When Does Usability Become a Liability?

nasteric asks: "I caught myself in the middle of a very interesting discussion last Friday over Krispy Kreme donuts and coffee. The discussion had to do with usability and security. Many of the Microsoft Administrators I work with argued the more user friendly Linux becomes, the more vulnerable it becomes. They claimed making Linux a friend of Joe User will require it to 'open itself up' and become more susceptible to attack. Needless to say, this became an endless debate between our Microsoft Administrators and our Linux/Unix Administrators that will undoubtedly continue into the morning. Therefore I pose this question to the Slashdot community. Will making Linux more user friendly result in it becoming less secure? Hopefully your expertise will help shed some light on (and bring to and end) our discussion." Does decent usability necessarily imply the presence of vulnerabilities? Macs seem to have this area down pretty well, with little in the way of vulnerabilities. Can Linux software follow the same route?

Simple

[Limburgher]

As soon as autoexec.bat runs.

Usability is always a liability.

[ArsSineArtificio]

I agree absolutely. If only we'd go back to using toggle-switches for computer input, the risk of viruses or security breaches would diminish enormously.

Ok, we're on to you.

[winkydink]

I cought myself in the middle of a very interesting discussion last Friday over Krispy Kreme donuts and coffee

Cheese it, it's the cops!

Write better SQL!

[markv242]

You need a COMMIT; in there to make sure your transaction runs, otherwise my base will still belong to me. For great zig! COMMIT;

Re:Cought?

[kruczkowski]

What had me thinking is why did the editor let us know that he was at Krispy Kreme's having donuts and coffee. That could have been left out.

Re:It's all in the install program...

[H3lldr0p]

I don't know...you might get a "funny" or two out of it.

Re:Usability is always a liability.

[platypibri]

But with toggles switches, I could do a DoS attack on your machine with a pair of pliers. What is more primitive than that?

MS Admins are experts on Linux security?

[contrapuntalmindset]

"Many of the Microsoft Administrators I work with argued the more user friendly Linux becomes, the more vulnerable it becomes. " Ummm... what makes a Microsoft Admininstrator the authority on vulernability and usability?

Just Called Tech Support...

[Anonymous Coward]

and an Indian fellow named "Jack" was assigned my case.

I cannot wait to hear from "Jack" and hear how his beloved "Mets" are doing in this fine baseball season.

I await with interest to hear his small talk about traveling on the "NJ Turnpike" to work.

Tech Support. You gotta love it.

Re:Usability is always a liability.

[SpaceLifeForm]

A large rock.

The List

[Henry V .009]

Hmm, I'll have to add one to my list.

1. Security through obscurity.
2. Security through obsolescence.
3. Security through unusability.

Re:Write better SQL!

[Limburgher]

Sorry, I have autocommit set in my scripts. :)PPP All your base are in fact belong to ME!

Note to Linux

[mumblestheclown]

When does usability become a liability?

Hey linux--how about you worry about that particular hurdle when it's within a light year away or so?

Re:Wha?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Even with 4 byte words (or 8 byte words on some monster big iron), 4000 bytes is not enough for all but the tiniest gif file. Now, gif being a 256 color only format, with no serious compression and an inability to depict sharp photographs of any significant resolution, I contend that no,

A picture is not ~1000 words.

Re:Whoosh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't tell me you've never heard of linux users surfing the web as root...

Ya, and we bitch-slap them every chance we get too

Re:Wha?

[proj_2501]

4k is plenty for a nice ascii art

Re:"Microsoft Administrators" have no perspective

[happyfrogcow]

and so they think anything that's user friendly must be vulnerable. A classic logic error, whose name I forget right now.

I'm pretty sure that's called the "Chattering Marmot Dilema" I swear! look it up!

Re:Guess what

[ps_inkling]

#!\bin\sh

rm -rf /
cat /dev/rand > /dev/dsp
echo Linux is teh gay!

Shouldn't the rm and cat lines have an & after them (run in background), and perform a loop on the echo line?
Thank goodness for Open Source! Many eyes, fewer bugs.

Re:Command lines aren't *learner* friendly

[thelenm]

Of course command lines are friendly! Whenever I need to find a program that does something new, I just hit the tab key. The shell helpfully asks, "Display all 2414 possibilities? (y or n)". I hit "y", and then it's just a matter of looking at about 25 pages of program names until I find the one I want. It even shows "--More--" at the bottom of each page and lets me go to the next page when I want to, instead of whizzing all 2414 programs by at ludicrous speed. How much more user friendly can you get?

