Note, this article is from March 2005.
Business schools redefine hacking to “stuff that a 7-year-old could do” (2005)
11–20 of 48 posts
Re: Business schools redefine hacking to “stuff that a 7-year-old could do” (2005)
#12Misleading headline, particularly the quotes. In this article no school said any such thing, only the author in creating an analogy. Synopsis: Business schools outsource their student application web app, said web app has bug that allows students to change GET parameters and see their acceptance status early. Exploit is posted to BusinessWeek forums, and at least some of those students who tried the hack were denied…
Article definitely did not live up to its title. Author definitely got some eyeballs though....and eyeballs == money?
The title was misleading, but what he talked about was interesting anyway. In this case, eyeballs don't equal money. This is a Harvard professor's blog with no ads.
Re: Business schools redefine hacking to “stuff that a 7-year-old could do” (2005)
#13I wonder how ApplyYourself found out which students took a peek? Were they dumb enough not to implement access at the Gatekeeper level but smart enough to some how keep a track, if someone did?
It seems probable that they just looked at the BusinessWeek forums on which the exploit was posted, and denied the applicants who they saw discussing it.
Re: Business schools redefine hacking to “stuff that a 7-year-old could do” (2005)
#14I wonder how ApplyYourself found out which students took a peek? Were they dumb enough not to implement access at the Gatekeeper level but smart enough to some how keep a track, if someone did?
It seems probable that they just looked at the BusinessWeek forums on which the exploit was posted, and denied the applicants who they saw discussing it.
If thats the case, its very unreliable. Denying admission based on a post on a forum...gotta love the digital age.
Re: Business schools redefine hacking to “stuff that a 7-year-old could do” (2005)
#15title = troll, rtfa
Re: Business schools redefine hacking to “stuff that a 7-year-old could do” (2005)
#16I wonder how ApplyYourself found out which students took a peek? Were they dumb enough not to implement access at the Gatekeeper level but smart enough to some how keep a track, if someone did?
Keeping track of what URLs people are hitting is trivial on any application server.
Re: Business schools redefine hacking to “stuff that a 7-year-old could do” (2005)
#17Hacking :: stuff that a 7-year-old could do
Wow, Python makes it that easy! ( just a quick laugh )
Re: Business schools redefine hacking to “stuff that a 7-year-old could do” (2005)
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems probable that they just looked at the BusinessWeek forums on which the exploit was posted, and denied the applicants who they saw discussing it.
If thats the case, its very unreliable. Denying admission based on a post on a forum...gotta love the digital age.
In an age when many employers seem happy to deny employment based on social networking profile posts and pictures, I suggest that it might teach them an important lesson about the presence of foolish people in positions of power.
Re: Business schools redefine hacking to “stuff that a 7-year-old could do” (2005)
#19Odd choice for the headline. I think the much more choice quote from Greenspun is this:
All the smart young Americans have gone to law, business, and medical school. Companies don’t like to hire old people (> 30 years) to write computer programs because it saddens them to see old folks doing something so degrading.
(he's attributing this mentality to the HBS lot)
I'm seeing this a lot now that I've gotten into development in the financial industry.
I think for some people developers will always be inseparably tied to the stereotypical unkempt and petulant tech-support guy who troubleshoots Windows boxes all day.
It's not a particularly well-respected profession unless you're doing the start-up thing in which case you're only respected because of the business aspect (and your potential to become a millionaire by 30), not the cool/hard things you may doing on the technology side.
Re: Business schools redefine hacking to “stuff that a 7-year-old could do” (2005)
#20I'm guessing this bug was fixed, but I applied to b-school this summer (starting part-time in the fall) and ApplyYourself was used for a few of the schools I applied to (NYU Stern, Fordham, NYU-Poly). From a front end/end user interaction point of view, it did not strike me as a well made system. I'm more an IT guy and not a programmer but I know a shoddy website when I use one. I applied to multiple programs at one school and the information could not be shared, it actually lost one of my applications at one point.