On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 5:49 PM, Ian McWilliam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Can anybody explain why is it acceptable to modify a "standard" for "ports" > but not not for "base"?
I'm going to guess that the core reason is "what helps more users?": - A pdf spec that's written to sell the illusion that you still have control over data that you've given to someone else? That's not helpful, may even be harmful. Insert bad-crypto vs. no-crypto argument... - A pdf reader that gets in the way of you accessing content or a pdf reader that lets you get your job done with the minimum of hassle? The latter. I'm going to assume that if you're looking at a PDF you have at least some license to access it. At least the password protected pdfs make you work for it if you're trying to read a pdf without permission. A "non-printable" pdf can be trivially screencapped and printed... more illusions for sale. And what if i'm writing a driver based on something in a de-permitted pdf? How is the magic "0x8000" I typed any different from the "0x8000" I could've just copied from the datasheet? - An ssh implementation that tries to avoid known (possibly security-related) bugs or an ssh implementation that just hopes the other guy got it right too. The former is more helpful. Maybe you'll be lucky and negotiate secure settings, maybe you'll be slightly unlucky and fail to connect or maybe you'll be very unlucky and negotiate "cipher none". Also, (and this may seem a little shallow) the original implementers (ssh, xpdf, whatever else) probably try to adhere to the spec as closely as they can. They produce a program with predictable behaviour - that's helpful. Then they give away the source in hopes that someone finds it useful... after that, there's nothing stopping their users who've legitimately acquired the source from saying "this is 99.9999% of what i need, i just need one more tweak" and hacking it up to suit their own ends. CK -- GDB has a 'break' feature; why doesn't it have 'fix' too?
