I don't mean to nitpick but I'm not arguing that it's burdensome or difficult to remember. I meant it when I said: > once you know what the rule is I agree tha

I don't mean to nitpick but I'm not arguing that it's burdensome or difficult to remember. I meant it when I said: > once you know what the rule is I agree that it makes access control obvious The rule is memorable and grokable, I agree with you! I don't use "silly" to characterize it as the wrong choice, I strictly mean it's a quizzical choice. Using your hidden file analogy in Unix: if I were to invent a new file system and I decided to use lower case letters to represent hidden files instead of borrowing the "." convention, wouldn't that strike you as a silly choice given the ubiquity of Unix-like filesystems?