Re: Library Computers and Such.

On Sun, 26 Aug 2007 06:20:19 -0400, David G. Bell wrote
(in article <20070826.1020.108474snz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>):

On Saturday, in article <87y7fzw9ii.fsf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
spcoltri@xxxxxxxx "Steve Coltrin" wrote:

begin fnord
J.J. O'Shea <try.not.to@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

On Sat, 25 Aug 2007 00:34:14 -0400, Steve Coltrin wrote
(in article <871wdsp709.fsf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>):


Do their computers have USB ports where you can reach them? They
may be cool with you bringing your own trackball.


It's normal to disable such items on public computers. IT security would
have
kittens at the thought of John Public being able to attach random devices
to
_their_ machines.

So I would have thought, but I saw a sign at my library of second choice
saying "our computers don't have CD drives; use floppies or USB drives".

It occurs to me that there could be a driver for a generic USB drive
installed, and plug-and-play disabled so that other USB hardware was
locked out.

It's much easier to simply kill USB in the BIOS.


A USB Drive and a floppy are the same class of risk and function, and
without them a public access computer might be of little use.

I've seen public-access machines which had either no floppy drive in the
first place, or a hole where the floppy drive once was, or someone had gone
to the trouble of getting one of those little gadgets that you can install in
the floppy drive and lock it. All such machines had USB killed in the BIOS
(except the Macs, which of course had no BIOS; Macs which had floppies tended
to not have USB. Macs with USB tended to have something physically blocking
the port.) All of this was done _precisely_ to _prevent_ people from saving
data from that machine to something which could be carried away.


--
email to oshea dot j dot j at gmail dot com.

.

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