Re: [PATCH] Remove absolute paths from gpg.rc
On Wed, Mar 21, 2007 at 12:27:10AM +0000, Dave wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 20, 2007 at 12:14:17PM +0100, Oswald Buddenhagen wrote:
> > otoh, most users *are* idiots (yes, even the unix users -
>
> Idiots have the right (a) to exist, and (b) not to have decisions that
> are rightfully theirs stolen by a zealous system, not even in the name
> of security. People don't lose their rights by being idiots.
>
i believe that you believe this - it's so truly american. i even know
for a fact, that many of your kind agree with using heavy weaponry to
"convince" others of these ideals. the problem with this attitude is
that *a lot* of people have to suffer from those idiots. blind trust in
unlimited freedom based on the assumption that the bad things will go
away by themselves eventually won't make perversions like creationism,
scientology or hate tv vanish, quite on the contrary. and they *do* hurt
- some short-term, some long-term, some physically and some
economically. and no matter how you twist it, it limits the freedom of
those affected. how does *that* fit with your ideals? the bottom line is
that sometimes you have to limit some freedoms to preserve other, more
important ones. anything else is simply irresponsible.
> > and even the most security conscious ones make mistakes.
>
> It's up to an individual user to decide not to trust himself, if he
> knows he's in the habit of making mistakes.
>
this is silly. everbody makes mistakes. confirmation dialogs are a
typical example of a measure to prevent small mistakes from having big
effects. but like any other safety measure, they have to be placed
wisely. same goes for security, only that it is way harder.
> > i can accept absolute paths determined at configure time in the
> > default config,
>
> I can't. The configure script has no authority to steal decisions
> from the user. The user owns his copy of Mutt, not the other way
> around.
>
dude, it is a config file that can be overridden, so such dogmatic
argumenation is completely pointless.
an actual reason would be the principle of least surprise: if i put a
new gpg in front of $PATH, i expect it to be used by every program
without checking each program's configuration first. one could call this
a part of the unix principle, too. :)
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