No, not at all. The reason you are in the trees is that you are failing to distinguish between defending the original AC and rejecting the notion that use of a cliche implies falsehood. Those are different things. I'm not engaging in the former, only the later, but you are failing to see that. Hence the trees.

Yes, please look at the post in question, but its not the one you think. The relevant one would actually be my original response where I did *not* include that first sentence, only the second. Can you imagine the reason? I'll offer a hint, I wasn't interested in the debate around the first. I was only interested in the cliche aspect of your response. Something tangential.

Actually, no. The "love it or leave it" meme was employed by a much older demographic historically.

Again, you have deluded yourself. I was only interested in the later of the two sentences and your apparent reaction to suggest a cliche lacks a kernel of truth. Trees.

No, I expect that it would be more accurate to say that cliches lose their impact from overuse. The point, the kernels of truth, are not changed by overuse.

You really should read the link regarding the 1945 hack. Its not at all what you are assuming. It is truly amazing even by todays standards.

Which is irrelevant. The technical feats being discussed are not those that would break encryption, rather they are those that would hack or otherwise defeat the humans doing decryption. Snowden's data is only secure if no one accesses it. Once accessed, if the machine used for decryption is somehow insecure (like the US Embassy in 1945) then the data is "leaked".

The plausibility of the idea that Russia or China has access to Snowden's data has little to do with NSA statements. Having physical access to Snowden increases that plausibility. Having Snowden's data in the hands of journalists greatly increases that plausibility.

Many commenters are acting as if breaking the crypto would be necessary. That is severely misguided. Hacking and technical espionage are all that is required. It is quite plausible for Snowden's data to have "leaked".

The reliability of the NSA statement has far more to do with this plausibility than the NSA's track record. Its plausible that the facts are coincidentally on the NSA's side.

Still lost in the trees I see. What I was arguing against was that cliche use somehow devalues an argument. It does not. Whether a person is creative in their language or not is only relevant to the the "selling" of an idea, not the actual facts behind an idea. And your "judgement" does not alter the fact that those critical of the US often prefer to live in the US. The figurative language you dismiss is not a literal invite to leave, it points out a hypocrisy of harsh critics who think the US is so evil yet they choose to remain. Suggesting that their actions expose the exaggeration of their words. In contrast to many of our ancestors who lived somewhere they thought was bad and decided to actually leave.

You mean working around the library and writing native code for platforms specific functionality?

Even for functionality that is common compromises sometimes have to be made and it does effect apps. I've ran more than one QT based app on a Windows box where my first impression was "why does this look like something from a Linux desktop?". For some apps that is OK, for others it is not.

Basically shortcuts involve tradeoffs, tradeoff have both upsides and downsides. And in the world of apps where word-of-mouth and first impressions are *everything* those downsides can be significant.

Simple examples often convey an idea more simply. The fact remains that in this core c/c++ code links to an iOS GUI, an Android GUI, and Linux console apps for regression testing and fuzzing. From the core code's perspective it has no idea whether a human user is driving it from a GUI or it is being driven from a script and is running on a headless Linux box in the closet for automated testing.

Plus this simple example also illustrates that even for a simple app if your UI code is more than half the program you may be doing something terribly wrong.

Actually I once led a team doing chemical diagraming and molecular modeling and visualization software. We used the same technique of minimizing the UI code and creating a c/c++ api representing primitive user interactions. Mouse up/down/move, button up/down, keyboard key up/down, etc. This again allowed scripting from a Linux console app. For example the selection of a chemical bond drawing tool followed by a series of mouse down/move/up actions that create a carbon ring. Such automation is very helpful to testing. It also allows the code to be easily run on various hardware targets. The core code, the actual functionality behind diagram and molecular model creation based on user actions, could be tested and debugged in parallel to the development of a GUI for a new platform.

