Business schools redefine hacking to “stuff that a 7-year-old could do” (2005)

Re:Business schools redefine hacking to “stuff that a 7-year... by mscarborough on Friday July 10, 2009 @03:39PM (#698229)

Misleading 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 admission to Harvard.

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Re:Business schools redefine hacking to “stuff that a 7-year... by Goladus on Saturday July 11, 2009 @02:54PM (#699435)

I was not mislead by the headline. It is open to more than one interpretation of course, but it is accurate (and sort of humorous) as written.

The whole point of the article is a discussion about the line between "exploit" and "incredibly boneheaded app implementation" and where the responsibility should lie.

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Re:Business schools redefine hacking to “stuff that a 7-year... by quizbiz on Friday July 10, 2009 @03:41PM (#698236)

Harvard != MIT

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Re:Business schools redefine hacking to “stuff that a 7-year... by scott_s on Friday July 10, 2009 @03:56PM (#698261)

The students were denied admission to Harvard. MIT came up because the author supervised MIT students creating an application with similar requirements.

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Re:Business schools redefine hacking to “stuff that a 7-year... by indiejade on Friday July 10, 2009 @04:46PM (#698344)

The MS&E program I applied to at Stanford University also routed me through ApplyYourself, which I thought seemed like a really deprecated site. But hey, if it's an MS&E program and a bigwig Uni name, who was I to question?

https://app.applyyourself.com/?id=SU-GRAD

All in all, it was an awful, horrible experience (the website application). What a disgrace to supposed prestigious Universities. Not to mention a waste of pompous application fees for many hopefuls.

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Re:Business schools redefine hacking to “stuff that a 7-year... by omnipresent1 on Friday July 10, 2009 @03:55PM (#698258)

Article definitely did not live up to its title. Author definitely got some eyeballs though....and eyeballs == money?

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Re:Business schools redefine hacking to “stuff that a 7-year... by scott_s on Friday July 10, 2009 @03:59PM (#698268)

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.

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Re:Business schools redefine hacking to “stuff that a 7-year... by qohen on Friday July 10, 2009 @08:48PM (#698668)

Just for the record, Philip Greenspun is many things, but Harvard professor is not among them (he's simply using a blog service run by the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School, which you can find out about by, as per the article, "hacking" his blog's URL: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/ ).

Anyway, while not a Harvard professor, "philg" is a very interesting guy who has done a bunch of worthwhile things (e.g. "Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing", htttp://photo.net, Ars Digita, etc.) that should be of interest to Hacker News readers. He writes well--in books, essays and blog posts--and he writes provocatively, with a mix of snark and self-deprecating humor that many enjoy.

In short, he's worth knowing about in my view (and I'm happy to know him). For links to his past and present projects: http://philip.greenspun.com For background info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Greenspun

P.S. As many readers here already know, he's also the author of "Greenspun's tenth rule of programming" (which led to the term "Greenspunning"): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspunning

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