Benefits of Vista's User Access Control? 118
Abtin Forouzandeh asks: "Having used Vista for a few months, something keeps nagging me about the user account control. For the UAC to be useful, the user needs to have a fair amount of knowledge about: what the UAC is; what application it is blocking; the consequences of blocking the action; and an alternate approach if the blocked action did something useful. Anyone who has ever worked with end-users can tell you that they are generally disinterested in learning anything about computer usage beyond how to use word and make a spreadsheet. Frankly, even as a highly technical user, I nearly always approve the UAC dialog, even if I don't know the consequences. Since users lack knowledge, and Vista keeps asking esoteric/ambiguous questions, then users will always approve UAC dialogs. Since the UAC so clearly fails in its goal of making computing more secure, and substantially increases complexity, why is it common wisdom that turning off UAC is 'not recommended'? For 99% of users, is there any true downside? Has the community come up with ways to make UAC useful?"
How about... (Score:1, Funny)
Easy answer! (Score:5, Funny)
With Windows 98 and, to a lesser extent, 2000, we
Well, then Microsoft went and did a big favor to the alternative OS community: UAC. Now, we can all get a big ol' chuckle (and "+5 Funny" mod points) out of saying, "Cancel or Allow?" in any thread whatsoever. It doesn't even have to be a thread about Vista or Microsoft. Apple even made a commercial about it! It's great. It's like Microsoft declared free karma Christmas!
"Mod me +5 Funny: Cancel or Allow?"!
And that's the benefit of UAC.
Time to stop complainging (Score:4, Funny)
How many articles have there been complaining about Vista this week alone? Seriously, it isn't as if you guys are the customers, you're just the consumers more than willing to pay for it. Maybe if there were no alternatives, or it was a project paid for with tax dollars all this complaining would be meaningful, but it is niether; it is a product produced by a for-profit company.
Windows has been out long enough that it has long since gotten boring to be complain about it. Microsoft's business practicies are a lot more worthy of complaint; even I know there are intelligent engineers doing what one would assume to be their best, inside of Microsoft.
If Vista is rubbish, do what most people do with rubbish: throw is out, and not discuss it with company. Windows isn't a Linux distro, loud complaining isn't going to change anything
Peace
Re:Easy answer! (Score:4, Funny)
Now I finally know (Score:4, Funny)
Looks like it was Vista...
Useful? Sure. (Score:2, Funny)
Yes. I can now easily condition people to incessantly push a button without having to resort to all those messy endorphins.
Re:useless but still the right thing (Score:3, Funny)