mental toolbox

Posted Oct 18, 2015 12:24 UTC (Sun) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877)
In reply to: mental toolbox by ncm
Parent article: How a few legitimate app developers threaten the entire Android userbase (Ars Technica)

> My wife is probably more intelligent than you, but she is not mentally equipped to root her phone, or to perceive a need to do it.

Honestly, the latter is the root of the problem, not the former.

There are lots of folks who aren't trained to fly airplanes, repair drains, install an electric circuit, or fix a car. Yet a lot of folks fly in airplanes and have functioning drains, electrical systems, and cars.

It seems very strange to me that we as a society are so content to keep computing weird in this regard.

mental toolbox

Posted Oct 23, 2015 6:42 UTC (Fri) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (1 responses)

> It seems very strange to me that we as a society are so content to keep computing weird in this regard.

I don't think anyone is "content" with the current state of computing; yet no one, absolutely no one wants to pay for the enormous quality cost of trying to make computers secure and reliable.
They're the most complex systems ever made - for both good and bad reasons.

mental toolbox

Posted Oct 23, 2015 11:19 UTC (Fri) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]

> no one wants to pay for the enormous quality cost of trying to make computers secure and reliable.

unless you have a finite-time algorithm for the halting problem, the cost is infinity.