Re:The screen that set off the ballistic missile alert on Sa...
by jdmichal on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @12:23PM
(#16159935)
I did think of the covered switches that are common in movies. I think the equivalent in software are confirmation dialogs, but those are not as effective as the physical counterparts due to click-through-itis disease. [0] This could actually be one of those types of things that might benefit from a different presentation, such as a silly skeumorphic design involving a graphical cover.
[0] Which, to be fair to users, is a disease introduced by putting too many switches under covers which shouldn't be.
Re:The screen that set off the ballistic missile alert on Sa...
by mikeash on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @08:45PM
(#16164766)
They could use an actual covered switch. Maybe something this important should have a bit of physical infrastructure associated with it. Doing everything in software can be great, but it's not always the best solution.
To me, the screenshot looks more like a list of user-defined presets than something that went through the original software development process. Maybe something along the lines of only superuser can define new presets, but lower users can activate them. That way, at least random "I love you honeybunny" pranks would be avoided, but the risk of skipping a real warning because of insufficient permissions would be avoided.
A physical UI would have an openly accessible switch for "drill" and "not a drill" protected behind a seal that needs to be broken, this is difficult to replicate in software.