Norton Go Home! We don't want you!

[Craig Macbride]

kherron at ms.uky.edu (Kenneth Herron) writes:

>>	"Even the superblock, a Unix's file-system cornerstone, can
>>	 be edited."

>>Please say it ain't so.  Please!  Please!  Not yet another fantastic way
>>for the ignorant to trash their machines with yet another GUI.  I think
>>I'm going to be ill.

>There are plenty of ways to trash unix without help from Norton :-)
>Seriously, how often do you edit a file system?  I've never had to do it, 
>so if I did, I'd like to use something with a decent user interface.  If 
>you want to stick with fsdb or the emacs directory mode, be my guest.

Well, I have used fsdb once or twice, and, yes, something a little friendlier
would have been nice. However, giving novices access to such a thing is like
giving out real guns to school children ... mass destruction!

>I *HOPE* this isn't your company's opinion.  IMHO your attitude is a
>pretty poor one for a "systems engineer."  Not everyone has the time,
>inclination, or aptitude to learn unix (or computers at all, for that
>matter).

Fair enough, but those who don't "learn unix" won't have enough knowledge for
editing the superblock to be of any use to them, so why provide them with such?
Also, the trivial mis-features of Norton's under DOS make it near impossible
for many users to use anyway. I mean, if a user who has a disk problem runs
"nu" and it complains of running out of memory, what is the user to do? There
are plenty of real-world users (eg. secretaries) who have join'd and subst'd
directories set up by someone else (eg. their boss, whose machine it is), who
can't use many of Norton's functions on vast sections of their file system.

In short, Nortons treads a fine line, providing a neat user-interface allowing
novices to do very destructive things to their machine in ignorance, while at
the same time preventing non-experts from doing things which should be easy!
They don't seem to know who to aim their product at, and thus make a bit of a
mash of it.

-- 
 _____________________________________________________________________________
| Craig Macbride, s900387 at minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au |  Reality is for people who   |
| Only the equipment belongs to Victoria Uni.  | can't handle science fiction.|
| of Technology (RMIT); The opinions are mine. |______________________________|