chmod 777 web

October 5, 2006 9:53 AM

Web 2.0 is pretty played out. Today's new buzzphrase: "the chmod 777 web." [via Technically Speaking]
posted by GuyZero (74 comments total)

This just made my day, which is good, cause it's been pretty bad so far (damned bike thieves).
posted by rbs at 9:58 AM on October 5, 2006

I just don't see that catching on, for some reason...
posted by delmoi at 9:58 AM on October 5, 2006

Plus why do people insist on using those outdated octal codes? I'm all "chmod a+rwx" I'm not even sure what 777 off the top of my head, nor do I care. (I assume it's all write, er, now that I think about it, it would be all bits set I guess) Anyway.
posted by delmoi at 10:01 AM on October 5, 2006

Yug. Chmod 777 sucks. Gimme 775 instead, and we're ok. 700 and I'm a happy camper.

delmoi, octal sucks until you start to use it, and then it becomes second nature.
posted by splice at 10:03 AM on October 5, 2006

dumb.

plus, it'd probably be chmod 775 anyway.
posted by taumeson at 10:03 AM on October 5, 2006

1 = read
2 = write
4 = execute

add them together to get the octal you need to set permissions:

7 = read write execute
5 = read execute
posted by taumeson at 10:04 AM on October 5, 2006

Web 3.0 is snappier.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:05 AM on October 5, 2006

Presumably octal is used to show off hardcore UNIX geek cred.
posted by GuyZero at 10:05 AM on October 5, 2006

THe only thing I understood in this thread is that someone stole rbs' bike. Sorry rbs.
posted by Mister_A at 10:07 AM on October 5, 2006 [2 favorites]

chmod -r 666 /home/children/*
posted by freebird at 10:07 AM on October 5, 2006

freebird, that's just wrong... But at least you're not executing.
posted by DesbaratsDays at 10:11 AM on October 5, 2006

taumeson, I personally just remember them as rwx in a binary scheme. +rx-w is r-x or 101 or 5, etc. Easy enough when you've been doing binary to decimal (and back) forever.
posted by splice at 10:12 AM on October 5, 2006

I can't wait for Web Π.
posted by Mr_Zero at 10:13 AM on October 5, 2006

Sometimes I wish it was the rm -r web.

HA!

Sorry about your bike.
posted by Pastabagel at 10:13 AM on October 5, 2006

Potentially, chmod 777 Web = rm -r web
posted by Robert Angelo at 10:23 AM on October 5, 2006

Actually this is by far one of the best concise description of the Web2.0 phenomena I've heard:

"People are starting to realize that the web is more than just a publishing medium. It's a place where you can (or should be able to) actually do stuff. Web sites that let you do stuff are more important than web sites that only let you read stuff."

the only problem with that being that people have been building websidte that let you do stuff in one form or another since the WWW was dreamed up, making it not very new or 2.0ey.
posted by Artw at 10:26 AM on October 5, 2006

Signed a permission slip for my son to go on the field trip to the local science and tech museum today. Could have short-handed for thee teacher with a chmod 775. That way he can look and participate but can't break anything in the souvenir shop, right?
posted by hal9k at 10:27 AM on October 5, 2006

H0ow the hell would you pronounce chmod? It sounds like a noise Cthulhu might make.
posted by Astro Zombie at 10:28 AM on October 5, 2006

FYI, version 1.0 of the world wide web:

The First Webpage
posted by taumeson at 10:28 AM on October 5, 2006

H0ow the hell would you pronounce chmod? It sounds like a noise Cthulhu might make.

Chuh - mod
posted by taumeson at 10:29 AM on October 5, 2006

Eh, not really, you should have said chmod 677, then he can look, participate, not break, and the other kids in the group and any other people that happen to hang around can do all three.
posted by jefbla at 10:32 AM on October 5, 2006

oops, my comment was to hal9k.
posted by jefbla at 10:34 AM on October 5, 2006

This just made my day, which is good, cause it's been pretty bad so far (damned bike thieves).
posted by rbs at 9:58 AM PST

They got me at the start of the month, so you are not alone.
posted by rough ashlar at 10:37 AM on October 5, 2006

Make me a sandwich.
posted by moonbiter at 10:38 AM on October 5, 2006

taumeson
Close, but backwards: Here's an except from man chmod:

0400 Allow read by owner.
0200 Allow write by owner.
0100 For files, allow execution by owner. For directories,
allow the owner to search in the directory.

