UAC or the return of Clippy

I was pondering the UAC (User Access Control) on Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 (nobody talks about Vista anymore) and it occurred to me that the experience of interacting with it reminded me of another time. An annoying, apparently helpful attempt by Msoft that actually prevents you from doing work (see here). Suddenly it struck me - the return of 'Clippy'!!!

Now, first off, I can understand MSoft's implementing the UAC. After all, everyone knows that MSoft is so full of holes that it should if it were a cheese it would be swiss cheese. Everyone knows that, even if it is not necessarily true. So to convince everyone that they were secure they had to prevent users (that would be us) from doing stupid things. Like installing programs that should not be installed or changing setting that would render their computer unbootable. Because, of course, if a user does those things than the people REALLY at fault are not the users (heaven forfend) but MSoft!

To quote on of my favorite sayings - "calling something foolproof fails to take into account the ingenuity of fools."

They have to do this because we are so stupid as a race that an entire industry has sprung up to inform us of the obvious. Such as "do not put a gasoline can in a fire" or "ax blades are sharp" or (as in this picture) "this egg product contains eggs".

Still, there has to be some sort of happy medium. W08 only offers two options - on or off. W08R2 offers more (and I will make some notes on that in another blog) but I fear that in general MSoft has gone too far in the wrong direction. They are so concerned with protecting us that they are annoying us. And if something becomes annoying we generally stop doing it.

Goodbye Clippy. Goodbye UAC.

Do I have a solution? Of course not. Except to suggest that the UAC could be tweaked to be more specific. What I mean by that is simply that rather than trying to prevent you from doing EVERYTHING, it should only prevent the main crucial things. Perhaps it should not question you when you are installing programs but only when you are not installing them from an executable from a DVD or from your local drive.

Or perhaps the solution is that high-end users simply turn 'Clippy' off. He is annoying and YES I DO KNOW WHAT I AM DOING AND I WANT TO DO THAT!

At least, most of the time...