Got Facebook? If so, join our new social group, SD Times Readers. We’d love to have you!

Social networking is an interesting phenomenon. Some social networks that I belong to are super useful. Some are completely worthless. Some work great using low-tech solutions like e-mail lists. Others are thriving thanks to the latest technology. We’re in a period that combines extreme experimentation with high-speed evolution. It’s fascinating to watch, but even better to participate in. Social networking is one sport that doesn’t play well from the sidelines.

We’re dipping our toes into the water with our Facebook group. What’s it going to look like a month from now, or a year from now? I have no idea. We might have 100 members. We might have 1,000 members. We might have 100,000 members, bringing together subscribers to SD Times and its newsletters, as well as everyone who visits SDTimes.com. There’s no way to predict.

What’s going to happen in the SD Times Readers group? Again, it’s hard to know. We might have technical discussions about multithreaded development. We might have in-depth discussions about the best Java application server, or the best .NET grid control. We might have software development managers sharing their family photos. With your help, we’ll have all the above.

So, what are you waiting for? Come join the SD Times Readers group and take part in the fascinating social networking revolution.

This email just came in… it’s a scam.

The message contains a link that looks like it’s from amazon.co.uk, but actually goes to to a doramail.com Web server that mimics the Amazon.co.uk login page. Don’t be fooled!

From: “Amazon.co.uk”
Subject: Amazon Marketplace Items Canceled

Dear member,

Per your request,your listings for the following items in the Amazon Marketplace have been canceled. You were assessed no fees.

(link is here)

Your items no longer appear in the Amazon catalog, and cannot be purchased. You can review the details of your cancelled listings, including the price, condition, and seller comments for each individual listing.

I’m a big fan of singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega. That meant a major disappointment last May, when she came to the IMAC Theater, within walking distance of our Huntington, N.Y., headquarters office, to kick off her most recent tour… but on a date when I couldn’t be in New York. Dang!

“Tom’s Essay,” Suzanne’s blog post in today’s New York Times, describes the history of her song “Tom’s Diner.” It also discusses how that song may be the driving impetus for the creation of the MP3 audio standard. Fascinating!

“Tom’s Diner” is the lead song from Suzanne’s 1987 album, “Solitude Standing.” She wrote a blog post about “Luka,” the other big hit single from that album, for the New York Times back in June.

My friend Phil Spiegel has written a wonderful book, entitled “Triumph Over Tyranny: The Heroic Campaigns That Saved 2,000,000 Soviet Jews.”

The hardcover will come out on Oct. 10. You can pre-order the book from Amazon.com right now. In the meantime, you can check out Phil’s Web site for the book. As he writes,

Shalom Chaverim,

My book, TRIUMPH OVER TYRANNY: The Heroic Campaigns that Saved 2,000,000 Soviet Jews, is now being printed and will be released by Devora Publishing of Jerusalem and New York on October 10, 2008. I invite you all to visit the book’s new website, www.triumphovertyranny.com.

The site will enable you to:

• See the book’s cover and a list of its chapters
• Read an overview of the book, my bio, and Natan Sharansky’s foreword
• Check out reviews of the book
• Find out where and when I’m doing book signing events
• Order signed copies of the book
• Link to websites from organizations who support Jews from the FSU
• Learn about the “Unsung Hero of the Month”

Please join me in supporting Phil’s diligent scholarship. “Triumph of Tyranny” has been years in the making, and I hope you’ll agree that he has done a tremendous job of documenting important history and genuine heroism.

Some more about Phil:

Philip Spiegel and his wife, Carolyn Kommel Spiegel, traveled to the Soviet Union in 1985 and 1987 as participants in the Moscow Marathon. They also visited and befriended refuseniks in Russia,Armenia and Azerbaijan. When they returned to California the Spiegels gave numerous talks about their findings in the Soviet Union and organized letter writing campaigns supporting resfuseniks and prisoners of conscience.

From 1985 to 1995 the Spiegels served on the Board of Directors of the Bay Area Council for Soviet Jews. During this time the author was chairman of the Social Action Committee of Congregation Kol Emeth in Palo Alto and represented the congregation on the local Jewish Community Relations Council.

During his professional career in the electronics industry Spiegel authored technical papers, marketing materials and training courses. In 2000 he wrote and published Remembering Ottynia, a 64-page book about his parents’ hometown in Ukraine. Copies of the book were donated to several Holocaust museums in the United States and Israel and the book was accepted by Yad Vashem as a Yizkor (memorial) book.

