Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!usc!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!rpi!leah!wfh58
From: wfh58@leah.Albany.Edu (William F. Hammond)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: PkaWare/PkaZip
Summary: self-extracting archives are dangerous
Message-ID: <2675@leah.Albany.Edu>
Date: 9 Mar 90 17:16:41 GMT
References: <55.25f441b5@uoft02.utoledo.edu> <195@sai.UUCP>
Distribution: na
Organization: Dept of Math & Stat, SUNYA, Albany, NY
Lines: 16

In article <195@sai.UUCP>, jte@sai.UUCP (John Evans) writes:
> . . . 
> What is missing, as many has said, is a CLI mode and also the self extracting
> capability of the MSdos version. In fact if they were to provide self
> extracting capability they would have a one up on many Amiga compression
> routines since you do not need a separate program to decompress, you just
> execute the archive and it extracts itself!
The only way that I would execute a self-extracting archive is if
1) I could afford to have an unexpected crash;
2) All of my resources were write protected except for ram:
3) I personally knew the creator of the archive and knew about everyone
   with whom the archive creator had shared software.
It's a dangerous world out there, and there is no point doing unnecessarily
dangerous things.  Self-extracting archives are a safe idea only in utopia
or within a very secure office environment.  They are never a good idea.
 -- Bill