[117297] in Cypherpunks
Re: Its the GUI, stupid
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Honig)
Mon Aug 30 23:43:40 1999
Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.19990830181038.007fa100@pop.sprynet.com>
Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 18:10:38 -0700
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
From: David Honig <honig@sprynet.com>
In-Reply-To: <199908302148.XAA09619@mail.replay.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
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Reply-To: David Honig <honig@sprynet.com>
Electric starting motors, automatic transmissions,
make cars easier. One does not have to understand
the otto engine to learn to drive. Generally,
this is a good thing.
At 11:48 PM 8/30/99 +0200, Anonymous wrote:
>With crypto -- as with many other applications -- GUIs generally serve
>only to *obscure* the underlying purpose of the programme. (And in
>the case of PGP, it's questionable whether the GUI even makes it any
>easier to use.)
>
>I never introduce lusers to a PGP GUI until I'm certain that they
>understand the purpose of encryption and have at least a rudimentary
>grasp of the bare fundamentals of public-key cryptography. People
>that can't get to that point are safer without any user-controllable
>encryption.
>
>
