Misleading Information from Forbes about ColdFusion

The link at the end of my Soapbox rant will take you to a short blog entry by Stephen Wunker, a writer for Forbes.com who’s apparent area of expertise is “New Markets”.

In this essay he proclaims that the second (of four) reason that MySpace.com is faltering is because it was written in ColdFusion which (as he puts it) is not an open source tool.

OMG (to put it in today’s vernacular).

According to Richard Buckingham, VP of Technical Operations at MySpace from 2005 to 2010 the site was launched in PHP but switched to ColdFusion for the sole purpose of allowing a more open platform. The API allows individuals to write in .NET, C#, ColdFusion, Ruby, and yes, even PHP.

Now there is no way to contact Mr. Wunker through his Forbes blog entry so I can attempt to set the record straight with him. As far as I can tell from his bio his major claim to fame is he was a “colleague” of some Harvard Business School professor.

Not sure what this guy’s agenda is, he has truly done Forbes a disservice by publishing an outright lie and the Internet programming community by misleading people into believing the ColdFusion is neither open source or flexible.

Who is this guy?

4 Morals from MySpace’s Fall - Stephen Wunker - New Markets - Forbes

ColdFusion Programmer Wanted

We are looking to add to our development team. A link to the job announcement is below.

Send your resumes to Development@LAWTRAC.com

LT Online Corp Web Log

Anonymous: Heroes or Villains?

There has been a lot of talk lately about this group that calls themselves “Anonymous” has been cracking the security of corporate and government entities and releasing the information they find as proof of abilities to hack these networks.

The IT community is watching this with absolute silence. They don’t want to say anything that would put their networks in the crosshairs of these network hooligans.

Their justification for not stepping up:

“The bottom line for the IT security community is that it needs to protect systems and data, regardless of the motivation of the assailant.”

Everyone, in my opinion, is missing the point. If these hooligans were really doing a ‘service’ to the IT community they would tell us what networks they could not penetrate.

They would also recognize the fact that obtaining a low-level PDF file from NATO (that wasn’t classified in the first place) and publishing it as proof that the network security is poor only extends the public’s misunderstanding of what they are doing.  Folks…. the document was not located in a security network. The security classification of the document meant it shouldn’t be published in a newspaper, but they really didn’t care who had access (it was a budget).

The denial of service attack against the CIA’s website should have been classified as a “prank” because that is what it was.

All other major network hacks have turned out to be inside-jobs. Individuals who the corporation trusted turned over the keys to the networks to these knuckleheads.

I’m going to post a plan this week which if everyone follows on their personal computer to insure their own security. So keep checking back.

Anonymous, LulzSec: Heroes or Villains?

Free isn’t “Free”

So many people are happy to give up their personal information in exchange for something they have been told is ‘free’.

Even institutions like Major League Baseball promote one game every day telling you that you can watch the game live from their website for ‘free’.

Not true – you have to purchase the plug-in to watch the game.

Then there is my favorite, “Free Credit Report.com”. First the site was created as a result of a lawsuit whereby the credit reporting agencies had to provide free credit reports to the citizens of the U.S.

After the period of time passed that they had to provide the information for free they changed the structure of the website so that they would provide the information for free (after a two-day waiting period) but you had to “enroll” in a service that (for a fee) would watch your credit transactions.

So that too isn’t FREE.

If I were in charge (like that is ever going to happen) any company who requires you provide any personal information in exchange for goods and services or requires an additional “bridge” purchase in order to obtain the item for “free” cannot use the word “FREE” in their advertising, product announcements or any other enticement.

Maybe our lawmakers will take this issue on once they get done spending all the money we don’t have.

Jim's Soapbox

FBI arrests Twelve Hackers

I thought when all was said and done that the FBI would find that the hacker group ‘Anonymous’ would be kids from a far-away land.

But no….

These knuckleheads are US citizens.

I do understand their reasoning behind their defense; to show what computer systems are not being run in a secure manner.

But this group can’t use that defense.

First, if they were really out to expose unsecure networks then they should be ready to share with the programming community which systems they couldn’t get into so we could see what those companies are doing right and learn from that.

Second, they should have never published user names, passwords, whatever to the rest of the world.

Finally, we need to know the techniques they used to access the networks that they did.

More info from ComputerWorld at the link below.

Update: FBI arrests 12 in 'Anonymous' hackers probe - Computerworld

Legal Directions

The redesign of LegalDirections.info is 80% complete. Still needs some of the RSS feeds plugged back in.

The site pulls together a number of RSS feeds from legal information sites including product recall information and more.

Check it out 

Legal Directions 

– if you have any suggestions feel free to pass them along.

Garage Sales of America

Going into Beta testing with a target ‘go live’ date of August 1st.

You are more than welcome to check the site out and even test how easy it is to post and edit your entries.

The site makes full use of Google Maps to show individuals where yard sales, garage sales, church bazars, fairs, flea markets and more are in proximity to their zip code.

Your thoughts on the lay-out and functionality would really be appreciated.

For you programmers out there, this site uses some of the new ColdFusion 9 infused JQuery tools.

Garage Sales of America

Today's Pix

Add a caption: This Ranger from the All American Division readies for a jump.