Cox Crow

I’ve been running without root access to systems for nigh on two years now, and I must say that it is very annoying, even with sudo in order to start some web servers and such. The basic UNIX security model is really, truly, FUBAR. What I’m finding is that every now and again you run into a relatively painless operation which, because of design assumptions way back in the Dark Ages, is restricted to the superuser — and that working around wasting the time of the BOFH opens many more holes than would be present if the code-monkeys had been just a little more thoughtful.

And the question I have to ask is, “What are you protecting?”

Avinash Kaushik posted a list of ten things to envy about working at Google, which are, oddly enough, similar to the reasons Joel Spolsky says I would love being a sysadmin at Fog Creek. Both companies place a lot of emphasis on working together, that is, in the same place. One works at, not for, Google.

It’s a wet, slushy day out today. I can understand that such weather might be unfamiliar at Google headquarters, though Google London might have some experience of it. I’m working at home today. What I’d like to know is what Google does in situations where the people can’t come to the Googleplex to work. I have no doubt that they have no software limitations on where they work, but it seems that locality is essential to the nature of Google.

Do y’all take a snow day?

Y’know, the puzzling thing about 2001: A Space Odyssey is why Dave Bowman didn’t beat HAL to pulp with a monkey wrench immediately after meeting it. Obviously the man had not had much experience with computers.

Ever have one of those days where you feel like your job is making you dumber by the minute? I am.

I have this recurrent daydream where I’m independently wealthy and volunteer my time to work on the transportation systems at DisneyWorld. And not just driving the monorail either, but drawing lines on the swamp.

Oh well.

The HTTP specification defines the method of a request in section 5.1.1. This definition dates to 1992.

The Method token indicates the method to be performed on the resource identified by the Request-URI. The method is case-sensitive.

Various cookbooks for constructing a request refer to POST as POST, and nothing but POST.

And, yet, we get requests like this. Addresses and URIs have been obscured to protect the victim.

10.0.0.1 - - [21/Aug/2007:08:32:44 -0700] “Post /myEndpoint HTTP/1.1″ 200 254 “-” “libwww-perl/5.76″

HTTP 1.0 was published as informational RFC 1945 in 1996. That’s more than enough time for HTTP user agent developers to read the short sentence requiring case-sensitivity. Even if you come from the copy-and-paste school of programming, there’s no excuse. What are you going to say? Oops, Microsoft Word automatically proper-cased that for me?

Actually, yes, it did. In the requirements for the application interface.

Back in May I was elected to the board of directors of the Dalton Farm Homeowners Association, and became co-chair of the grounds committee. What that means is that I’m responsible for ensuring that the grounds are maintained — that the lawn is cut, the weeds pulled, the trees trimmed, the light-bulbs changed — and improved. And then there was the family of skunks. Most of the work is administrative in nature, such as planning, seeking bids, handling contracts, and addressing complaints.

But it’s a wonderful feeling to reach out and touch something you did. Because the results are physical, the work seems so much more real than what I do for a living. I can see the results of my efforts.

“Write once, run anywhere” is a crock of shit.