[email protected] wrote at 09/12/2013 02:32 PM:
I think it is better to not deprive the drone prone of important
existential angst. Make them sit around these people for a few days until
they lose their religion. That won't happen if they just watch them on
TED, or in carefully produced speeches in the East Room of the White House,
or even in university lecture rooms.
Yeah, I know. But that doesn't scale. Somehow we need to replace silly role
models like Justin Bieber with real ones like Spot Draves (draves.org) ... or
_you_. 8^) There's no way to get all the drones into a religion-losing
interaction, especially when/if the role models really do continue working.
3) A culture that has low tolerance for secrets.
If an interface promises to do Y when it sees X, and that is tested and
declared `compliant', it doesn't tell me for sure what happens when it sees
Z, when Z is never mentioned (e.g. in the documentation). Maybe it will
indeed again deliver Y when X is seen again, but meanwhile also deliver X
to the Mossad? I want to see the logic that leads to Y, and see exactly
how it happens. Otherwise all I have is a sketchy contract and it is up to
me to try to break it with Z and whatever other misuse one can think of, or
break down the obsfucated artifact (executable) into smaller bits and try
to rationalize that.
But where do you stop, in your ideal? Do you stop at the source code? Or do you also
need a transparent compiler? Linker? Run-time? System? Component, vhdl, ceramics,
doping, drawing methods? Do you have to _be_ Yog-Sothoth in order to finally sit back
and say to yourself "OK, there are no secrets, here"?
Of course, the answer is that it depends on who "you" are. Some of us are
satisfied quickly, very near the interface. Others need to dig in and pick every nit
they can (and eventually go mad ;-). But, in the end, all of us tolerate secrets. It's
just a matter of the quality/character of those secrets.
As you point out, that's different than trying to
POSIX open(2) a file and being given EPERM. That's a refusal, but it can
be checked for consistency with other sorts of queries (e.g. stat(2)).
Ha! Nice.
--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.com
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may
be the most oppressive. -- C. S. Lewis
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