DrunkenBlog

Yin & Yang Redux (AKA, "You sank my battleship")

So, that was fun. After going through all the feedback from the last post, I figured I'd take time out from my normal saturday morning googling for a new hangover cure and try to answer a good chunk of it. As usual, where applicable questions of a similar vein are paraphrased and aggregated.

Are you saying that filesystem permissions aren't worthwhile and need to go?

I'm not suggesting that in the least. Filesystem permissions came out of a desire to protect the system from the user, and users from each other.

You don't invalidate those needs, or the solutions designed for them, by saying they don't do a hell of against a new type of threats. To put it another way, the military builds weapons designed for a specific purpose.

As new threats arise, sometimes new types of tools are built to work in tandem with the older tools, and sometimes advances allow something new to come about that kills two birds with one stone. This isn't a case where the older threats have disappeared and some relic is being kept around as a pork project. The older threats are still very real, and there's a reason why we have the system we do.

However, I do believe the way that it is abtracted, or presented to the user needs to be improved greatly. Greatly. Right now, way too much of it makes the computer and code's life easier rather than the end users.

This touches on a larger problem in the tech world... namely the old adage that 'no one thinks they have a lousy sense of humor'. It's very difficult for someone to realize when they've 'gone native' and started to identify more with the computer and the code rather than the end user. Unfortunately that's way too long of a subject to go into in this redux.

You retard, Apache does not have to be owned as root.

If you go back and look at the actual phrasing I used in that section, and what had been covered before, that example was meant to be conceptual. I.E., a user going in without a lot of knowledge could pick up the concept and move forward without having to go into a whole sub-section on it, while a technical user would see the phrasing, get what I was doing and move on.

This happens a lot on the blog, where a highly technical user takes a break from a trek convention and gets tripped up over something that was not meant for a highly technical user. I could get around this by gearing what I say only towards technical users, but that's not my thing.

As a base denominator, I assume whoever is reading is intelligent but might not have the frame of reference to just feed them facts, and try to focus on concepts. Teach a man to fish, and all that. If I specifically say there are exceptions in the same sentence as what you have a problem with, chances are I have whatever you're going to take into issue with in mind.

If I'm breaking down the concept of 'ports' in a post and you're an advanced user, it should be a big clue what is meant for you and what's not. Of course I leave the comments open for a reason, and I love it when people flesh things out and go further on aspects. But when they get all bent out of shape and indignant, I just find it amusing.

Your spelling and grammer is atrocious, therefore x y z.

It's literally in your genetically-programmed-desire-to-procreate's best interest to count to 30 before you send me a long caustic email about my spelling. If it is really going to cause you that much mental anguish, it's probably been way too long between lays... and grammer nazi's generally have a hard time getting laid.

I put a frightening amount of effort into things like the chats, and very little effort into niceties like spellchecking, revisions or even just reading what I've written for things I do. That's just the way it is.

On a brighter note, if a misspelled word here and there is going to be your biggest issue you're going to single out on something I write, I could do worse. Going a little further, if I had 132 misspelled words out of 13,193, that's still only 1% and gives me a perfectly acceptable excuse to pour myself a shot.

How long did it take you to write that?

About six hours total, spread over five days. Something like that, I didn't really keep track. A little bit here and a little bit there, usually once the rest of the world was snuggling their pillow.

The Mac OS X firewall can so do x y z!

If you read the above in the redux and look at the exact phrasing in the post, all should become clear. I'm not saying it's not inherently possible. It's worth talking about another concept here: the default has a habit of staying the default.

There's an old adage in the console world: if a console system doesn't ship with an accessory by default, usually it's going to be a sucky accessory simply because there won't be enough support for it in shipping games.

Only a small fraction of the base as a whole will ever buy that particular accessory, so game makers can't depend on the user having it and hence can't justify the time to support it, let alone make their game depend on it. There's a rant about Firewire 800 about to burst out here, but I'm trying to contain myself.

