From: Lillian Komlossy <Lillian(_at_)dmnews(_dot_)com>
The whole world will not switch over to Unix
- the average user will always be more confortable with Windows
unless Unix will at one point offer the same seamless user-friendliness.
So it will always be a problem, one which cannot be solved by telling
others not to use what they've accustomed to - and one which cannot be
ignored.
The issue cannot be ignored, but it has nothing to do with UNIX. The
only connection with UNIX is that UNIX comes from the old tradition in
which design involved more than increasing already long lists of bullet
items that people with no knowledge or interest in computers think they
understand, but don't and don't care that they don't.
The issue is that the Internet is not merely a big but private corporate
internet such as the one in Redmond. Authentication and authorization
are not the same things. That which is most convenient or "user-friendly"
is not safe enough, whether it is using ActiveX to update software from
AOL/Netscape or Microsoft headquarters without the informed consent of
the local user, not requiring the informed local consent before running
the latest dancing baby email attachment, or many other things including
those that are called viruses but that don't differ significantly.
Vernon Schryver vjs(_at_)rhyolite(_dot_)com