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

[Vladimir Vukicevic <vladimir ximian com>]

On 23 May 2001 18:26:14 -0400, Miguel de Icaza wrote:
> Note that this will happen right now anyways, as .desktop files do not
> need to have the execute bit set.  

Right, so why make the problem worse?

> Fix the irc clients to not accept random data by default.

Except that there's nothing to "fix".  The only other reasonable default
for dcc downloads would be /tmp, but that is completely non-intuitive to
the user.  If someone chooses to dcc me a file called ".desktop" and I
accept it, or the client auto-accepts for me, there isn't anything that
can be fixed here.

I still think that this is a bad idea.  If a user does not have the
ability to set the +x bit using Nautilus or gmc (following instructions
on how to do so when downloading the installer), why is that user
qualified to click "OK" on a dialog box that says "make sure this binary
comes from a trusted source"?  The windows ILOVEYOU scenario included
many many reports of people receiving emails which said "do not open
email called iloveyou", but they did anyway because it was "from someone
they knew".  Not being able to execute simple programs like this
trivially puts a barrier in place so that only people who are qualified
to execute said program are able to.  The qualification is rather low,
but sadly, as evidenced by the Windows virii, a large number of users
apparently aren't "qualified".

    - Vlad