2006-07-02
Back from RailsConf
RailsConf 2006 was one concentrated dose of Ruby and Rails goodness. I went through my talk a bit faster than expected. If you are looking for the slides, they are posted over at Writertopia. I plan on writing a lengthy article based on the talk to flesh in many points I skipped or glossed over.
The Authorization plugin has been getting a lot of love for the last ...
2006-06-22
Authorization Plugin 1.0
A new version of the Authorization plugin is available, just in time for RailsConf. A detailed description is available on the development page at Writertopia. An "Identity" plugin will soon be up as well.
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2006-02-20
Authorization Plugin for Rails
(Updated 6/21) Please see the main Authorization plugin page for updated information.
(Updated 2/22) This treatise describes three aspects of an Authorization plug-in for Rails:
- a proposed domain-specific language (DSL) for authorization,
- a pattern for use that describes conventions, and
- a reference implementation that lets you test the ideas.
The authorization process decides whether a user is allowed access to some feature. It is distinct from ...
2005-12-11
Lisp vs Python vs Ruby for Web apps
The founders of Reddit, a poster-child for web app development with Lisp, decided to rewrite their site using Python. The collective cries from the Lisp community are deafening. And the Ruby on Rails followers are wondering, “Why not Ruby?”
Aaron Swartz provides some insight into the Reddit move and why his web.py project was selected over Django. Web.py will be used by two of the startups ...
2005-11-10
Cracking passwords using 500GB tables
Most web sites are protected by passwords that have been transformed into long hashes using presumably one-way functions. You enter a password like “cat” and the hashing function translates this into a unique and long string of characters like “FEAFjelaKFJAOWI0382lFKEFKJ…” If you store only the hash (the transformed password) into the database, crackers who read the hash strings still can’t generate the original password because the reverse ...
