Zed Shaw - The ACL is Dead - CUSEC 2008

http://blog.cusec.net/?p=197

by edwardog • 18 years ago

123 51 18 years ago

blog.cusec.net

Recorded almost a year ago (before the bank busts, and shortly after Zed’s first famous rant), this presentation was given to about 400 Canadian undergraduate software engineers and computer scientists. Zed talks about management and his ACL-killer at a bank job accompanied by Factor-powered slideware. Also: steaks, strippers, and statistics.

N.B. This video might damage your vision of Zed swearing all the time and may make it seem like the last year of ranting was a terrible joke gone wrong. Oops.

P.S. - Check out this year’s lineup (Ingalls, Stallman, Bryant, Culver, Hwang, and Bowkett are just the keynotes). This is one of Canada's best kept secrets, and tickets are super cheap.

bprater• 18 years ago

Wow, the guy doesn't have horns!

He's actually really entertaining to listen to. I like his real-world examples of problems.

Steak will never be the same.

davi4• 18 years ago

Notes from lunchtime viewing of first 40 min

------------------------------------

~9:29: "law is actually kind of a turing complete language"

Law is fuzzy; ACLs are fuzzy. ACLs can't handle real law because they're not Turing complete.

~11:20: had a business manager learn Ruby, had him implement poorly specified/tough features --> result: he modified/eliminated requirement

~12:20: a bunch of if statements are easier & better than an ACL

~13:50: in one case, 1000 users and 1000 containers would have required 270,000 ACL entries to implement one compliance rules; and 5 minute polling updates, because rule was time-based; --> couldn't audit, handle real-time changes; would've required 12 beefy boxes to execute.

14:40: Instead, re-write all rules in 400 lines of Ruby; analysts could read the code and say if implementation was right.

15:45: So a language wins, right? No -- "this is where the Suck begins" -- where management comes and crushes your soul. Bad product was substrate for document management system.

17:50: How do they sell this stuff? Connections, subterfuge? No.... "Steak and strippers, baby."

19:00: "This is one reason I want women to be in charge."

20:00: "What happens when they give you an MBA is they give you a lobotomy... and you walk out going 'Synergy! Synergy! Synergy!'"

21:00: MBAs are trained in manufacturing -- programming is not manufacturing -- you're going to work in an environment where they think you're worker bees on an assembly line.

22:00: So what to do about it?

1) Managers see people sitting there, they think nothing is going on. If management says "I demand all of your creativity but trust none of your judgement," you have to gather evidence that makes you more credible. You have to be objective. Try out whatever crappy technology that they're proposing.

2) Develop alternatives: if their crappy technology is good enough, stop; but if not, try out alternatives before suggesting.

3) Statistics; develop some pretty graphs. E.g., Zed's team built a demo server, showing slow performance. Without those, he would've had no evidence to contradict the sysadmin who was saying his tweaks had helped. Be prepared for intensely technical arguments, too.

4) Admit technical deficiencies.

~29:30: If none of this works, and they won't take it, build it anyway and then sell it to them or their competitors. The client can be your first customer. Good way to start a company.

~30:00: our doc management system is very simple, 4400 lines of Ruby plus some Samba modifications, and better than anything else out there.

Drools -- JBOSS rules engine -- "blows ass" -- just use Ruby instead.

~31:30: Figure out Roles first, with a Role Resolver -- draws on LDAP etc. -- 30 lines of Ruby -- now, ~200 lines of Ruby, covers all bizarre corner cases, easy to add new rules, easy to fix existing rules.

~33:30: And they still wanted the crappy older thing. At this point, it's all the social problem. What mattered was the old product had the same name. "Document Store 2000" vs. "Document Store New Gen" -- completely different, but easier to get through manager's manager's procurement process -- "that's the stupidity you deal with in the real world".

35:15: How do we win? We kept hammering. They sent out their best guy. I had him implement the toughest rule, the one requiring 200,000 ACL entries. Then had him explain to his managers why it wouldn't work. Had nothing to do with tech.

36:15: This stuff will kill you. How do you keep your soul through all of this? [Poll audience for years of education] -- "It don't matter" -- you're a factory worker.

37:30: "Business leaders don't really like you, because they need you, and they don't understand anything you do. ... And the sales people know this; they know if they go to your boss, and give them steak and strippers...."

~38:40: Fight your hardest not to be a corporate coder: your life as a geek or a coder should be all about exploring some new domain that no one else gets -- you can only go to conferences and talk to other geeks about what you do. A corporate coder works only on the stuff he's supposed to on one language, and never touches code otherwise. You should go home and do something fun with technology.

40:00: how to avoid not getting burnt out by day job? I.e., how to avoid losing your soul?

[40:30 stopped watching, back to work.]

------------------------------------

twism• 18 years ago

Immediately after 40:30 is actually the best part of this talk.

Prrometheus• 18 years ago

I thought the opposite. The real life example of implementing his project was a lot more interesting than yet another exhortation to "be true to yourself".

michaelneale10• 18 years ago

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 grassroots things - things are never as white and as pure as they seem (well almost all things).

