[6176] in Release_7.7_team
Re: Apropos Kiosk Mode for Athena 10.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mitchell E Berger)
Thu Jan 22 12:44:38 2009
Message-Id: <200901221743.n0MHhsIa009917@byte-me.mit.edu>
To: Evan Broder <broder@MIT.EDU>
cc: William Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>, release-team@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:20:12 EST."
<49764E1C.8060105@mit.edu>
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 12:43:54 -0500
From: Mitchell E Berger <mitchb@MIT.EDU>
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> William Cattey wrote:
> > all: Let's see if this narrow-function kiosk mode works, and enables
> > us to offer "Register" without getting into the business of giving the
> > world anonymous web access from an Athena 10 prelogin screen.
>
> I think that it would be good for release-team to come up with a
> solution that would actually allow anonymous web access from the login
> screen. My single biggest use case here is CPW - SIPB constantly has
> pre-frosh visiting looking for an opportunity to check their e-mail or
> check into their flight home or print their boarding pass. Can we figure
> out a way for it to be reasonable to have a fully functional browser
> from the login screen?
>
> - Evan
I know I really should have spoken up before the meeting yesterday,
but the minutes make it sound like you're still waiting on feedback.
I'm concerned about this idea... I certainly agree that there are
times at which this would be a generally good thing, like CPW. But
I've seen plenty of non-MIT types wander onto campus and try to use
quickstations (W20, building 11, 16, etc.) only to discover that
they can't make the computers do anything useful. This is a good
thing.
If they suddenly have a truly working browser available without a
login, I think we may well find that we'll be turning campus into a
public internet cafe. I think the main reason we don't see more
of these attempts to use the Athena machines as public internet access
is that most people who are around the area know that it doesn't
work from past experience. Once this feature becomes available, I
think we're going to accumulate more and more people who find out
that they can use the machines to check their mail. I think we'll
start having non-MIT people tailgate into clusters and/or ask for
and receive the combo (this creates an unsafe environment for MIT
community members). And I think the quickstations will become
increasingly unavailable to Athena account holders during the day
as the public is using them.
One possible compromise is to make it configurable whether a machine
allows unrestricted web access, and maybe except during special times of
year like CPW, disallow it on the quickstations. This would allow
SIPB types (and students with guests) to let parents/guests into a
cluster to use a workstation, but make it harder for the vagrant
population to discover the availability of public kiosks by waling up
to the various quickstations in easily accessible areas of campus.
It also may address what you do about personal workstations - if I
had a private machine with Athena 10 installed, I certainly wouldn't
want the world to be able to walk up to it and use it as an internet
cafe. Maybe the answer is simply "private workstations shouldn't
run Athena 10; they should run Debathena which won't do this"?
Mitch