If something is set as the default, that's just the way things are going to be for the majority of users. If there is no GUI control for something for all intents and purposes it just doesn't even exist for the vast, vast majority of users.

A simple checkbox for "block all inbound and outbound" or even on a per-port basis would alleviate that, so if it's something you'd like, ask Apple. While you're at it, I wouldn't mind the functionality of Little Snitch being rolled in as a checkbox either. And, since you're there, ask them to allow you to enter in ranges of ports for forwarding in their wireless products.

You ramble too much.

*points to the name of the blog* When the lead in to the post is that it's a half-baked stream of consciousness, and then you're annoyed that it's a half-baked stream of conciousness, it's hard for me to be sympathetic.

That said, some of it is intentional. When it is intentional, it's an effort to phrase things in a way so that they're more accessible to a normal user who is interested but doesn't have the phrame of reference to just snatch up a sentence and grok the real meaning.

If you ever sit down and talk with someone who knows a shitload more about a chosen field than you do, they often don't realize just what they're hitting you over the head with. Technically-oriented users can have a habit of forgetting what people don't know and don't take for granted. In it's most severe form, they're fully aware the other person is lost, but take a sickly pleasure from it.

That said, of course there are areas that could be tightened up or revised to say the same thing but more succinctly if I cared enough to.

How can you even try to absolve Microsoft of their sins?

I'm in no way acting as a Microsoft apologist, and if you got that impression I don't think you read far enough. That said, I did try to humanize the process by which all of this stuff generally works. The direction Microsoft went on certain issues is extremely important to assess, but understanding the problems and the mindset that companies approach problems with is just as important.

I'm not saying I'm a big fan of how some of this works, but instead that it's the real world and if you're not accounting for it, chances are you're also hanging out in a dorm lounge grousing about how socialism could work if it was tried with x and y.

I'm also not a big fan of demonization or propaganda on any side. Not because I don't think it can have an effect, but rather because at it's core it assumes that people are sheep and too stupid to understand the real issues. So instead you give them a pamphlet with no context to hopefully get them on your side because of a short term goal, usually not realizing the long term damage you're doing to whatever cause you happen to hold dear and whose name the ends justify the means.

It's a lot easier to think certain things and say certain things when you've dehumanized the tens of thousands of employees in a company into one monstrous entity. It'd take a whole other blog post to really go into the dangers of that, but suffice to say once the echo chamber feedback loop reaches its narcissistic crescendo, what you're saying only makes sense to those in there with you.

It doesn't help that most people just suck at it, and end up looking sidelined and lame. You know, hot pants only work for a small amount of people, and others trying to wear them just look silly. But then again, the people who are wearing hot pants when they shouldn't would never believe they're not pulling it off.

It's just too damn long. If you broke it up into sections, then...

Yeah, just about all of these comments and emails were good points. Unfortunately, to get the effect going in that I wanted, it probably would have taken 30 hours instead of 6... meaning with my schedule it just wouldn't have gotten done. I easily have 15-20 posts in my head in the same state, so you'll just have to believe me.

Your conclusion sucked.

Yeah ,it kinda did. The amusing part was that it was supposed to feel... unsatisfying... in order to hit home that this was a process and there weren't any silver bullets, as well as to push the reader to form their own opinion from the concepts and problems I presented.

Reading back over that part, I certainly could have worded it a lot better to get the same effect, but that was just what was in my head at the time. I will admit I was about to head out the door. 'My bad'.

I'm disappointed, and will never read your blog again...

I can understand that kind of stuff in the comments, where you might want to have an effect on other people... but if you're emailing it directly to me, I'd have to assume it's supposed to have an effect on me.

After having been exposed the very public crucible known as DrunkenBlog for awhile... that stuff is just noise to me, sorry. However, just to set the record straight, my mother was married when I was conceived.

 Posted by drunkenbatman
    December 11, 2004, at 11:30 AM