Yesterday, the question that was asked was:

In Windows Vista, why don’t we see any elevation prompt for non-admin users when UAC is disabled? One example is login as a non-admin, try to change date/time. If UAC is enabled, we see a prompt for entering admin creds, but when UAC is disabled, we just see an “Access denied” dialog instead.

These words are true, the description of the behavior is accurate. The answer is easy enough:

Because UAC controls the elevation experience. No UAC, no prompts, period. It goes back to XP behaviour.

But then someone off the main thread of conversation suggested to me that it was a great example of how one cannot have one's cake and eat it too.

To paraphrase the immortal words of Inigo Montoya, I do not think that phrase means what he thinks it means. :-)

Though the confusion is not entirely surprising, it has been around for a while now -- a common phrase dating back nearly over 450 years to talk about "having one's cake and eating it too".

Of course in modern English, the phrase has lost most of its meaning, since the phrase "have some cake" and really most similar uses of the term have in this context are synonymous with eating the cake.

The original intent was to distinguish between possession and consumption -- you can certainly possess/hold on to that piece of cake, or you can eat/consume it, but you cannot have it both ways.

Now in a way one could extend this to the above case -- you can't turn off a functionality but then want one of the features that the functionality provides. But the original quote did seem more targeted to me -- it never felt to me like a generic theory that would apply to all logical contradictions like these.

But perhaps I am mistaken on this point.

Thoughts, anyone? :-)

 

This post brought to you by ㊒ (U+3292, a.k.a. CIRCLED IDEOGRAPH HAVE)