On Apr 11, 2007, at 8:49 PM, William Squires wrote: > 1) Viruses, trojans, and other malware. > 2) Data security (making sure students don't get access to faculty > info, or even other student's info via hacking, rootkits, etc...) > 3) Network security (if your computer got stolen after the lecture, > would the thieves be able to gain access to the school's network > using your network setting?) > > You can solve #1 with Panda Internet Security, Norton AV, et al... > but you could never be sure that a newly discovered virus wouldn't > sneak onto their network, though the odds are pretty slim... :)
Throwing more software on the computers is one thing to *avoid* when possible, since they interact with each other in ways you may not predict. For example, the AV software that screws around with your email because it acts as a proxy, then your subscription has a problem or a component in the AV software has a problem and email stops coming in. This is in addition to the problems you have with fifty resident programs and services running in the background. > I'm not sure you can resolve their concerns regarding #2, however. > Especially on a Windows network. There are some really clever kiddo's > out there who know a lot more about Windows, networks, MSIE, etc... > than their teachers do, I suspect! In my experience, this is more of a myth than people let on. There are very very very few students who "get" Windows, or computer operating systems, in general. Multithreaded? Whazzat? API? Huh? Students are simply more willing to BREAK school property (or parent's computer) more. They don't care, just clickclickclick. My daughter logged in to the school network recently and her desktop is FILLED with animated crap, snippets of her current movie favorites and Degrassi and "male hottie" icons blinking and flashing and generally making my eyes cross in the attempt to see anything. "What did you do?" "What?" "Your background. How did you enable all of that?" "I don't know..." That's how it is with 90% of the modifications. I don't know, it just happened, I don't remember installing XYZ...computers, to users, are magic. They do things on their own. But the magic is aided by ample clicking on random blinkies, settings, and thingies that pop up during web browsing... Kids don't generally "know" what they're doing. They're just less afraid to click and play with things they don't know or understand. _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode: <http://www.realsoftware.com/support/listmanager/> Search the archives: <http://support.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html>
