This week, the HP vice president indicted for leaking trade secrets from IBM, his former employeer, pleaded guilty. Dude, UR DOIN IT RONG. Atul Malhotra allegedly emailed the goods to a coworker, drawing a big red arrow back to his own forehead. Ready to cash in on your inside info? Follow this six-step plan.

1. Be sure the secret is worth something. You don't want to risk your neck over info the company is already required to file with the SEC.

2. Pick the right potential buyer. Start with senior VPs or members of the executive team -– someone who can and will play ball.

3. Establish an anonymous Internet presence. Only do email from Internet connections that can't be traced back to you. Local Wi-Fi hotspots and unsecured home networks are your friend. Never use the same email address to contact more than one person. Don't just change addresses, hop from Gmail to Hotmail to Yahoo. Skyhook is developing a wonderful hybrid positioning system to pin down your location based on IP address. Keep that in mind.

4. Ditch email for prepaid phones from T-Mobile, available at your local Target, it a mark shows interest. But remember that if a 911 operator can find your location, so can anyone else. Check for security cameras in the area before you dial or take a call.

5. Use an untraceable method to transfer the info. British agents used Bluetooth or IR devices disguised as rocks to pass information. Get creative: A dropped USB stick, a misplaced folder, or a shared Google Doc all can work. The Madrid bombers created email drafts that others could access, so nothing was ever sent through an SMTP server that could be tracked. You needn't be high-tech. Aldrich Ames carried top secret documents out of the CIA in paper bags.

6. Hide the money. Never break omerta, lest you end up like Pink Cadillac Guy in Goodfellas. Living beyond your means always tips people off. It happened to Ames. And keep your mouth shut. James Hall III overshared with a Russian spy who turned out to be FBI. Earl Edwin Pitts' ex-wife and Robert Hannsen's brother-in-law helped turn them in. That's the downside of a successful sale: You sell the company's secret, but saddle yourself with one of your own.

A self-taught hacker, Rigano says he discovered the vulnerabilities and coded the exploits on his own time, which he says is none of HP's business. "I have the right to sell what I want," he says. He told me he attracted mostly Chinese and Russian buyers, but claimed he never found takers for the HP or SAP "vulns" and exploits. He said he stopped selling black-market code in January but didn't explain why.

An HP spokeswoman admitted the company has a rogue employee in France and said it was investigating along with the FBI. When I told Rigano this, he became incensed. "This is real bullshit," he said, and threatened to sue anyone who claimed he was the target of any investigation.

He may be right: It's possible the company has been investigating another Gallic code crasher whose online nickname is t0t0, and who in May 2007 posted offers for SAP 0days that were traceable through HP's network. By connecting his various aliases with email addresses he has used over the years, I was able to track t0t0 to Paris's Institut Supérieur d'Electronique, France's premier high-tech college, where it appears he's an instructor. T0t0 didn't respond to repeated interview requests.

What does the board do? You meet at 8:30 a.m. and planes have to be caught around 1 p.m. An audit committee meeting can take an hour and you've got all the other committees. And then it's almost time for lunch and you have a few minutes to talk about competition, strategy, growth rate, succession, the future, fundamentally important stuff. And it tends to get scrunched into a very limited amount of time.

When I joined the board, the company was spending $5 billion a year on R&D and the board was oblivious. So we established this committee. It met the day before the board meetings and got into the strategic aspect of HP. Made it possible for Carly [Fiorina] and Mark [Hurd] to take risks. HP had had a very liberal technology licensing policy, actually paying out $100 million a year in royalties. At the first meeting of the technology committee we changed that. I insisted that every single license had to be signed by Fiorina. The second thing we did was get serious against Dell Direct. But the most important thing was we encouraged the company to redirect a lot of purchases of microprocessors to AMD from Intel.

Jay

(Photo by ashbyyokosuka)

Jarvis boasts of Dell customer loyalty while espousing his fondness for sticky viral marketing (ewww):

I am big into the whole viral thing. You are going to see us do a lot of viral activities and spray it on the wall and see what sticks. Dell customers are vehemently loyal. There is a "Dell for life" concept. So we are going to build a loyalty program. There will be viral aspects to that loyalty program.

