Re: The home user problem returns

["R. DuFresne" <dufresne () sysinfo com>]

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On Tue, 13 Sep 2005, Mason Schmitt wrote:

> > > Educating users to fix the problem doesn't work.  Educating users there
> > > *is* a problem seems to work, just not en-mass.
> >
> > Nope. Because we're dealing with shared environments - so even if you
> > managed to somehow raise the clue level in 50% of the population it winds
> > up having almost no effect because the clueless infect the clueful
> > second-hand.
>
> I think that was Paul's point.  Home users can't be educated to the
> point that the problem becomes "fixed".  I don't think they need to be
> or should be, so if that's where the effort is being expended, then I
> agree - it's a waste of breath.  I do think that over time education
> efforts will result in an increase in clue in the vast majority of
> people.  If this weren't the case, then there would be no point to
> having a public education system...  Not everyone is going to get
> straight 'A's, some people will fail, others who are living a hand to
> mouth existence, or who's country is too backward or too poor will or
> for whatever reason doesn't have education available to the masses will
> not learn - which leads nicely to your comment below concerning AIDS.
>
> > It's really a problem in epidemiology. Imagine if 50% of
> > your population refused to worry about AIDS yet was capable of having
> > sex with 1,000,000 different partners a day* - The numbers are all tipped
> > the wrong direction, for education to work. Spammers have pretty much
> > proved that.
>
> Well, no, the spammers haven't proven that.  What the spammers have
> shown us is that even if they only sucker a minute percentage of the
> people that actually receive their crap, that it's financially
> worthwhile.  The reason being that the economics of spam allow the
> spammers to plunder a public resource (the net) with relative impunity.
> Ecological economists such as Herman Daly, have shown that when you
> don't factor in the cost of continual withdrawal from a natural
> resource, that your books aren't really balancing.  This is again an
> issue that is only going to be rectified by increasing the spammers
> costs which many people are working on.
>
> I also don't think the user education problem is an epidemiological one
> either.  To suggest that ignorance to a growing and changing computer
> security environment is somehow like a rapidly spreading pathogen is a
> little bit of a stretch.  If ignorance were infectious, you'd probably
> be dead or an idiot right now.  I remember you ripping apart Dan Geer's
> mono culture idea that was such a big deal a little while back.  Not
> trying to pick a fight here, I just don't get the argument.

Raise a teen or two and you learn, epidemiological/pathogen covers alot of 
issues in development and edcuation! Ignorance *is* infectious, and one 
bad apple can...two bad apples, damn, life would be grand if one was just 
hearding cats...

Passive education, observational learning has it's limits and is tested to 
the extreeme in the world o parenting.  It can be both intriging andf 
frustrating to see how many times the same kid<s> has<ve> to grab the same 
hot wire before they learn that the shock it distributes is *not* 
enjoyable.  My 3 pups on the otherhand learned within a day that the 
invisible fencing bounds the limits of their explorations.


But I digress some from the topic at hand, sorry...

Thanks,


Ron DuFresne
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