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Ask Slashdot: Making a Tablet Run Only One Application?
An anonymous reader asks "I'm working for a medical centre who want to make a tablet with various videos and webpages about smoking cessation available in their waiting room. The tablet can't access the Internet because of security policies. I'm planning to use a local server with copies of the (Creative Commons) videos and pages accessed through local webpages using the tablet's browser. How can I make only the browser be available to the tablet users? Ideas? Suggestions?"
Easy if the tablet runs Windows or Linux. Much harder on other platforms. Maybe you should narrow the problem domain.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Put it on a VLAN, and Make HTTP(S) Go straight to the web server and only the web server. There are portal WAPs that do just that. Securing the tablet from running anything else would be as easy as installing a custom version of CyanogenMod or similar. Heck even Apple might be able to make an iPad that did just that.
I'd also tether the thing to the room, or it will walk away.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
If using Android: create a replacement launcher app, set your new app as the default launcher, and... profit?
I mean seriously - the first time someone thinks they can walk out the door with the tablet, it's gone. Don't think it wouldn't happen.
Why not instead just make a dvd with those videos and print out the text of the websites? You could have a small tv hooked up to a dvd player, have the dvd available to those interested, etc....
It wouldn't be as convenient to steal, and it is a technically easier way to set something like this up. Why are you going to such great lengths to make something more complicated than necessary?
Absolutely. The solutions is a cheap PC running windows, which can easily be configured to allow one and only one app to run at login, and to log off if the application is closed.
Please stop using technology for the sake of technology to increase my already outrageous healthcare costs.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os
The only app that runs is the browser, it is based on gentoo so you can install pam modules to meet your site requirements needs (ldap, kerberos, etc),
And it is designed so you can easily force an enterprise wide os refresh whenever you need/want.
Work bio at MMWD
If the hospital management is being treated well by the tablet manufacturer, then why isn't the tablet manufacturer helping with a solution to lock down the tablet? Surely of anyone they should know best how to lock there own tablets down.
Delete the other applications? Was that the answer?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Smokers pay taxes. Just make sure those taxes help subsidize healthcare for others, and while you're at it, deny them benefits based on their self abusive behavior. Win Win.
That's they way healthcare is heading anyhow.
I don't think that anyone debates how easy it is to steal a bunch of pamphlets. I think it's more about the price of losing a bunch of pamphlets versus losing a tablet.
Plus, it's healthcare; they have money to burn.
Ahh, another "Only in America" quote...
...he wants a digital photo frame with Wifi
and for security... unplug the dam server from the internet! if it's only serving local file then no bloooooody net access is required. ^_^
Simples!!!
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
Is there a reason your organization wants this to be easy-to-steal-and-expensive tablets?
The hospital management is being treated well by the tablet manufacturer, who would very much like this hospital to become the envy of the `non-tablet' hospitals. Plus, it's healthcare; they have money to burn.
The reason the tablet manufacturer is throwing money/product at the hospital is because they know they don't have the right solution but want you to shoehorn it in anyway. Sometimes free is not the best solution.
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
Glass and plastic are going to hold a lot less disease than the couch you would be sitting on.
Ou mean like copying the video to an SD card and set up a user with only execute permissions to one file on the system
.... Nah that would never work.
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
Because these discussions are much like talking to whining women: They are not looking for answers, but just to have your attention and sympathy.