Yeah.. that's it. We'll just ask for ID cards proving citizenship before we shoot back at someone.
If you are specifically targeting someone, you already have identified them. Targeting isn't a case of getting into a gunfight with someone, killing him, then finding out he's John Doe, US Citizen. It's saying "John Doe, US Citizen, must die. Let's send in the drones to blow up his car."
People like you are why I'm glad some corporations (like Best Buy) are tracking customers who abuse the system and starting to refuse to do business with them. You're just raising prices for the rest of us.
I'd say the manufacturer that's selling defective goods is the real culprit here.
While it may feel good... And may be justifiable... The problem with this is that it doesn't actually fix the problem.
Sure, maybe you get your money's worth in the end... But Microsoft is still selling a product with a 33% failure rate and Toyota is still selling cars with defective parts.
Which is why I suggested originally that perhaps it was a conversation better had with someone in technical support or with a lawyer - with the intent of coercing the company into fixing the actual problem.
"Not fixing the problem" depends on what you consider the problem to be. If I've got a bricked piece of electronics, my problem is that I've got a bricked piece of electronics. Sure, it's also a problem that some entity is selling products with an excessive defect rate. It's just not my problem -- or if it is, I only own a tiny share of that problem. I used to worry a lot about trying to help do my part to get things fixed: calling tech support, calling the comment line, writing letters . . . I've never gone so far as to take legal action to try to force a change, but the thought crossed my mind (and kept going out the other side). I've since decided that unless I'm getting paid consultancy fees, it's not worth my time and effort to fix somebody else's problem. Maybe I'm selfish or apathetic, but I think I've got enough things to fix of my own without looking for more.
Wikileaks is also a criminal enterprise for distributing, encouraging the distribution of, and conspiring to distribute classified documents.
Anyone in the United States who works for or supports Wikileaks is guilty of a federal offense, just like the leakers, and if convicted, eligible to be sentenced to upto 10 years in federal prison.
Good point. We sure could have used a guy like you during the Bush administration to ensure respect for the law.
Message to dgatwood: The government has plenty to hide. I'm sure that there are plenty of things that some people in our government know that should not be known by many (most, if not all) people outside of some agencies. . . but there are definitely reasons that the government SHOULD have some secrets.
dgatwood was being ironic. The "if you have nothing to hide . .." line we get from the government and others is disingenuous.
And I don't maintain a USB stick with such apps, since I don't do this kind of thing very often.
No better time than now to start collecting installer.exe files.
Unless you really don't want to become that "guy who knows computers and fixes mine for free". Even if they pay you -- or especially if they pay you -- you've gotta deal with that "you touched it last" problem the next time they install some malicious. I used to be that guy, and I did just as you said. And you're absolutely right about publishers "going rogue" and the advantages of keeping multiple old version, JIC.
I still keep that USB stick. But I try to make sure no one knows about it anymore. It's only for my wife's windows laptop that she won't part with yet.
I'd say if you've moved away from Windows yourself to try as hard as possible not to keep maintaining "somewhat computer illiterate person('s)" machines.
Some advice for programmers trying to do interface design: Don't. Leave question like this to an interface designer. If you can't afford one, or you want to do it anway, a good book for starters is "The Design of Everyday Things" by Don Norman, it's not even expensive.
Further, stop treating users as a problem in the system. Every user has his own model on how the system works. This model is very likely very different from the programmers model. Your task as an interface designer is to teach the user enough about the system (or it's model), so he can use the system successfully. Error messages don't help very much, as you've figured out, users don't read them. The lesson is, don't try to force the user to read error messages, instead find other ways to communicate the model.
Go immediately to Amazon (or wherever) and get that book. Don't do anything until you read it. Really. It is the bible of good interface design, making things look like how they work, so it's obvious what the user should do at all times. If a user shouldn't to something, don't let them. Constrain them to doing the right thing, make it easy to see if something is wrong, make recovery from errors graceful and painless. If users aren't reading your error messages and aren't entering correct data and pushing the right buttons, it's not a bug in the user.
