🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <2048@saber.UUCP> phil@saber.UUCP (Phil Gustafson) writes:
>Many perceive a big difference between looking in the corners of a file
>system and snooping through someone else's desk.  They're the ones I was
>writing about.

I'm one of the many, indeed UNIX books and lecturers encourage the
reading of files in other people's bin directories and up in the /usr
partition. It's a good way of learning your way around UNIX.

The question is though, how many people outside the friendly `snoop
and learn' UNIX tradition feel there is a big difference. One systems'
administrator I've worked with saw none whatsoever, and charged
snoopers with gross moral deficiencies and latent hacker's syndrome.
I'd be curious to see how many people see computer file space as personal 
space into which no-one should intrude, regardless of access permissions.

The `big difference' attitude, if generally accepted, would be an
important Human-Computer Interaction phenomenum, as beliefs about
text/information on a computer would be the oppostive of beliefs about
other personal `property'. On a lighter vein, could adaptive systems
spot compulsive neurotics and automatically change their umask to 077?!
Conversely, could an adaptive system spot egocentric exhibitionists
and automatically post all their source files to net.sources in shar
format along with inflated claims of their performance and functionality?!
-- 
   Gilbert Cockton, Scottish HCI Centre, Ben Line Building, Edinburgh, EH1 1TN
   JANET:  gilbert@uk.ac.hw.aimmi    ARPA:   gilbert%aimmi.hw.ac.uk@cs.ucl.ac.uk
		UUCP:	..!{backbone}!aimmi.hw.ac.uk!gilbert