Since 2002, Spiegel has researched the history of the international Soviet Jewry movement and interviewed over 200 activists, political leaders, former refuseniks and prisoners of conscience. He has presented several lectures on his research and in 2006 he developed and taught “The Journey of Soviet Jewry,” a five-session course for Lehrhaus Judaiaca, the Adult School for Jewish Studies in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The Adventures of IP Man is the new comic strip put out by Broadvox, a VoIP company. Designed, of course, to promote the benefits of Voice over Internet Protocol Technology, the strip is cutely drawn, but shallow and unsubtle.

Our superhero, IP Man, and his simian sidekick, Metoo, take on the evil Mr. Bellhead — a Darth Vader lookalike who loves circuit-switched networks — and his minions, Noise and Jitter. The strip has a few jokes, breaks the fourth wall (as Mr. Bellhead appeals to “Mr. Comicwriter Man” for an army of clones), and a 100% male cast.

Sadly, Broadvox made the implementation of the IP Man site far too complicated. It’s very “flashy,” which makes it slow and tedious to read the comic. Frankly, just displaying each comic book episode as a series of multi-strip HTML pages would be far more friendly. Oh, lose the cheesy background music, okay?

I think that’s what Microsoft wants. In any case, they are running a big promotion selling Office Ultimate 2007 for $59.95. The promotion is called “The Ultimate Steal.” The company says you can save 91% off the estimated retail price.

Isn’t Microsoft against stealing software? The company goes to tremendous lengths to stop Windows XP and Windows Vista from being stolen. The Genuine Advantage program, for example, has been known to arbitrarily decide that legally licensed versions of Windows are pirated, and it’s up to you, Mr. or Ms. Consumer, to convince Microsoft otherwise.

The Ultimate Steal is only for the Windows version of Office Ultimate 2007. There’s no comparable program for Office 2008 for Macintosh.

It’s also only for college or university students. “You must have a valid e-mail address at an educational institution ending with the domain suffix .EDU,” or attend one of a group of listed schools that don’t use the .EDU domain.

There’s a lot of stuff in Office Ultimate 2007. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Groove, Publisher, Access, InfoPath and even Accounting Express. It’s quite a “steal”!

I received this email — sent to a “bcc” distribution list — from Tom Brennan, organizer of the OWASP 2008 conference next week in New York. OWASP is the Open Web Application Security Project.

The contents of the email are interesting and provocative enough to share them verbatim. (I’m not associated with the conference.) You can read more about clickjacking on Jeremiah’s blog.

———-

Subject: Microsoft/Adobe Researcher Talk @ OWASP

Below is a email from Robert Hansen concerning himself and Jeremiah Grossman of WhiteHat Security, being suppressed from speaking about a critical information security flaw that has been discovered and they had planned to uncover and discuss at the OWASP Security Conference event on 9/24.

As the OWASP event organizer, this critical issue does deserve your attention. I am sure if your browser, video and microphone was taken over by someone who wanted to conduct surveillance, industrial espionage or hack your system and use the vulnerability against you and millions of users you would want to fully understand the threat. Well this is in fact the situation described below and I believe that a information security conference with industry peers from around the world IS the place to discuss/debate topics such as these and they should NOT be suppressed by anyone.

Read below from the security researchers and speakers, you can contact me or the researchers below for more information.

BTW — This is not the only security person that will be providing breaking research, however this is the 1st that has been told not to talk about it thus far.

Brennan

—–Original Message—–
From: Robert Hansen
Sent: Monday, September 15, 2008 3:07 PM
To: Tom Brennan
Cc: Jeremiah Grossman
Subject: Clickjacking speech

Hello, Tom. I’m sorry to say, Jeremiah and I will have to pull our talk from the World OWASP conference. It turns out that the issue Jeremiah and I found expands over many different browsers and different vendors. Although clickjacking in some way or another has been known for a while as a possible attack vector, it was poorly documented and poorly researched. Not until recently did we begin doing research into other things it allows, and only then did we figure out exactly how dangerous it potentially was. Unfortunately we found this information out only days ago.

Even initially Jeremiah and I had a visceral reaction to our findings — and not much makes security guys cringe, which made us think it was a talk worth giving. Being concerned researchers, we contacted Adobe to warn them about one issue that affected them and their users. Although we didn’t believe it was their fault, they felt obliged to issue a patch, rather than rely on browser vendors. Only later did we realize we had found a separate flaw in their software. Successively we found other flaws in other software as a result of that research. It was a snowball effect.

