brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) (03/12/85)
An important note to add to the "restrictive software" debate is this: Remember news is a multi-user piece of software. Unlike single-user stuff, other users can step on what you are doing, by making your groups full of noise and garbage. This is the same as an operating system. With an OS, specific permissions on files are called a feature, not a restriction. Memory protection that stops other users from writing on your memory is considered an essential feature for useful work, nobody calls it a restriction. In any system where a group of users are sharing a physical resource, such as the net, restrictions are the norm. It's because news doesn't have enough such restrictions that we have our problems. Remember the days when any typo created a new group? We fixed that and we should fix the rest. -- Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473