Barry Leiba makes a good point:
"What if you were having a house built, and the builder sent you a text message: "Should we put your floor joists 16 inches on center? I need an answer immediately, or my workers are going to another job." Would you know how to respond, without asking any questions back and risking losing the day?
How about if you tried to visit a web site, and your browser responded with a popup that said, "There's a problem with the site's certificate. Should I accept it anyway?" Oh, you say that last one happened to you just this morning..."
"...why on Earth are we programming these things this way? Why do our computers persist in asking questions that 99-point-some-number-of-nines percent of the users have no hope of understanding, much less answering correctly?
"What should I do with this certificate?"
"Program XYZ wants to access the Internet on port 3271. Should I let it?"
"There was an error reading the preferences for this program. What should I do?"We should never ask a user a question that most users are not qualified to answer.... We're at a point where we ask the users a million questions, and the "correct" answer is almost always "yes". But the consequences of saying "yes" when it's the wrong answer are serious.... We need to get to the point where we ask the users very few questions, and the correct answer is almost always "no". We teach people that, and get them used to saying "no" if they aren't sure what to do. And then the system fails safe: the consequences of saying "no" when it's the wrong answer are that you remain secure."