Adobe asked us for more time, and we obliged. It’s good news for them, but unfortunately it means we won’t be able to do our speech. It was never our intention to harm any one vendor, but rather to show a problem in browser architecture as it stands today. So although Adobe’s request was unexpected, given our initial tenant, we feel obliged to honor it. We’ve been in contact with two browser vendors (Microsoft and Mozilla) and explained the problem. There may be small short term patches that will mitigate parts of the problem, but a better solution is probably not in the cards for the near future given the complexity of the issues involved.

During our communications with browser vendors it was initially thought to be a stand-alone problem that only affected Adobe, but after further analysis everyone concluded it is a more generic attack that may break some security measures put in place by websites. Users who want to protect themselves from the immediate issue need to disable scripting and plugins within the browsers, but because most users won’t know how to do this, we had to give Adobe some time to issue a patch. While that’s not a great solution, it’s the best we can offer at the moment. While the exploits we found are not the end of the internet, we felt it was best to work with the vendors and give them time to issue patches before releasing our speech to the security community.

We are obviously disappointed that we can’t deliver our speech, but we thought a neutered speech that left out critical details would diminish the message. And the message is — it’s pretty bad. If you or any of the other conference organizers have any additional questions feel free to contact either Jeremiah or I. Adobe’s PSIRT team also said that they would field questions at email hidden; JavaScript is required. I’m truly sorry!

Robert Hansen, CISSP
CEO — SecTheory LLC

EclipseWorld has secured special rates with the Hyatt Regency Reston.

Single occupancy: $239 per night
Double occupancy: $264 per night

To make your reservations online, use this link.

You can also call the hotel directly at +1-703-709-1234. Be sure to identify yourself as an EclipseWorld attendee to receive the group rate!

Note that this rate will expire when we use up our room block or on October 8 — whichever comes first. There aren’t many rooms left in the block, so book the room early so you don’t miss out.

Yesterday, Microsoft finally gave in, accepting the Unified Modeling Language and joining the Object Management Group.

Microsoft wasn’t the only tools company that avoided UML, but it became the highest profile one. The modeling tools that debuted a few years ago in Visual Studio Team System used Microsoft’s own modeling system, as the compan claimed that UML was simply too complicated.

Microsoft was not wrong. UML is large and cumbersome, and it’s often overkill for applications design and development, particularly in the smaller and mid-sized companies that make up the bulk of the Microsoft customer base.

By contrast, the highest-profile proponent of UML has been IBM Rational. Rational (before IBM bought it) not only was the original backer of UML, but its customers are huge financial and aerospace companies that take formal modeling very very very seriously. Microsoft’s “we’ll have it out way” approach was arguably the best for its developers.

Microsoft has finally jumped onto that large, slow-moving bandwagon. In its press release, the company said:

Microsoft Corp. today outlined its approach for taking modeling into mainstream industry use and announced its membership in the standards body Object Management Group. Modeling is a core focus of Microsoft’s Dynamic IT strategy, the company’s long-term approach to provide customers with technology, services and best practices to enable IT and development organizations to be more strategic to the business.

Modeling often has been heralded as a means to break down technology and role silos in application development to assist IT departments in delivering more effective business strategies. However, although the promise of modeling has existed for decades, it has failed to have a mainstream impact on the way organizations develop and manage their core applications. Microsoft believes that models must evolve to be more than static diagrams defining a software system; they are a core part of daily business discussions, from organizational charts to cash flow diagrams.

Implementing models as part of the design, deployment and management process would give organizations a deeper way to define and communicate across all participants and aspects involved in the application life cycle.

To make model-driven development a reality, Microsoft is focused on providing a model-driven platform and visual modeling tools that make it easy for all “mainstream” users, including information workers, developers, database architects, software architects, business analysts and IT professionals, to collaborate throughout the application development life cycle. By putting model-driven innovation directly into the Microsoft .NET platform, organizations will gain visibility and control over applications from end to end, ensuring that they are building systems based on the right requirements, simplifying iterative development and re-use, and resolving potential issues at a high level before they start committing resources.

“We’re building modeling in as a core part of the platform,” said Bob Muglia, senior vice president, Server and Tools Business at Microsoft. “This enables IT pros to specify their business needs and build applications that work directly from those specifications. It also brings together the different stages of the IT life cycle — connecting business analysts, who specify requirements, with system architects, who design the solution, with developers, who build the applications, and with operations experts, who deploy and maintain the applications. Ultimately, this means IT pros can innovate and respond faster to the needs of their business.”

