<nettime> Microsoft's "cancel" is an ambiguous word

[Frank Hartmann <hartmann@fsf.adis.at>]

... from this week's real audio interview transcript
between McChesney from Hotwired and Brad Chase, manager of the Internet
Explorer at Microsoft, on the release of the new IE 4.0:

> McChesney: Let's talk a little about security. One of the things that I find incredibly annoying is that I like to
> know when a cookie is being set on my hard drive. I also like to know when there's an Active X threat out there.
> When I arm my browser now to do that, I get about 5 million windows, particularly here at HotWired. It seems
> like there's a cookie every 15 seconds that comes up, and what I like about the Netscape browser is that the
> cookie alert window has two things you can push on. One says "OK," accept the cookie. Two says "Cancel."
> And I've never been sure whether when I press the Cancel button that means the cookie comes anyway. I don't
> know what Microsoft does about it now, but it's a very annoying thing. How do you take care of that in the new
> browser? 
> 
> Chase: Well, there's a number of things we've done. We call the situation you're referring to "authorization
> fatigue." 
> 
> McChesney: Right. Good term. Like compassion fatigue. 
> 
> Chase: Yeah. People are just tired of seeing all these security alerts and having to respond to them all. At the
> same time, they do want to make choices about what they do. And as a consequence, we've innovated with a
> new feature in Internet Explorer 4 called security zones. And there's some default zones, like an intranet zone or
> an Internet zone.... 
> 
> McChesney: You mean intranet zone, and Internet zone, the intranet being inside your company and
> something you fully trust, or at least you have to. 
> 
> Chase: That's correct. You're supposed to. And so one of the things that's a lot different is today, on a
> Netscape browser or a Microsoft browser, you have to basically make security decisions for all sites at one
> time. And as a consequence it's really very difficult, and that's how you end up with authorization fatigue. So with
> Internet Explorer 4 and zones, you can develop groupings of sites and give them certain types of security
> clearances. And we do very basic common-sense things as defaults, like for example your intranet site, your
> internal company site, has a lower security setting, and an Internet site has a higher security setting, where you
> will get warned about things like Active X controls. 
> 
> McChesney: Now in that zone; I mean, you have the trusted zone where you've picked out some sites that you
> think are not going to mess you up or send unwanted email or do all kinds of things to you like export your
> Quicken files and drain your bank account, or whatever might happen out there, but ... 
> 
> Chase: Just your bank account, John. 
> 
> McChesney: Yeah, I hear Active X controls can do that. But we'll talk about that some other time. When you get
> - when you're in the Internet zone, you get alerts, that is, this is the untested area out there, the great unknown,
> what does the alert look like? I mean, is it the same kind of alert we're getting now? 
> 
> Chase: Well, we've tried to make the alerts a little more consumer-friendly, but they do try to also be direct to
> make people cognizant of the choices they need to make. So they are, I think, pretty similar to what you need to
> have now, perhaps a little more friendly is the simplest way to summarize it. 
> 
> McChesney: Does it say Accept or Reject? 
> 
> Chase: Yeah, or OK or Cancel. 
> 
> McChesney: Cancel is an ambiguous word in there, you have to admit. I mean, it seems to me to mean you're
> just canceling the box, rather than canceling the cookie. 
> 
> Chase: I don't actually know if we have an OK or Cancel per se. I mean, the problem is that you're dealing with
> a number of messages here. I don't remember them all off the top of my head. I would encourage you to try
> these situations yourself, and let me know if you think it's, if you think our messages are unclear. But I think we
> do a pretty good job of making it clear what your options are. 

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