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Microsoft Exec: [Vista] UAC Designed To 'Annoy Users'
CRN Channel Web ^ | Apr 10, 2008 | Kevin McLaughlin

Posted on 04/11/2008 9:56:44 PM PDT by dayglored

The User Account Control in Windows Vista improves security by reducing application privileges from administrative to standard levels, but UAC has been widely criticized for the nagging alerts it generates. According to oneMicrosoft (NSDQ: MSFT) executive, the annoyance factor was actually part of the plan.

In a Thursday presentation at RSA 2008 in San Francisco, David Cross, a product unit manager at Microsoft who was part of the team that developed UAC, admitted that Microsoft's strategy with UAC was to irritate users and ISVs in order to get them to change their behavior.

"The reason we put UAC into the platform was to annoy users. I'm serious," said Cross.

Microsoft not only wanted to get users to stop running as administrators, which exacerbates the effects of attacks, but also wanted to convince ISVs to stop building applications that require administrative privileges to install and run, Cross explained.

"We needed to change the ecosystem, and we needed a heavy hammer to do it," Cross said.

(Excerpt) Read more at crn.com ...


TOPICS: Computers/Internet; Conspiracy; Humor; Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: annoyances; security; uac; vista; windows
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To: Varmint Al; Defiant
> How do you turn off UAC? I will be the only one using the computer and am the administrator on it.

I strongly recommend that you run as a "Power User", not as an Administrator. Elevate yourself to admin priv only when you need to (e.g. use the "RunAs" option). Especially if you plan to turn UAC off.

You're just asking to get stung, if you run with admin priv, and without warnings.

That said, if you have excellent A/V and anti-spy software installed and up-to-date, AND if you are extraordinarily careful (read: PARANOID) all the time, and never ever EVER click on links on webpages without first checking what the target really is in the status line, and never ever EVER visit social networking or porn sites, and never ever EVER click on links in email, even if they appear to come from people you know... then maybe you'll be okay.

Yes, I'm completely serious. That's basically how I run, under XP. Though, to be fair, I do most of my work on a Mac or on a Linux box. I use Windows only when I have to.

21 posted on 04/12/2008 11:58:54 AM PDT by dayglored (Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government!)
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To: Still Thinking
> But if they’re trying to “teach us” something, isn’t it a bad strategery to have the annoyance be greater when the system is more secure? Turn off UAC and the system is supposedly less secure and less annoying at the same time. Sounds like they’re not teaching what they set out to.

Yep, I agree.

Nobody is accusing Microsoft of being overly smart about Vista. They've not only shot their foot off, they've worked their way up to the knee with a machete, and are apparently planning to poke their own eyes out by killing XP on all but trivial machines like Eee-PC.

So did they step on their own d!cks with UAC? You betcha.

22 posted on 04/12/2008 12:02:40 PM PDT by dayglored (Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government!)
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To: dayglored

bump for later


23 posted on 04/12/2008 12:04:33 PM PDT by JZelle
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To: dayglored
It's an operating system, not an ecosystem
24 posted on 04/12/2008 12:04:56 PM PDT by stainlessbanner
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To: stainlessbanner
> It's an operating system, not an ecosystem.

That comment from Microsoft tells you a lot about how they think. They think Windows is THE WORLD.

Ummm, wrong, guys. It's a piece of software, and not a very good one either, despite its wide use.

25 posted on 04/12/2008 12:10:05 PM PDT by dayglored (Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government!)
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To: dayglored

He has a point. Microsoft’s architecture has pretty much invited and required developers to write their applications to need elevated privileges for many years, and that’s what triggers UAC. It’s going to take developers a while to get used to the non-Microsoft way of doing things, which is writing your applications with only the privileges they need. Maybe the second generation of written-for-Vista apps will finally cut the number of UAC prompts down.

So, the plethora of UAC’s isn’t necessarily Vista’s fault, it’s mostly Microsoft’s fault pre-Vista.


26 posted on 04/12/2008 4:48:52 PM PDT by antiRepublicrat
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To: antiRepublicrat
> ...the plethora of UAC’s isn’t necessarily Vista’s fault, it’s mostly Microsoft’s fault pre-Vista.

You're right, I grant.

But Vista was SUPPOSED to have fixed that. The original specs for Longhorn called for major rewrite, even a codebase change. One of the things I recall hearing about was the much-anticipated, "Users will be able to run apps without admin priv", which we all took to mean, "Vista will REQUIRE that the applications NOT require admin priv, except to install."

Instead, we have this debacle.

And worse, things like WindowsLive OneCare, which (I say this as a mostly-content user) requires that training the firewall be done with admin priv (correct) BUT it doesn't give the user a way to elevate themselves during the blocked connection -- they just see that the app failed for no apparent reason. The next time an admin LOGS IN, then up come the dialogs to allow the connection.