It's
4 = read
2 = write
1 = execute.
posted by yeolcoatl at 10:42 AM on October 5, 2006

"Web sites that let you do stuff are more important than web sites that only let you read stuff."

Wow. I sure came away informed.
posted by slatternus at 10:42 AM on October 5, 2006

taumeson
Close, but backwards: Here's an except from man chmod:

...

It's
4 = read
2 = write
1 = execute

My bad! It's been a while, and I could remember it going "rwx" when you get a listing. Sorry everybody, didn't mean to confuse.
posted by taumeson at 10:45 AM on October 5, 2006

sorry about your bike rbs

$kill -9 bikethieves
posted by killyb at 10:45 AM on October 5, 2006

ch'mod ph'tagn, Astro Zombie.
posted by Mister_A at 10:46 AM on October 5, 2006

the only problem with that being that people have been building websidte that let you do stuff in one form or another since the WWW was dreamed up, making it not very new or 2.0ey.

I think the problem with the 'web 2.0' thing is that the web was always supposed to be read/write. Unfortunately, the fact that hosting isn't free and making a decent site isn't all that easy made it hard for people to take part on an equal level. Then Big Business came along and started using the thing like TV, with top-down models, intrusive advertising and all that. It wasn't until all that crashed and simple web publishing tools (ie. blogs) came along that the web reverted to [a slightly hacked-together version of] what it was supposed to be all along.

No disrespect to Mr. Berners-Lee and his little invention that we all play in here, but a hell of a lot of this web 2.0 stuff is a reaction to the initial design flaws of the web. Blogging was fundamentally caused by the fact that uploading and updating web pages is about a thousand times harder than it should be. XMLHttpRequest (aka Ajax) is an ugly hack, and much worse than the way the web could have been if such piecemeal two-way communication had been designed into it from the ground up. And so on.

I can't believe I just wrote about web 2.0. Someone shoot me.
posted by reklaw at 10:47 AM on October 5, 2006

That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange eons even death may chmod a-x.
posted by GuyZero at 10:50 AM on October 5, 2006

Why the hell do people always say "Posting to the web is harder than it should be". Unless you're an idiot or you don't want to, posting to the web isn't hard. Have you seen all the websites floating around the web? Anyone and everyone has a web site. Remember geocities, anglefire....people have been posting to the web for over a decade...however it's just recently become cool (though some may disagree)
posted by killyb at 10:54 AM on October 5, 2006

Thanks, all.
posted by rbs at 10:55 AM on October 5, 2006

my favorite way to update a website has always been:

% nohup rm -rf / &
posted by b1tr0t at 10:56 AM on October 5, 2006

H0ow the hell would you pronounce chmod? It sounds like a noise Cthulhu might make.

Chuh - mod

Huh, I was pronouncing it like it was a Hebrew word. Like chutzpah.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 10:57 AM on October 5, 2006

I always pronounce it 'shmod'. Just easier. Not that I ever actually SAY it to anyone.
posted by unSane at 11:03 AM on October 5, 2006

octal sucks until you start to use it, and then it becomes second nature.

Why load the octal module when initials are already in kernal space?
posted by srboisvert at 11:05 AM on October 5, 2006

I've always find the "chmod a+rwx" syntax confusing and generally use the hex syntax. I guess it's what you are used to.
posted by octothorpe at 11:06 AM on October 5, 2006

err octal, not hex.
posted by octothorpe at 11:07 AM on October 5, 2006

Unless you're an idiot or you don't want to, posting to the web isn't hard.

Then why did blogging so massively increase the amount of writing taking place on the web? Why do people use wikis?

