It seems my last comment hit a bit of a nerve. As some pointed out, having a back door for maintenance could be common and good policy.

Since my programming ability is pretty much limited to simple scripting and BASIC "Hello World" routines, maybe this freaks me out unnecessarily. I guess it comes down to ethics and morality since there seems to be no way to prevent this kind of monkey business. Depending on Joe Coder's ethics and morality is a losing proposition, long term. But then I don't trust humanity in general to do the right thing.

A free lance grunt of any kind should be worried about not getting paid. That's just being smart. But wouldn't it be tempting to leave the backdoor/remote kill in after you get the cash?

Does this make me an anti-social pessimistic freak or a realist?

Screw this, I'm gonna get a coke.

Well, I just noticed my karma is good, and that is good.
now I just have to concentrate on coming up with more useful info. Maybe I should pick a co uple of obscure tech sites or papers and monitor them obsessively. What do you all think?

See ya!

P.S. Is good-to-excellent a bigger increment than positive-to-good? Don't care much, really.

Hot dang, I've got positive karma!