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	Phil's Blogservations Wednesday, August 25, 2004 Posted by philgomes 12:21 AM The Washington Times And Gomes' Law Of Storage The Washington Times And Gomes' Law Of Storage The Gomes Law Of Storage, crafted during my sysadmin days and refined during my agency-side tenure with Phoenix Technologies, stated "The death of the floppy disk drive is always five years from today." Alas, as years went by, it seemed that the humble 3.5" floppy was destined to persist as a parasitic element on the humble PC. Products like Iomega's ZIP disk became complementary to the floppy. The CD-RW never quite replaced it. And the LS-120 format? Remember that? Probably not. It's even less likely that you ever held an LS-120 disk in your hands. But now we have the USB memory keychain and, with it, a collapsing mortality window for Gomes' Law Of Storage. Thanks to ubiquitous USB ports in PCs and even non-PC devices, the contents of several dozen floppies can be crammed into half a pinky finger's worth of plastic. Now, for real this time... The floppy is doomed. So much so, in fact, that I once noticed that Dell would penalize you $20 if you burdened their finely tuned supply chain with a $5 floppy drive. (For that same $20, though, you could get a 16MB USB key from the same online store.) I own two such devices. One of them I bought on impluse in 2002 at Fry's Electronics. It has 64MB of storage and, handily carabinered to my keychain, it has saved me numerous times. The other is a 256MB key I got from the lovely folks at Forbes for participating in a 2003 conference. I store archived family photos on it. I used to wear it around my neck and under my shirt all the time until Erin, having enriched my life in so many other ways before and since, was kind enough to inform me that my geek credentials were otherwise just-fine-thank-you and, thus, wearing that blue plastic fob around my neck really was this close to donning a Klingon suit and jumping a Furry in front of City Hall. But I digress... You're asking where this is all coming from, and I'm getting to that... Doing my usual industry news scanning, I came across this piece in The Washington Times. A reader, reacting to a column by Mark Kellner about a particular brand of USB key suggested that such products would be great to use around the office. Alas, the office disagreed: The IT director said the device would be too handy for corporate espionage or, lacking virus protection, the delivery of malicious viruses or worms into a corporate network. The reader was confronted with a stark response: Not only will his company not purchase USB Flash Drives for employees, but the IT department will "craft a policy for management approval wherein the mere possession of a personally owned [USB flash drive] device on company premises may be grounds for termination of employment." So, it's come to this: "Use sneakernet, lose your job!" I hate to break it to sysadmins everywhere but, if an employee wants to get data out of your organization, he or she will do it. Make a policy banning USB keys, and Fred from accounting (who is already pissed off at his benefits reduction) will start making regular trips to the roof during his coffee break to rendezvous with his trained carrier pidgeon. The only real solution, all things considered, is making it very clear that it's the company's network and, as such, the company has every right to record and log who touches what data, how often, and where it goes. If credible forensics yield incontrovertible evidence of corporate espionage, then the corporation needs to punish the offending employee. Blaming a technology that has the potential for misuse is the easy and ineffective way to answer the more difficult problem of actually addressing the human equation. Mr. Kellner ends his piece, as I will similarly end this posting, with sage advice: How might you gain the advantage in such situations? Become an "evangelist" inside your circle for such new technology. Marshal your facts, get the information together, and see how you can present such ideas to senior management to win their approval. HOME | OBSESSIONS | FAQ | HEROES | CAREER | BLOG | CONTACT Note that the views expressed on this site do not necessarily reflect those of Phil's employer, its business partners, its clients, or anyone or anything that doesn't come from Phil.	ABOUT THIS BLOG This blog not only discusses PR and media matters, but Phil's everyday observations about a variety of topics. EMAIL phil[at] philgomes[[dot}]com SYNDICATE Feedburner ARCHIVE YAHOO! IM SKYPE WISH LIST PITCH POLICY MY PHOTOS www.flickr.com Photostream RSS Enter your Email Powered by FeedBlitz COMMENT AND TRACKBACK POLICY Comments and trackbacks are unmoderated, though I will delete the patently offensive ones. Any comments and trackbacks are the opinions of the individual writer of those comments and trackbacks, and not those of Phil Gomes, his employer, its clients, or its business partners. If you have a bone to pick, bug the people who wrote the comment or trackback.