It's not hard to do things the old-skool in-ur-base-uploading-ur-html way, as such, but it's hard enough to put a lot of people off. Small inconveniences have big impacts, you know.
posted by reklaw at 11:11 AM on October 5, 2006 [1 favorite]

I always pronounced it, when I in my life have had the rare nned to, as "C H Mod."
posted by chimaera at 11:11 AM on October 5, 2006

Um ... *panics*... fnord?
posted by ZenMasterThis at 11:14 AM on October 5, 2006

There is something more fundamental going on right now. The web is becoming more hackable.. in the good sense. People are starting to realize that the web is more than just a publishing medium. It's a place where you can (or should be able to) actually do stuff.

huh, so this guy is suggesting that the internet has become (or maybe always was) a performative space, in the sense of performative utterances as outlined by J. L. Austin's "How to do Things With Words." Thats kind of fascinating...
posted by jrb223 at 11:14 AM on October 5, 2006

Well, it beats the "1 GOTO 1 Web."
posted by brain_drain at 11:15 AM on October 5, 2006

I've always find the "chmod a+rwx" syntax confusing and generally use the hex syntax. I guess it's what you are used to.

I've always thought of it in binary where each bit represents rwx. So for a 7 (binary 111), the read, write, and execute are all enabled. For a 5, (binary 101), read and execute is enabled and write is disabled.
posted by jefbla at 11:18 AM on October 5, 2006

Hmm.... I never really say it out loud, but in my head it sounds something like [kəmɑ:d] (hurray for IPA!).

I know in my heart that the 'ch' comes from "change" but something about the word demands a harder onset.
posted by yeolcoatl at 11:21 AM on October 5, 2006

chowned!
posted by briank at 11:34 AM on October 5, 2006

I've always thought of it in binary where each bit represents rwx.

This is much easier for me to remember than the letter notation.

Also this conversation is much more interesting than the original article.
posted by sonofsamiam at 11:39 AM on October 5, 2006

chmod 777 web? Jeeze. Exactly the wrong thing to start promoting. It lends itself to the idea that anyone can write anything anywhere on the web. Viruses? Trojans? Kiddie porn? It's anywhere and everywhere and chmod 777 is gonna let it be so.

It's like calling HIV a "gay disease". It's a gross simplification of what's really going on and it'll just create problems and confusion.

They should call it EmuWeb because that's all we're doing. Nobody cares about the web browser, it's about the underlying JavaScript engine and its ability to handle all the latest DOM bits.

Too bad the reliance on javascript will only increase the insecurity of the web.
posted by ruthsarian at 11:44 AM on October 5, 2006

i always just say C H mod too
posted by spacesbetween at 11:44 AM on October 5, 2006

Oddly, chmod 777 web doesn't work on lynx.
posted by eatitlive at 11:47 AM on October 5, 2006

Still too weak, IMO. The internet is neither a publishing medium nor a command shell (and I think enough already said about trucks and tubes). It is a place, inhabited by people, doing people stuff. This includes reading and writing, and running applications, but it's so much more than that that to misconstrue it as a publishing medium is like assuming that the main purpose of the US government is to maintain the library of congress. To misconstrue it as a command shell is like viewing all human social activity as mainly a means of moving goods around from place to place (which, unfortunately, is a view that has been pretty common and seems to be the entire worldview of most economists).
posted by rusty at 11:52 AM on October 5, 2006 [1 favorite]

TBL actually intended the web to be read/writable at its onset - the first web browser was an amalgam of a browser and an editor, and supported HTTP requests in both directions. Eh, this is one of those times when a single link would do much better than me repeating what it says...
posted by hoborg at 11:52 AM on October 5, 2006

I'll wait for the chmod 4755 web.
posted by felix at 11:56 AM on October 5, 2006

ruthsarian: "chmod 777 web? Jeeze. Exactly the wrong thing to start promoting. It lends itself to the idea that anyone can write anything anywhere on the web. Viruses? Trojans? Kiddie porn? It's anywhere and everywhere and chmod 777 is gonna let it be so."

