8 ms·

I'm sure your point utterly convinced the clerk being paid minimum wage at your ice cream shop of the errors of his employer. Would you have accepted it if the

by herge 13y ago

I'm sure your point utterly convinced the clerk being paid minimum wage at your ice cream shop of the errors of his employer. Would you have accepted it if the clerk explained to you that requiring a Facebook account is the most hassle-free way that ice cream shop has found, considering a) their technical expertise, b) the amount of time and money they need to invest and c) their average customer?

TeMPOraL 13y ago
This is one of the things that really saddens me about the world we live in - we can't have nice things, because everything is being optimized for the average use case, and average people just don't care much about anything, especially quality.
- tedivm 13y ago
  Oh man, you mean we have to rely on 4G LTE connections instead of using the free wifi provided for us? My email may be marginally slower- I don't think I'll ever be able to enjoy ice cream again :-(
- blueskin_ 13y ago
  It's not even for the average, because too many people are far too stupid for that and things suddenly have to be 'for everyone'. Someone with a 100 IQ and a modicum of common sense can deal with such things as an options menu, despite what google/apple/increasingly MS think.
  - pydave 13y ago
    > Someone with a 100 IQ and a modicum of common sense can deal with such things as an options menu It depends on previous context. Myself and another career programmer couldn't figure out how to print a wikimedia image on my uncle's Surface RT. (We tried several different apps and looked for context menus in each one to provide a print option.) As far as we could tell, it couldn't be done without dropping to the desktop. My computer-illiterate uncle showed us that you can just pick print from the devices menu in the charms. (Apparently, the Charms is a hybrid system menu and app context menu.) I didn't have any context for how Win8 works. He did. Then again, I don't know how long it took him to figure it out and whether we would have figured it out eventually. Despite my bad experience, I'd rather see radical changes in UI instead of sticking with what "works". It only works because we're used to it. Win8 might not be a step in the right direction, but it's might lead to improvements.
    - blueskin_ 13y ago
      Well, a surface is explicitly designed for the lowest common denominator. Context-sensitive menu options that change what they do have always been a bad thing as they completely block development of muscle memory for actions; they would only ever logically be useful for people who are not fully able to remember multiple locations and associate them with different actions. "Make a completely foolproof product and only a fool will use it".
      - pydave 13y ago
        > Context-sensitive menu options that change what they do The whole point of a context-sensitive menu is that it changes depending on your context. I think they're usually for advanced users -- often the right click menu just duplicates commands from the global menu but it's a faster access method. The Win8 case requires it for all users. Of course if the context is the same, then the menu should be the same. (Maybe that was your point?)
- acdha 13y ago
  > average people just don't care much about anything, especially quality. That's incredibly arrogant, and more than a little naive. The problem is that you're only looking at the small part of the problem which you understand better than the average person. Think about it instead from the perspective of the ice cream shop owner: they're not making any money from your using the network. You might look at the a Facebook captive portal and think it's a poor choice but your solution isn't optimized for the business needs: cheap, reliable, doesn't require much staff time to support or special skills. This particular problem is really a tech industry market failure, as there's never been a serious attempt to build a federated authentication system because the general trend has been trying to force a closed system on the world with the goal of levying a tax later. The most successful attempt was OpenID which was fundamentally mis-designed – inexplicably using URLs instead of email addresses – and quickly derailed by the gratuitous complexity crowd. There's a chance we might see things change with Persona but … I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that this won't happen quickly and, even if it does, it's going to be hard to find many developers willing to turn down a Facebook-scale salary to work on a turn-key level captive portal system priced at what an ice-cream shop can afford to pay.
  - hobs 13y ago
    They certainly are making money if I come and eat ice cream knowing they have free WiFi that I can use, and leave (without buying ice cream) if the WiFi doesn't work for me. If enough people care about the problem and don't buy ice cream as a result, they will likely change their policy. I don't think this will ever happen, most will buy ice cream and just leave or sign in with their Facebook profile, which is a win-win for the ice cream shop. Likely this will just cause enterprising people to look for holes in the registration process, like tunneling traffic over port 53 (old), or any number of other methods, especially when you are talking about a unified login system that forces you to do something with FB.
    - acdha 13y ago
      > They certainly are making money if I come and eat ice cream knowing they have free WiFi that I can use, and leave (without buying ice cream) if the WiFi doesn't work for me. The key thing is recognizing that the WiFi is closer to advertising rather than the product – the same situation might arise if they don't have enough chairs, the bathroom is out of order, etc. Just as you don't build out 2,000 seats just in case everyone wants to camp out, you don't want to invest more in the WiFi than the incremental percentage of sales lost.
code_duck 13y ago
I think the point of the story is to illustrate that a Facebook account is not a useful way to validate a customer's identity.
- mgkimsal 13y ago
  I think the point is it's useful enough for many situations.
  - grey-area 13y ago
    No, it's really not. Its very simple to create a fake FB account, all you need is an email. Relying on FB login is a really stupid way to try to verify identity - why not just use emails if they want some minimum bar for registration? FB is no more useful, ubiquitous, or reliable. I see the attraction for FB in this though; they're desperately trying to come up with ways to avoid becoming the next geocities or myspace - if lots of websites or services use their login or comments system, they will manage to stay at least minimally relevant for a bit longer. I'm not really sure what's in it for the businesses or consumers though, unless they trust FB...[1] [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims-wont-help-facebooks-privacy-problems-2010-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims...
    - interpol_p 13y ago
      But it really is good enough for the business offering WiFi. If Facebook validation causes 90% of their visitors to simply hit the "sign in" button on their default Facebook account, they have probably reduced a significant amount of bad behaviour on their network. The fact is the vast majority of people are already connected to Facebook under their real names on their mobile device at all times. Taking advantage of that (minimum security through "ease of use") is a good idea. The person who goes to the store and uses a fake Facebook account to use their free WiFi maliciously is almost non-existent. People will just take the path of least resistance to get what they want now. Stop thinking of their security in terms of how to circumvent it — that's easy — think of security in terms of which path most users will flow along. Then look at the tradeoffs of increased security to handle the remaining users, you generally find it's not worth bothering with them.
carlob 13y ago
Well, said ice cream shop had a fully open wifi before going through the hassle of creating the captive portal by themselves two years ago. The thing that really irks me is the assumption that nowadays everyone has facebook. Isn't it surprising that in a country that finds national IDs liberticide the problem of identifying people is being outsourced to a corporate monopoly?
- caprad 13y ago
  This is not about accepting that everyone has facebook, it is about accepting a very easy way for them to solve a problem they are having, which is people doing illegal stuff through their wifi.
- sbt 13y ago
  > Isn't it surprising that in a country that finds national IDs liberticide the problem of identifying people is being outsourced to a corporate monopoly? This was the core of the problem during all the Snowden leaks last year; A fraction of the population recognized how serious it was, but for the vast majority it just didn't compute. This terrifies me and I fear that we may have to see an entire generation before society learns to recognize risks to digital privacy.
  - interpol_p 13y ago
    But what if the vast majority of the population is right? What if there are no detrimental long term effects to our society when our digital privacy is compromised? What if the majority of the population ignoring the risks and simply being productive in the areas they work best is the best thing for society? I'm not arguing this point of view, but I think risks are often be exaggerated by the security conscious.
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 13y ago
      I think one has to distinguish between no privacy and privacy controlled by some central entity, though. If essentially everyone knows everything about everyone, that might work (though I have some doubts how one could get there from here, especially as it would need some fundamental changes in our economic system), but having the control concentrated in one place seems to me to be very risky indeed, as that is a huge pile of power in the hands of a few.

