[cap-talk] Firefox breaks the principle of identifiability

[Mark Miller]

David Wagner wrote:
> Maybe this is the best we can do and still remain secure.  Could be.
> But if so, this is cause for lament that we can't solve people's problems
> better (not cause for pride in the elegance of our abstractions).

I'm glad to see discussion in this thread about how to make Pet Names more 
usable -- this is needed. But even after the best usability improvements we 
can muster, what you say above may still be true. As a computer scientist, you 
must have a deep appreciation of impossibility results -- it keeps us from 
barking up the wrong tree, no matter how attractive that tree is.

Limitless energy would be nice, and people have tried many designs for 
perpetual motion machines. You tell me now that creation of net energy is 
impossible, and further, you show me a machine that actually *looses* net 
energy as it operates.

Maybe this is the best we can do and still produce useful motion. Could be. 
But if so...

So let us all lament the impossibility. We can now proceed to the useful talk 
of improving the design so that it looses less energy.

-- 
Text by me above is hereby placed in the public domain

     Cheers,
     --MarkM