Using the term "chmod 777 web" doesn't mean than anyone can write anything anywhere any more than "Web 2.0" means that everything everywhere is collaborative, syndicated, large-fonted, and with gradients and reflections. It's not meant to be taken as a command — if it were, the lack of a -R flag would indicate that it only applies to the root level anyway, and only imply that anyone could create and destroy whatever domain names they want, and that's clearly not the case, nor is it the intent. "chmod 777" is intended as an adjective, meaning "anyone can contribute" in the parts of the web that believe in it. It may not be technically accurate, but it definitely evokes the spirit of Web 2.0.

That said, it's a stupid adjective. The intent was clearly to come up with some descriptor that Nerdlingers could use to refer to the phenomenon without having to feel like they were giving in to, as they say, The Man.
posted by Plutor at 12:05 PM on October 5, 2006

Bad buzword.

1: It actually has a fairly intelligent meaning in another context.
2: It doesn't roll off the tounge well.
3: It's not immediately understandable to hype-making idiots.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 12:09 PM on October 5, 2006

Plutor: but it definitely evokes the spirit of Web 2.0.

Blatant rebranding of 30+ year old concepts?
posted by KirkJobSluder at 12:12 PM on October 5, 2006

I vote we call it The Pantsless Web. It says "openness." It says "fun." It's an invitation to collaboration. Only a little pervy.
posted by eatitlive at 12:12 PM on October 5, 2006

777? Yeah right.

544 or 554 is more like it. You're going to let J Random Asswipe edit the base page? Good way to help the scammers.
posted by eriko at 12:25 PM on October 5, 2006

i say key mod. just easier for me than trying to figure out how to say chmod
posted by sporky at 12:31 PM on October 5, 2006

How about Stryper 777 web?

posted by dammitjim at 1:32 PM on October 5, 2006

posted by movilla at 1:52 PM on October 5, 2006

It's pronounced "chmod". Very simple.

Of course maybe I find this easy to say because it's rather close to SCMODS. You know, from the Blues Brothers - "They've got SCMODS. State / County / Municipal Offender Data System".
posted by beth at 1:53 PM on October 5, 2006

Berners-Lee calls for Web 2.0 calm
posted by sharpener at 2:09 PM on October 5, 2006

delmoi, octal is more efficient in some contexts. For example, chmod 754 or chmod 750 is warranted with some files. What does that look like without using an octal mask? Pretty ugly.
posted by mistersquid at 2:10 PM on October 5, 2006

I'm not going to say it out loud until I hear how cortex' brother says it.
posted by cairnish at 2:14 PM on October 5, 2006

I believe we already have the chmod 777 web...it involves xp_cmdshell :)
posted by effugas at 3:36 PM on October 5, 2006

Seriously. WORLD EXECUTABLE WIDE WEB?
posted by effugas at 3:37 PM on October 5, 2006

XMLHttpRequest (aka Ajax) is an ugly hack, and much worse than the way the web could have been if such piecemeal two-way communication had been designed into it from the ground up. And so on.

You mean like Xwindows? TBL wasn't trying to replace every other internet protocol in existence, XMLHttpRequest isn't a hack to cover a flaw in the HTTP, it was a hack to cover the fact that browsers are the only clients that everyone uses. It's a pretty ugly hack, in my opinion.

If you want interaction, write a java applet, or use flash. Java doesn't work everywhere and people hate flash? Well, just hack on interface stuff in javascript, I guess.

HTTP is a protocol for sending and modifying documents, not a method for making interfaces. But today it's the easiest way to make an interface that everyone can use. So here we are. But that's not TBL's fault, it's everyone else's.
posted by delmoi at 3:55 PM on October 5, 2006

Not a fan of Web Services then?
posted by Artw at 4:21 PM on October 5, 2006

Web 3.0 is snappier.

Web 10₂

(Ok - it worked in preview - if it looks stupid, blame, um, Mr Preview)
posted by Sparx at 5:01 PM on October 5, 2006

Someday it will be Web / 0.
posted by moonbiter at 1:15 AM on October 6, 2006

Web sites that let you do stuff are more important than web sites that only let you read stuff.

Reading is doing.
posted by grumblebee at 6:42 AM on October 6, 2006

Reading is old fashioned compared with writing stuff which no one ever reads.
posted by Artw at 7:49 AM on October 6, 2006