biggysmall: That's how it's supposed to work in most *nix systems. However, for Cocktail to do its advertised tweaking, those permissions would have to be unset. Still, it's always bothered me that the "First Real *nix For Users" wouldn't chown all system-critical files to root and set the sticky bit and the immutable bit on them.
I guess that's an exercise to be left to the security-conscious reader. But, as was Matthew's original point: why can't these kinds of protection checks be built into Installer.app and such substructures?
Actually, a point of semantics:
"By the way the u s r in /usr stands for Unix System Resources"
That's a backronym. It actually was, at one point, the home folder (/usr/home in Solaris & FreeBSD [/home in FBSD symlinks to this], /usr/people in IRIX, and so forth). It is a fairly novice mistake to make, since historically, it was used for user [read: not administrator] resources. It certainly has changed meaning over time, but there's no reason to for the majority of the responses to be so condescending. That was the original intent, so it's no surprise a novice would see that. Actually, if we're going to harp on current definitions, why not go with what most FOSS systems (*BSD, Linux) have done and adopted /home instead? "Home" is sufficiently different than /usr. "Users" is not.
I think Beeblebrox has sufficiently nailed the point. All systems have their flaws. I consider a root-level directory something that, even if visible, should not be so easily deleted by an underprivileged user (sticky issues with write permissions occur in implementation, but it's possible). This really is no different than the "Show files" nagscreen you initially run into on Windows when attempting to go into C:\Windows\system32. Obscurity is not a good practice, whether it be in security or in stability, and those who worship at the Altar of Cupertino should recognize when these things happen and demand better. You certainly pay enough for it.
And They Said the Mac Was Intuitive
And They Said the Mac Was Intuitive