Available: DEC LA120 printer

From: Dan Williams <dan_williams_at_ntlworld.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 20:07:55 2004

>That's actually a really good point. I wonder if Librarians could be
>properly educated about Knoppix (certainly on a library by library basis).
>
>A decent (though not terribly crafty) analogy is that the computer is now
>like a pad of paper and a pen. You come in and use the paper that you
>need, then rip those pages out and take them with you. The pad is then
>made fresh for use for the next person. The computer is now just
>hardware, and soon enough, with cool technology like keychain harddrives
>or what not, you'll bring in your own OS and software tools and modify the
>hardware to your purposes, leaving it as it was for the next user.
>
>
>
The unfortunate thing is that all though everyone on this list would do
that, there was always be the 1% or more that would bring in a cd to do
damage or try and hack in to a system. Easy internet although they don't
have any accessible drives leave usb ports open to anyone their
machines and you can install anything you want there. But to be safe all
their machines reinstall the operating system every time you logoff ,
time consuming - but effective . The point being you could still
download as much bad stuff from the internet as you can put on a cd
anyway but people in libraries etc don't think like that.
The pc's I use at work have their floppy drives disabled in bios but
still boot from cd and that is with over 2,000 remote sites. I know i'm
digressing but some people do worry about stupid things and ignore
things that are dangerous. When they could just protect themselves in
the first place and not worry.

Dan
Received on Thu Apr 22 2004 - 20:07:55 BST