by herge 13y ago

TeMPOraL 13y ago

This is one of the things that really saddens me about the world we live in - we can't have nice things, because everything is being optimized for the average use case, and average people just don't care much about anything, especially quality.

tedivm 13y ago
Oh man, you mean we have to rely on 4G LTE connections instead of using the free wifi provided for us? My email may be marginally slower- I don't think I'll ever be able to enjoy ice cream again :-(
blueskin_ 13y ago
It's not even for the average, because too many people are far too stupid for that and things suddenly have to be 'for everyone'. Someone with a 100 IQ and a modicum of common sense can deal with such things as an options menu, despite what google/apple/increasingly MS think.
- pydave 13y ago
  > Someone with a 100 IQ and a modicum of common sense can deal with such things as an options menu It depends on previous context. Myself and another career programmer couldn't figure out how to print a wikimedia image on my uncle's Surface RT. (We tried several different apps and looked for context menus in each one to provide a print option.) As far as we could tell, it couldn't be done without dropping to the desktop. My computer-illiterate uncle showed us that you can just pick print from the devices menu in the charms. (Apparently, the Charms is a hybrid system menu and app context menu.) I didn't have any context for how Win8 works. He did. Then again, I don't know how long it took him to figure it out and whether we would have figured it out eventually. Despite my bad experience, I'd rather see radical changes in UI instead of sticking with what "works". It only works because we're used to it. Win8 might not be a step in the right direction, but it's might lead to improvements.
  - blueskin_ 13y ago
    Well, a surface is explicitly designed for the lowest common denominator. Context-sensitive menu options that change what they do have always been a bad thing as they completely block development of muscle memory for actions; they would only ever logically be useful for people who are not fully able to remember multiple locations and associate them with different actions. "Make a completely foolproof product and only a fool will use it".
    - pydave 13y ago
      > Context-sensitive menu options that change what they do The whole point of a context-sensitive menu is that it changes depending on your context. I think they're usually for advanced users -- often the right click menu just duplicates commands from the global menu but it's a faster access method. The Win8 case requires it for all users. Of course if the context is the same, then the menu should be the same. (Maybe that was your point?)
acdha 13y ago
> average people just don't care much about anything, especially quality. That's incredibly arrogant, and more than a little naive. The problem is that you're only looking at the small part of the problem which you understand better than the average person. Think about it instead from the perspective of the ice cream shop owner: they're not making any money from your using the network. You might look at the a Facebook captive portal and think it's a poor choice but your solution isn't optimized for the business needs: cheap, reliable, doesn't require much staff time to support or special skills. This particular problem is really a tech industry market failure, as there's never been a serious attempt to build a federated authentication system because the general trend has been trying to force a closed system on the world with the goal of levying a tax later. The most successful attempt was OpenID which was fundamentally mis-designed – inexplicably using URLs instead of email addresses – and quickly derailed by the gratuitous complexity crowd. There's a chance we might see things change with Persona but … I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that this won't happen quickly and, even if it does, it's going to be hard to find many developers willing to turn down a Facebook-scale salary to work on a turn-key level captive portal system priced at what an ice-cream shop can afford to pay.
- hobs 13y ago
  They certainly are making money if I come and eat ice cream knowing they have free WiFi that I can use, and leave (without buying ice cream) if the WiFi doesn't work for me. If enough people care about the problem and don't buy ice cream as a result, they will likely change their policy. I don't think this will ever happen, most will buy ice cream and just leave or sign in with their Facebook profile, which is a win-win for the ice cream shop. Likely this will just cause enterprising people to look for holes in the registration process, like tunneling traffic over port 53 (old), or any number of other methods, especially when you are talking about a unified login system that forces you to do something with FB.
  - acdha 13y ago
    > They certainly are making money if I come and eat ice cream knowing they have free WiFi that I can use, and leave (without buying ice cream) if the WiFi doesn't work for me. The key thing is recognizing that the WiFi is closer to advertising rather than the product – the same situation might arise if they don't have enough chairs, the bathroom is out of order, etc. Just as you don't build out 2,000 seats just in case everyone wants to camp out, you don't want to invest more in the WiFi than the incremental percentage of sales lost.