If you want to save a few bucks and buy used or look for it in a library, it was previously titled The Psychology of Everyday Things, or POET. But this title resulted in the book being purchased by people interested in psychology, and shelved in the psychology section of bookstores and libraries. The title itself violated the design advice of the book. The author admitted he liked the title "POET", and used that instead of thinking of how it would be used. Experience led him to re-title the next edition.
Often, it's a good idea to think about the problem in an abstract way. For example, we have a similar problem at the place I work. There are two doors next to each other, one you should use, the other one you mustn't because it triggers the alarm. They tried to fix it by attaching a sign saying not to use that door. Needless to say, it didn't work, because noone read the sign.
As Norman would note in the book: a door that requires a user's manual (even one as short as your sign) is too complicated.
Yes, people do it all the time when someone is tailgating them.
He drives much too slowly, and then when someone is following him, wishing he would speed up and drive the same speed as everyone else, he taps his brakes.
Of course, tailgating someone so they'll accelerate to my desired speed is also a "stupid asshole tactic". Probably a better bet when encountering someone driving "too slowly" for your tastes is to either pass (if possible) or suck it up, Nancy. Maybe even give them more distance, not less. Even if they are driving so slowly as to create a traffic hazard (not just an inconvenience). Especially then. Because if someone is unintentionally creating a nuisance or a hazard, you ought to keep your distance to avoid making an accident even more likely. And if they're doing it intentionally, it's an even better idea. In no event is tailgating the "offending driver" going to make things better. If you wreck your car to make some kind of point, well, you've still got a wrecked car.
Naturally this doesn't apply to operators of trucks over 1 1/2 ton, who are specifically permitted by most rural and southern states to "run over his slow ass". Yes, mods, that sentence was "sar-cas-tic".
Step 7. Get health coverage. We found insurance through a local trade group for $600 a month for my wife and I. Pay it out of the company, it's a write off.
These are all good suggestions, and many people could benefit from them. But Step 7 can be the real stumbling block. Obviously not for you and your wife at $600 a month, but there are plenty of people who, through no fault of their own except perhaps original sin, just can't get affordable private insurance. Usually because one partner has a "serious" pre-existing health condition. It doesn't have to be life-threatening or crippling or even detectable by the average person looking at you. Just "expensive", as in maybe $100 of Rx/drugs per month or something like that. In that case, you may not be able to buy insurance on the open market for any price. This puts you in the unfortunate position of having to buy from your state's "high-risk" pool -- if your state has one. These can cost twice as much as the average private insurance plan, and there may be a waiting period or a wait-list to get in.
If we truly value the idea of more small business in the US, we'd try to reduce or eliminate this hurdle and mitigate the hassles of steps 5 and 6 as well. I'm not saying that a person can't work their way around this (like you have), I'm just saying that the fewer obstacles we put up, the more folks would take a chance on quitting Initech and hanging out their shingle.
Here are some of the opinions of Bob Parsons, the owner of GoDaddy. He is pro-violence: Close Gitmo? No way!!
When you cite the man's blog that has absolutely nothing to do with the hosting company he is CEO of, to state that he is "pro-violence", you kind of blow your the credibility of your argument. Please keep your personal political opinions out of non-political debates. What you did there is no better than any other meritless political smear campaign.
The rest of your post was spot-on, though, and I wouldn't trust GoDaddy with my first name.
You can base your opinion of a corporation on the politics of its CEO. Unless you're afraid that ACs will criticize you . . . No, it't the Anonymous Cowards!!!!1! Oh noes!
But seriously, folks. If a CEO is naive enough to think that no one will be impressed by his politics, positively or negatively, it's hard to imagine how he got so far in the first place. More likely, a CEO figures he'll play the percentages. That's how smart managers win ball games.
"Those are my personal opinions. Yours may be different."
