Dan Kegel wrote:
http://www.linuxinsider.com/rsstory/68566.html
The article is about users who are willing to follow bogus instructions to solve a problem (or install something).
It makes me want the average desktop to be really, really locked down... and for user-installed apps to run in a sandbox so they can't break the rest of the system.
I am looking forward to hear what the discussion at http://sandboxing.org comes up with.
Dan:
You really underestimate the stupidity of people. This was pointed out in the article with detail. Folks will always try to get warez to run and they will think that Linux is 'safe' until the first time they wipe out their system by running Wine as root and then installing the warez and it does its thing. This is something that WE cannot and should not control (this is a reversal of my previous statements on running Wine as root, but folks continue to do so and we cannot really stop them from doing so.)
However, adding the sandbox idea is what Java was based upon. It continues to fail to fully meet this requirement as Java still continues to need to have physical access to devices on the hosting machine. This is not a shortcoming of Java, but a shortcoming of device emulation for real-time or near-real-time processing.
James McKenzie