code_duck 13y ago

I think the point of the story is to illustrate that a Facebook account is not a useful way to validate a customer's identity.

mgkimsal 13y ago
I think the point is it's useful enough for many situations.
- grey-area 13y ago
  No, it's really not. Its very simple to create a fake FB account, all you need is an email. Relying on FB login is a really stupid way to try to verify identity - why not just use emails if they want some minimum bar for registration? FB is no more useful, ubiquitous, or reliable. I see the attraction for FB in this though; they're desperately trying to come up with ways to avoid becoming the next geocities or myspace - if lots of websites or services use their login or comments system, they will manage to stay at least minimally relevant for a bit longer. I'm not really sure what's in it for the businesses or consumers though, unless they trust FB...[1] [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims-wont-help-facebooks-privacy-problems-2010-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims...
  - interpol_p 13y ago
    But it really is good enough for the business offering WiFi. If Facebook validation causes 90% of their visitors to simply hit the "sign in" button on their default Facebook account, they have probably reduced a significant amount of bad behaviour on their network. The fact is the vast majority of people are already connected to Facebook under their real names on their mobile device at all times. Taking advantage of that (minimum security through "ease of use") is a good idea. The person who goes to the store and uses a fake Facebook account to use their free WiFi maliciously is almost non-existent. People will just take the path of least resistance to get what they want now. Stop thinking of their security in terms of how to circumvent it — that's easy — think of security in terms of which path most users will flow along. Then look at the tradeoffs of increased security to handle the remaining users, you generally find it's not worth bothering with them.

carlob 13y ago

Well, said ice cream shop had a fully open wifi before going through the hassle of creating the captive portal by themselves two years ago. The thing that really irks me is the assumption that nowadays everyone has facebook. Isn't it surprising that in a country that finds national IDs liberticide the problem of identifying people is being outsourced to a corporate monopoly?

caprad 13y ago
This is not about accepting that everyone has facebook, it is about accepting a very easy way for them to solve a problem they are having, which is people doing illegal stuff through their wifi.
sbt 13y ago
> Isn't it surprising that in a country that finds national IDs liberticide the problem of identifying people is being outsourced to a corporate monopoly? This was the core of the problem during all the Snowden leaks last year; A fraction of the population recognized how serious it was, but for the vast majority it just didn't compute. This terrifies me and I fear that we may have to see an entire generation before society learns to recognize risks to digital privacy.
- interpol_p 13y ago
  But what if the vast majority of the population is right? What if there are no detrimental long term effects to our society when our digital privacy is compromised? What if the majority of the population ignoring the risks and simply being productive in the areas they work best is the best thing for society? I'm not arguing this point of view, but I think risks are often be exaggerated by the security conscious.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 13y ago
    I think one has to distinguish between no privacy and privacy controlled by some central entity, though. If essentially everyone knows everything about everyone, that might work (though I have some doubts how one could get there from here, especially as it would need some fundamental changes in our economic system), but having the control concentrated in one place seems to me to be very risky indeed, as that is a huge pile of power in the hands of a few.