A Time of Magic

Sometimes it seems like hardly a day goes by without some breakthrough in one area or another of medicine yet still we are surrounded by the minor annoyances that rarely seem to get a mention.

Every year we can bank on queues at the doctors when the winter weather brings on colds and flus. Yet neither have a solution so despite the medical authorities telling us all that antibiotics are no use for those lots of people turn up at their doctor anyway. Perhaps some year that queuing will be worthwhile but don’t count on it anytime soon as the problem with those diseases is that they mutate so the solution for last years variant won’t work on this years.

Then there’s the issue of a totally effective acne treatment. Sure there are lots of creams around that will remove the spots after a while, but what teenagers really want is something that’ll stop them appearing in the first place ie something that actually cures the problem rather than attacking the symptoms.

And, of course, there are many other little annoyances that afflict one group or another.

These days everyone and their dog seems to concentrate on the hi-tech end of promotion but forgetting about the lower end of technology loses out a lot.

For instance, how many people would think about getting a custom rubber stamp these days? Not so long ago it would have been very rare to come across a company that didn’t have loads of stamps with their logo on them yet nowadays it’s equally rare to find a company that does anything other than use computer graphics to print off their stationery and so there are few rubber stamps around with the logo on them.

But forgetting that “old technology” is a mistake. There are lots of places that you can stamp your logo which you’d simply not be bothered to print using the computer and that’s lots of opportunities for marketing that you’re missing out on in the absence of a simple rubber stamp.

With the rapid rise in the number of incidents and sensitivity of information affected through various losses of government information, the profile of information security is on a sharp slope upwards in importance.

Just a few years ago typically those in government information security roles were, by and large, generalists who had the security function bolted on by way of a fairly small number of specialist training courses. However, with the rise in the profile through media attention on various incidents that’s rapidly becoming a non-runner and thus there’s been a fairly rapid rise in the number of university masters courses on the topic.

Why not ordinary degrees? Essentially that’s because those getting into information security are generally very experienced and many of them already have degrees in the computer field. One suspects also the fact that the universities can charge more for a masters course has a certain amount to do with the level of degree too.

Is it just a flavour of the month though? In the sense it is in that a lot of the raising of the profile has arisen from the bad press that the various incidents created. However, those incidents are, to some extent, a reflection of the sheer volume of information that’s knocking around these days and that can only get worse as the power of computers increases.