Can Baysal – Page 41

How secure are Github’s private repositories?

Although I do not like this word, this is the place to use it: GitHub services are not “Enterprise” level. There is a gigantic git repositories collection against a huge user space. If you switch to a paid account, you can mark some of your repositories “private” and limit access to them for a subset of users exists in the system. There is no user level security, no network protection, no extra service continuity options and/or an actual SLA. You need to trust implicitly to your users, and you need to know some good prayers against network and system problems.

Edit in 2021 to this 2016 summary:
Github is developing and improving its service quality and tools on offer for a better environment. In the time between my original writing and this update there have been improvements and changes. Maybe not the most important but definitely most dramatic one of those is the acquisition of Github by Microsoft. Given the current stance of Microsoft, I personally view this development as a positive one. Also it seems that, most of improvements in the service occurred after this ownership change. All these being said, I still do not see Github services as enterprise level. So the the answer to the first question (that is about private repos…) stay the same. For any FOSS and similarly “need to be out there in the open” project however, Github became an excellent platform.

What are the biggest lessons you have learned in the corporate world?

There are several candidates to “the biggest” lesson. As you are asking the one and only one, I would go with this:

Success in the corporate world has two faces, one is how much value you add to the organisation, and the other is how much successful you seem to other people in and out of the organisation. These two are usually not balanced, meaning that most of the time your image (lets call it face value) is either more or less successful than your added (or actual) value.

When your face value is higher than your actual value, it is easier to advance your position, increase your prestige, open some doors etc. It is also easy to make new enemies, attract more negative feedback from people. And due to increasing expectations, it is easy to fail.

When your actual value is is higher than your face value, it is easier to self motivate (the most important motivation type), to develop oneself without gathering so much attention, and usually people would not pressure you more than you can handle, maybe other than your immediate boss. But you would also frustrate, some people would not see you as “material” etc.

So, due to these characteristics, people tend to oscillate between these two situations. Now they are overvalued, then they are undervalued, and then, and then, it goes. It is important to remember, this situation is normal, both positions have positive and negative aspects, and should be acted upon accordingly. In fact most situations in life are in that way, with positive and negative aspects. Easiest time in your life is when you are in balance, not overvalued, nor undervalued. However it is also the most static time in your life…

Take care.

Why do most professional programmers prefer Macs?

Frankly Windows became increasingly unreliable in my experience in recent years. It is probably we just do not want to wait, biting our nails, to see if our code is still there after an unpredictable crash. Or again in my experience we might be hating to see a notebook fail to return to life from a suspended (or hibernated) session. Again the same suspense during reboot “O Lord, please my code would be there intact and error free…” Normally there are lots of very good and running exclusively on Windows (although this trend seems to be something of past) tools, which should be a positive motivator for using Windows but it is not good enough…

Linux is another and sadder story. I love Linux and all my servers are still Linux, not Solaris (do they still produce it?) not BSDi, nor freeBSD nor Open BSD. But on the desktop side, Linux is becoming suckier every passing day. Window managers became memory monsters, the usually default browser Firefox is dead (for me at the least, I use it only just to see if its interpretation of my pages is correct or not), Thunderbird was my choice of mail interface, while it is not as bad as Firefox, it is not going well either. So while Eclipse is running very good on Linux, I need a good desktop to carry out my daily life as well. Also, at least for my coding, everything I wrote and that works on Mac, works on Linux too…

Aşk ya da Müzik veya Şiir Üzerine

Çoğu zaman ne aradığımı bilmeden bakınırken gördüğüm ufak cevherler oluyor sağda solda, bu da onlardan biri. Çok detayına girmek istemiyorum aslında, kendisi için konuşacak yetkinlikte bir şiir sonuçta. Şarkı sözlerinin hepsine şiir demek fazla iyimser bir bakış belki ama işin içinde Shihan the Poet olunca, pek soru işareti kalmıyor, en azından benim için. Geçen sene başıma gelenler içinde, en önemli olaylardan birinin Marcus Miller konserine gitmek olduğu gittikçe netleşiyor, ilginç şekilde.

I want a love like
Me thinking of you
Thinking of me thinking of you type love
Or me telling my friends more than I’ve ever admitted to myself
About how I feel about you type love
Or hating how jealous you are
But loving how much you want me all to yourself type love
Or see how your first name just sound so good next to my last name
And I wanted to see how far I could get without calling you
And I barely made it out of my garage
See, I want a love that makes me wait until she falls asleep
And wonder if she’s dreaming about us being in love type love
Or who loves the other more
Or what she’s doing this exact moment
Or slow dancing in the middle of our apartment to the music of our hearts
Closing my eyes and imagining how a love so good

Miller/Shihan Van Clief

Özümsenmiş faşizm

Malum, bir meslek hastalığı olarak;
Hayatın akışına, akışın kontrol ve raporlamasını yapan bilgisayar programları gibi bakmak kolay geliyor. İnsanların yazdıklarını, söylediklerini isimlerden sembollerden arındırıp, temel mantık ve kurallar çerçevesinden bakınca bazı çirkinlikler çok belirgin şekilde gün yüzüne çıkıyor. Özümsenmiş faşizm de bu cümleden hayatımızdaki en görmediğimiz, görmemekte ısrarcı olduğumuz çirkinliklerden biri.

Dün facebook’ta bir yazıda, hem de çok yakınımdan, iki kişinin ortak olarak “biz toplu cezalandırma uygulayan lider istiyoruz” dediklerini gördüm. Tabii bu şekilde ifade etmedikleri gibi, muhtemelen bir kahramanlık hikayesini övdüklerini sanıyorlar, muhtemelen ilkokulda bize ezberletilen yalanların arkasına bakmaya da çalışmamışlar.

Her şeyden önce, toplu cezalandırma uygulanan bir ortamda yaşamak istemediğim gibi, bunu uman insanlarla da ortak bir noktam olmasını istemiyorum. Hepsinden ötesi, hayattan habersiz, yazdığını, paylaştığını düşünmeyen, kolay gaza gelen, provokasyonlara bu kadar açık insanlarla bir arada olmak en kötüsü…