I propose a new rule for software development:
A Makefile from one project should never recurse to a Makefile from a different project, unless using a subshell with a clean environment.
In other words, if you must automatically build another project, you should do it in a way indistinguishable from the way it would be built directly by a user.
This post was brought to you by uClinux-dist and Buildroot, two complicated script systems to turn code into system images.
Yeah, I do this once in a while.
Here is the voicemail I just left for California Senator Barbara Boxer. I wrote every word myself.
I think the Transportation Security Administration has gone too far. In the name of protecting us from terrorists, they are violating our constitutional rights to privacy and to freedom from unreasonable searches. Air travelers today face an unacceptable choice between two invasive and humiliating forms of search: to be seen naked on full-body scanners, or to be groped in an invasive pat-down.
I’m sure you have read the open letter from UC San Francisco faculty voicing their serious concern about the health risks of the backscatter X-ray machines. Rafi Sela, former head of the Israel Airport Authority, has given interviews recently in which he describes the machines as “useless” and easy to defeat. These machines do not make us safer, and may actually be harmful, yet the TSA has pushed them into service at great expense. There is an even greater cost these machines take: the dignity and privacy of our own bodies. I hope you will agree with me that this state of affairs is completely unacceptable.
I believe much of the money spent on the TSA would be better used on intelligence, emergency response, or – here’s a crazy idea – schools and parks. The TSA is a bad security trade-off. It is time to stop and find a different course. Senator Boxer, I hope that during tomorrow’s TSA oversight hearing, you will demand the invasive and unconstitutional full-body scanners be removed, and further, that you will question the TSA’s fundamental role and effectiveness.
I’m not happy with the last paragraph. I should have done another draft.
I wanted to say something like this, but it didn’t seem to fit, and I couldn’t get the words to say what I wanted to. So, here’s the “deleted scene”:
Security is always a trade-off: it is only gained at the expense of something else. Nothing in the world can be made one hundred percent safe. But, as we try harder and harder, the costs grow more and more dear. Now, we are buying security at the cost of the dignity and privacy of our own bodies. I believe this is completely unacceptable.