Notifications: uselessness of

[Marius Gedminas]

On Tue, Mar 03, 2009 at 03:47:17PM +0100, Laurent wrote:
> I my personal experience (which is limited to have installed 5 Ubuntu's 
> on non-expert friend's computers), I have the same impression. The users 
> divide in two categories
> 
> 1. the ones who say "updates ? I don"t care; even security holes : there 
> are no viruses on Linux and even with viruses, I don't care : I have 
> nothing to hide on my computer, no personal data, no agenda, nothing"
> 
> 2. the ones who care.
> 
> We all agree here that the reasons invoked by the first group are 
> terribly wrong, and are the result of deep misunderstanding of many 
> points in general informatics... however...

And then there are ones who don't understand and are scared by every
unfamiliar window and just click on 'Cancel' by default, thinking it's
the safer choice.  You could consider them to be part of group (1).

> The first group will NEVER make the updates, a part with an automatic 
> system which don't even notify. What we need to do for them is 
> *education*[1]; there are no real technical way to make them aware of 
> the updates.
> 
> For the second group, the small old icon which appears is sufficient.
> 
> I personally don't know people in an intermediate state between these 
> two categories. I suppose there exists some ... but I fear that they are 
> very few.
> 
> My two cents
> have a good afternoon
> Laurent
> 
> 
> [1] btw, if someone knows a text that can explain me how to be 
> persuasive in explaining that security updates are needed for everybody, 
> I'm interested. Although I try very hard, I never succeeded to make that 
> point clear in the head of non-expert users.

Have you tried appealing to their sense of civic responsibility?  If
somebody takes over their machine, they could use it to attack other
people on the Internet/send spam/etc.

Marius Gedminas
-- 
Shift happens.
		-- Doppler
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