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List:       cap-talk
Subject:    Re: [cap-talk] Why arn't safer OS being used. [ was
From:       "Karp, Alan H" <alan.karp () hp ! com>
Date:       2009-09-29 17:02:05
Message-ID: A0BE9926384D0940BBAD4B60190CB29A6A92174C69 () GVW0433EXB ! americas ! hpqcorp ! net
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David Wagner wrote:
> My impression is that
> there are lots of apps out there that do all sorts of crazy things,
> but I couldn't characterize exactly what they do and thus wouldn't
> be in a position to evaluate claims of backwards compatibility.

Boy, do they ever!  We learned that lesson with Polaris.  Fortunately, the awful user \
interfaces in the most widely used products have trained people to be adaptable.  \
Since it's only a prototype, Polaris implements about 95% of the most commonly used \
features of many applications.  I believe that fewer applications break completely \
under Polaris than under Vista with UAC.  

When people encounter a feature not supported by Polaris, they find a workaround and \
keep on going.  One example is the list of recently used files in the File menu.  We \
didn't implement a powerbox for this list, so users can't open files that way.  They \
quickly switched to using the Recent Items list from the Start menu.  

The lesson is that we don't need 100% compatibility on day one, although the closer \
we come, the larger the audience.  I believe that we will find ways to implement most \
of the missing features.  Eventually, developers may evolve their applications to \
make that easier to do, if only to avoid the bad press from yet another successful \
attack.

________________________
Alan Karp
Principal Scientist
Virus Safe Computing Initiative
Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
1501 Page Mill Road
Palo Alto, CA 94304
(650) 857-3967, fax (650) 857-7029
http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Alan_Karp


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