On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 3:06 PM, Matthew Toseland <[email protected] > wrote:
> > How, plugging their nervous system directly into a serial interface? If > > they are using a headless server it is almost certain they'll be using it > > from a client that is capable of running a Javascript-capable web > browser. > > It occurs quite regularly in support. It's amazing how many geeks think > they can remote admin a server and yet don't know about ssh -L > port:localhost:port ... > So now we should make our usability decisions to pander towards wannabe geeks who don't know how to use ssh? I don't think they are an important constituency. > > And wouldn't these super-paranoid users be following our advice to use a > > separate browser for Freenet? > > No. Our standard advice *has been* to use a separate browser, however as > soon as we can reliably start a browser in privacy mode from the rabbit we > are going to stop asking them. Because this makes life easier. We might warn > them if they then use a different browser. > > Unfortunately at the moment there are bugs with this - sometimes the > browser comes up in normal mode. But IIRC we are warning the user very > mildly if we *think* we managed to launch a browser in privacy mode, at > least on Windows. > > Making it easy, convenient and the "obvious default" to do the right thing > the right way is an important principle in building secure, usable systems > IMHO. > Yeah, but you want to make it easy and convenient for the minority who insist on disabling Javascript (which doesn't help their security with Freenet AT ALL), at the expense of the ease and convenience of the majority of people who don't. > > If they are as paranoid as you claim they are then this is merely an > > inconvenience. Why are you trying so desperately to avoid > inconveniencing a > > small minority of our userbase while right now AS WE SPEAK we are > probably > > losing hundreds of users per day who are put-off by our current UI? > > Because IMHO of the users who actively contribute, or who are most likely > to stay, they are a *LARGE* proportion. Maybe not a majority, but a large > enough group that upsetting them is a really bad idea. > As a project we should make decisions based on rationality, not to pander to irrational fears. If they are smart enough to develop Freenet, then they are smart enough to create a Freenet-specific browser profile which enables Javascript. > > You can't claim that you are motivated by a desire not to inconvenience a > > small minority of users when the status quo is that hundreds, perhaps > > thousands of users are inconvenienced every day because Freenet's UI > sucks. > > Most of the casual filesharers would not have stayed anyway because there > is no content. And there is no content because we don't have enough users, and one of the major reasons we don't have enough users is that our UI sucks. > I'm not saying we shouldn't do everything we can to solve that - starting > with better performance, better UI and better tools - but cutting off our > natural users is a really bad idea. And some of them - a small minority but > a strategically significant one - have good reasons for their paranoia. > So you are saying that our natural users are irrationally paranoid? I guess I just have a higher opinion of them than you do. Ian. -- Ian Clarke CEO, SenseArray Email: [email protected] Ph: +1 512 422 3588
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