I have mentioned before some of the interesting policies of a consulting company of my acquaintance. But sadly recently there has been more head scratching. Item the first: when laptops are delivered from their preferred supplier they remove the wi-fi card. This is apparently for "security". Naturally everyone who receives one of these machines then goes to the store and buys a PCMCIA wi-fi card and puts it on their expenses. Item the second: they have a VPN. Which is nice because they are a consulting company and the majority of their staff work on client sites. Except it's virtually impossible to get access to, for "security" reasons. When this gift is granted to an employee I'm informed that they aren't trusted to install and configure the VPN software themselves, they have to take their work laptop (without a wi-fi card) to the office to get someone from technical support to set up their access. Of course the problem here is that their employees need this VPN access because they aren't in the office, but that doesn't seem in any way ironic to them. The mind boggles.