Protecting People from themselves.

So whilst botnets and the like pose a constant problem to users, we've seen people targetting anonymous lower computer smart memebers:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03...s_hacktivists/
oops.

But we also see this:
http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/commen...ize_in/c3vujwc
Which I think is the danger of a command line, people just don't understand what they are doing when their an idiot, and are often told by people to "just copy and paste this in, hit enter".

So once again it got me thinking, why don't we have a nice sandboxed microkernel OS?

I'm constantly disapointed with the poor mans unix that is linux, but hey its open source right, so that somehow means I can't be pissed at it. The fear I have is we will see iOS and crippled windows 8 machines filling homes, because the users aren't tech savy. But what then, any kids who want to be tech savy will have to buy a Pi?! I just don't like this at all.

I was wondering has anyone come across any heuristic filter type thing for command lines?

Thought they'd gone the way of text adventures...

But as for sandboxed microkernal OSen.. isn't that kind of the browser as OS model? And what Google are attempting with Chrome?

I don't think you need to fear loss of power for power users - both OSX and Windows 7 actually expand on the shell functionality of their predecessors. (Terminals and powershell)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TheAnimus

But we also see this:
http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/commen...ize_in/c3vujwc
Which I think is the danger of a command line, people just don't understand what they are doing when their an idiot, and are often told by people to "just copy and paste this in, hit enter".

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I saw that and immediately thought "sudo rm -rf /"* (note DO NOT try this on Linux\OS X\Unix\BSD) then clicked on it, and yup I was right, some people will type anything they are told the old ALT+F4 thing pops into my head.

*sudo obviously elevates permission, and rm -rf will delete all files from your hard drive ignoring any errors, a pretty dangerous command as it doesn't output anything to the terminal, and it may take a while before your system dies, so you might not even realise it has worked for a while until enough has gone to make your machine unusable.

I remeber as a young child, the first time I used a Windows machine I was told never to touch "MS-DOS Promt" because I'd break the computer, from then on I've associated that MS-DOS Promt shortcut icon with computer destruction.

I think the key is education because the the more you protect someone the more complacent they'll get.

BTW, this thread reminds me of this.