I Vote for UAC

Geez - I'm so sick of hearing people whine about UAC on Windows Vista.  SHUT UP!  It's a good thing.  Stop moaning and crying.  These are the same people that bitch about the weather or election results (as if "we" really decide the winner.  pa-leeez).

Ben Fathi, over at the Windows 7 Engineering Team posted a very nice diatribe on the virtues and vexations of UAC.   The goal of which is to open a discussion of where UAC might "go" in Windows 7.

Microsoft simply cannot make everyone happy.  People will bitch just because they like to bitch.  If Microsoft handed them a truck-load of solid gold bricks, they'd still bitch.  They make products "simple" and "easy" and people bitch they're not robust and secure enough.  So they tighten the security and bolster the performance and now they bitch because it's not as "simple" and "easy" as it used to be.  Too bad.   I've read scores of posts on how (and why) to disable UAC to avoid the "nagging prompts",  waaahhhh.  When someone knocks at your front door, do you open it without ever asking who it is?  Why the hell would you do that with your computer?!?!  As if it couldn't cause serious harm to just let everything run unabated.  Root kits?  Sure, come on in.  Viruses?  Trojans?  Bloatware?  Stupid-ass dumb actions on the part of the user?  Why not?

UAC is not perfect, but it's certainly good enough to leave alone and just let it do its job.  The folks on the Windows 7 team are pretty sharp.  Say what you want about Microsoft, but they don't hire idiots.  You might not agree with how things are done or how products look and feel, or whatever, but that's not an indication of intelligence.  It's a matter of taste, which is ENTIRELY subjective.  I'm not defending them.  Okay, maybe I am.  But this holds true for almost any software company you know of. 

Sure, the method used for challenging privileged process invocation on OSX or Linux is probably (arguably) better tuned to work within the framework of those platforms.  But if you think the FIRST version of those methods worked as well as they do now, you're wrong.  Horribly wrong.  UAC is Microsoft's first attempt and it's pretty good as far as I've seen.  I strongly recommend to anyone I know to leave it enabled and get used to it.  It will improve as updates and upgrades come out, just as they have with other platform products.

Rant complete. :)