[LINK] What's a reasonable level of code-checking?
rchirgwin at ozemail.com.au
rchirgwin at ozemail.com.au
Thu Aug 17 21:28:32 AEST 2006
Karl (with a big snip...),
>"Entire" maybe not. But the lion's share *should* be. For example, any
>operating system should be delivered "closed" - no access to a local
>network AT ALL, in or out. Each opening should require active
>intervention by the user. It's pretty simple, but basically noone has
>got it right yet.
>
>Likewise software can check for good passwords. Software can check for
>good passphrases. Software can demand that two applications do not share
>a password. Software can distinguish between original installed files
>and new files, and can (and should) refuse to execute or open new stuff
>until the user has explicitly "blessed" it. Software can check
>permissions of directories and files and refuse to operate if they are
>insecure. Simple stuff; the list is endless.
>
>Very little software actually does any of those things because the
>*consumer* doesn't want the hassle. But they can't have their cake and
>eat it too. That's not a responsibility issue though - it's a consumer
>acceptance issue.
>
>
There is a mindset issue as well, and it exists both in free and paid
software (and which also exists in the provision of Internet services,
VoIP, and many other places). It's a lack of imagination: the creator of
the software or service does not imagine the user as being any different
to him(her)self.
Nietzsche put this insight down as "ecco homo" - "They paint pictures of
themselves and cry 'Ecco Homo' ('Behold the man!')" - that is, if you
are not like "me" then the fault is yours.
Take it away from software for a moment. There's any amount of evidence
that people don't care a rat's about advanced 3G mobile phone services -
that don't feel an irresistable attraction to watching TV on a 2"
screen. Now, what does the industry have to say about this? "Consumers
'still don't get' 3G" was a headline I saw ...
It's not the 'consumers' that don't get the service: it's designers who
can't imagine people who aren't the "same as me".
But it exists in software design *in spades*. What was it that the
gun-toting free software dude, name forgotten too much wine, said? "All
great software starts to scratch the developer's itch." That's okay -
for the *start*. But it restricts the user base to "people like us". And
as someone who has never quite managed to be anybody's definition of
"people like us", I have a lingering resentment of software designers
who can't widen their mental scope to include "people not like us who
would like to use the software".
The "Ecco Homo" is apt in another way. Neitzsche was railing against the
"moralist" when he coined the description. And there is a very strong
thread of moralist in the FSF imagination. Now, I am willing, to a
degree, to forgive Richard Stallman's moralising, (although having met
him in person, I can think of few individuals more likely to make me
want to take up strangling) ... but to make moralising about what users
"must" learn to do is a pragmatic absurdity. Learn to do advanced stuff
if you wish, but it's wrong-headed to set "willingness to read lines of
code" as the sole measure of intelligence *or* of "fitness to use a
computer.*
RC
>Regards, K.
>
>
>
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