OMG has been an international, open-membership, not-for-profit computer industry consortium since 1989. OMG’s modeling standards include the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and Business Process Management Notation (BPMN). In addition to joining the organization, Microsoft will take an active role in numerous OMG working groups to help contribute to the open industry dialogue and assist with evolution of the standards to meet mainstream customer needs. For example, Microsoft is already working with the finance working group on information models for insurance business functions related to the property and casualty industry, and will eventually look to expand those models so that they can be applied to P&C, life and reinsurance. Another early focus will be on developing specifications for converting messages across the various payments messaging standards.

“Microsoft has always been one of the driving forces in the development industry, helping to make innovation possible but also simplifying many of the most challenging aspects of the application development process,” said Dr. Richard Mark Soley, CEO at OMG. “In less than 10 years, OMG’s UML, a cornerstone of the Model Driven Architecture initiative, has been adopted by the majority of development organizations, making OMG the seminal modeling organization and supporting a broad array of vertical market standards efforts in healthcare, finance, manufacturing, government and other areas. Microsoft’s broad expertise and impact will make its membership in OMG beneficial to everyone involved.”

Developers can begin to implement model-driven approaches today through innovations such as Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) — the declarative model that underlies Windows Presentation Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation — and ASP.NET MVC, which deeply integrates model-driven development into the .NET Framework and makes it easy to implement the model-view-controller (MVC) pattern for Web applications. Both XAML and MVC are examples of models that drive the actual runtime behavior of .NET applications. These are part of Microsoft’s broader companywide efforts to deliver a connected platform modeling, which includes technologies being delivered across both “Oslo” and Visual Studio “Rosario” initiatives.

I’m not sure what Helen is looking for…. what do you think?

From: “helen kumba”
Date: September 9, 2008 6:41:47 AM PDT
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Subject: Hello,

Hello,

My name is Helen; I am 25 years in search of a man who understands love as trust and faith rather seeing it as a way of fun always but a matured man with scence of humor. So I derive special interest on you so contact me with this email address I believe we can start from here. Waiting to hear from you soon so I can send photo for more introductions.

Kisses

Helen

The case for commercial reusable software components is a strong one. Reusable components hit a real sweet spot: They solve genuine problems, whether it’s connectivity, GUI input or output controls, AJAX plumbing, reporting, data conversion, connectivity – tasks are that bread-and-butter necessities for modern applications.

Sure, developers can and do write one-off code to handle the drawing of a pie chart or the parsing of a file format – but that code take a long time to make and test. Even worse, you end up with something that’s brittle, hard to change, hard to maintain and nearly impossible to reuse.

Given how very inexpensive most software components are, there’s just no reason not to employ them. The question of whether to use or not use reusable components from commercial suppliers is easy, and the answer is, “yes.” But there’s nothing new there.

The hard question is, from which commercial suppliers should you obtain those components? Too few developers put enough thought into researching that question, using a simple heuristic (“the first I find that’ll do the job at a decent price”) vs. finding an optimal solution.

It’s not like buying a pair of tennis shoes, where buy whatever’s on sale, and if doesn’t work out, you’ll be buying another pair in a few months anyway. Unlike tools like IDES or compilers, software components actually end up being built into your application. They’re in the bits you push out to your server, discs you ship out to your customers. You’re not just using a component to solve today’s little problem to save a couple of your developers a few days’ labor. Instead, you’re outsourcing your software development.

Sadly, too many developers don’t realize this. They see an immediate need (“Dang! I need a 3D pie chart, stat!”), do a quick Google search, and download the first cheap component that touts the right buzzwords. Problem solved. Right?

Wrong. When a company chooses a component, it’s choosing a long-term partner in the component supplier, not a short-term fix — even if they don’t realize it. The component supplier is a company to whom you’ve outsourced part of your software development. What does that require? Trust. Stability. Credentials. References. A solid architecture. A solid business. Real support that you can count on next week, or next year.

Don’t choose components based on the number of bullets on a feature list, and don’t delegate the vendor-selection process to a coder. That’s not how your company should choose a long-term partner, someone whose code you’re going to insert into your own shipping products as if it is your own. Choose component suppliers based on a strategic partnership — that is, companies that you want to be in business with. That’s the way to leverage the value of component reuse within your organization.

Son Michael has been working with the beta of Google’s new Chrome browser for Windows. Sadly, his ancient father is waiting for the Mac version to come out (there’s a sign-up box for notifications).

Here’s what Offspring has to say about it:

Today is the first beta release for the all-new web browser, Google Chrome. Unfortunately the beta release is not available to Mac or Linux users.

