[E-Lang] Possession as Metaphor (was: Pet Extensions and such (was: what is good about E?))

[Ken Kahn]

You are welcome to use my rewording but I think Ben has a point. You are
right that a cost/benefit analysis is behind this. I think Ben's point is
you might not know much about the party you transfer some capability to.
Maybe only that it was approved by the Underwriters Lab. You just think that
the total of its activities with your capability has a greater expected
benefit than risk. Maybe it does send your capability to others, maybe not -
in general, you don't know.

Best,

-ken

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jonathan S. Shapiro" <shap@eros-os.org>
To: "Ben Laurie" <ben@algroup.co.uk>
Cc: <e-lang@eros-os.org>; "Miriam Walker" <mwalker@cs.berkeley.edu>;
"Ka-Ping Yee" <ping@lfw.org>
Sent: Thursday, August 02, 2001 4:13 PM
Subject: Re: [E-Lang] Possession as Metaphor (was: Pet Extensions and such
(was: what is good about E?))


> > > I would have thought you are trusting me to only hand the key to
someone
> > > that can be trusted at least much as I can be trusted with your car
> keys.
> > > E.g. the valet may give the keys to another valet.
> >
> > Why would I trust you to do that? I might _hope_ you would, but I can
> > only trust you to do that if I have mind control over you.
>
> So first, Ken is right, and his suggested rewording on the tutorial is a
> good one [Ken, do you mind if I steal it?]
>
> However, trust is a statement of expectation, not a statement of
absolutes.
> In every act of trust, there exists some probabilistic expectation of
> failure. Mind control is not called for. Rather, a cost/benefit analysis
> between risk and value has presumably been done, and based on this the
risk
> of cap transfer is justified.
>
> However, this all fails to consider Trojan horses. Regrettably, the
> intentions (good or bad) of the receiving program are not all one needs to
> consider. This is why mandatory access controls may be necessary in the
real
> world.
>
>
> Jonathan
>