Vote for new Ubuntu Feature---Let's try it again --- and without getting all religious about it

[Peter Garrett]

On Wed, 10 Jan 2007 12:36:11 +0700
Chanchao <custom at freenet.de> wrote:

> 
> > The Unix security model has evolved over the past twenty, thirty years and 
> 
> Why are so many people getting so religious over a basic usability
> comment/request. 
> 

<quote>
"we trust you have received the usual lecture from the local System  
> Administrator. It usually boils down to these three things:
>      #1) Respect the privacy of others.
>      #2) Think before you type.
>      #3) With great power comes great responsibility.

</unquote>

that's the venerable "sudo lecture " that traditionally popped up the
first time a command was run with sudo by $USER . I don't recall seeing it
on Ubuntu, but it is still there by default on Debian. 

There is nothing "religious" about opposing the weakening of a time-tested
security model. It may be inconvenient, but that's intentional. Being made
to think twice before fooling with system files is a Good Thing (tm).

By the way, Mac OS-X does exactly the same thing as Ubuntu - see if a
password request pops up on a Mac when you try to edit a system file... 

On a Mac:

$pico /etc/hosts
(file opens, I add the word "foo" to it, then i try to save....

pico answers:  "Cannot open file for writing"

Of course, the Mac also _hides_ the system files unless you are geeky
enough to open a terminal and issue, say,  " ls / "

let's try one that you *can* find in the so-called "Finder":

pico /System/Library/Components/AppleScript.component/Contents/Version.plist

Same deal.

 (totally off-topic:  Anyone who feels Apple should be shot for their
directory structures has my sympathy, by the way )

 How odd - everyone lauds OS-X to the heavens for its usability... yet
it won't let you edit system files without sudo!  ;-)  Well, at least they
got _that_ right ....

Peter