Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!ucsfcgl!cca.ucsf.edu!wet!epsilon
From: epsilon@wet.UUCP (Eric P. Scott)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Student's view of NeXT marketing pl
Summary: Misguided "security" "features" are the problem
Message-ID: <420@wet.UUCP>
Date: 16 Aug 89 07:34:27 GMT
References: <4866@tank.uchicago.edu> <116900006@p.cs.uiuc.edu>  <416@wet.UUCP> 
Reply-To: epsilon@wet.UUCP (Eric P. Scott)
Organization: Wetware Diversions, San Francisco
Lines: 38

In article  J Greely  writes:
>In article <416@wet.UUCP> epsilon@wet.UUCP (Eric P. Scott) writes:
>>Our campus of "Enormous State University" has a required
>>Operating Systems class for most Computer Science majors that
>>includes making bootable systems as a graded project.
>
>First things first.  Do you mean writing an OS, such as Xinu, or does
>"making bootable systems" mean something different?  Not sure what you
>want, so I can't tell you exactly what I think of using a NeXT for it.

Writing *small* memory-only systems.  Let's say, no I/O other
than a timer and a serial port.  Maybe two serial ports and a
round-robin scheduler.  Very basic stuff.  File system
implementation is left to the graduate level.

>                                         The ROM changes in 1.0 allow
>the administrator of a machine to prevent unauthorized individuals
>from doing interesting things like changing the boot device (which is
>actually one of the least interesting things you can do from the
>monitor).  They do not disable booting from OD, they allow you to
>control it.

Giving our users root access is just not a substantial risk.  If
anyone can "lock" an otherwise accessible cube so that no one
else can use it ... that is a SERIOUS threat.  It's near-
impossible to trace, and could be difficult to correct.

Per-system passwords don't work for us, only per-user do, and not
always that well.  Computer "security" measures invariably cause
more inconvenience to legitimate users than they "protect"
anything.  We use physical (usually non-electronic) approaches.
#1 concern is theft--we've had a lot of hardware "walk."

There is nothing special about computers.  They are pieces of
laboratory equipment, can be secured as any other laboratory
equipment, and abusers can be disciplined as in any other
laboratory environment.
					-=EPS=-