On Wed, 8 Mar 2000, Samuel W. Heywood wrote:
> On Wed, 8 Mar 2000 16:15:39 +0100 (CET), Bagnoli Franco wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> > is it possible to customize the behavior of the suite (maybe in the
> > commercial version?) I need to eliminate most of things that can
> > allow people to destroy the kiosk !!!
>
> <snip>
>
> Hello:
>
> If you have to contend with a threat of vandalism, then it doesn't matter
> what kind of PC or operating system or software you are running. To protect
> a publicly-accessible computer from a person inclined to do physically
> destructive things, then it would seem that your only option would be to
> encase your kiosk with steel and provide a very tough membrane type keypad
> and also install video cameras, like the banks do with their ATM machines.
>
> A great advantage of using Arachne at a public kiosk is that it will run
> very well on an inexpensive vintage PC. If someone does vandalize the kiosk,
> then the damages incurred would not be as great as you would otherwise suffer
> by setting up a modern pentium running the latest Windows software.
You touched the point. At present we have some high-tech kiosks with touch
screen, fast pentiums and specialized software (based on a combination of
internet explorer and visual basic). Apart from the cost (which is
also important: due to limited budget of our public university, we have to
choose between 10 such high-tech kiosks or 100 (maybe 1000?) low-end
arachne ones -- we have 5000 students!), they suffer alternatively from
being out of service or hackerized (say installing irc servers).
Arachne could solve some of these problems, but I have to avoid for
instance exiting to dos pressing the esc key, and maybe preventing access
to the command.com shell. I have some ideas, but I would like to know if
anybody has already considered the question.
Franco Bagnoli
Dipartimento di Matematica Applicata "G. Sansone"
Universita' di Firenze, Via S. Marta, 3 I-50139 Firenze, Italy
tel. +39 0554796422, fax: +39 055471787
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
