Slashdot Mirror
One Laptop Per Child Security Spec Released
juwiley writes "The One Laptop Per Child project has released information about its advanced security platform called Bitfrost. Could children with a $100 laptop end up with a better security infrastructure than executives using $5000 laptops powered by Vista? 'What's deeply troubling — almost unbelievable — about [Unix style permissions] is that they've remained virtually the only real control mechanism that a user has over her personal documents today...In 1971, this might have been acceptable...We have set out to create a system that is both drastically more secure and provides drastically more usable security than any mainstream system currently on the market.'"
What executive, or any human being do you know is using a $5000 laptop? Even the most hardcore geeks I know spend only up to about $2k for the best laptops.
Sounds like more slashdot FUD to me. It's amazing that even though slashbots rail against FUD when Microsoft does it, they exaggerate and lie with the best of them.
This example on the front page is more evidence of that.
I think it would be a lot easier to have a goal of putting one handcrankable desktop in every village. You could make something heavy, durable and difficult to steal. You may be able to set up a low bandwidth wireless connection so that isolated villages could communicate with the outside world (I'm thinking a low frequency radio signal with a lot of range, but low bandwidth). The BBC/UN/etc could broadcast news and other information on radio frequencies usually reserved for AM/FM radio. We are in such an information glut that we often forget that 2400 baud modems were useful in their day. We expect video, but text can still be very useful. The information technology needs of a Third World village are pretty limited and this would satisfy them. It would be very inexpensive and require little expertise to setup. If it failed, the consequences would be minimal. If it succeeded, then more elaborate steps could be taken.
The problem with the One Child Per Laptop is that it is too ambitous. The United States was quite capable of delivering one laptop per person trapped in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. Would that have solved their problem? No and that's in one of the most advanced countries in the world. If you give a laptop to a kid in Hati/Nigeria/Afghanistan, they are going to get it stolen. And that's just for the raw material of the laptop. Have you seen pictures of Chinese workers stripping old computers for their component materials? And there are countries a lot poorer than China. The idea of setting up reliable public wireless networks in the Third World is absurd. Talking someone with a non-technical university degree through a wireless setup for their house can quite frustrating. And we're supposed to believe that public wireless networks can be setup in the poorest cities in the world without a glitch? And for little money at that.
Why would we be concerned about security anyway? Wow, a poor kid just had his computer hacked and his homework was stolen. Does anyone think that any hacker would bother? It's much more likely that these laptops will be stolen and used for illegal purposes afterward. Unless they have terrible security, it won't be an issue.
People use to leave keys in their car all the time in the olden days.
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world