Opera Mini for the iPhone

I had such high hopes for this application. I thought when it came out that it would be the panacea to the web browsing issues of the iPhone that it claimed to be. Unfortunately I have to say that I am disappointed by the initial launch.

Problem #1: The sites that i visit don’t recognize that i am on a mobile device and serve up their entire site. Unfortunately for Opera it renders horribly. At least in Safari I would get a decent looking render that was entirely too small for me to read and then had to mess around with trying to resize.

Problem# 2: Redirection, any time I click a link in Facebook and go through the redirection process it just sticks on the redirect page.  In fairness this might be an issue with Facebook rather than the Opera browser but the average user is going to blame in on the browser since it worked as they expected in Safari.

Problem# 3: This app was released before it was ready for the mainstream. I put the app on my wife’s phone and she has constantly complained about the functionality while using it. This is a huge blow for the adoption of Opera for the iPhone. it needed to come out working like a champ for all users and applications.

I will say that it is indeed much faster than Safari, but speed isn’t everything. Being a software developer I understand that the initial release is always fraught with peril, and as a geek I will continue to support Opera, use the application and provide feedback, but for now I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone that just expects or wants their web browser to work.

Punishment for the enablers

There have been quite a few stories lately about the crackdown on and punishment of hackers (real hackers, not kids who guess the password of a famous person’s social networking account). My question is when are we going to start holding the developers accountable?

Part of my job is to evaluate the security of applications before they are put into our production environment. These applications are from developers around the world for major companies’ global initiatives. I find myself time and again having to send the application back to the developing agency (sometimes more than once) for what seem like very elementary exploits.

Security should be a major concern in the digital age, we are fighting a war against those that would exploit weaknesses online applications to infect an unsuspecting user’s computer, steal information and make it part of a botnet that is meant to cause further damage.

I agree that users should be aware of these threats and take necessary precautions such as having some form of a firewall and anti-virus, but it seems like we are attacking the problem from the wrong direction. Catch and prosecute one hacker and 5 more will take his place and wreak havoc long before they are even noticed. It’s an uphill and losing battle.

There will always be an exploit, it is impossible to write any sort of complex program where an exploit cannot be eventually found. I’m not talking about those applications, but the applications that come across my desk every day. Most smaller firms don’t have someone like me standing in the way of releasing code with blatantly obvious exploits.

It is up to the developer to ensure that their application is secure. If the developer is unsure of how to accomplish this, then that developer shouldn’t be writing applications that deal with sensitive information or that have a large group of users.

I think it is time to bring the fight to the developers. If a developer knew that they could be held accountable if their application was hacked and eventually led to the loss of sensitive information or infected users machines, I think those developers would get knowledgeable about security and do their best to secure the application before releasing it into the wild, reducing the surface area of what can be attacked in the first place.

The beginning of the end for net neutrality

"The US Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Comcast today, stating that the FCC lacks the authority to require broadband providers to give equal treatment to all Internet traffic flowing over their networks."

This sets a dangerous precedent for major ISP’s to control and shape the traffic of the Internet. On a more extreme level it could allow for content providers such as MSN to offer cash to say Comcast to throttle or redirect traffic in favor of MSN. Imagine you want to go to Google to search but your provider decides that the traffic should be routed to MSN instead. It could get a little more nefarious than that if the ISP was paid to throttle the traffic, so that when you tried to visit you favorite site you noticed that it was slow to respond, but in visiting a competitor you were able to surf at your normal broadband speeds.

This kind of precedent also leaves the door open for traffic shaping. When you paid for your Internet connection it was probably with the understanding that you could use that connection for any legal purpose in any way that you pleased. If ISPs are allowed to traffic shape they can effectively decide what and when you can do with your Internet connection that you pay for. At any point they can institute policies that limit watching videos or listening to music online.

The most extreme cases of this involve sanctioned censorship. If this is allowed to continue special interest groups that want to tell you what information you can consume and want to strip away your freedoms by deciding what is best for you can pay off the ISPs to block access to legitimate content.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality
http://www.savetheinternet.com/