Configurability in other places [LWN.net]

Configurability in other places

Posted Jun 11, 2006 20:38 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304)
In reply to: Configurability in other places by smoogen
Parent article: Questions for deployments of GNOME

Cars are physical objects in which errors can be dangerous to lethal and which interact with each other and with pedestrians, so you want a centralized training scheme, mandated external signals, and enough similarity between models that buying a new model doesn't require relearning everything (and in which you can borrow someone else's car without crashing it).

*None* of these things are true of computer software, except perhaps the last, and even that fails if you provide tools to allow copying and publishing of configurations (his KDE runs differently from mine? OK, use my config). Secure global-scale distributed filesystems will provide the necessary infrastructure for this (paging Google, or perhaps <http://fs.net/>).

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Configurability in other places

Posted Jun 12, 2006 3:00 UTC (Mon) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] (1 responses)

Sorry.. but a poorly planned desktop can be lethal in the right enviroment:

Hospital
Military
Aircontrol
911 dispatch room.

In the cases where time is of an importance having someone come into a different desktop can cause major problems. In other cases it can just be additional costs because everyone has decided what is best for themselves and they spend tons of time arguing over "gee my desktop design is so much superior to yours."

These are specialized environments.. and not the general case, however I am bringing them up as counter to your globalization account that it doesnt matter. If I am misunderstanding you.. sorry.. I always seem to minunderstand evangelical fundamentalists.

Configurability in other places

Posted Jun 12, 2006 11:22 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

I was overgeneralizing: obviously consistency is paramount in safety-critical environments (see virtually every issue of RISKS, for instance).

But *most environments are not safety-critical* from a software POV. Why on earth should people in non-safety-critical environments be locked down by requirements that only make sense if safety-critical software is in use?