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Comment Re:Windows 7 will solve your problem (Score 1) 932

Wait, what?

1) Do you have any experience with a modern Mac?
2) If so, was it some kind of modded to-the-hilt FrankenMachine with a zillion noname, 3rd party apps?
2) Windows 7 hasn't been publicly available for even a month yet. How can one establish any reasonable comparison?

I've been running the same install of Mac OS X for a solid 3 years, changing only to lay an upgrade of the OS right on top. I can count on one hand the number of times in those 3 years that I've had to hard reboot and at least half of those times were due to my impatience, not the OS's inability to recover and carry on.

Comment Spent a bit of time in banking industry (Score 2, Interesting) 193

What really surprises me about the idea of 'banking via twitter' is how the originating bank got this concept past their internal compliance officer/team/department. I just came off of a 6-month stint at an up-and-coming regional bank. While there, I learned a couple of really interesting lessons about banking in general: 1. Absolutely every breath they take and every move they make (rock on, Police) is filtered through federal and state regulatory compliance. 2. To my surprise, most non-national banks think nothing of throwing money at software solutions with outside vendors and these banks rarely require direct interconnectivity with what is referred to as their 'core' system. This, as it happens, is often an expression of point #1. So, I say #1 to point out that *someone* familiar with regulatory compliance must have signed off on the Twitter-banking idea. Many here have noted that the communication with a user's accounts is pushed into a private realm at Twitter, but that doesn't sound like an adequate separation to me. 'Private' tweeting or not, it seems to me that most compliance auditors would reel at the mere suggestion of tossing any account information into that electronic pool. They would also likely need to get some kind of compliance statement from Twitter itself to make the bank tweeting product available. I say point #2 just to say that I'm convinced there's alot of untapped opportunity in banking for hosted applications. ;-)
PHP

Submission + - PHP within a Financial Institution?

FuturShoc1k writes: "I have a question I would like to pose to Slashdotters.

I recently changed jobs from a large retailer to a regional financial institution. In my new position, I have the opportunity to shape the company's web efforts. Right now, I'm evaluating a new web host for the company's website. Our public site is currently static HTML only, hosted with a 3rd party requiring rigorous review before any new files are posted. We're planning to move to another third party under which we can have greater immediate control.

I have a bit of exposure to VB.NET and Java under ColdFusion, plus DB2/MSSQL. However, my most extensive experience is with PHP/MySQL.

To the point: Does anyone have any experience using PHP within the context of a bank or other security-sensitive environment? Specifically, a public website. As much as I'd like to jump in and take off using PHP, I'm concerned about its *perception* of insecurity. Even if we don't end up dealing with customer data on the site itself and even if I cover all the bases for securing my application(s) using PHP, I'm wondering if I should even consider that language. Am I being overly paranoid or is this perception as big a concern as I think?

As a result of this apprehension, I've sort of resigned to using ASP.NET and, of course, choosing a reputable web host who supports it. Even though any language can be a risk, if it isn't written securely."

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