[Tutor] ongoing saga

[Luke Paireepinart]

Kirk Bailey wrote:
> well  now. I had a new idea, a product to let managers communicate to
> workteramss in offices- sends messages to groups of people.
>
> My approach is valuable because iit is so simple, and does not requirte the
> opeininig of new ports in the fireewwall of a site- it opperates through
> port 80, the http port. It is very easy to use at bothe ends, and only 1
> program is employed to accomlish it's work.
>
> Now here is  the intresting part- Sellinig it. As offices are so different
> in their setup, using it takes some case by case 'fitting' to apply it to
> each office. A house IT staff can install and adapt it to their situationb
> on their own, or employ our firm to custom install it for them. Therefore,
> we are going to GIVE IT AWAY, but offer support and installation services.
>
> So here's the miravcle of the money tree- we make money by giving it away,
> then letting people pay us to bring a ladder when they dig their own graves.
> It  will become available to the public in a month.
>
> So how's YOUR money tree growing?
I was under the impression that managers e-mailed their workteams if 
they needed to talk to groups of people.
If the people are on an intranet, there shouldn't be any firewalls 
blocking their communication.
The firewall would be between the computers and the internet, correct?

The point of a firewall is to block all traffic which may be harmful to 
computers behind it.
If your software listens on port 80, this is an abuse of the firewall 
spec, IMHO.
The reason people are willing to open port 80 is because they know the 
only thing that will be listening
on the other end is Microsoft IIS or Apache, both applications which 
have been under constant, stable development for years
and have good security.  Putting an application you just wrote from 
scratch with no regard to the security of it provides
hackers an entrypoint into your network via your application.

In addition, I doubt the managers would move to universally supporting 
your application - many of them would desire to continue to use
e-mail for communication - and this would result in the workers having 
just another intrusive application they have to leave open all the time,
as they're already required to leave an e-mail client active, I would guess.

Anyway, I'm just a college kid with no experience in this kind of stuff, 
so if I'm completely wrong then correct me,
but that's how I'd see it as working.

P.S. my money tree's a little dried up right now but I hope with some 
water and some love it'll be rejuvenated soon.
-Luke