That's, roughly speaking, how you do it.
That's not a rationalization, that's a description. Of course it's an opinion. By rationalization, we'd be looking for a way a person can square these seemingly contradictory opinions. As in, "your opinions on these two similar issues seem to be inconsistent, can you explain that?" Rationalize: "to bring into accord with reason or cause something to seem reasonable."
Sure a person can hold contradictory opinions, whether or not anyone else agrees or thinks they are "right". But that's not the point. When you have contradictory opinions on two similar subjects, you appear to be making an argument against yourself.
This is only valid if you consider the environment to be free, like it has been forever. Put a price tag on the environment and everything changes. But this is inconvenient for many powerful interests.
It's not only inconvenient for those with something to lose. I think many of those who are concerned about the the cost to the environment of our activities are squeamish about assigning a value to it. Like it would cheapen it, perhaps. I understand where that sentiment comes from, but this is exactly what must be done. The environment -- nature -- provides us with a great deal of wealth and comfort. It provides us with breathable air and water to drink. It produces our food, our shelter and our clothing.
Can anyone make their own oxygen from CO2? Can we will into existence appropriate weather and land to produce our food crops, building materials, textiles? Nature is the world's largest corporation, yet it doesn't lobby anyone's government.
There's enough of us now that our actions are no longer free w.r.t. the environment, to express the other side of your argument. The joke's on us, though. We may alter nature enough that we don't survive at our current levels. Nature will be OK, in the long enough run -- but we might not. But maybe we're lucky, and it doesn't get too bad in our lifetimes. Apres moi . ..
From a German perspective it sounds a bit weird, I mean, can there be any good argument against greater energy efficiency? Even if there was no climate change, why waste energy?
From listening to BBC reports from the climate summit last Fall, the energy industry's argument against energy efficiency is that if energy becomes too expensive to waste, our standard of living will go down. Efforts to boost efficiency will make energy more costly, particularly if additional taxes are directly imposed on electricity generation and motor fuel or if carbon emission limits are implemented.
So if it becomes more expensive to light and heat and cool your home, then that's one less trip to 'visit grandma', fewer Christmas presents for the kids, etc. Ergo, your standard of living is reduced.
"But what about energy efficiency? Wouldn't that offset the increasing costs of energy?", you might ask (and the moderator did). Again, according to the trade associations, no. We tried that in the 70's, with Jimmy Carter wearing a sweater and urging people to turn down the thermostat. "The American public isn't willing, and shouldn't have to make these sacrifices." I am not making this up, this really is the reasoning used against efficiency. Energy efficient appliances will require replacement of perfectly good equipment, again costing people money.
Of course the environmentalist (on the panel for 'balance', I guess) was pretty stumped by these arguments. All she could come up with was "I've got radiant heat floors, and they're comfy and efficient". She couldn't come up with anything like: "You aren't willing to wear a sweater in the Winter for the sake of your kids visiting Grandma you greedy heartless bastard?" or "You know, appliances wear out eventually, you might as well replace each with a more efficient one at that time." One would almost think they brought on the least qualified advocate for efficiency just to maintain the "balance". You might even suspect more sinister things.
Now, if I can unthaw my fingers enough to do more searching, I'll try to find the interview online so I'm not just pulling this out of my ass.
The Briggs - Chase Law of Program Development:
To determine how long it will take to write and debug a
program, take your best estimate, multiply that by two, add
one, and convert to the next higher units.
Thanks. I'd been wondering about where that came from. Also gives me some insight why I was still a little too optimistic: I left out the "+ 1" term.
If you provide the estimate, then "miss enough deadlines, checkpoints, tollgates, or whatever", then obviously your original estimate was crap, no matter how you justified it.
Well, ya. But we were starting from the premise that you were gonna get "crap". I was being a little "sarcastic", as they say, with my description of the "benefits" of this particular method.
Unless, say, the thing you actually need from the innards of your car is the private key of the ignition system. Which isn't in the plans.
