Slashdot Mirror
Bulletproof Tool For Golden Age Browsing?
An anonymous reader writes "I work in a retirement/assisted living home. Many of the residents had never used the Internet but really find it fascinating once they are given a little training. However, I've stopped introducing it to them because of the drain it puts on me. There are a million and one things that a computer novice can screw up, and I don't have time to solve all of them. These folks don't need any sophistication. and they need only the most basic options. Adjustable text size would be nice, but otherwise — no email, no word processing or editing, no printing — just Internet browsing. This may not seem like a big market, but it's getting bigger every day! Is there an absolutely fool-proof device that can provide this without requiring virus scanners and constant attention?"
Before I dive in, I have to say that I don't think you adequately explained the requirements here. In one part you seem concerned about configuration, in another you seem concerned about security & finally it seems to come down to being too sophisticated for the user.
... well, in some cases degenerated minds. I don't say that to be mean but ironically my four year old cousin and my 80 year old grandfather have some of the same needs when it comes to high tech gadgets.
:). Granted, this may violate your sophistication requirement (and destroy caching), it has the huge benefit of going "Oooops, time to simply reboot."
I'm not sure which one you value the most. But, assuming we need all three, I would suggest something like the OLPC as an everything. Yes, it's geared for children but I guess you're kind of dealing with
One step up from that would be to use a premade Live CD of Ubuntu or Dragonfly or some other easy live Linux OS. You show them how to reboot with it and then they can surf like that. The downside is they can't save anything to disk but the upside is they can't save anything to disk
You know, the last college I attended had labs where you had administrative privileges but they reverted to a system restore point nightly. As a result, there would be screwed up machines but only for a day or week at most.
But, if we assume you don't want to reboot with a live CD of the OLPC or Ubuntu, you could instead simply turn off cookies & turn off javascript. Why? Because javascript is the devil. I think it has some of the most flawed type casting (if I can call it that) out there today. It's not a "type safe" language. And the proliferation of JSON objects in Javascript is frightening. But once you eliminate cookies & javascript, you also eliminate a lot of functionality.
I would suggest giving them the flash plugin (pending system requirements) as it's not so bad anymore. That and they'll probably want to watch YouTube videos of their offspring. I think that is a fair trade being as the latest Flash plugin is fairly secure.
So, I would finally recommend you give them plain jane mozilla firefox with no javascript or cookies & the flash plugin. It probably wouldn't hurt to jack the security meter up to the top and just tell them that sites they can't access are bad sites anyways.
Once again, I could use more requirements before giving you a final assessment but the above two options sound like they would come pretty close to satisfying your (and their) needs. These were made under the assumptions that these people suffer from learning disabilities in their old age and, as a result, you cannot host training sessions whereby you show them safe & secure internet usage.
In the end, I predict that some of the users are going to find a way to make it hard for you and them. I suggest starting with the lightest steps and only progressing forward as necessary.
My work here is dung.
Just use machines with a decent amount of RAM,like a full gig, an optical drive, and one of the mini linux distros like damn small. No hard drive needed. About as simple to do as anything and un-hosable.
Check out the VMWare browser applicance... basically a disposable OS with browser in a vmware image. If it gets broken, just create another copy - no need to worry about the base system getting hammered with crap.
VMWare Player is free - have at it!
5468652047616D65
This seems like a no-brainer to me. You don't even need a window manager, although there are some minimalist ones that will do the trick for things like the preferences window, etc. Firefox has font-size adjustment, so that's not a problem, and you can theme gtk to be high contrast with large font sizes in the menu, etc.
Why make life difficult on yourself?
http://www.opera.com/support/mastering/kiosk/
Designed to be used at public terminals. Bonus points for installing it on Linux.
Software is the answer. http://pcwin.com/popular/Lock_xp_kiosk-1.htm Or the Microsoft way http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555463/en-us
Just reduce the resoultion to 800x600 or 1024x768. That is hands down the simplest, easiest way to make images and text larger on screen.
- Gentoo Linux(minimum system means less things can be broken and less security updates required)
- ssh (for remote administration)
- xorg
- Firefox( I think there is a kiosk mode addon, and you'll have to install security updates every couple of weeks)
- dwm (remove the status bar and add rules to tag all firefox window the same)
and run it all as a user with only read/write permission to firefox's cache.
You can't disable javascript because so many websites stupidly depend on it.
I've seen some sites that don't display anything if javascript is disabled.
- Jesse McNelis
...and that is all I have to say about that.
http://jessta.id.au
Firefox in kiosk mode, configured as your X session (i.e. the app that is executed by X when it starts up), on an X server that is reloaded automatically, with all the VTs disabled, is apparently pretty bulletproof in practice.
I know, gonna get ripped, but what the hell...
set up a pretty decent single computer (running linux of course) and hook several terminals to it. have them either boot up like LTSP or do a small install and get X remotely. they could log in and you can set up what apps they have access to. if they aren'[t computer literate, they won't know firefox on linux from firefox on XP. and it's a bit safer, I'd wager.
or, remoce (or just unplug) the hard drives and give them boto cd's like ubuntu. or just leve the cd's in the drive. you can make a custom ubuntu cd which has only basic browsing, plus can already be set up for proxies, etc.
either way, it's gonna be hard to mess up the system. that's my $0.02. more work up front, far less down the road.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
If you hide the Navigation Toolbar (right click anywhere on toolbar, uncheck Navigation Toolbar) the only interface outside of the web page itself is the tab toolbar. Nothing to mess up there (:
I believe someone already has done something like this with Linux, called "Cl33n Linux" http://cl33n.com/index.html It allows browsing and only uses Web Applications and Web Mail if the user wants to do some other type of work. Although it doesn't include Flash, you might be able to include that in a variation. Then install it in kiosks. Hope this helps you in your search. The only other options would be Internet Appliances, such as Compaq's old IA or WebTV.
