Re: Java

[Stephen Masterman <floyd@animals.mit.edu>]

   On Sat, 2 Mar 1996, Stephen Masterman wrote:

   > What is to stop someone from putting a java applet on their home page that,
   > when run, deletes everything it can on the local hard drive?
   > 
   > Steve
   > 

   Java has built in blocks that keeps a program from doing any harm to your 
   system. I suppose someone could still find some way to do something 
   (perhaps crashing your computer), but I don't think anything permanent 
   could be done.

Does this mean that a program written in java can not do file i/o?
Otherwise, how could the VM know that it was doing "harm" as opposed to
some necessary file manipulation?