specifying what services Activities may use

[Michael Stone]

On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 11:03:41AM -0400, Greg Smith wrote:
>Hi Daniel,
>
>We need a list of anything that might "break" an activity. 

The list of things that have to work in order for an activity
(particularly a networked one) to "work" is larger than the memory and
comprehension of any individual working on this project. It includes
nasty things like

   * syscall semantics
   * file-system layouts
   * authorization data like file-system permissions
   * statistical biases in the outcomes of non-deterministic computations
   * availability of language interpreters
   * library APIs
   * computational complexity of default algorithms

Fortunately, most of the things in the list change slowly.
Unfortunately, as John has pointed out, we change them far faster and
with far less warning and support than most other people in this
business.

Michael