lördag 09 oktober 2004 10:46 skrev John Andersen:

> You are vastly too swayed by a few initials behind a name.

>

I don't think that peeking into dictionaries would give me a clue to the dubious nature of that remark.

> Computers are the most complex machines ever invented

> and if you think such a machine never needs a manual you

> may be qualified, if only to find the off switch.

Old IBM mainframes, used to have consoles that operators sat and watched for messages. When an error message, or any other message, popped up on the screen it was in the form of F50347, with some message attached and you had to look up in a pile of manuals, to figure it out. Because the message, was really short. Once you looked into the manual, it often referred to another message F40527 (These numbers are made up, merely to look like the originals and have no real relevance to the original messages), and often you had to look into yet another manual to read that description.

Those manuals were written, for security through obscurity, and not because the machines were so complex. We all know, security through obscurity, is not really a working security ... just as we know that 'idiot proof' only produces better idiots. We could land somewhere in the middle though ... don't you think?