So no, access to the plans doesn't really help at all, in this specific situation.
I see what you mean, but the documents can still be quite useful. It's certainly useful to be able to build your own unit, perhaps even without the retry delay. Also, the Wikipedia article on TPM says that ". . . each TPM chip has a unique and secret RSA key burned in as it is produced, it is capable of performing platform authentication." If the design documents provide insight to how the keys are generated and assigned, perhaps you can reduce the complexity of guessing them. I assume it's not just a simple series of keys (1000, 1004, 1008, . .., e.g.) but it's probably not completely random, either. Knowing something of the degree and nature of "non-randomness" could make a tough problem orders of magnitude less tough. Recall that when breaking the Enigma, Allied cryptanalysts learned (through espionage) that the keys could never contain the same character in the same position as the previous day's key. This limitation of randomness made their work a little easier.
And maybe you find the best gift of all: a back door.
Ah, good ol' function point analysis. I thought most intelligent people realized that it was a whole load of bullshit right around 1983 or so.
Doesn't mean it's not useful -- just not useful for estimating actual time. You create an estimate, you've got data to back it up. Sure it's just as much a WAG as anything, but it's such a Scientific WAG, what with all the numbers and calculations. Gets management off your back until you miss enough deadlines, checkpoints, tollgates, or whatever they want to call them.
The deal is, you have to be able to get a screen or database up and running ok in some x number of hours, and prioritize, to fit that estimate. Once you start doing that, then you can adjust your estimates to allow for more features or yes.
Unfortunately, features usually get cut by chance rather than by plan since no one wants to give up on anything, including the deadline. As you suggest, it would be be better to do it in a conscious way, but that seems way too rare in practice.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah .. that's it. We'll just ask for ID cards proving citizenship before we shoot back at someone.
If you are specifically targeting someone, you already have identified them. Targeting isn't a case of getting into a gunfight with someone, killing him, then finding out he's John Doe, US Citizen. It's saying "John Doe, US Citizen, must die. Let's send in the drones to blow up his car."
People like you are why I'm glad some corporations (like Best Buy) are tracking customers who abuse the system and starting to refuse to do business with them. You're just raising prices for the rest of us.
I'd say the manufacturer that's selling defective goods is the real culprit here.
While it may feel good... And may be justifiable... The problem with this is that it doesn't actually fix the problem.
Sure, maybe you get your money's worth in the end... But Microsoft is still selling a product with a 33% failure rate and Toyota is still selling cars with defective parts.
Which is why I suggested originally that perhaps it was a conversation better had with someone in technical support or with a lawyer - with the intent of coercing the company into fixing the actual problem.
"Not fixing the problem" depends on what you consider the problem to be. If I've got a bricked piece of electronics, my problem is that I've got a bricked piece of electronics. Sure, it's also a problem that some entity is selling products with an excessive defect rate. It's just not my problem -- or if it is, I only own a tiny share of that problem. I used to worry a lot about trying to help do my part to get things fixed: calling tech support, calling the comment line, writing letters . . . I've never gone so far as to take legal action to try to force a change, but the thought crossed my mind (and kept going out the other side). I've since decided that unless I'm getting paid consultancy fees, it's not worth my time and effort to fix somebody else's problem. Maybe I'm selfish or apathetic, but I think I've got enough things to fix of my own without looking for more.
The controller isn't broken, why would I throw it away?
So the console can be played in the afterlife, of course.
Wikileaks is also a criminal enterprise for distributing, encouraging the distribution of, and conspiring to distribute classified documents.
Anyone in the United States who works for or supports Wikileaks is guilty of a federal offense, just like the leakers, and if convicted, eligible to be sentenced to upto 10 years in federal prison.
Good point. We sure could have used a guy like you during the Bush administration to ensure respect for the law.
To the best of my knowledge, to get a position dealing with secrets, you sign a paper saying you won't reveal the secrets.
