I suppose the thing I like least about UNIX is the way every program I run automatically receives permission to do everything I can do, e.g. delete all my files, send mail on my behalf, etc, etc. Also, there is nothing like a "virtual machine": portability of programs can not be enforced because every program can examine its environment and decide to fail if certain files exist on the system or whatever. This second issue is a consequence of the first one, of course: every program unnecessarily receives permission to examine the system it is running on.
Will the HURD provide a solution for these problems? Or are these things simply not perceived as problems? (You might argue that people who want badly written programs to run safely and portably should use Java. Still, it might be nice to provide a UNIX virtual machine for application programs to think that they have the machine to themselves.) Edmund
