Indirectly via Jake over at appslab one of those wonderful "I'll summarize you in 20 questions" tests floating around the web. It seemed reasonably fair to me. Unusual and paradoxical, random and nonchalant - My mother would be so proud. Anyway you all might want to have a go.

Niall, you show a slight right-hemisphere dominance with a moderate preference for auditory processing, an unusual and somewhat paradoxical combination of characteristics.

You are drawn to a random and sometimes nonchalant synthesis of material. You learn as it seems important to a specific situation, and might even develop a resentment of others who attempt to direct your learning down a specific channel.

Your right-hemispheric dominance provides a structure that is only loosely organized and one which processes entire swatches of reality, overlooking details. You are emotional in your reactions and perceptual more than logical in your approach, although you can impose structure and a language base when necessary.

Your auditory preference, on the other hand, implies that you process information sequentially and unidimensionally. This combination of right-brain and auditory modes creates conflict, as you want to process data more rapidly than your natural processes allow.

Your tendency to be creative and free-flowing is accompanied by sufficient ability to organize and be logical, allowing you a reasonable degree of success in a number of different endeavors. You take in information methodically and systematically which can then be synthesized rapidly. In this manner, you manage to function consistently well, although certainly less efficiently than you desire.

You prefer the abstract and are a theoretician at heart while retaining the ability to be practical. You find the symbolism in a great deal of what you encounter and are something of a "mystic."

With regards to your lifestyle, you have the mentality which would be good as a philosopher, writer, journalist, or instructor, or possibly as a systems designer or social worker. Perhaps most important is your ability to "listen to your inner voice" as a mode of skipping over unnecessary steps to achieve your goals.

It seems that there is a surprising lack of awareness of basic password security even in the IT industry. This week I had occasion to call customer services at my ISP - a leading player in the UK market - the customer services representative used the password for my user account  to authenticate me. This is information a customer services member of staff should never be able to see. 

Just now I've received an Oracle workflow email from the Oracle store (I wanted to be able to store list prices for quotes for stuff we buy as part of a paper trail) the registration email I received contained the following plain text content. Quite why one should need to send passwords and logins in the same plain text email is beyond me. 

Your account sign-in information is as follows:

- Login Name : <removed>

- Password: <removed> 

Your company Registry ID is <removed> 

IMPORTANT: Do not reply to this mail. If you need to contact us, send an

email to [Customer care email id]