Run Mac OSX. set it to the simple finder mode. There you can lock out all applicatons you don't want them to have. They cannot edit the icons in the dock so what they see is what they get (and they can't accidentally delete them either). And finally if ALL you really want is Browser, you can put it in kiosk mode and even have it boot that way. SO all it is is a browser, up and running when you snap on the machine.
Now if you are budget minded you could do the same with Linux. Use a Live CD, configure it to boot to a browser. Remove all the other icons and don't give them permission to the apps. One of the very easiest ones to configure this way is DSL linux which has the benefit of booting very very very fast from CD and running on old, memory starved hardware, and being parcimonous about screen realestate. However, for you i'd recomend DSL-N (not DSL) as that is more modern.
If you are not budget minded, it would be smarter to go with the mac. several reasons
1) lots of plugins will be easier to use. likepdf support in the browser itself, (flash quicktime silverlight....)
2) some folks there might want a real computer too. The liveCD linux boot will be constraining. Macs, have faster user switching so you can corral the people who need the simple finder but let other use it in advanced mode.
3) Eventually they may want to add a few more apps. maybe they want for example to have podcasts. google earth. Watch DVDs
4) you can keep a mac secure without going crazy. You can even firmware lock it to keep the wiseguys at bay.
5) it's easier to attach portable disks, second or external screens, cameras, etc... to the mac. No sys admin needed.
6) If you need support you can call apple and so can they if you are not around.
7) For desktops there are no cables and they are easy to adjust to viewing angles (like for a wheel chair)
8) easier to use applications, should they want them.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
As every poster has pointed out, you can rock-solid a computer with Kiosk modes, virtual machines, etc, etc. But if you're going to put a tool like the Internet into the hands of (shall we say) "unskilled" users, you have a responsibility to protect them from the baddies.
Before anyone gets on the computer for the first time, drill some basic saftey tips into them. Do not give out passwords. Do not give out personal data. Do not give out financial data. Not to anyone, no matter how legit it looks. For many, this is probably their first experience on the internet. You cannot take for granted that they have been ingrained with The Basics. They don't know about Phishing. They don't know people can make a website that looks exactly like their banks' website. They don't know about Nigeran princes. Their bases have only every belonged to them.
Print out some Golden Rules, and post them in the computer lab/common area/whatever. If the computers are going to be in the resident's apartments, make sure you print out something that can be stuck to the monitory.
Send them out to play, but not in traffic.
You can do some things behind the scenes as well. Route everything through a gateway you control. Make sure you have some good security on it. Go grab PeerGuardian's list, and maybe mvps.org's host file. Keep it up to date so that it blocks all the well known phishing sites. Concider blocking any outbound request for an IP address (rather than an URL). Run a mail server with a kickass spam filter, and give them all their own email boxes. (grandpaAbe@shadyacres.com). It also makes it easier to whitelist their friends&family email addresses to let legit attachments through.
Try running guided tours of the Internet. Don't just pluck them down and say "here you go". Show them good places to go, and how to get there. News sites. Wikipedia. National Geographic's site. Typing Tutor sites. Maybe some instructional courses: How to use Flickr to view and post family albums. How to edit a Wikipedia article about the hometown they grew up in (and know everything about... preserve the knowledge!)
Do this right, and not only will you have safe comptuers-- but you'll also have safe, happy, productive users.
UTF-8: There and Back Again
There is an easier way to do it with Linux than live CD. Much higher performance as well.
Start with a full install of Debian or Ubuntu or any other distribution that strictly complies to the fs standard and does not write into /usr. Build it with separate /,/var,usr and use tmpfs /tmp /var/tmp. Install all necessary plugins. Once you are happy with the result switch /usr to read-only mode. Do not give them a root password and provide sudo instructions for the visiting grandchildren if the golden age customer asks them to install something in addition.
This has been tested on a Golden Age customer (my mom) and this setup is the first machine she has had so far that does not require any maintenance. It just works regardless of powercuts, cats sleeping on the keyboard, etc. She had a windows before that and it got trojaned with a dialer hijacker which clocked her an insane phone bill. It also worked 10% of the time. During the rest it was suffering from various windowsy degenerative diseases. Prior to that she had a linux with a normal read-write install and she successfully managed to f*** it up by pressing the power button during fsck a couple of times.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Easy, there is specialised Web kiosk software that is free and easy to get and use - http://webconverger.com/
http://webconverger.com/ does just that and a bit more to ensure a functional and safe web kiosk experience.
If you are a serious windows user and you don't want to go the Linux or OSX route try XP Embedded (XPE). I have played with XP Embedded and it has a nice feature where you can lock the hard drive (or flash card). When a user boots all the temporary stuff is created in a RAMDrive. You can install standard software such as Firefox or some office software and then lock any further changes. People can keep their documents etc on a USB stick. When the PC is rebooted then it reverts back to the locked down version. There is even a hibernate once a resume many feature where the OS is loaded from a hibernate image which is extremely fast.
In an ideal word Linux would be the best bet but XPE has its benefits if you are from a windows background.