Wednesday, October 22, 2008

What's All This Fuss About Modeling?

Just recently I blogged about how CDO mismanagement led to the world's financial crisis. There's another version explaining the CDO fiasco that's even more facetious than my blogs, so don't read it if expletives offend you. Apparently Eike Stepper has been a really busy guy, because I also discovered that he's caused security problems at Microsoft in an article brought to my attention by Goggle Alert. Check out this part of the article:
Meanwhile, the lone moderate item is highly technical, involves only XP SP3 and deals with a potential information disclosure exploit in Microsoft Office that can be triggered through the use of a specially crafted Connected Data Objects, or "CDO," URL. With CDO, programmers can upgrade and enhance a code-building facility called the Eclipse Modeling Framework for runtime support using Java or XML. This is a back-end vulnerability that an egghead hacker could really have fun with just to be mischievous, experts say
I would normally be extremely happy to discover that Microsoft is using Eclipse technology in Microsoft Office, but I don't really appreciated CDO's users being characterized eggheads nor having EMF blamed for Microsoft's security problems, though it's nice to know clients could really have fun with it. I'm thinking about terminating Eike's project before he does any more damage to our reputation. I'm tired of him snowing on my roses.


I wonder if perhaps someone did a Google search on CDO, not being sure what it stands for, and ended up at Wikipedia's CDO link, which naturally lead them to the Connected Data Objects link, and from there they jumped to a questionable conclusion. Sadly it's yet another example of misconceptions around modeling, as if I didn't list enough of them already. You'd think the bright ideas would stand out better against the dull background.


Don't forget to register for Eclipse Summit Europe and also don't forget to book the hotel when you do; Nestor Hotel is nice and close so I'd suggest booking as soon as possible. I'll be doing my "stupid modeling" talk at ESE; I'm sure you won't want to miss something so unbearably stupid! I'm really looking forward to the symposia too. I don't know how I'll be able to divide my time between the modeling symposium, where we're bound to create some unbearably stupid new misconceptions, and the runtime and e4 symposia. Oh my goodness, I just noticed there are auto and banking symposia as well. That's way too much goodness for one day, especially when modeling is important for all of them! I'm going to have a chat with Ralph about the fact there is simply too much good content being crammed into too little time. Such a bountiful fountain is just unacceptable for the indecisive among us!


The ESE banking symposium reminds me of Eclipse Banking Day in New York. It's planned for December 9th. The agenda is almost complete. Don't forget to register if you plan to attend. There will be lots of good modeling content, and Jeff and Jochen will be there too. I can't wait to find about about what UBS and Morgan Stanley have been doing! Apparently they've looked beyond the all misconceptions, so I'm going to investigate what type polarizing filters they have in their glasses to block out the harsh glare.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That's hilarious. Here's the choice the "award-winning journalist" would have faced on the Wikipedia disambiguation page:

"Connected Data Objects, a free implementation of a Distributed Shared Model on top of the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF)"

OR

"Collaboration Data Objects, a Microsoft application programming interface for data access"

Tasked with uncovering the source of a Microsoft Office exploit, naturally you can see how Mr. Leffall would opt for the first vaguely computery-sounding thing he saw.

-- Dave