But then again, such a document is "just a god-damned piece of paper".
Message to dgatwood: The government has plenty to hide. I'm sure that there are plenty of things that some people in our government know that should not be known by many (most, if not all) people outside of some agencies. . . but there are definitely reasons that the government SHOULD have some secrets.
dgatwood was being ironic. The "if you have nothing to hide . . ." line we get from the government and others is disingenuous.
My life philosophy is "plan for the worst, hope for the best, and expect the most likely."
I tried that, and all I got were these twelve chairs!
Repeat it as needed.
Don't worry, this is Slashdot. We got that covered.
No better time than now to start collecting installer .exe files.
Unless you really don't want to become that "guy who knows computers and fixes mine for free". Even if they pay you -- or especially if they pay you -- you've gotta deal with that "you touched it last" problem the next time they install some malicious. I used to be that guy, and I did just as you said. And you're absolutely right about publishers "going rogue" and the advantages of keeping multiple old version, JIC.
I still keep that USB stick. But I try to make sure no one knows about it anymore. It's only for my wife's windows laptop that she won't part with yet.
I'd say if you've moved away from Windows yourself to try as hard as possible not to keep maintaining "somewhat computer illiterate person('s)" machines.
Yes, that's something up with which I cannot put.
Some advice for programmers trying to do interface design: Don't. Leave question like this to an interface designer. If you can't afford one, or you want to do it anway, a good book for starters is "The Design of Everyday Things" by Don Norman, it's not even expensive. Further, stop treating users as a problem in the system. Every user has his own model on how the system works. This model is very likely very different from the programmers model. Your task as an interface designer is to teach the user enough about the system (or it's model), so he can use the system successfully. Error messages don't help very much, as you've figured out, users don't read them. The lesson is, don't try to force the user to read error messages, instead find other ways to communicate the model.
Go immediately to Amazon (or wherever) and get that book. Don't do anything until you read it. Really. It is the bible of good interface design, making things look like how they work, so it's obvious what the user should do at all times. If a user shouldn't to something, don't let them. Constrain them to doing the right thing, make it easy to see if something is wrong, make recovery from errors graceful and painless. If users aren't reading your error messages and aren't entering correct data and pushing the right buttons, it's not a bug in the user.
If you want to save a few bucks and buy used or look for it in a library, it was previously titled The Psychology of Everyday Things, or POET. But this title resulted in the book being purchased by people interested in psychology, and shelved in the psychology section of bookstores and libraries. The title itself violated the design advice of the book. The author admitted he liked the title "POET", and used that instead of thinking of how it would be used. Experience led him to re-title the next edition.
Often, it's a good idea to think about the problem in an abstract way. For example, we have a similar problem at the place I work. There are two doors next to each other, one you should use, the other one you mustn't because it triggers the alarm. They tried to fix it by attaching a sign saying not to use that door. Needless to say, it didn't work, because noone read the sign.
As Norman would note in the book: a door that requires a user's manual (even one as short as your sign) is too complicated.
Yes, people do it all the time when someone is tailgating them.
He drives much too slowly, and then when someone is following him, wishing he would speed up and drive the same speed as everyone else, he taps his brakes.
Of course, tailgating someone so they'll accelerate to my desired speed is also a "stupid asshole tactic". Probably a better bet when encountering someone driving "too slowly" for your tastes is to either pass (if possible) or suck it up, Nancy. Maybe even give them more distance, not less. Even if they are driving so slowly as to create a traffic hazard (not just an inconvenience). Especially then. Because if someone is unintentionally creating a nuisance or a hazard, you ought to keep your distance to avoid making an accident even more likely. And if they're doing it intentionally, it's an even better idea. In no event is tailgating the "offending driver" going to make things better. If you wreck your car to make some kind of point, well, you've still got a wrecked car.
Naturally this doesn't apply to operators of trucks over 1 1/2 ton, who are specifically permitted by most rural and southern states to "run over his slow ass". Yes, mods, that sentence was "sar-cas-tic".
