"cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)" wrote
Beg to differ here, Chris - this is not ignoring reality, it's trying to
change behaviour. Not running as administrator is a mitigating
factor, except in the case that you run as administrator.
We're saying the same thing.
It's interesting that we talk of big monopoly vendors having power
over the industry, but it often doesn't work that way. IBM declares
the PC obsolete, to be replaced by thier PS/2 systems; the industry
tells them to get lost. Intel trumpets RAMBus as a must-have; the
industry tells them to sod off. MS says "all device drivers should be
signed" and "sware should work with limited-rights user accounts" and
the sware dudes just shrug and carry on doing the same old stuff.
After 5 years of QuickBooks needing admin rights, just about every
game needing admin rights, etc. clearly the mountain had to move
towards sware bad practice. What's the alternative; wait another 5
years for sware vendors to get a clue?
Hence UAC, and a lot of behind-the-scenes smarts that we haven't seen
since the Win95 mission-impossible brief to run DOS and Win3.yuk apps
better than the native platforms (Win3.yuk could barely run DOS apps
at all, especially games) plus do all the 32-bit stuff. In 4M RAM.
Vista-64 is the place to dig in the heels; new platform, no
compromises. Sign your drivers or die. Run with limited rights or
die. Stay the hell out of the kernel, etc.
Mind you, I always thought it was ridiculous to graft NT's
corporate-orientated user-based model to consumerland in the first
place - it's as irrelevant as oars on a bus. Why should I pretend to
be different people with different job descriptions to use my own PC?
Why should I have to log in and out just to do different things?
Makes no sense, from a consumer's perspective.
So we didn't see consumers asking sware vendors to get it right, and
we still don't... except that as new apps emerge that work better with
Vista, folks will say "I want some of that". It won't be "work with
lowered rights", it will be "work" - the mechanics of why it doesn't
work will no longer be an incompatibility with an option feature
no-one really likes or understands, as limited user accounts are.
Also, no matter how limited an account is, it always has the right to
write (and therefore, to destroy) the user's data - which is the most
important thing for the user, even if it's irrelevant to the vendors.
The reality that most consumer apps and games run as administrator is cause
to chastise the authors of consumer apps and games, who should not be
insisting that you run as the computer administrator when you are totalling
up your cheque book payments, or trying to teach your kid how to add.
Yup. We tried beating the sware dudes, for 5 years of XP, and it
hasn't got us an inch closer to being able to use limited accounts in
consumerland. Time to try a different approach.
Frankly, I'd stop trying to make everyone pretend to be an MSCE
bullying a herd of headcounts on behalf of a non-existant boss.
Instead, I'd re-abstract a model based on what we actually want.
What we want is for sware to state upfront what it will do, and then
be limited to doing that and nothing else.
"Hi, I'm a cute screensaver!"
' Fine, then you have no business snorting my data or accessing the
Internet. Here's your box; screensave your ass off, but if I catch
you groping my data or calling home, you WILL get stomped '
"Hi, I'm your friendly media player! I call home all the time, to
send out 'anonymous traffic statistics' !"
' That sucks. Next! '
"I'm also a media player, but I can just play audio files and CDs
without having to call home or wave adverts in your face!"
' Cool, you got the job '
"I'm an accounting app, so I need to access your data"
' That's fine, but that means you don't get to call home. Ever. '
Internet access. Data access. Pick one.
IOW, abstract application categories according to data and Internet
access, automation, whatever else we're interested in and want to
maintain a watch over. The app has to state upfront in language that
the user can understand, and isn't allowed to do anything else.
Breaking those barriers is a clear breach of faith, actionable by the
FTC with a minimum of evidence required (i.e. cleap to sue).
Of course, sware vendors would hate this, because they're used to the
OS colluding with them. Write a crappy little mouse driver; sure, you
need to poll for "updates" every six hours, and browbeat the user to
"register" so their asses can be sold to "business partners".
It would be nice to see an end to those slimeball games...
--------------- ---- --- -- - - - -
Saws are too hard to use.
Be easier to use!
