[ryandrake]

I don't think "everything is a file" is necessarily bad. What's worse is "every application I run has access to every resource that the OS gives my user access to".

Would be nice if the operating system could set up a fresh, temporary "user" for each application installed, and instead run the application as that user, who starts out with no access to computing resources. Maybe some existing systems already sandbox apps into their own unprivileged users, I don't know, but it would probably be very secure.

[Blikkentrekker]

Modern operating systems can; there is quite granular control.

But often when such sandboxes are attempted, it turns out that it often became more complex than originally thought, and applications need many resources which were not originally considered, so they are given those resources, and very often those resources can be used again to construct more resources or otherwise to some measure escape the sandbox.

[SamPatt]

I believe this is how Qubes OS is supposed to operate.