So when someone is tailgating you, you tap the break down while pressing down on the accelerator?
I just use the e-brake so the taillights don't give 'em any warning.
Step 7. Get health coverage. We found insurance through a local trade group for $600 a month for my wife and I. Pay it out of the company, it's a write off.
These are all good suggestions, and many people could benefit from them. But Step 7 can be the real stumbling block. Obviously not for you and your wife at $600 a month, but there are plenty of people who, through no fault of their own except perhaps original sin, just can't get affordable private insurance. Usually because one partner has a "serious" pre-existing health condition. It doesn't have to be life-threatening or crippling or even detectable by the average person looking at you. Just "expensive", as in maybe $100 of Rx/drugs per month or something like that. In that case, you may not be able to buy insurance on the open market for any price. This puts you in the unfortunate position of having to buy from your state's "high-risk" pool -- if your state has one. These can cost twice as much as the average private insurance plan, and there may be a waiting period or a wait-list to get in.
If we truly value the idea of more small business in the US, we'd try to reduce or eliminate this hurdle and mitigate the hassles of steps 5 and 6 as well. I'm not saying that a person can't work their way around this (like you have), I'm just saying that the fewer obstacles we put up, the more folks would take a chance on quitting Initech and hanging out their shingle.
Here are some of the opinions of Bob Parsons, the owner of GoDaddy. He is pro-violence: Close Gitmo? No way!!
When you cite the man's blog that has absolutely nothing to do with the hosting company he is CEO of, to state that he is "pro-violence", you kind of blow your the credibility of your argument. Please keep your personal political opinions out of non-political debates. What you did there is no better than any other meritless political smear campaign.
The rest of your post was spot-on, though, and I wouldn't trust GoDaddy with my first name.
You can base your opinion of a corporation on the politics of its CEO. Unless you're afraid that ACs will criticize you . . . No, it't the Anonymous Cowards!!!!1! Oh noes!
But seriously, folks. If a CEO is naive enough to think that no one will be impressed by his politics, positively or negatively, it's hard to imagine how he got so far in the first place. More likely, a CEO figures he'll play the percentages. That's how smart managers win ball games.
How do you rationalize positions like that?
"Those are my personal opinions. Yours may be different."
That's, roughly speaking, how you do it.
That's not a rationalization, that's a description. Of course it's an opinion. By rationalization, we'd be looking for a way a person can square these seemingly contradictory opinions. As in, "your opinions on these two similar issues seem to be inconsistent, can you explain that?" Rationalize: "to bring into accord with reason or cause something to seem reasonable."
Sure a person can hold contradictory opinions, whether or not anyone else agrees or thinks they are "right". But that's not the point. When you have contradictory opinions on two similar subjects, you appear to be making an argument against yourself.
Only if it weighs less than a duck.
This is only valid if you consider the environment to be free, like it has been forever. Put a price tag on the environment and everything changes. But this is inconvenient for many powerful interests.
It's not only inconvenient for those with something to lose. I think many of those who are concerned about the the cost to the environment of our activities are squeamish about assigning a value to it. Like it would cheapen it, perhaps. I understand where that sentiment comes from, but this is exactly what must be done. The environment -- nature -- provides us with a great deal of wealth and comfort. It provides us with breathable air and water to drink. It produces our food, our shelter and our clothing.
Can anyone make their own oxygen from CO2? Can we will into existence appropriate weather and land to produce our food crops, building materials, textiles? Nature is the world's largest corporation, yet it doesn't lobby anyone's government.
There's enough of us now that our actions are no longer free w.r.t. the environment, to express the other side of your argument. The joke's on us, though. We may alter nature enough that we don't survive at our current levels. Nature will be OK, in the long enough run -- but we might not. But maybe we're lucky, and it doesn't get too bad in our lifetimes. Apres moi . . .
