| > It's irrelevant how many people believe in something if they're wrong. “Wrong” asserts a level of objectivity which has not been established. My argument is simple: the computer industry has failed to produce general-purpose devices which non-specialists can safely operate. That's security threats like phishing, but also just the ever present fear almost all computer users have of installing something which will break or degrade their computer. When a high percentage of people choose to buy devices which are more restricted – and thus safer to use – the correct response is not to crank up the smugness and say that they need better education but rather to ask what we should change to make a general purpose computer safer without going all of the way to the app store model. As the most obvious example, strong mandatory sandboxing could be a big improvement while still allowing a knowledgeable user to adjust the sandbox policies or develop their own. > A billion people believe the Earth is 60,000 years old and was created in a week by an all-powerful bearded deity I find this comparison apt, but presumably not in the direction which you intended: We have a preponderance of evidence that people cannot operate computers safely, ranging from the billions of dollars spent on support and data recovery services to e.g. ransomware being an industry with at least 8 figures of annual revenue. Smugly asserting that people buying safer alternatives is due to poor education seems rather close to the creationists who assert that every hole in their theory is caused by insufficient faith. If that was ever going to work, it would have done so already. |