M Harris wrote: > On Monday 26 February 2007 01:11, John Andersen wrote: > >> What security expert sits a child at the console and then in the same >> breath preaches security as a reason to inconvenience the vast majority >> of users? >> > I'll give you another real world scenario (more relevant) that I > experienced > at a college campus library a year and a half ago. > > Several of us were in the library one Thursday evening doing some late > research and finishing up on a couple of critical papers. I had requested > several journal articles via inter library loan and my laptop was in the > process of downloading the fifth of six large journal faxes. Two other > machines were in the process of the same sort of activity and one or two more > were idle. In strolls the campus clown... who thought it might be funny (as > he sailed through the library) to reach out and close the lids of all the > laptops he could reach as he progressed between the tables. Most of the > machines lost their connection and suspended... a couple of them > hibernated--- all of them except mine... which kept right on downloading the > last of the journal articles I desperately needed. Of course the other guys > were able to get their articles too... eventually... after their machines > woke up, reestablished the connection to campus... and then *restarted* their > downloads. It wasn't funny, and it was avoidable. The moral... my colleagues > *convenienced* themselves into an arbitrary highly inconvenient and > uncontrolled shutdown because they thought nobody would ever close the lid of > their highly personal computer except themselves... ooops. > > And by the way... I can suspend my laptop when I want to in about, oh, > five > seconds by pressing an icon and entering a password... so what? The point is > not to preach inconvenience, the point is to encourage new folks to the *nix > OS to work within the security benefits of the system... instead of > constantly trying to circumvent them... especially because working within the > security constaints of the system is soooo easy... sudo, su -, etc. > Why in the world would anyone set their, often times very expensive, laptop down on a table and leave it unattended?
Under NO circumstances would I EVER leave my poor little Gateway sitting anywhere in a public place I, or my spouse, wasn't in the immediate vicinity. It's not the newest or most wizbang little computer but it is VERY important, and personal, to me. It would almost be like leaving your wallet just sitting on a table somewhere. I'm sorry, but I see the above scenario as an I D Ten T error. Everyone deserved exactly what they got. -- (o:]>*HUGGLES*<[:o) Billie Walsh The three best words in the English Language: "I LOVE YOU" Pass them on! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
