Linked List: March 9, 2005

Wednesday, 9 March 2005

Philip Greenspun on the Harvard Business School’s Definition of ‘Hacking’ ★: Someone figured out that students applying to leading business schools — including Harvard’s — could check on the status of their applications simply by truncating the URLs to the online application service used by the schools. Harvard has deemed this “hacking”, and is denying admission to those who used the trick. I deem it a crappy web application written by incompetent programmers.
Tim Bray on the People-Getting-Fired-For-Blogging Meme ★: Tim Bray responds to the growing mainstream media meme that “people are getting fired for their blogs”, and argues the opposite — that for most people, writing a weblog is good for your career.

Blogging clearly isn’t going to help that proportion of people who aren’t really up to their job, or who are prone to inarticulate flaming, or both. But then, those people tend to have career problems anyhow. Put it another way: not blogging won’t protect you from career-limiting moves, and if blogging provokes one, well, you were probably going to do it anyhow.
Alco Blom wins second round of Apple Dashboard Contest ★: Long-time Mac developer Alco Blom (URL Manager Pro, Web Confidential) is the winner of the second round of Apple’s Dashboard Widget Contest. His winning widget is an SMS text-messenger that integrates with Address Book.