Re: Sys Info network attributes

On May 21, 2010, at 19:04 , Doug Turner wrote:
> Thanks for your response Frederick!  You do not have to stretch very far to imagine a use case for the mac address as part of the system information.  The simplest use case is to just display the information to the user.  On the Nokia n900, there is a little gtk app called HomeIP that shows similar information.  On many devices there is a MAC address sticker.  You could imagine that an application could be used instead to display the MAC to tech support, etc.

In past discussions we've tried to distinguish between use cases that can be envisioned for the geekiest users and those that are closer to the 80/20. I don't think that exposing the MAC address is really close to the 80/20 mark here. Who needs that in a UI, let alone a web page? That's what ifconfig is for :)

> Also, I am not happy about the policy framework, nor do I think that it will be implemented by Mozilla.  I would have hoped for something alot simpler.  I guess it has to do with me not really visualizing how I would expose any of this policy framework in terms of UI to the user.

Nothing is cast in stone. You can use the APIs orthogonally from the policy framework, so at least if you don't like it you can still get something out of this exercise. But more importantly, if you have a vision of a policy framework that would rock your world, I'd suggest submitting it (or at least outlining it). Not liking it but not doing anything about it is unlikely to make it change much. You know, patches welcome, specs are made by those who show up, all that stuff.

--
Robin Berjon
  robineko — hired gun, higher standards
  http://robineko.com/

Received on Wednesday, 26 May 2010 11:04:19 UTC