[OT] "Pre-announcement" of Python-based "computing appliance" project.

[eltronic at juno.com]

On Thu, 23 Sep 2004 09:02:54 -0300 Carlos Ribeiro <carribeiro*@gmail.com>
writes:

> Appliances also are relevant, as it is seamless networking.
> I heed you to check Microsoft's documents on "how Longhorn will be
> great" :-) Seriously, they're working hard to create a new paradigm
> for the Windows desktop, and some of the things that you talk about
> are discussed there too -- namely, they're hiding folders, drive
> names, etc, from the user view, and creating a new and much 
> simplified
> user interface. Google is known to be working on something similar 

cleaner interface, removing background noise such as file extensions? has
nobody learned anything from the last
10 years of virus introduction by user apathy to
look at file extensions. now they want to remove all incentive?
you can bet the impetus isn't entirely user driven.
after beating up their customers over the head with
default settings that allow hijacking, Microsoft with
its new found security perspective decree that the default,
more secure settings are only a few updates away.
I think they just didn't want the customer service nightmare
of explaining how to allow legitimate use of various programs.
you would think the liability of guaranteeing that in the case
of an attack you would have no chance to avoid by using defaults.
but I guess the word hasn't filtered up to management 
that everyone up ad down the chain has been asleep 
at the wheel for oh so many years. they have a charmed life.
job security, but at what price in loss of data and privacy.
do we casually brush off the thousands of man hours lost 
updating and repairing systems as cost of business?
lost data and downtime may just be too hard to quantify.

> --
> your computer will be just a big Google-indexed repository of
> information. No more trying to file things into folders, Google 
> will
> categorize and locate things back for you in a snap.
> 
the exploration of new technology along these lines
can only be good in the long run.  
getting there, based on past performance and conflict of interest
we should expect the real intentions to be less than obvious.
and the tradeoffs not to be clearly understood 
by the ultimate consumers of the service.
the buzzwords change but the problems will remain.
robots.txt shouldn't be the only thing protecting your data.
common sense tells you that others shoulden't be able to
search for credit card information, passwords and private emails.
yet it happens and will continue at a faster clip.

> A project of this size is really big and ambitious. 

of course security and usability aren't mutually exclusive.
as long as we have custom install, classic interface and expert mode.

e
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