Complexity eats kittens alive!!!

Posted Nov 24, 2009 20:48 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304)
In reply to: Complexity eats kittens alive!!! by dskoll
Parent article: Fedora 12 to remove unprivileged package installation

The distinction between 'device' and 'system-internal device' is clear
enough: the latter should really be 'external device'. Basically the
latter is internal disks and the former is USB stuff and things like that.

What a 'job' is, I have no idea. I agree, there should be a
maximally-precise version of the descriptions.

Complexity eats kittens alive!!!

Posted Nov 24, 2009 21:10 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

The distinction between 'device' and 'system-internal device' is clear enough: the latter should really be 'external device'.

It's not clear to me. What if I have a hot-swappable SCSI disk? Is that internal or external? How about if my root file system is on an external USB device? (Don't laugh... I run my EEEPC that way.)

Some of the categories listed don't look useful to me. In fact, they look dangerous exactly because they are imprecise. If complexity is the enemy of security, then imprecision is the nuclear weapon.