From a German perspective it sounds a bit weird, I mean, can there be any good argument against greater energy efficiency? Even if there was no climate change, why waste energy?
From listening to BBC reports from the climate summit last Fall, the energy industry's argument against energy efficiency is that if energy becomes too expensive to waste, our standard of living will go down. Efforts to boost efficiency will make energy more costly, particularly if additional taxes are directly imposed on electricity generation and motor fuel or if carbon emission limits are implemented.
So if it becomes more expensive to light and heat and cool your home, then that's one less trip to 'visit grandma', fewer Christmas presents for the kids, etc. Ergo, your standard of living is reduced.
"But what about energy efficiency? Wouldn't that offset the increasing costs of energy?", you might ask (and the moderator did). Again, according to the trade associations, no. We tried that in the 70's, with Jimmy Carter wearing a sweater and urging people to turn down the thermostat. "The American public isn't willing, and shouldn't have to make these sacrifices." I am not making this up, this really is the reasoning used against efficiency. Energy efficient appliances will require replacement of perfectly good equipment, again costing people money.
Of course the environmentalist (on the panel for 'balance', I guess) was pretty stumped by these arguments. All she could come up with was "I've got radiant heat floors, and they're comfy and efficient". She couldn't come up with anything like: "You aren't willing to wear a sweater in the Winter for the sake of your kids visiting Grandma you greedy heartless bastard?" or "You know, appliances wear out eventually, you might as well replace each with a more efficient one at that time." One would almost think they brought on the least qualified advocate for efficiency just to maintain the "balance". You might even suspect more sinister things.
Now, if I can unthaw my fingers enough to do more searching, I'll try to find the interview online so I'm not just pulling this out of my ass.
Thanks. I'd been wondering about where that came from. Also gives me some insight why I was still a little too optimistic: I left out the "+ 1" term.
With that info, I found this delightful list of Eponymous Laws of Software Development.
If you provide the estimate, then "miss enough deadlines, checkpoints, tollgates, or whatever", then obviously your original estimate was crap, no matter how you justified it.
Well, ya. But we were starting from the premise that you were gonna get "crap". I was being a little "sarcastic", as they say, with my description of the "benefits" of this particular method.
Unless, say, the thing you actually need from the innards of your car is the private key of the ignition system. Which isn't in the plans. So no, access to the plans doesn't really help at all, in this specific situation.
I see what you mean, but the documents can still be quite useful. It's certainly useful to be able to build your own unit, perhaps even without the retry delay. Also, the Wikipedia article on TPM says that ". . . each TPM chip has a unique and secret RSA key burned in as it is produced, it is capable of performing platform authentication." If the design documents provide insight to how the keys are generated and assigned, perhaps you can reduce the complexity of guessing them. I assume it's not just a simple series of keys (1000, 1004, 1008, . . ., e.g.) but it's probably not completely random, either. Knowing something of the degree and nature of "non-randomness" could make a tough problem orders of magnitude less tough. Recall that when breaking the Enigma, Allied cryptanalysts learned (through espionage) that the keys could never contain the same character in the same position as the previous day's key. This limitation of randomness made their work a little easier.
And maybe you find the best gift of all: a back door.
Ah, good ol' function point analysis. I thought most intelligent people realized that it was a whole load of bullshit right around 1983 or so.
Doesn't mean it's not useful -- just not useful for estimating actual time. You create an estimate, you've got data to back it up. Sure it's just as much a WAG as anything, but it's such a Scientific WAG, what with all the numbers and calculations. Gets management off your back until you miss enough deadlines, checkpoints, tollgates, or whatever they want to call them.
The deal is, you have to be able to get a screen or database up and running ok in some x number of hours, and prioritize, to fit that estimate. Once you start doing that, then you can adjust your estimates to allow for more features or yes.
Unfortunately, features usually get cut by chance rather than by plan since no one wants to give up on anything, including the deadline. As you suggest, it would be be better to do it in a conscious way, but that seems way too rare in practice.