RE: Re: [xml-dev] The Rule of Least Power - does it miss the point?

["Bullard, Claude L \(Len\)" <len.bullard@intergraph.com>]

>Ok.  I have to give up on this one, because I'm lost.  I hadn't been
>exposed to the terminology you were using relating to cybernetics, but
>from the point of view that you just stated, yeah:  multiple viewpoints
>across the same data is a good thing. 

No it isn't.  That's the point. Do you really want your Social Security 
Number on a clipboard?  It depends on the operations over the clipboard, 
roles, permissions, rights, persistence, access by location by whom (police officers 
have to weld or chain car PCs to the body of their cruisers), and so on.  

We use subjective communications to attain objective goals.  Then measure 
and iterate.  The fact of measurement being subjective and the choice 
of goals being subjective makes it all feel... well.... unreal.  Then 
you get the phone call from a credit agency, realize your identity 
was stolen and now you have to spend X numbers of days and resources 
fixing that mess because the time of access to discovery was long 
and that is how the system was designed:  subjectively.

>I take your earlier comment about the context for what the original
>start for the thread was:  the web and only the web.  

And that means only apply the principle to the web, but then you'll 
have hard time figuring out what is 'on the web' and what is 'off 
the web' and you have a world of marketeers, well-known experts, 
and laudable heros telling you to be always connected and always 
on the web because you alwasy want to be Googlable, right?

See the circular nature of that?  Your objectives are subject to 
their objectives.  You want free gmail whether it is reliable or 
not.  They want to mine your mail and sell your thoughts in
their attention economy.  Wouldn't it be a bit cheaper to buy 
another $99 USB external hard drive?  Objectively speaking that is?

<aside>be aware that attention is both directed 
and misdirected:  the first is real magic, the second is stage 
magic.  Fools and their money/identity/love... </aside>

>Fair enough, but from a few other things going on over the last few days, it's really
>driven home that in several cases, we need a lot less zeal and a bit
>more critical thinking & actual understanding of how people solve
>problems.  A lot of people don't articulate the why, only the how, and
>that makes it difficult when it comes time to change it later. 

Alright.  If you have a choice between a QBE-data base GUI that automates 
the rule checking (think business rules), vs a mashup GUI that is loosely 
coupled to services of different quality and can mostly validate that 
you entered a syntactically valid URN, SSN and Zip Code, vs a screen 
form that is identical to your tax form in appearance but otherwise 
just ships the data you enter unvalidated to an accountant, 
which do you prefer to do your taxes?

How matters.  How long matters.  How much matters.  Why is a given.

It doesn't always work that way.  Sometimes why matters a lot but 
only if you have problems with intensions and now we are back to 
subjective systems.  You do want to know why, but you may not 
have to care.

>"It is far better to be explicit and wrong than to be vague."

You will be just as broke.

>Back to lobotomizing some architectural principles in the name of
>backward compatibility... *sigh*

Yes, but you'll have lots of money and desirable things follow that around.

len