On Sat, 07 Mar 2009 13:54:20 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> It isn't.  But to say that the implementation of UAC is a good way to
>> solve the problem is inaccurate; the team working on UAC and the team
>> working on Explorer need to come to terms with the best way for the
>> user.
> 
> Certainly. That would be the "library" I was talking about.

I see, yes.

>> talking to each other, and the user base accepting that "well, this is
>> the way it is" instead of demanding something be done about it.
> 
> I think a lot of the broken security (w.r.t. the UAC) in Win7 is due to
> the user base demanding something be done about it, and Microsoft doing
> the wrong thing instead of fixing their applications the right way.

Agreed. :-)

>> IOW, explorer being dumb here isn't the issue.  It's that UAC "fixes"
>> it by also being dumb that is.  Two dumbs don't make a smart.
> 
> If you mean the UAC "fixes" in Win7, I'm in complete agreement. I think
> MS has a mess of code that doesn't run quite right with the UAC, just
> like everyone else (in the sense that it took years to get people to
> write software that runs unprivileged), and they're unwilling to spend
> the time to fix that code, so they make half-ass patches that break the
> security.

In general, I think the idea of UAC as the "fix" is the problem.  
Granted, it's really a first attempt at fixing the problem, but still - 
MS is supposed to be hiring some of the smartest people out there.  I 
know some of them (not who work on the core OS, but on other parts of 
their product offerings) certainly are.

> I think we're actually agreeing, and I'm just commenting "your code
> could probably be better than MS's if you took the time."

We do have a habit of that, don't we? ;-)

Jim

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