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>To fix this the answer is to educate the users That's like saying the fix for road deaths is to educate drivers. We already proved that doesn't work nearly as
by xenadu02 10y ago
>To fix this the answer is to educate the users
That's like saying the fix for road deaths is to educate drivers. We already proved that doesn't work nearly as well as designing better cars, roads, and signs.
Educating 7 billion human beings is a lot of work. A mind-bogglingly insane amount of work. Security is even worse because one lapse in judgement, one sick or busy day, can completely erase a lifetime of following security best-practices.
The power of software is the power to make machines do the work. Why would we want to make 7 billion people take responsibility for a problem that could be solved by a few thousand programmers?
- userbinator 10y agoWhy would we want to make 7 billion people take responsibility for a problem that could be solved by a few thousand programmers? Precisely so that those 7 billion people will not be at the mercy of the few thousand programmers (and those who they represent the interests of.) Creating more walled gardens --- which is effectively what you seem to be proposing --- only gives those in control even more power.
- skybrian 10y agoWhat's the alternative? Building software is a collective process that often depends on experts. Nowhere is this more clear than in cryptography, which everything else depends on. With hardware it's even worse. We need to get everything reviewed and decided on in the open, so that independent experts can verify it. But getting rid of experts - forget it, that's a cabin in the woods scenario that doesn't scale. Of course we can always do more to educate more people, but that's a way of increasing the number of local experts. You're still going to be surrounded by lots of non-programmers who can easily make naive mistakes.