>
>
>Well, it depends on what you mean by `unified.' If you mean a
>database of some sort that's more unified than a bunch of files in
>/etc, one for each application, then no, I don't want to see that.

I wasn't arguing for that. 

>As soon as you get into a unified single database it becomes *very*
>hard to track exactly who has made what changes and where.

Not necessarily. See oracle. Or Sybase.

> And, of
>course, such a thing tends to be difficult to maintain in text
>format anyway. There is, of course, no question of using any other
>format, since that would go right against the unix philosophy and
>make the standard tools we already have (sed, grep, etc.) useless
>for manipulating it.

Possibly. However, distributed adminstrative files modified by
a wad of (possibly broken and easily breakable) programs make
a self maintaining system a little more difficult.

I think what I'm falling into here is grousing about BSD (and
even more so) AT&T unix for what they are. However, they do
have to compete with other systems. And saying that 'things
go against a philosophy ...' etc. is the same old stuff I've
heard for 20 years- all of which I watched with dismay the
Unix folks blow their substantial technical lead (a much
better mousetrap) and lose to far inferior technologies. Feh.

This isn't technical- sorry for driving into the ditch again...