Posted by
CmdrTaco
on from the you-can-do-it dept.
Rantastic writes "In a recent interview with Wired Magazine, Microsoft Security Program Manager Stephen Toulouse, when asked about their now 2 year old focus on security, comments "it's more of a 10-year timeline." He also reveals that he runs Firefox."
Sounds like an acknowledgment of the extended timeline for something like Palladium/Trusted Computing. I've been curious to hear more about when and where that's actually going to show up.
Re:Doubledge sword
by
PocketPick
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Those are all nice features for some, but not features that will sell an operating system to Joe User. When a user boots up thier computer, they want three things:
-To Read Email
-To Use Office (or other word processing/spreadsheet/presentation application)
-To Surf the internet.
That's all. My grandmother doesn't care if KDE provides quick access to the console terminal, nice configuration of profiles or quick ways to make system level modifications. And she definitetly wouldn't care about ports or tcp-ip (even if she had a vague idea of what they were). In short, she would have no intention of touching these features in the first place even if they were present in Windows.
Your case of installation is another excellent example. Windows install methods are kept basic for the simple reason that even your most average user has to be able to perform it (and Microsoft knows it). Having a variety of installation methods and added complexity tends to scare people away from any product in general. Whether it's simply choosing 1 application from hundreds that you want to install or telling someone to setup partitions and swap space, they'll be terrified if you put too much in thier face.
Linux Distribution companies realize this, and are working hard to simplyfy thier installation methods. Based on what i've seen when I picked up SuSE 9.0 a while back, this is certainly true.
In time, people will come to become more computer literate, and perhaps these features will have some meaning. Till then though, it's not going to be all the fancy under-the-hood features that sell a product. It's going to be simplicty.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like an acknowledgment of the extended timeline for something like Palladium/Trusted Computing. I've been curious to hear more about when and where that's actually going to show up.
Those are all nice features for some, but not features that will sell an operating system to Joe User. When a user boots up thier computer, they want three things:
-To Read Email
-To Use Office (or other word processing/spreadsheet/presentation application)
-To Surf the internet.
That's all. My grandmother doesn't care if KDE provides quick access to the console terminal, nice configuration of profiles or quick ways to make system level modifications. And she definitetly wouldn't care about ports or tcp-ip (even if she had a vague idea of what they were). In short, she would have no intention of touching these features in the first place even if they were present in Windows.
Your case of installation is another excellent example. Windows install methods are kept basic for the simple reason that even your most average user has to be able to perform it (and Microsoft knows it). Having a variety of installation methods and added complexity tends to scare people away from any product in general. Whether it's simply choosing 1 application from hundreds that you want to install or telling someone to setup partitions and swap space, they'll be terrified if you put too much in thier face.
Linux Distribution companies realize this, and are working hard to simplyfy thier installation methods. Based on what i've seen when I picked up SuSE 9.0 a while back, this is certainly true.
In time, people will come to become more computer literate, and perhaps these features will have some meaning. Till then though, it's not going to be all the fancy under-the-hood features that sell a product. It's going to be simplicty.