>>> Thanks again. What (hypothetical) Stuff are we talking about? I mean
>>> even accepting that it's possible, yea perhaps even desirable, to run
>>> one's puter under a different account, I'm still unclear as to the
>>> dangers posed by running as single account/owner/admin.
As long as most here are wringing out your exception, I wish to
take exception to the exception that you are excepting.
"exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis"
[The exception confirms the rule in the cases not excepted.]
You merely forgot to except cases like mine :)
I think that most here will agree that if nothing bad happens
to an old geezer like me, with an age-shrunken half sized brain,
then nothing bad is likely to happen to an ordinary Mac user.
In short, you are raising a straw man, something that is _very_
unlikely to happen in ordinary circumstances.
(notice I posted "unlikely", not "impossible")
I run as administrator 100%% of the time, for years on end,
delving into the guts of my OS, plus the guts of my Vista partition
on my MacBook Pro, doing such things as "combined" backups of both
the OS X and Vista partitions.
(terminal dd image at block sizes from 512 bytes to 524288 bytes,
combined with "stuffing" 99.9%% of the Vista partition's
free space with hex zeroes for minimum archiving size - - -
and yet I have not managed to "damage the system" myself,
as you contend, in years of operating as administrator)
Furthermore I spend hours surfing the web every night as
administrator, going to many obscure websites, mostly medical
websites lately, engaged in "spirited" discussions where I put
others in their place when their commercial interests in selling
their software conflict with everyday medical experience with other
competitive software.
No firewall, older
10.4.8 OS, ancient Pismo Powerbook.
I am in no way advocating operating carelessly as I do,
just merely relating the fact that no malware has been
encountered by me in years of operating in this fashion.
Don't bother to look for me in places like:
<
http://knowbrainer.com/pubforum/>
...because I post under an alias and cover my "style" very well.
The moderator who "runs" that website is guilty of bias and
misleading info'. Surprised he has not kicked me out of his
forum, for calling him out on his more outrageous claims.
(BTW, the "KnowBrainer" site name is very apropos to me,
considering my severe lack of smarts compared to
ordinary Mac users)
Now if you had 'excepted' cases like mine in your posts,
by posting something to the effect that some users like me
have had NO problems with 'accidents' or 'malware' in years of
operation, then I would have no quarrel with your contention that
it would be advisable to go to all the time and trouble of
setting up and operating non-administrative user accounts.
I know, picky, picky, picky, way too "Michelle like" on my part.
Mark-