STUPID, STUPID, STUPID. And all at the feet of Microsoft, by design.

So while the apps developers are surely not innocent, Microsoft had the opportunity to fix this in Vista and other recent MS software, and has refused to do so.

I think they've been infiltrated by Apple moles. It's the only explanation for how often they screw up Windows. ;-)

27 posted on 04/12/2008 5:08:54 PM PDT by dayglored (Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government!)
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To: dayglored
You can get a third party tool called TweakUAC to remove the nagging permissions request every time you want to install software by suppressing them.

28 posted on 04/12/2008 5:13:54 PM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Heart Forever)
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To: goldstategop
> You can get a third party tool called TweakUAC to remove the nagging permissions request every time you want to install software by suppressing them.

Cool. I just read up on it at http://www.tweak-uac.com/ and will download it for possible future use when I have a user who argues that he wants to turn UAC off entirely.

Thanks!

29 posted on 04/12/2008 5:29:29 PM PDT by dayglored (Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government!)
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To: Varmint Al
I used a program called Vista Manager to adjust my settings, and it has an option to turn off UAC. I did that on my computer, but not on my wife's or my kids' computers.

You can also turn it off using Vista. I think you go to the control panel "System" and look for security settings. It will give you about 3 warnings before it lets you. Then it will bug you with a red task bar icon that you have to close. I found a way to get rid of that, too, but I don't remember how.

So far, no problems, but you should know how to be careful before turning it off. By the way, I bought 2 GB of RAM (2 1GB sticks) from Fry's yesterday for $14.99.

30 posted on 04/12/2008 5:45:03 PM PDT by Defiant (McCain's big vein drains mainly from his brain.)
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To: dayglored

With golf shoes, AFAIC.


31 posted on 04/12/2008 5:54:33 PM PDT by Still Thinking (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?)
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To: Defiant

The red don’t-you-like-my-annoying-features icons in the taskbar often are from “services” (they should have call them “disservices”). So go to My Computer / Manage / Services, and look through the list till you find the one with the name that sounds right, and disable it.


32 posted on 04/12/2008 5:58:34 PM PDT by Still Thinking (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?)
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To: dayglored

33 posted on 04/12/2008 7:37:25 PM PDT by dubie
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To: dayglored; Defiant
Confirmed by Microsoft: Vista was designed intentionally to piss you off.

Who'd-a thunk it???

 

There's another side to the UAC that I didn't see mentioned. It is actually Microsoft's get-out-of-jail-free card. You see, the UAC was purposely designed to annoy (as has been admitted). Most users will eventually turn the damn thing off so it will stop annoying them. The next week, the user gets a virus that the UAC might have warned the user about. Now, Microsoft can point to the fact that the user had turned the UAC off and say "not our problem... user error".

 

34 posted on 04/12/2008 7:41:26 PM PDT by zeugma (FedGov has no intention of actually doing anything to secure this nation. It's all a power grab.)
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To: dubie
> "I'm Vista"

YOW! MY EYES!

But yes, that's exactly right.

35 posted on 04/12/2008 8:04:45 PM PDT by dayglored (Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government!)
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To: zeugma
> ...the user gets a virus that the UAC might have warned the user about. Now, Microsoft can point to the fact that the user had turned the UAC off and say "not our problem... user error".

We Have A Winner! Yep, you got it.

36 posted on 04/12/2008 8:06:06 PM PDT by dayglored (Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government!)
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To: Still Thinking
> With golf shoes, AFAIC.

OUCH!

37 posted on 04/12/2008 8:06:55 PM PDT by dayglored (Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government!)
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To: dayglored
...but also wanted to convince ISVs to stop building applications that require administrative privileges to install and run,...

As a network/security admin for my company, I'm all for this.

38 posted on 04/12/2008 8:08:30 PM PDT by FReepaholic (Me no bottom man. Me top man.)
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To: FReepaholic
> As a network/security admin for my company, I'm all for this.

As the director of system/network admin for -my- company, I couldn't possibly agree more!

39 posted on 04/12/2008 8:18:27 PM PDT by dayglored (Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government!)
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To: dayglored
One of the things I recall hearing about was the much-anticipated, "Users will be able to run apps without admin priv"

They just left off the rest of the sentence, "...once everybody rewrites their apps to work with the new security model."

STUPID, STUPID, STUPID. And all at the feet of Microsoft, by design.

I read an article way back about the group that designed the dumb sleep/shut down/hibernate/etc menu. It's apparent that Microsoft's mismanagement and ponderous corporate structure with strained and slow communications are also largely to blame, not necessarily the programmers, and not necessarily by intentional design.

40 posted on 04/12/2008 10:04:18 PM PDT by antiRepublicrat
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