:tux:

Windows fanbois are the idiots, not regular Windows users

  • usernamesaredifficul [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    well user friendliness is a metric you can design for. No computer is ever secure either in that there will always be some unaccounted vulnerability but you can say a computer is sufficiently user friendly for the target audience just as it can be sufficiently secure for the organisations needs

    • CheGueBeara [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      User friendliness still assumes familiarity with a ton of strained metaphors from the days of Xerox being a personal computing company. It's mostly about not making things worse, but it pretty much always fails to make things better.

      The only exception is the Inception "BWAAAAAAT" button app. That one counts as user friendly.

    • xXthrowawayXx [none/use name]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      User friendliness is neither a valid metric nor something that can be designed for. Slathering b*ttercr*am frosting onto the whirring sawblades slowly advancing towards my face doesn’t constitute design.

      Security is fundamentally different from any useful definition of user friendliness in that it operates on the terms of the computer only. There is no difference between a tcp vulnerability that requires use of nmap and packet manipulation or one that requires clicking a few buttons in excel. Both are insecure and do not require that a person be involved.

      • usernamesaredifficul [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        no usability as in ease for a user to understand how they are doing something is in fact a measureable and important metric.

        Similarly security policy has to consider users and their allowed behavior and levels of authentication. I'm sorry but computers don't exist in a vaccuum and have users

        • xXthrowawayXx [none/use name]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Any metric of usability requires that the evaluator make a series of arbitrary and capricious assumptions first.

          Even a person who doesn’t accept the fundamental inhumanity of computing has to recognize that all usability evaluators have some stake in the subjects, process or broader ideas they’re evaluating and do nothing to document or control for these assumptions and often obfuscate them.

          Security is at least measured in ways that can sometimes avoid a big ol bag of made up assumptions about what’s important.

          • usernamesaredifficul [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            emulator what are you talking about you test usability by trials with prospective users or other humans. Something not being testable by a machine doesn't mean it can't be tested

            • xXthrowawayXx [none/use name]
              ·
              2 years ago

              Oh well if it’s a trial that changes everything.

              Never seen incorrect or completely off base results come from a trial. Good thing we have an unimpeachable method of designing studies and evaluating results that never falls victim to systemic problems whose root lies in the very assumptions our institutions are founded upon.

              Wait, is that Unpublished Corporate Research’s music I hear?