I was pretty excited this week with I discovered Answers.Yahoo.com. It has all the elements necessary to provide a forum for the free exchange of knowledge on a variety of topics, including security. It allows participants to post questions, which are then answered by the other members of the service. After several days, the question posted is closed for answers as members vote on the best answer. Points are given for posting a question, posting an answer, having your answer selected as the best answer for a specific question, etc. Like I said, I was pretty excited when I first visited this site. But my excitement quickly turned to disappointment.
Like all forums, the Yahoo Answer service suffers from user ignorance. Many answers posted are just plain stupid. Those are pretty obvious. So they cause no harm. However, there are answers selected as “best answers” that are wrong. Of course you can post comments about the wrong answer, but the participants don’t seem to care. The best answer, even if wrong, continues to rack up votes while the person requesting the information goes merrily on his or her way with an erroneous factoid lodged securely in the brain.
I decided to pass on this service. I have many other worthwhile activities to pursue. Someday, however, I hope to find a forum where knowledge and attention to accuracy actually has some meaning.
Writely: A great product with questionable security
Friday, March 17th, 2006For those of you not familiar with Writely, it’s an online beta word processing service that provides the following services:
Yes, it’s a great product with fantastic potential. And now that Google has purchased the company, Upstartle, things could get very interesting. There is just one catch; there are no safeguards to protect the content of documents during editing or viewing.
On February 27, 2006, in the Writely blog, Jen, an employee of Upstartle, responded to a thread in which users questioned why SSL protection was not provided.
[QUOTE=Jen]OK, now I have to reply ;-}
We don’t have SSL definitively planned as part of a premium service, although that’s certainly possible. SSL will definitely slow the service down, which is why we would likely not make it the default in the basic service. Yes, I know this response is vague, but it’s only because our plans are not final![/QUOTE]
As I posted to the Writely blog, it’s irresponsible for an organization to provide a tool like this without any apparent regard for safeguarding the activities of its users. I hope that Google takes a different approach with this innovative and, in my opinion, much needed service.
Author: Tom Olzak
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