this sounds like a variant of the cliche about security through obscurity.
that's a lousy analogy. we're not talking about security here, we're
essentially talking about a social convention.
my point was about the design approach that attempts to control behavior by
ugliness.
ugliness is your personal judgement. I think X- is beautiful.
we quite often use visual cues to call attention to special circumstances:
- colored flashing lights on emergency vehicles
- warning signs on top of a student driver's automobile
- yellow tape surrounding a construction area or crime scene
- colored dots on IETF nametags
X- is just another visual cue.
it's like the effort to prevent use of tcp header prediction -- which
permitted a tripling of tcp throughput -- because it would permit ethernet
users to get an unfair share of the line.
no it's not. we're not talking about preventing people from doing
anything here.
Keith