When my brother was just starting out as an economist, he told me that economics was easy because it was “a mile wide and an inch deep” meaning that it was everywhere in social sciences, but analytical tools were so poorly applied and misused that you could strike gold anywhere you stuck them.

Books like Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything show that analytical tools are still misused: that book is a circular indictment on itself.

Nothing has changed in economics.

I read this today:

PHP Seen as a Popular Hacker Target

Looking at other e-commerce security trends for 2007, the report also expects the wildly popular PHP programming language to continue to provide a bounty of opportunities for hackers. PHP was invented more than a decade ago and has been used to create every type of software program needed to operate an online store, including shopping carts, payment systems, CRM and newsletter applications. Unfortunately, PHP developers to date have all too frequently emphasized functionality over security, according to ScanAlert, who reported that its security researchers had uncovered critical security flaws in several PHP programs.

<sarcasm>I bet that was a challenge to find all those security holes!</sarcasm>

PHP application-level security: a mile wide and an inch deep.

Fun with words

Here is my version:

Windows Seen as a Popular Hacker Target

Looking at desktop computing trends for 2007, the report also expects the wildly popular Windows operating system to continue to provide a bounty of opportunities for hackers. Windows was invented more than two decades ago and has been used to create every type of software program needed to use an computer, including word processors, spreadsheets, PIM and e-mail/browsing applications. Unfortunately, Microsoft to date has all too frequently emphasized functionality over security, according to AlmostAnyone, who reported that its security researchers had uncovered critical security flaws in several Windows components.

I should have been a journalist.

Other things to report

The sun rises in the East. It sets in the West.

The universe is expanding.