Mmmmmm donuts... *drool*

[jayveekay]

You had me at "Krispy Kreme". ;)

Re:Wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone get a sense of irony here?

Denigrating command line (word based) control for graphical (icon based) control, because commands (words) are "not user friendly" and then complaining about people's lack of reading (word) comprehension skills?

Maybe if slashdot articles and comments were posted using pictograms rather than words they'd be more "user friendly"?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Command lines aren't *learner* friendly

[MagnaMark]

workbox:~magna > mod -h
MOD - Moderate Version 0.9a (2004, Mar 24)

usage: mod [arguments] [-|+]n comment [reason]

moderate the comment (up/down) n points for reason

arguments:

-h print this message
-v print MOD version number
-f force mod, even if no mod points

workbox:~magna > mod [phone] insightfull
mod: unknown reason "insightfull"

workbox:~magna > mod [phone] interesting
mod: you have no moderator points

workbox:~magna > mod -f [phone] interesting
mod: you must be superuser to force a mod

workbox:~magna > su
Password: *************

workbox:~magna > mod -f [phone] interesting
moderation complete

workbox:~magna > nethack &

Eating in France

[The Angry Mick]

Try getting food from a blind man in france.

How to acquire French cuisine in four simple steps:

1. Go to France.
2. Find blind man eating a sandwich.
3. Hit blind man with hammer.
4. Enjoy sandwich.

Re:Wha?

[gl4ss]

they should form those eulas into ascii art displaying hot chicks.

then at least they would be viewed.

Re:Usability is always a liability.

[EMH_Mark3]

Good ol' rock.. NOTHING beats rock.

Re:Wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but only if the concept is reasonably obvious.

How to "train" people to use the mouse? Why, get them to play Solitaire or Minesweeper.

The double-click is NOT intuitive.

Re:Eating in France

[vsprintf]

1. Go to France.
2. Find blind man eating a sandwich.
3. Hit blind man with hammer.
4. Enjoy sandwich.

I thought that the sandwich was an English invention and that even a blind Frenchman wouldn't be caught dead eating one.

Re:Eating in France

[Unregistered]

bad idea. They'll surrender the country to you and do you reallly want to be responsible for France? Unless you happen to really like wine, it's a lose-lose situation.

Obligatory response

[Tim Browse]

Hopefully your expertise will help shed some light on (and bring to and end) our discussion.

You're new here, aren't you?

Re:Eating in France

[zulux]

How to acquire French cuisine in four simple steps:

1. Go to France.
2. Find blind man eating a sandwich.
3. Hit blind man with hammer.
4. Enjoy sandwich.

No need for violence. Replace Step #3 with: Say to him - "I am German."

Re:Eating in France

[jesser]

When all you have is a hammer...

Re:Eating in France

[Anonymous Coward]

every blind man starts to look like a frenchman?

Re:No word in English

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I can tell, there is no word in everyday English that means 'being unable to speak the local language'.


Sure there is. "American."

Re:Command lines aren't *learner* friendly

[aardvarkjoe]

...It even shows "--More--" at the bottom of each page and lets me go to the next page when I want to, instead of whizzing all 2414 programs by at ludicrous speed.

Really? How come my system is missing this feature? Perhaps it's because I'm using Debian, and they want to make sure that the "--More--" prompt doesn't have any serious security flaws.

Re:Eating in France

[Halfbaked Plan]

Sung to Peter, Paul, and Mary's melody:

"If I had a haaaaamer... ...I'd a hammer in your fo-ore-head"

Re:Wha?

[acidtripp101]

Basically imagine flipping programming languages and natural languages, so that you spoke in perl/c/asm/etc, and coded in english/french/german/etc.

Ick... and I thought american english was hard to understand...

README SECOND

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I can tell, the parent to this post is the "second" post to this story. So, I'll post this here to get away from the noise of the replies to this story's first-post thread.

The above thread is (largely) an erudite, overthought, masturbatory, navel-gazing, pissing contest about CLI vs. GUI. In case you hadn't heard, that battle/debate was DECIDED in 1984. You can argue till the cows come home and are ground into hamburger, but history has already proven one the overwhelming winner regarding the term "usability."

I'm reminded of something Amborse Bierce once wrote that exposes the problem of syllogistic reasoning

LOGIC, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. The basic of logic is the syllogism, consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion thus:

Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man.

Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds; therefore

Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.

For now, I'll just say that sometimes the problem with Slashdot is that there are many more than sixty diggers.

:P