Microsoft Echoes Spanish Prisoner

I really enjoyed the movie "Spanish Prisoner" when I saw it. It's a movie about a never-quite-defined, extremely valuable "process" that's the intellectual property of a company, and the intrigue that surrounds attempts by various parties to gain access to it. The "process" is so valuable that there's enormous secrecy at the company and painstaking measures to protect it. The movie is often compared to the better-known movie, "The Usual Suspects," but I think the dialogue in "Spanish Prisoner" is far more entertaining, as it's all complicated and filled with little side sayings and such, like the woman that just throws into a conversation the phrase, "Dog my cats."

The real point of this post, though, is that we have some new security posters that have gone up around campus, encouraging us to be careful with our intellectual property and security measures. Every time I see one, I think of "Spanish Prisoner," where they had posters on the walls of the company with much the same theme. One that springs to mind is a poster with some guy drowning in front of a sinking ship and the slogan, "Someone Talked!" emblazoned across the header. It is, of course, a reference to the phrase, "Loose lips sink ships."

I'm in no way downplaying the importance of security and the protection of intellectual property, although I'm a firm believer in more transparency being good for product development. But this is definately a case of life imitating art.