From: Mike '/m' 



An excerpt from the article I posted:

===
...User Account Protection

Modern operating systems like Linux and Mac OS X operate under a security
model where even administrative users don't get full access to certain
features unless they provide an in-place logon before performing any task
that might harm the system. This type of security model protects users from
themselves, and it is something that Microsoft should have added to Windows
years and years ago.

Here's the good news. In Windows Vista, Microsoft is indeed moving to this
kind of security model. The feature is called User Account Protection (UAP)
and, as you might expect, it prevents even administrative users from
performing potentially dangerous tasks without first providing security
credentials, thus ensuring that the user understands what they're doing
before making a critical mistake. It sounds like a good system. But this is
Microsoft, we're talking about here. They completely botched UAP.

The bad news, then, is that UAP is a sad, sad joke. It's the most annoying
feature that Microsoft has ever added to any software product, and yes,
that includes that ridiculous Clippy character from older Office versions.
The problem with UAP is that it throws up an unbelievable number of warning
dialogs for even the simplest of tasks. That these dialogs pop up
repeatedly for the same action would be comical if it weren't so amazingly
frustrating. It would be hilarious if it weren't going to affect hundreds
of millions of people in a few short months. It is, in fact, almost
criminal in its insidiousness.

Let's look a typical example. One of the first things I do whenever I
install a new Windows version is download and install Mozilla Firefox. If
we forget, for a moment, the number of warning dialogs we get during the
download and install process (including a brazen security warning from
Windows Firewall for which Microsoft should be chastised), let's just
examine one crucial, often overlooked issue. Once Firefox is installed,
there are two icons on my Desktop I'd like to remove: The Setup application
itself and a shortcut to Firefox. So I select both icons and drag them to
the Recycle Bin. Simple, right?

Wrong. Here's what you have to go through to actually delete those files in
Windows Vista. First, you get a File Access Denied dialog (Figure)
explaining that you don't, in fact, have permission to delete a ...
shortcut?? To an application you just installed??? Seriously?

OK, fine. You can click a Continue button to "complete this
operation." But that doesn't complete anything. It just clears the
desktop for the next dialog, which is a Windows Security window (Figure).
Here, you need to give your permission to continue something opaquely
called a "File Operation." Click Allow, and you're done. Hey,
that's not too bad, right? Just two dialogs to read, understand, and then
respond correctly to. What's the big deal?

What if you're doing something a bit more complicated? Well, lucky you, the
dialogs stack right up, one after the other, in a seemingly never-ending
display of stupidity. Indeed, sometimes you'll find yourself unable to do
certain things for no good reason, and you click Allow buttons until you're
blue in the face. It will never stop bothering you, unless you agree to
stop your silliness and leave that file on the desktop where it belongs.
Mark my words, this will happen to you. And you will hate it.
...
===

  /m


On Thu, 20 Apr 2006 22:11:40 +0200, "Hrvoje Mesing"
 wrote:

>Hi,
>
>very little about some nice (maybe) "futures" of Windows Vista:
>
>http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2006/05/FirstLook/default.a
spx
>
>http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/topics/vista/gadgets-pt1.mspx
>
>
>---
>M.
>

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