Position & proposal

[Dwight Hughes]

| From: Mike McDonald <mikemac@titian.engr.sgi.com>
|
| >From: Chris Bitmead uid <chris.bitmead@alcatel.com.au> (x22068)
| >But you have the issue anyway of protecting the user from
| >themselves. Or do you always login as root on your machines?
|
| 
|   Users should be able to do themselves in anytime they feel brave.
| Now, if you want to deliver a machine so that its users can only do
| certain things, then you build upon the freedom of the LispOS to
| implemetn and enforce the restriction that you choose, not the ones
| some nameless OS implementer decided you should have.

I certainly agree with that. You might still want to consider something
like the sandbox however - perhaps having a sandbox "mode" for the
entire LispOS (something like the need to explicitly save a Smalltalk
image before any changes are permanent). Then you could blow yourself
to smithereens, reboot, and be back where you were before you got 
the losing idea. This is something all the POS ideas should consider -
there are times when you *really* do *not* want a certain configuration
committed.

-- Dwight