Category Archives: Philosophy! and Politics!

Social Aspects of Scaling Web Applications

Sometimes you have to kill the sacred cows in the room to get the job done. Some times the cows kill you.

I think that we have moved past “ruby does not scale” or “rails does not scale”. However the feedback that I have gotten over the last few months is more along the lines of “Rails is just kids, hackers and rockstars. It’s not a serious contender”.

We (as a community) have done fantastic work getting rails to scale, and showing the world that it does. Our next challenge is to show that we are grown up. We need to “scale” the community if we want to continue our growth and penetrate more and more markets.

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Privacy vs. Anonymity

One of the perceived issues with the increased use of social networks and pervasive online activities is eroding of personal privacy. Some would have us believe that there will be no privacy in the future, and we just need to accept that fact.

I feel very differently. What is eroding is personal anonymity, which is very different then privacy.

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Insomina

So, I’ve had this curse since I was a kid. I just cannot sleep sometimes. I’m still really tired and groggy, I just can’t sleep.

It’s really times like this that get the mind running into some of it’s darker corners. This is that mystical point, where good ideas flow, and right when I get a head of steam up on an idea, I fall asleep.

With Clouds, Come a Chance of Rain

One of the interesting paradigms in the technology field now days is “cloud”. I think that I have seen it bandied about more then “web 2.0″ a few years ago. It’s hit required buzz word compliance status in market-speak. I believe that is it over used, misunderstood and used to mislead. Let’s cut through the hyperbole and see what is really going on.
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