Slashdot Mirror
Opera Unite is a Hail Mary
snydeq writes "Rather than view it as a game-changer, Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister sees Opera Unite as a Hail Mary bid for Opera to stay in the game. After all, in an era when even vending machines have Web servers on them, a Web server on the Web browser isn't really that groundbreaking. What Opera is attempting is to 'reintermediate' the Internet — 'directly linking people's personal computers together' by making them sign up for an account on Opera's servers and ensuring all of their exchanges pass through Opera's servers first. 'That's an effective way to get around technical difficulties like NAT firewalls, but more important, it makes Opera the intermediary in your social interactions — not Facebook, not MySpace, but Opera,' McAllister writes. In other words, Opera hopes to use social networking as a Trojan horse to put traditional apps back in charge."
...that is all.
Google for Netscape and Brown Orifice for more details.
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/70
Such a security hole is waiting to happen. It is really a dumb idea from Apple. One of the biggest plus point of MacOS is that, it is safe and it does not have vulnerabilities. To put that reputation at risk by allowing the browser to dish out data to the outside world is really really a dumb idea.
Yes, there are security features. Yes there are things the user must enable for it to work. Despite all this, having server code loaded up in the memory of a browser is stupid.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
No, we're supposed to hail Mary, who we learn is an operatic Trojan who between gigs is also "on the game" — [cough], the oldest profession, you know. It sounds like a remake of Woody Allen's Mighty Aphrodite. It might be good, but I'd guess The Brüno Movie will be much funnier and outstrip it at the box office.