Re: [PMH] Re: [Nautilus-list] Idea for Nautilus and GMC.

[Elliot Lee <sopwith redhat com>]

On 24 May 2001, Dan Winship wrote:

> And for the gazillion and oneth time on the other side: IT DOESN'T
> MATTER. It doesn't matter how many warnings the user gets. It doesn't
> matter how dire they are. You can pop up a dialog that says "If you
> proceed, your children will be kidnapped, tortured, and murdered", and
> *THEY'LL STILL CLICK "OK"* because they want to see the funny joke
> they've been promised is in the attachment. This has been demonstrated
> time and time again in the Outlook world. The so-called "security fixes"
> for Outlook have done almost nothing to slow the spread of viruses.

Yes, and you know what?

IT DOESN'T MATTER.

When someone willfully and deliberately decides to run an executable,
whether they are being stupid or not, it's not your problem.  Your problem
is to enable them to do what they want with the information available.

I use the MSIE "run this downloaded .exe?" thing very regularly, and think
it's a great feature to have. Although not nearly as useful under Linux
(where one typically installs a package instead of running a
self-installing exe), I don't see any point in purposely avoiding this
feature, as long as I'm given the choice whether or not to run the program
and given a suitable warning.

-- Elliot
A fool and his money were lucky to get together in the first place.
        (WC Fields)