Re: Preferences [Was: a whole lot of other things, too]

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Rui Miguel Silva Seabra <rms 1407 org> writes: 
> In dangerous evironments, it's bad to have automagical stuff going
> around. In other situations it's quite nice (like plugging an usb
> scanner, for instance).
> 

What I'm worried about is for example those dialogs web browsers pop
up in various security situations, with "don't show this again"
buttons. So it pops up and says things like "any information you post
could be insecure" on web forms. Everyone I've ever seen just turns
the dialogs off and proceeds to post all information insecurely.

Another example is when ssh gives its warnings about unknown host key
or whatever. I've never seen anyone type "no" when it asks if you want
to continue connecting.

The question then is, by making something more inconvenient have you
actually increased security or just made yourself feel better...

If there are hostile DHCP servers, is it really more secure if I have
to connect to them manually?

I'm not saying it is or isn't, I'd just be hesitant to say
definitively that it is.

Havoc