From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,971aa11c293c3db1 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-07-28 14:42:16 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!newsfeed.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!canoe.uoregon.edu!arclight.uoregon.edu!enews.sgi.com!newshub2.rdc1.sfba.home.com!news.home.com!news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com.POSTED!not-for-mail From: tmoran@acm.org Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: When correct software meets illegal data (was: Ada The Best...) References: <3B63260D.6F4819@PublicPropertySoftware.com> X-Newsreader: Tom's custom newsreader Message-ID: Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 21:42:15 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.7.82.199 X-Complaints-To: abuse@home.net X-Trace: news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com 996356535 24.7.82.199 (Sat, 28 Jul 2001 14:42:15 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 14:42:15 PDT Organization: Excite@Home - The Leader in Broadband http://home.com/faster Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:10674 Date: 2001-07-28T21:42:15+00:00 List-Id: >But the whole worldwide web situation is a tribute to software that >does what one means rather than rigidly following a spec. What happens >... >but I know that mine aren't. There are all kinds of HTML peccadillos >that are ignored or worked with by the successful browsers. If >everything had to be correct, the worldwide web would be the worldwide >wasn't. Being fault tolerant is nice. Depending on fault tolerance is not so nice. The lack of an "as built" spec makes life very difficult for anyone attempting to write code that accepts the same unknown set of inputs as "the successful browsers". It also makes life hard for someone trying to write a web page that will be rendered very similarly by *all* "the successful browsers". As earlier pointed out, if the tolerance was accidental rather than on purpose, it often leaves a security hole. Some tolerance is hard to imagine except on purpose, e.g.