In message Paul Montgomery
was claimed to have wrote:

On Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:41:54 -0700, DevilsPGD
wrote:


Remember, this isn't a new thing, user permissions have been around in
Microsoft operating systems since the mid 90s. Any author who hasn't
caught on yet needs some encouragement, and nothing quite like user
pressure to make it happen.

Yeah, like 99% of the users having problems with UAC contact the
software authors.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

Dream on.

Maybe not, but the results speak for themselves, take a look at
http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/200...t-control.aspx

The "Number of unique applications and tasks creating UAC prompts" line
speaks for itself, having gone from 800,000 to a little under 200,000 in
a 12 month period.

Those results don't say (as in "speak for themselves") that the
reduction is because of a surge of user complaints to software
developers as you initially implied.

You missed TWO other possibilities, each more credible than yours, and
each clearly explained in the article:

Quoting from that article:

"... we also expect that as people use their machines longer they are
installing new software or configuring Windows settings less
frequently, which results in fewer prompts, or conversely when a
machine is new that is when there is unusually high activity with
respect to administrative needs."

The "new machine" effect would be seen in "Percentage of sessions with
prompts over time", if the problem is applications that need elevation
on a regular basis without any need (games, Quickbooks, etc), those
applications would likely exist both on mew machines and day to day
activity.

What might be an interesting stat would be "percentage of sessions with
UAC prompts over time-since-Windows-installation"

Regardless, stat I quoted is "number of unique applications and tasks
creating UAC prompts", which indicates that either applications are
changing their behaviour, or that users are moving to limited-user
compatible software.

Also:

"Customer Experience Improvement Program data indicates that the
number of sessions with one or more UAC prompts has declined from 50%
to 33% of sessions with Vista SP1."

SP1 came out in May, so again looking at "number of *unique applications
and tasks* creating UAC prompts", excluding SP1, that's down from
800,000 in Aug/07 to 300,000 in Apr/08.

I stand by my comment that the results speak for themselves.

FromTheRafters wrote:
"Mr. Arnold" MR. wrote in message
...
"FromTheRafters" wrote in message
...
Leave it to Symantec to "give the people what they want"
with no regard for the security implications.
I wouldn't use the thing. It's about as bad as Application Control in 3rd
party personal FW(s) or other such nonsense snake-oil solutions. One wants
the mouse click on the accept button when it's malware that was *accepted*
and remembered so that one is not asked about it again.

Yes, one might as well just silently elevate as with UAC turned off.
Allowing UAC to partially function is just lending users a false sense
of security. True, other aspects of UAC still enhance security if this
portion is circumvented, but the false belief that a whitelist won't be
abused by malware is damaging.

You might find some interesting reading here about Vista's kernel.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/m.../cc162458.aspx

http://www.securitypronews.com/news/securitynews/spn-45-20060601ASLRJoinsVistasBagOfTricks.html

You know, I just don't see posts about malware issues with Vista users
that much.

"Mr. Arnold" wrote in message
...
FromTheRafters wrote:
"Mr. Arnold" MR. wrote in message
...
"FromTheRafters" wrote in message
...
Leave it to Symantec to "give the people what they want"
with no regard for the security implications.
I wouldn't use the thing. It's about as bad as Application Control in
3rd party personal FW(s) or other such nonsense snake-oil solutions. One
wants the mouse click on the accept button when it's malware that was
*accepted* and remembered so that one is not asked about it again.

Yes, one might as well just silently elevate as with UAC turned off.
Allowing UAC to partially function is just lending users a false sense
of security. True, other aspects of UAC still enhance security if this
portion is circumvented, but the false belief that a whitelist won't be
abused by malware is damaging.

You might find some interesting reading here about Vista's kernel.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/m.../cc162458.aspx

http://www.securitypronews.com/news/securitynews/spn-45-20060601ASLRJoinsVistasBagOfTricks.html

You know, I just don't see posts about malware issues with Vista users
that much.

Probably they're all too busy configuring Vista for less security to
do anything about infecting their system. )

Thanks for the links.