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Comment by codeLullaby | Hacker News Reader

Business 2.0 has implemented a flash based voting system to pick the Most Influential people(from their list!) .The sleek interface looks great, but actionscript that runs behind the scene is amazingly lame.

Exercising democracy is far more better than,editors handpicking a top 10 list over a pizza.But if the system built to exercise democracy is lame, then all your fun are belong to coders!

Hacking/breaking/gaming a live system is not really a cool thing to do. But what if the target is too lazy and careless ?

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"Hacking/breaking/gaming a live system is not really a cool thing to do. But what if the target is too lazy and careless ?"

That doesn't really matter. That's like saying "Judge, I only stole this car because the lock was lame and whoever designed it was lazy and careless." See how silly your argument really is?!

For automobile industry [or any direct consumer product for that matter,say ,Gmail ], a lame product will be replaced by a competition. Thats how better products dominate the market.Thats how 'survival of the fittest' works.

But for lame practices, the answer is it to break it down and show them why they should care. This is a humble reply to an extremely careless coding practice.

I am not proud of what i did.For a beta product, if glitch exist, it can be reported. But come on..this is freaking CNN! Cant they just care to implement a decent system for The Worldwide Campaign they run?

actually i was about to ask you how you did it

maybe this just show that how matters most now are the developers. hehe.

who matters most now (i mean)

For a flash based implementation all you have to know is:

#1 Anyone can dissect a swf file and read your code .

#2 Own your swf files.This means ,make sure that your server side script runs/executes only if the swf file resides in your trusted domain.

For a voting system, some kind of IP based check is a basic necessity. Business2.0 didn't even care to implement it.Aint that lame?

codeLullaby - looking for a job? we can always use a good hacker... let me know michael@justin.tv

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