21–30 of 55 posts
If he sticks to his rant-personality, he will sooner or later become on of the stars of the internet.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Q&A was good - I think Zed is wildly missing the non technology/boring business aspects of starting up (I guess he hasn't tried to start something up before? Or maybe he has...).
Reading your post and considering it further, I guess his message is less about starting up than about how to survive a day job and continue to grow as a human being by doing interesting work at night. Blub work on a startup at night could be another path away from employment that isn't really addressed in the presentation (though it's very difficult to pull off, IMO).
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on "steak and strippers...." - well I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding - ALL input products (not just software based) is sold this way to large corporations. Everyone has an agenda. Also - its not just big enterprisey things - rails is so common in the enterprise these days due to the "steak and strippers...." work done by companies like thoughtworks. There is always wheeling and dealing, even with grass…
There was a story on HN several months ago about a guy on vacation in Istanbul having someone sell him a rug even though he never had any intention of getting one. It outlined a whole lot of non-bullying sales tactics that had nothing to do with the actual product, it was more about putting a person in an environment and state of mind where they felt like getting the product, even if they never really wanted it.
Sure - but how did apple really get strong enough to survive this long? at least in this country it was steak and stripper sales to the education department to get them in all schools.
I love that he's saying "The ACL is Dead." This should be said loudly and often. Maybe it'll get through the heads of management out there. Heck, it needs to get through the heads of a lot of programmers. Modern security and access controls need functionality like capabilities.
Any links? As only a sometime-programmer, the "ACL is Dead" idea is new to me. I could use some good examples.
ACLs as they're implemented on most operating systems are wicked limited; tracking attributes and access to anything beyond simple boolean HAVE_ID or !HAVE_ID or HAVE_THIS+HAVE_THAT logic gets really ugly with an ACL. And the classic ACLs are not at all dynamic, as is pointed out in the presentation. You can't easily tie the access control processing directly into the LDAP directory for employment status or into the system time for time-based rules, for instance.
Having access to conditional statements and such to manage access control is infinitely more flexible. This is the "Turing Complete" part of the presentation.
This processing all reminded me of what you can do with D inside the DTrace environment, too. But I digress.
Watch the presentation. It's worth your time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
on "steak and strippers...." - well I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding - ALL input products (not just software based) is sold this way to large corporations. Everyone has an agenda. Also - its not just big enterprisey things - rails is so common in the enterprise these days due to the "steak and strippers...." work done by companies like thoughtworks. There is always wheeling and dealing, even with grass…
There was a story on HN several months ago about a guy on vacation in Istanbul having someone sell him a rug even though he never had any intention of getting one. It outlined a whole lot of non-bullying sales tactics that had nothing to do with the actual product, it was more about putting a person in an environment and state of mind where they felt like getting the product, even if they never really wanted it.
Or by stimulating the neural cortex with sound to prime you to purchase. This is the idea behind pumping music into shops. Just another technique in the toolset to make you buy, "Why We Buy: the science of shopping" ~ http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1907307.htm
Lots of stuff here that resonates with this some-time CMS architect and soulless corporate wage slave, but I missed the part where Zed was able to provide an easy-to-use UI to allow non-programming sysadmins to change the security rules. That must have been so simple he didn't need to mention it, right... right?
Seriously, the idea that a complex system can be built by non programmers is somewhat of a pipe dream, it always ends up being more complex than some simple code a programmer can understand.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any links? As only a sometime-programmer, the "ACL is Dead" idea is new to me. I could use some good examples.
Zed Shaw discusses this in several parts within the presentation; it's somewhat of a recurring theme. ACLs as they're implemented on most operating systems are wicked limited; tracking attributes and access to anything beyond simple boolean HAVE_ID or !HAVE_ID or HAVE_THIS+HAVE_THAT logic gets really ugly with an ACL. And the classic ACLs are not at all dynamic, as is pointed out in the presentation. You can't easily…
For example, does Ruby on Rails offer some framework for dealing with this? Or is it a 'just do it' kind of thing? Maybe it's not as complicated as I'm imagining it could be, and that's the point. But some example code would be good to look at.
I'll look into this further but thought I'd solicit here first.
Lots of stuff here that resonates with this some-time CMS architect and soulless corporate wage slave, but I missed the part where Zed was able to provide an easy-to-use UI to allow non-programming sysadmins to change the security rules. That must have been so simple he didn't need to mention it, right... right?
No, but he is saying that complex things require an actual language, not a point and click UI idiots can use, so changes to rules would require a programmer. Seriously, the idea that a complex system can be built by non programmers is somewhat of a pipe dream, it always ends up being more complex than some simple code a programmer can understand.
(Also, non-programmers != idiots)
I love that he's saying "The ACL is Dead." This should be said loudly and often. Maybe it'll get through the heads of management out there. Heck, it needs to get through the heads of a lot of programmers. Modern security and access controls need functionality like capabilities.
Any links? As only a sometime-programmer, the "ACL is Dead" idea is new to me. I could use some good examples.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, but he is saying that complex things require an actual language, not a point and click UI idiots can use, so changes to rules would require a programmer. Seriously, the idea that a complex system can be built by non programmers is somewhat of a pipe dream, it always ends up being more complex than some simple code a programmer can understand.
I agree wholeheartedly with your last statement, but my point was that Zed got through the whole hour without once mentioning that this was a trade-off that was being made - and it is a pretty important one. (Also, non-programmers != idiots)