Actually when going between iOS and Android it does not take a keen eye. There is often a user expectation of platform specific functionality. Least common denominator designs often suffer in user evaluations. Its a fact of life for apps that depend on word of mouth and first impressions rather than a marketing department selling to corporate clients.

Your statement is on the same intellectual level of creationists who take the biblical genesis to mean the world is 6,000 years old. The cliche, like the biblical story, is to be taken as figurative language not a literal truth. The figurative language in this case illustrating the truth that very few critics of the US would want to live anywhere else.

That said, you are also having a forest and trees moment. In my post I was simply pointing out that cliches, like myths, old sayings, etc sometimes have a kernel of truth in them.

Actually that is debatable. Successful lying usually involves a lot of truth telling too. Plus why would the truth be statistically unfavorable to the NSA? The truth is the truth regardless of the character of the person or organization sharing it. Its an extreme example but consider NSA claims about some ISIS member doing bad things.

Now Snowden is certainly quite different than an ISIS member but the fact that he has accessed his encrypted data while in China and Russia leaves the door open to technical surveillance, hacking or some other manner of inadvertent sharing of his cypher keys. As I mentioned in another post they have physical access to him and his laptop and that physical access can make security breaches far easier. People who are assuming a brute force attack or a flaw in an encryption algorithm are being quite narrow minded.

And then there are journalists who have access to his data.

Critical intelligent people are open minded. They are quite aware of the fact that a professional liar will tell the truth when the truth coincidentally serves the liar's interests.

A person that automatically believes the NSA is lying is really not much different than a person that automatically believes the NSA is telling the truth.

Cliches are overused lines. Overuse does not imply falsehood. In fact cliches often express a truth, they just express the truth in a tired unoriginal unartistic manner. Yet, a truth is a truth.

Do you tell your friends your deepest darkest secrets? Especially the new friends, the friends of convenience?

Recall that physical access to the hardware trumps most security. In the crypto world physical access to the person who has the cipher keys would be the equivalent. Ignoring coercion, the CIA and KGB performed many amazing technical surveillance feats back in the day. Some of it damn near unbelievable, beyond what hollywood dreams up (ex 1945-52 a listening device with no power supply or active electronics, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... There is no reason to believe comparable technical feats no longer occur.

All modern farming is "overfarming" compared to primitive naturalistic techniques. Going beyond such techniques is how we avoid a Malthusian catastrophe. Its not unique to the central valley.

Apologies, I hits the submit button prematurely. Please read my response to my other post, its the full response, the first was a work in progress.

No, it absolutely makes sense to use the native api of a platform to create the user interface. Otherwise your app does not look or behave as expected and that has been shown to be harmful to an app's success. So if its an internal enterprise app that people will be told to use, fine, take that shortcut. However if your app's success depends on being embraced by the public absolutely beware of these one-size-fits-all least-common-denominator solutions. Your app must look native, it must look current, it must support all the built-in shortcuts, etc.

That must be a fairly trivial app. Or your design and implementation is wrong. Lets use a scientific/statistical/business/hex/bill/tip calculator app that I wrote as an example. All the math is naturally in the core. So is an api that the user interface will call. This api basically includes a function for each button possible press.

The platforms specific side of the code does nothing more than call the appropriate button press C api function (ex button_1() button_plus() button_2() button_equals()). The core code does all the real work. I can re-use the core on Android or on a desktop OS. I even build this core code against a Linux console front end. Two actually, one for a scripted regression test that simulates user button presses and another that generates random values and operations for fuzzing. Note that these tests are not using a special api, they are using the exact same api that the user interface code is using. Things like that are important.

No, it absolutely make sense to use the native api of a platform to create the user interface. Otherwise you app does not look or behave as expected and that has been shown to be harmful to an app's success. So if its an internal enterprise app that people will be told to use, fine, take that shortcut. However if your app's success depends on being embraced by the public absolutely beware of these one-size-fits-all solutions. Your app must look native, it must look current, it must support all the built-in shortcuts, etc.