[Mailman-Users] A Vote Against Passwords

[Derek Simkowiak]

-> > I find the reminder meaningless anyway.

	I find the reminders quite useful.  I would like the option of
turning them off, especially if passwords will be optional.


-> Those [non-technical] people don't remember their phone number?  
-> They don't have an SSN?

1) Phones have been around a hundred years, my grandmother knows what that
is.  She does *not* know what a password is (in computing terms).

2) I only have one SSN to memorize, not 5 or 10 or 15.

3) Most people don't know how to file their emails.  They have enough
problems using the backspace key.

	I'm thinking of the network appliance and IMac users, here, not
Unix sysadmins such as the people subscribed to this list.  It's very easy
for us to forget that the general public can't distinguish between the
monitor and the CPU.

-> It's trivial to save a four-character password, [...]

	...not for my grandmother (or even my mother)....


-> and it's reasonable to expect a mailinglist member to do it.

	Depends on the mailing list member.  

	May I suggest a self-improvement exercise?  Volunteer some time at
your local library, helping newbies with computers.  Observe how people
have problems understanding the correlation between mouse-movement and
cursor-movement.  Observe how people don't understand terms like
"scrollbar", "button", "window", or "click".

	Then try to imagine having to explain passwords to these people.