I don't see this ever changing, unless somehow all these types of corporations simultaneously cease to exist, and something else more merit based takes their place.

nihilocrat2• 18 years ago

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.

stcredzero2• 18 years ago

I wonder what is the other side of "steak and strippers, baby!"? Why is it that management doesn't trust us? He says a little about it: "You guys have got to stop lying...talking on IRC all day..." I wonder if it's all because of dopplegangers, or the techie dark side?

A part of it is because we're different. But a part of it must be bad as well. We're all only human, after all.

undertoad2• 18 years ago

Thanks for posting this; the part at 40:00 actually motivated me to view the rest, which I recommend to anybody working in a corporate job.

Hopefully this summary does justice to the remainder (but IMO it's worth watching):

40:00 Essentially he says you're not defined by your job. Your outside projects represent your self-expression and the corporation doesn't get a piece of that.

42:00: Most companies treat programmers like factory workers. In that case, act like one: do a professional job and punch out at the end of the day.

43:30: "If the company makes money off the sweat off your back, you get a chunk. If you don't get a chunk then you give them what they absolutely ask for, keep it to a minimum, be friendly, be very professional, do your stuff, make sure it's well-written, but don't go out of your way to give them your latest, greatest research or your idea or whatever."

44:00: Work on weird and cool stuff at home to stay sharp. If all you do is corporate coding, all you'll ever be is a drone.

45:00: When you're coding at home, "you're making poetry people can play with." But you don't want to do this for a company that doesn't care. "Who wants to make another document management system, time tracker or accounting system? There is money in that, but unless you're making the money too, it's not really fair."

47:30: Don't fear change. At home, take chances and learn new stuff. But at work, just give them what they want because they'll make changes whether you like them or not. It's just a job.

50:00: If you're concerned about being outed, consider creating an online identity (like "_why").

51:30: Don't do Blub at home; do something completely different, break the rules and code for fun. At work, don't think too much, don't be different and just get it done.

52:40: Outside work, make sure you're not someone's "resource" to be "utilized." Run with like-minded folks.

54:00: Embrace your geekiness, get out there and do it now.

55:00+: Questions and answers. This was good too, but somebody else will have to take over the transcription. ;)

michaelneale10• 18 years ago

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...).

nihilocrat2• 18 years ago

I haven't personally worked there, but from everything I know I have to second his idea that you shouldn't work for a big huge video game company (chiefly EA) because you like games and want to make your own. If you have the capital and the skills to make games on your own and/or with a few friends, go for it! The late 2000s are proving to be a sort of golden age of indie gaming from both ends of the transaction.

edit: Also, unrelated to this, another question/answer pair starts around 66:00 which I think is a pretty good idea.

michaelneale10• 18 years ago

Well I think his audience is "corporate programmer" types isn't it? cause what he says is just confusing to the rest of us.

nradov• 18 years ago

The misconceptions that some technical people have about MBAs are kind of funny, but also rather pathetic. The program I went through put very little emphasis on manufacturing.

sspencer• 18 years ago

Zed is probably the only blog author I would really like to meet in real life. And this video seems pretty close to what I imagined he'd be like.

ambition• 18 years ago

Come to CUSEC 2009. He'll be there.

nirmal• 18 years ago

I wish I could see his slides.

silentbicycle2• 18 years ago

It's in Factor, right?

Is the source available?

bk• 18 years ago

http://www.zedshaw.com/conferences/cusec2008.factor

stcredzero2• 18 years ago

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.

davi4• 18 years ago

Any links? As only a sometime-programmer, the "ACL is Dead" idea is new to me. I could use some good examples.

Hoff• 18 years ago

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 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.

mindslight• 18 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability-based_security

allertonm2• 18 years ago

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?

gnaritas3• 18 years ago

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.

allertonm2• 18 years ago

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)

markessien• 18 years ago

Zed is going to become important. It's easy to write, but it's not easy to look good on video, as well as have good video timing. He's not perfect, but he's good.

If he sticks to his rant-personality, he will sooner or later become on of the stars of the internet.

old-gregg• 18 years ago

Personally I don't see who can compete even now. Zed's blog is the only blog RSS feed I have in my reader. Nobody else has earned the privilege so far. Everything else in my reader is corporate stuff like HN or arstechnica.

thomasfl• 18 years ago

fucking awesome

shaunxcode• 18 years ago

Zed Shaw: Joe Hill of programming. Though rather than organizing workers into unions/factions of the IWW he is advocating people reserve their "real" programming/creativity for themselves unless they stand to make a profit (which they would if labor conditions were equitable). I can totally get behind that.

thenduks• 18 years ago

This whole "must follow speaker with camera" thing has _got_ to stop. Just stick the camera on the slides and leave it there. _At least_ get both in the frame. This is pushing unwatchable with him pointing to the slides all the time, the audience laughing at the slides, he's referring to code on the slides... Kill me :/

michaelneale10• 18 years ago

Hey that sounds like a neat camera product idea: how common is it that you want to record 2 visuals at once? Pretty common - so a little camera with 2 separate point-able lenses would be nice - or something like that.

Zed Shaw - The ACL is Dead - CUSEC 2008

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