John Lettice, writer for The Register will quite happily accept a "do what we like to your machine" system from Red Hat:
I've clicked on the nice critical updates icon, clicked forward a lot, agreed they could have details of my machine, figure out what it needed and then install it, and yes, this is pretty much in the same department as Windows Update, about which I'd say something quite different. And maybe I should have read what I agreed to, but I have to do quite enough of that with Windows. Personally I view it as more a matter of how much you trust people than whether or not an automated update system is right or wrong. I'm prepared to trust Red Hat a little on this, and on that basis it's a handy service.
He's prepared to trust Red Hat on this, and not Redmond - fair enough.
Now we put a link to two .exes on a web page:
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Downloads an install application that you save to disk and run which then installs a whizzy application that aggregates news feeds from all over the place, calls web services from a number of sources to perform spell checking, update notifications, saves data to your local disk etc etc - because it was installed on the machine it has full reign.
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Uses some instant launch, lets say its .NET but it needn't be - its an application but it can't do anywhere near what application 1 can do - it can't write to the local disk, it can't call web services unless these are proxied by the .exe origin server (which makes what difference?), it can't aggregate content from multiple sources.
But what is the difference - the trust relationship to the web site must be the same in both cases - you were willing to download an application and then run it, trusting that it will not upload the contents of one's hard disk, yet if one tries to do 2 there will be all sorts of screaming about security (irrelevant of who the origin is, Red Hat or Redmond). Why do an extra couple of clicks give a user some sense of enhanced security (which is completely misplaced) - both are "Internet Applications".
posted at: 5:38:44 PM 
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