Currently being run on my Windows Vista Premium machine, the new browser is much faster and smoother than Microsoft’s beta release of Internet Explorer 8.

Unlike Internet Explorer and Safari, Chrome doesn’t shove the maker’s name in your face. All it says is Google in small text by the minimize button. It’s not ‘Chrome: brought to you by Google.’

On startup it looks like almost any other Windows-based web browser, except it opens with a visual history of the pages you’ve visited most often and most recently. The trapezoid browsing tabs offer a more aesthetically pleasing browsing experience than the standard rectangular ones. It also doesn’t have a million toolbars cluttering up the URL address bar, just your bookmarks and a link to sites you might enjoy based on your browsing history (Google is smart).

All it takes is a little Flash Player plug-in, some preference tweaks and you are ready to go with one of the best web browsers available.

A public service announcement to my fellow computer scientists, techies and other interested parties, on behalf of the Association for Computing Machinery:

ACM Bulletin Service Today’s Topic: ACM Awards Call for Nominations September 4, 2008

Each year, ACM recognizes technical and professional achievements within the computing and information technology community through its celebrated Awards Program. And annually, ACM’s award committees evaluate the contributions of candidates for various awards that span a spectrum of professional and technological accomplishments.

You and your colleagues are invited to nominate candidates for ACM awards, including:

Awards with November 30, 2008 nomination deadlines

A.M. Turing Award
ACM – Infosys Foundation Award in the Computing Sciences
ACM/AAAI Allen Newell Award
Software System Award
Grace Murray Hopper Award
Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award
Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award
Distinguished Service Award
ACM – IEEE CS Eckert-Mauchly Award
Outstanding Contribution to ACM Award

Awards with September 30, 2008 nomination deadlines

The SIAM/ACM Prize in Computational Science and Engineering
Doctoral Dissertation Award

Please take a moment to consider those individuals in your community who may be suitable for nomination, and feel free to share this information with your colleagues and peers.

Read a letter from ACM’s Award Co-chairs on the importance of ACM Award Nominations

Learn more about ACM Award Nominations

Visit the ACM Awards site

Microsoft today slashed the price of the Xbox 360 game console, which beginning on Friday will cost as little as $199. The system comes in three versions:

• Xbox 360 Arcade, $199.99 — includes the console and one wireless controller, and a tiny 256MB of of flash-based storage. No headset, no network cable, no HD audio/video cable, and no backwards compatibility with older Xbox games. Get this only if you’re super-cheap, or are buying a birthday present for someone you don’t like very much. Was $279.99.

• Xbox 360 “Plain,” $299.99 — includes the console and one wireless controller, headset and network cable. Also has a 60GB hard drive and an HD audio/video cable. It’s compatible with the older Xbox games, too. This is the one to get. Was $349.99.

• Xbox 360 Elite, $399.99 — has everything that the plain Xbox 360 has, but it has a 120GB hard drive, and includes an HDMI cable. If you’re a serious gamer, it’s probably worth the extra $100 for the storage and cable. Oh, it’s black instead of white, like the Xbox 360 plain and Arcade. Was $449.99.

With this price cut, Microsoft is trumpeting the sub-$200 price point, of course:

“We are thrilled to be the first next-generation console on the market to reach $199, a price that invites everyone to enjoy Xbox 360,” said Don Mattrick, senior vice president of the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft. “Xbox 360 delivers amazing performance at an extraordinary value with the leading online service and best lineup of games, downloadable movies and TV shows available from a console. The majority of consumers make the decision to buy consoles once the price falls to this mark, making this an important milestone for consumers and the industry.”

However, with only 256MB of storage and no high drive, and no reverse compatibility, the Xbox 360 Arcade ain’t a good deal. Get the plain edition for $299.99.

It came from the original Battlestar Galactica television show in the 1970s, but “frak,” as a generic swear word, is all over the delightfully reimagined series, which debuted in 2003.

And according to this story on CNN, “The curse word ‘Battlestar Galactica’ created,” it’s all over everything else. As the story says,

“Dilbert” creator Scott Adams calls the word “pure genius.” “At first I thought ‘frak’ was too contrived and it bothered me to hear it,” Adams said. “Over time it merged in my mind with its coarser cousin and totally worked. The creators ingeniously found a way to make viewers curse in their own heads — you tend to translate the word — and yet the show is not profane.”

While I haven’t yet begun saying “frak” or “what the frak,” maybe I should. What the heck, eh?

If you haven’t been following the new BSG (as fans call it), the place to start is with the 2003 miniseries.