Re: [K12OSN] Machines

Todd O'Bryan (toddobryan@mac.com)
Tue, 12 Nov 2002 22:40:52 -0500 

Oh, yeah...security... :-)

Any idea how long it took my kids to come up with acceptable passwords 
on the new system this year.

For some reason, the same passwords they used in their Windows labs 
last year were just unacceptable...

Did I mention my county sends all of our email passwords in cleartext 
on the web interface (it's a Microsoft Exchange
Server). Not such a big deal, except that the county has roughly 5000 
teachers. I keep hoping some obnoxious kid
(not one of mine, thank you) hacks into the system and sends random 
porn or other offensive messages to
various newspapers, TV stations, and government officials using several 
different principals' (and maybe the
superintendent's) accounts. Maybe somebody would realize this is not a 
good idea.

Todd


On Tuesday, November 12, 2002, at 09:14  PM, Yan Seiner wrote:

> On Út, 2002-11-12 at 20:22, Todd O'Bryan wrote:
>
>> I have:
>> (1) cost of software licenses (free is better than a Windows license
>> any day in my book, especially if we have to upgrade)
>> (2) length of ownership (terminals can last for 5 or 6 years and you
>> can upgrade the whole lab just by upgrading the server(s) )
>> (3) ease of administration (with a single file server, software can be
>> made locally available to all machines at one time, student
>> work can be monitored from a central location, kids can log on to any
>> account from any machine, and I can too, which makes checking
>> and helping easy)
>> (4) experience for the future (I'm going to have them survey various
>> local and nationally recognized colleges. I'm guessing most CS 
>> programs
>> use *nix of some sort as their primary platform, and having the kids
>> learn how to navigate its intricacies in high school is a major leg up
>> that most schools don't have)
>>
>> Did I leave anything important out, or miss an important angle on
>> something I included?
>
>
> Security - few viruses can penetrate a *nix system
> Security - it's easy to isolate users from system commands
> Security - extensive logging of user activities
> Security - it's very difficult for users to install/modify/hack system
> Security - it's easy to keep system up to date for security updates
> (what with autorpm, up2date, and apt-get these days)
> Security - users can install own software without root/admin privileges
>
> Oh, and did I mention security? ;-)
>
> Also, remote access to files.  I could see setting up a wan for each
> user - using something like vtun - and then students could get their
> files using scp over a vpn....  Heck, have the students set up the
> vpn...
>
> --Yan
>
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