[cap-talk] High level dissonance

[Ivan Krstić]

On Feb 23, 2008, at 5:57 AM, Toby Murray wrote:
> But there is a tension  there with allowing the user frreedom  and  
> preventing them  from having to make too many choices.


I've heard this argument before, and it never made much sense to me.  
At this point, I think I'm confident it's categorically false. Larger  
modern programs have thousands of options -- think of your spreadsheet  
or word processor. Most users are entirely capable of getting their  
job done knowing perhaps a single percent of that feature set. That  
doesn't mean the remainder of the feature set isn't available or that  
the spreadsheet designers aren't "allowing the user freedom" to  
utilize it; it just means the UI and design paradigm follow the onion  
model: layer the complexity, make the outside layers only expose the  
simple things required to get one's work done, but make it possible to  
peel back successive layers so full complexity can be utilized by  
those who desire it.

Security must learn to operate the same way. And we're seeing it begin  
to happen -- in Firefox 3, the dreaded "there's a SSL certificate  
problem with this website" dialog is no more. Instead, access to the  
site is denied by default, and the user asked to add a manual  
exception for the site if she wishes to override this security  
decision. This is _exactly_ as it should be, and exactly as a number  
of people, myself included, have been saying for years.

--
Ivan Krstić <krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> | http://radian.org