commentary

OpenSocial Hacked Again

OpenSocial Hacked Again: He’s pulled up Ning co-founder Marc Andreessen’s friend list to prove his point, and shared part of it with me. I won’t be publishing it here, but it shows that he got access to the application.

Total time to hack iLike on Ning: 20 minutes.

As with the RockYou/Plaxo hack, no real damage has been done, but it shows that in the rush to get applications out the door quickly, attention to security may have fallen by the side of the road. [Oops]
Source: TechCrunch

Mark Bernstein: NeoVictorian Computing

Mark Bernstein: NeoVictorian Computing: This isn’t working. We’ve been stuck for years, the backlog never goes away, and we fight the same old fights with a new generation of management. The Enterprise is too complex, too turbulent, too confused, to be a fruitful place to study the craft of software. We don’t know when it’s right. Yes, we sometimes know when it’s wrong, when we can’t even deliver the software. But what is success? Praise from a self-interested manager? An incremental improvement in corporate throughput? A pile of surveys filled in by our students? A nice writeup in The Journal?

I propose that enterprise software is a hard problem that we can understand only after we solve an easier case, one that lies close to hand. Before we can tackle the enterprise, we need to write software for people. Not software for everyone, but software for you and for me. [Awesome piece. Not to be missed.]

Jackass of the Week: NBC Universal’s Jeff Zucker

Jackass of the Week: NBC Universal’s Jeff Zucker: NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker claims Apple “destroyed the music business in terms of pricing”. As John Paczkowski points out, the going rate for digital downloads pre-iTunes was zero. Zero.

So while they sit around until hell freezes over waiting for Apple to voluntarily just start sharing iPod hardware profits with entertainment companies for no good reason whatsoever, that’s what they’re going to get for video now, too: zero.

[There’s a lot of entrenched thinking around “content”. More here. Disclosure: Oxygen, the company I work for was bought by NBC Universal.]
Source: Daring Fireball

Javascript battles

Brendan’s Roadmap Updates: Open letter to Chris Wilson: Everything that has been done to advance JavaScript to the proposed ECMAScript 4th Edition (ES4) in Ecma TC39-TG1 has been in the open for well over a year, first via the es4-discuss mailing list (complete archive) and exports of our group’s wiki, along with public talks I’ve given. Then by ecmascript.org hosting the reference implementation for ES4 as proposed, along with our public trac database. And finally by the whole wiki being fully opened up and hosted live — including Microsoft’s “ES3.1” proposals. [Hmmm.]
Source:

The plantation the TV networks have created for them

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: A boring rant: The producers of content don’t like the TV network system but can’t quite see the way across the divide into my digital world. Some musical artists, like Prince, are figuring it out, but they’re isolated examples. Trust me, however, when I tell you that TV and movie people will figure it out too. These are not stupid people. And they are not un-greedy. Which means their desire for more money and more control and more freedom will lead them to apply their energy into figuring out how to get out of the plantation the TV networks have created for them. They will break free. Mark my words. [Er umm I may be on the wrong side of this issue all things considered… bring change from within?]

Appliances or platforms?

Staff Roundtable: Apple Should Do No Harm to iPhones: Similarly, although Apple apparently attaches no importance to enabling independent applications, users (like Glenn and Joe, and many others) disagree. Apple needs to understand that the iPhone will be a platform whether or not Apple likes it, and managing that process will prove more effective and lucrative than ignoring it (or fighting it, which will just generate bad press). Perhaps Apple should learn from Microsoft, which listened to its customers and will be selling Windows XP for six months longer than previously announced, due to anemic uptake of Windows Vista. [Not only will Apple lose, but all these appliances can become platforms which can be far greater sources of revenue if only Apple would learn from its past. All sorts of folks can use these things as appliances and enjoy the Jobsian experience. Others can hack and add all sorts of stuff, and make these devices what they want. Jobs has to learn to let go.]
Source: TidBITS

Staff Roundtable: Apple Should Do No Harm to iPhones

Staff Roundtable: Apple Should Do No Harm to iPhones: Now, I hold no truck with the notion that companies have constitutional rights. That’s part of the erosion of personal liberty in favor of so-called corporate rights that began in earnest in the 20th century. (You can read Peachpit Press founder Ted Nace’s book “Gangs of America” on this topic; it’s a free download.) But you have to admire the chutzpah that lets a cell carrier assert a constitutionally guaranteed right to prevent choice among its consumers as a matter of “speech.”

The FCC replied in its rule-making on the matter, “To the extent that a choice of device or application implicates First Amendment values at all, we think that our requirements promote rather than restrict expressive freedom because they provide consumers with greater choice in the devices and applications they may use to communicate.” Well put – and rather radical in its true conservatism. [Chutzpa doesn’t begin to characterize this sort of thing. Which of our presidential candidates has something to say on this issue? I’ve so much research to do…]
Source: TidBITS