Talis
join:2001-06-21
Houston, TX
| reply to tcp1
said by tcp1  :
A) Expecting a user to know that web pages get stored on their disk is hardly tantamount to having a CS degree.
Thats a true statement. But expecting users to know anything about how a particular application works internally doesn't make sense if you want general joe-blow individuals to use your application.
said by tcp1 :
B) You must not have been around computers very long. I imagine you'd be completely floored by how difficult it was to do something as simple as installing a modem ten short years ago. Hell, even five or six years ago. IRQs, TSRs, IO addresses, jumpers.. You don't know how good you have it. Things ARE easier today.
I've been working with computers for 20+ years. Things are definitely easier today, no doubt about it. But developers still do not think in terms of safety and security - defensive development would be a good way to say it, with respect to the user.
said by tcp1 :
You can only dumb down a complex system so much until it just stops working properly.
I disagree. I'm not even suggesting you dumb down anything. I'm saying you make the programs smarter, the interactions between programs smarter, to account for the lack of knowledge of the users.
said by tcp1 :
Remember, what's simple in your mind may not be so simple in practice. Think logically - HOW could Google have done this otherwise? The files are stored on your disk, by IE and Firefox, not Google, unencrypted. Google allows you to turn this feature off. Where did they fail, other than perhaps making the description of this feature blinking, rotating, and in bright red and yellow?
This isn't Googles problem, and I don't believe I ever said it was. The problem is that the data is laying around in the cache to begin with. It should not be. It isn't that difficult to build protocols that describe sensitive data and protocols that define how applications should treat that data. But the industry as a whole has not cared to address those issues. Until they do, this will continue to be a problem forever, and it isn't the users problem. |
