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The Significance of the Hotmail Crack
Slothrup writes "Telepolis has an interesting piece linking the problems at Hotmail with the Sun purchase of Star Division. An excerpt: 'What this the Hotmail hack shows is that the Internet's self-regulation
doesn't work anymore because it relies on the assumption of more or less
equal participants. This is clearly no longer the case.' " Interesting piece. Definitely worth a read.
Sun is a HARDWARE and SUPPORT company. True, they sell Solaris, at a loss. True, they sell lots of products under the Solstice banner, but usually they're just 3rd party products with Sun's Stamp of Approval. Java is merely a part of the strategy to continue to sell big servers - Java applets (whats' that? StarPortal did you say???) need to be served, and, in the size and scope that Sun is thinking in, (40 million users? (there's a convenient number...)) by the very servers they produce.
Honestly... Weather the software is open source or not won't matter to Sun. Its just that RIGHT NOW the available commercial software is better for the markets they look at (Koffice will be _great_ but its not there yet, and its not written in Java)
And the server-centric model is the right one... At least from a management perspective.
--
We are Microsoft. You will be assimilated. Resistance is Futile.
Don't like my sig? I don't either.
You're not rebuking the idea of centralised computing, you're playing on people's prejudices against 20-year old dumb terminals that were hard to use.
In huge centralized system the effects of such attacks are greatly magnified because one single line of code can suddenly open millions of mailboxes.
And one line of bad code can't be much more of a risk on millions of PCs running the same (browser, e-mail, etc)? At least on a centralised server, it can be fixed for good, by qualified people.
You invariably end up with no rights what so ever, and you are likely not even to know it because you would have to be a computer scientist and a lawyer at the same time.
What exactly does this have to do with the matter at hand? How will putting a PC that needs to be configured, maintained and supported on every desktop help here?
Centrally managed computing (like Sun may offer) is a good answer for companies that need to manage hundreds or thousands of desktops for clueless users in a sane manner. Noone is shoving anything down your throat. Yes, believe it or not, the big, nasty corporations aren't, in this case, trying to rob you blind, curtail your precious rights, or anything else. They just don't care.
The key different between HotMail and StarOffice (as a service) is that StarOffice will run INSIDE the company, and therefore be the responsibility of "friendlies", NOT an external service provider.
Of course, they'll probably make it a net-available services as well, but so what? Big corporations *gasp* are still responsible for writing a lot of the software out there.
I don't know exactly what the author is trying to do here; it seems like they've strung together a list of 'hot-button' issues to make some kind of statement, one that we've heard many times before. It doesn't add anything really useful.
"Okay, here's a question. Before I click that "Check for new mail" widget, where is my mail? OH MY GOSH! It's out there on that scary Internet! ARRRGH!"
Well you just said it -- *new mail*. Sure your e-mail passes thru the internet, but it spends very little of its time there. Most of my e-mail has been safely in its folders on my system for months, and only on the internet for hours.
The other issue is concentration of resources. Sure its cheaper and easier to keep 40 million people's e-mail (the entire history for many, not just their recent e-mail) on one set of large servers. But that same concentration means one single flaw in security can expose that entire quantity of e-mail (as was just demonstrated.) When e-mail is stored locally on end-user's machines the risk is distributed, and each person can be more responsible for their own safety.
"Also, our friend the authordroid seems to be mistaking storing applications on a remote sever with storing data on a remote server. Is there really any problem with accessing an application via network that updates itself automagically and lets you save your data either on the server or locally?"
You know, I think thats an excellent idea for web apps like StarOffice and HotMail, keep the files locally, the applications centrally. But I get the impression it wasn't an option for HotMail. It won't be an option for those on WebTV either (like we care -- I know.)
I have nothing against Sun's plan to market web applications, they have a lot to recommend them in ease, price, and convenience. We have to be realistic about the flaws too though, or we're going to see too many more incidents like the recent HotMail crack.
Jim