Vulnerable
If you haven’t used Windows Vista yet, then you may be unaware of the major interface change that has taken place. Behind all that fancy transparency is the decision that you can no longer be trusted with your own computer.
Computer security is a tricky thing, especially on a home PC where users like to download and install new software. But I honestly can’t believe that the best way to solve the problem of malicious software installs is to treat the user like a baby, and constantly ask them if they are sure what they are doing is what they want to do. Called User Account Control, it feels like such the wrong approach to the problem, like making the user confirm every left and right turn they make on their car steering wheel in case they’ve taken a wrong turn. It seems like a good idea at first, but before you know it you’ve just caused an accident.
It’s almost like Microsoft are throwing in the towel, that they’re resigned to the fact that the underlying operating system is insecure. So rather than fix the holes that allow the programs to do nasty things, they’re going to make you agree to the program doing them before it does. So when that new virus comes along and wants to chop away at all your files, at least now you’ll get a friendly dialog asking if you’re sure you want to allow it. Shouldn’t they just stop the virus from having that kind of power in the first place? And even if they have (and the better handling of users and permissions is certainly their attempt to do so) isn’t this still like an admission of guilt, that they don’t believe they’ve done a good enough job of securing the vulnerable parts of the system?
