milestinsley

Obviously there are great online resources, but I'd like to crack the spine and smell the pages of an actual book.

-I'm new to Ruby, but a fast learner.

-I've had enough of PHP.

-I understand object orientated coding and MVC design principles.

-I want something that gets me up to speed on the idiosyncrasies of Ruby and the Rails framework.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated. Thanks :)

Edit: Formatting

I am currently working on a web application that allows users to upload files. There is much more to it than this of course, but I am asking the following question solely in relation to the storage of files.

I am planning on using a CDN (such as Amazon's S3) and my question is simple: How effective is obfuscating the names of publicly available files using a UUID for security purposes? For example, naming a file something like this 4b013ca21ba608373efb4717.jpg.

I would be fascinated to hear any thoughts from the HN users. Certain questions spring to mind, like:

- How easy would these be to guess? Can there be any guarantees of uniqueness?

- What is the best algorithm to create them?

- Should I just make them all private and use authenticated access controls?

I understand that this is an application specific question, that depends on what level of security I require, among other factors. But, for purposes of this discussion, lets just say that it needs to be high, but no Fort Knox: if a file was comprised it would not be critical.

Thank you in advance for any help. :)