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Dialog box: Difference between revisions
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Dialogue boxes are insentient, unwanted interruptions. They require pointless intervention before continuing the [[tedious]] task with which you were already occupied. They can and do get buried under windows, files and ''other'' pointless dialog boxes. They can be buried so deep as to be quite invisible, undetectable and unreachable. But they hang your session all the same, waiting obediently for reply that will never, and can never, come. | Dialogue boxes are insentient, unwanted interruptions. They require pointless intervention before continuing the [[tedious]] task with which you were already occupied. They can and do get buried under windows, files and ''other'' pointless dialog boxes. They can be buried so deep as to be quite invisible, undetectable and unreachable. But they hang your session all the same, waiting obediently for reply that will never, and can never, come. | ||
Dialog boxes are also, in their way, [[second-order derivative]] risk management tools. For what is one meant to achieve but an ''allocation of fault'', that can only play itself out upon, and not before, catastrophe? | Dialog boxes are also, in their way, [[second-order derivative]] risk management tools. For what is one meant to achieve but an ''allocation of fault'', that can only play itself out upon, and not before, catastrophe? | ||
It makes [[Middle management|management]] happy in the meantime, and gives it someone to point a finger at later. In this way, it resembles many of the protections afforded by a legal [[contract]] that do not target practical, day-to-day compliance or meaningfully go towards ensuring a robust system, but which merely allocate liability should the unthinkable — and since you’ve designed a sodding dialogue box for it, it’s not ''really'' unthinkable, is it? — happen. | Does a dialog box ''stop'' you from downloading that trojan worm? It does not. It just reminds you that it’s ''your'' posterior in the sling if you do. Does a quarterly [[compliance attestation]] that, say, you have not violated the employee share trading policy prevent anyone from doing so? Again, it does not. Quite the contrary: it provides comfort – ''false'' comfort – that compliance is in hand; it de-escalates whatever risk management process might otherwise be running and instead provides a [[RAG status|green]] signal that ''the [[legible]] world is at peace''. | ||
This makes [[Middle management|management]] happy in the meantime, and gives it someone to point a finger at later. In this way, it resembles many of the protections afforded by a legal [[contract]] that do not target practical, day-to-day compliance or meaningfully go towards ensuring a robust system, but which merely allocate liability should the unthinkable — and since you’ve designed a sodding dialogue box for it, it’s not ''really'' unthinkable, is it? — happen. | |||
The risks attested to by dialogue boxes fall into two categories: ''real'' ones and ''bullshit'' ones. | The risks attested to by dialogue boxes fall into two categories: ''real'' ones and ''bullshit'' ones. | ||