Destroying "only" your home directory (was Re: Newbie question on permissions)

[Alan McKinnon]

On Wednesday 05 April 2006 05:53, Michael T. Richter wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-04-04 at 22:15 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:


> Had you been able to successfully dismiss my comment (with its
> attached story), you'd have pointed to the numerous cases in which
> it *WAS ALREADY DONE* under UNIX.

OK, let's not argue semantics, sentence structure and whether three 
consecutive short sentences in their own paragraph constitute a 
single coherent idea. We're probably both half right and half wrong 
anyway, and old comments about arguing on Usenet and being a jerk 
come to mind.

How about we flick the flame switch to <off> and play the ball not the 
man?

> My point remains and you're just pissy over the fact that UNIX does
> suck for end-users.
>
> UNIX, being a general purpose operating system, *CAN* do lots of
> things. It's only the active user-hostility of must UNIX
> programmers that gets in the way of it actually *BEING DONE*.
>
> Verb tenses are a real bitch, aren't they?
>
> > And yes, I do actually watch users. Very closely in fact. Daily.
> > I train them. Daily.
>
> Ah, yes.  Training and watching are two different activities.  Most
> geeks want to force end-users to be like them.  Try instead
> listening to your end-users sometime.

Calm down cowboy :-) You don't know me and never met me, you don't 
know if I do listen to users or not. Most != all. <not a flame>

Technically, scratching your Mum's itch is a trivial problem - all the 
core tools are already there on the machine, and nothing needs 
re-inventing. Maybe my idea has been done somewhere, maybe not. I 
wouldn't know as I don't need that itch scratched. 

What I do know is that most of the user's I have interfaced with find 
using Ubuntu very intuitive. Much more so than Windows. Very much 
more so than Solaris, AIX and Slack but those were never designed for 
average users anyway. I don't like Gnome for my own use, but I have 
to admit they understand Aunt Tillie's POV (still incomplete apps 
excepted). Give them their due - they built something that no-one 
else could under the same circumstances.

You have coding skills and a relative with an itch, why don't you code 
a killer backup program suitable for most end users?

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za
+27 82, double three seven, one nine three five