Heh, you're right. I've only used it a few times at work. Does it ever ask for the root password for anything? Is the root account just there for the unix aspect of OS X? That is, does a regular user who doesn't care about unix ever need to use root? I'm just curious to see if the way this is done in OS X can be done elsewhere, if it's a good system.
Instead of feature descriptions, many pages only said: "Our apologies. Sorry, but the help page for this item is not yet written.''
The problem is that with free software, you can sort of get away with this. Frequent releases are common and most of the users are more knowledgeable and more forgiving of little defects. Of course, the above wouldn't fly with a "professionally released" product. You'd have a lot of irate, paying customers taking their business elsewhere. If the app crashes once in a while or is insecure, it might be a bit more acceptable to many users than a secure, reliable app that's got incomplete pages in its online manual or a hard to use UI. (I don't mean to compare GIMP or Photoshop. I'm speaking generally, of course.)
Also, running as root may not be ideal for Linux people, but end-users would just get irritated if they had to enter the root password everytime they wanted to change the system configuration or mount the cd-rom...
As someone else mentioned, Mac OS X does this already. If you want to change major settings, you'll have to enter the root password. To me, it's just a small paradigm shift and the end result makes more sense than not having it. It's like having an extra step that asks, "This change is going to affect your computer a lot. Are you sure you really want to do this?"
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I hope you don't drop us into volcanoes using DC-8s and then release H-bombs on us like Xenu did!
Heh, you're right. I've only used it a few times at work. Does it ever ask for the root password for anything? Is the root account just there for the unix aspect of OS X? That is, does a regular user who doesn't care about unix ever need to use root? I'm just curious to see if the way this is done in OS X can be done elsewhere, if it's a good system.
Instead of feature descriptions, many pages only said: "Our apologies. Sorry, but the help page for this item is not yet written.''
The problem is that with free software, you can sort of get away with this. Frequent releases are common and most of the users are more knowledgeable and more forgiving of little defects. Of course, the above wouldn't fly with a "professionally released" product. You'd have a lot of irate, paying customers taking their business elsewhere. If the app crashes once in a while or is insecure, it might be a bit more acceptable to many users than a secure, reliable app that's got incomplete pages in its online manual or a hard to use UI. (I don't mean to compare GIMP or Photoshop. I'm speaking generally, of course.)
Also, running as root may not be ideal for Linux people, but end-users would just get irritated if they had to enter the root password everytime they wanted to change the system configuration or mount the cd-rom...
As someone else mentioned, Mac OS X does this already. If you want to change major settings, you'll have to enter the root password. To me, it's just a small paradigm shift and the end result makes more sense than not having it. It's like having an extra step that asks, "This change is going to affect your computer a lot. Are you sure you really want to do this?"
Is it biodegradable?
I doubt it. Even worse is the fact that you can't turn it into an aquarium or a bong when you're done with it.
I'd rather it was "Controlling the Mind with Robots".
I'm sure the whole family's proud of him. :-)
Oh yeah. Thanks guys.
Damn, I know that quote. What's it from? It's gonna bug me all day until I find out.