The big challenge was that there actually was no culture or discipline of marketing at Dell at all. Marketing at Dell until I walked in was a consequence of the sales process... However what is lacking at Dell is there is no air cover over the top that actually explains what Dell does and creates an emotional link between Dell and the customer.

We are going to apply the direct model to customizing what's outside the box. So you are going to be able to pick the design of the outside of your system, which H-P can't do. ... Ironically even Apple, Apple has moved away from that. There used to be a time when you could get six different colors of Apples.

The Amazing Race
Everyone's a little bit racist! And you're a lot racist, so just like the good Lord told you, you keep your MySpace hookups within the holy white race. When the hot dude on MySpace calls himself "Caucasian," you can ask him to verify that with a quick HP skin-tone index match. HP will tell you if that's a tan — or if you almost committed the mortal sin of miscegenation!

Fell Down Some Stairs
Ladies, we all know about make-up's toughest job: hiding the bruises from hubby. (He does it because he loves you so much!) We also know that "I walked into a door" only does half the job. HP's patented color-matching technology helps you take care of the other half, turning those bruises into easily ignored softer bruises with our discoloration-matcher. Ouch, ouch, careful with that applicator!

Rebel Without Faux Pas
You're 15; that's pretty much an adult. Don't show up to the My Chemical Romance concert in your old man's skin tones. HP will help you match your whiteface, mascara, and hair dye (my, what a unique choice you made at K-Mart!) to your stockings. But we won't help you realize that when you kiss other boys, you're not actually doing it to impress the girls.

L.A. Tangential
People in L.A. are just more beautiful (no matter what everyone else says). You can be more beautiful too, when you tan with the HP color-matcher. We have a special color index for L.A. tanners, ranging from "Contemporary Lohan" to "Donatella Versace." Ask these happy customers!

Puttin' on the Blitz
Hey Mister Hedge Fund Manager, you're looking fine in your striped shirt! You know what this shirt means! You're going to rock the club! But your rocking striped shirt does not perfectly match your khakis! Fuck that, you're holding HP's douche card, the striped-shirt color guide for bridge-and-tunnel douches from San Francisco's Marina district to L.A.'s West Hollywood to New York's Murray Hill. Now go out there and do a line off the urinal!

Nick Douglas writes at Valleywag, Too Much Nick, and Look Shiny. His lip gloss is poppin'.

(Sun Microsystems' flacks pitched us on the following story, but only because they knew we love a good gang war.)

This summer, Bay Area artists sent life-size cutouts of Silicon Valley on a hitchhiking tour designed to end with glorious homecomings for all. But cutouts of HP founders Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard were turned away at their own company's headquarters, according to one of the project's creators.

That artist's husband is an engineer for Sun. Sun and HP are kind of like rival gangs (the poncey finger-snapping, dancing kind, not the bust-some-caps-in-your-ass kind), and their last run-in ended with HP slapping its brand on Sun's cocktail napkins. So you'll forgive Sun for needing a little payback — and for turning this into a "fuck you" to HP's business decisions.

Sun Rescues Hewlett and Packard [Sun Blogs]
Where's Waldo meets Silicon Valley [SF Tech Chronicles]
The Adventures of Hewlett and Packard [YLEM.org]

Sun is so short of money now, that for a recent Sun Data Centre conference that they held in Melbourne, Australia, they had their event organiser seek external sponsorship. Someone from HP stepped up and sponsored a dinner or something, which resulted in the attached napkins being used throughout the whole conference. Apparently the Sun customers thought it was great, especially watching the Sun reps running around trying to pick up the napkins all day.

Somehow, the Oracle CEO ended up in an old shirt with a Compaq logo. He wore it for a video shown at Hewlett-Packard — Compaq's old rival and, since 2002, owner.

Weird thing is, CNET blogger Stephen Shankland says Larry remembered to tape over the logo in January. What kind of game is he playing here? Somewhere in the billions, Larry, is room to buy a new shirt.

Larry Ellison's logowear lapse [CNET]
Photo: Same outfit, taped logo [CNET]