If not for your post I wouldn't have known the meme was from this comic, and then gone and read the blog and enjoyed it and now appreciate the meme more.
This isn't a jab at heroku. We had the option to provide micro, small, or medium instances. We host most of our apps on mediums so this is a good, powerful instance. 500 hours on a micro is nothing compared to 500 hours on a medium.
When working for Naughty America, I made a website for the members' area that was attempting to be like hulu for porn. Queueing, favorites, recommendations, subscriptions. We had it ready to go...
Naughty America was very resistant to change. The didn't want to divert all their members to a new site. They continued to work on their old members area so I was always feature chasing.
What it comes down to is that porn companies are not set up to be tech companies. They start out with 1 hacker that throws together some shitty CMS site and starts hacking content into it. Since the site quality isn't driving the money, they never lose the "one guy hacking on the site" mentality. They were basically doing everything as a one-off, without actually trying to make a good quality solution that would serve them long term.
I found the whole incident rather funny. Zed published a post about the issue, I published the issue since Zed didn't link it. I've never submitted to Hacker News and figured it'd get buried. I didn't expect top story on hacker news.
I've calmed a bit since the original postings. I can see why he was upset and I know that the right thing to do was to remove the book. I had good intentions and I did this out of homage, not to steal or claim any credit.
I've always been a fan of Zed's work. I will continue to be despite getting defensive about this.
Thank you for this. It's been my intention this whole time to point out that I really enjoy all of Zed's work. And felt a attacked when I thought I was doing something good. I felt a translation was helpful, but I took it down immediately when I received a complaint. I like what Zed has done and use it daily. Working at Engine Yard is not something I see as being better than any other job, only that we're a prominent user of Mongrel, possibly the largest in the world.