Re: Cerebro v3.0: File sharing and buddy management made easy!
(sugar changed to sugar-devel) 2009/1/9 Polychronis Ypodimatopoulos ypo...@gmail.com: Want to exchange files between your desktop and your XO laptop? It can't get any easier! In the latest version of Cerebro (currently 3.0.3) you will find simplified file sharing and buddy management. Just click on the buddy you want to send a file to and select a file to send! Screenshots are here: http://cerebro.mit.edu/index.php/Documentation#Example_GUI If you are a developer, there is detailed tutorial to do file sharing from Python prompt (!) here: http://cerebro.mit.edu/index.php/Documentation#Buddy_management Enjoy Pol This is really fantastic! :-) Has anybody gotten the GUI to run...I get an error when I try to run the GUI. Anybody who has tried the GUI, please share your steps and results. thanks! Arjun -- Polychronis Ypodimatopoulos Graduate student Viral Communications MIT Media Lab Tel: +1 (617) 459-6058 http://www.mit.edu/~ypod/ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Arjun Sarwal ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: child protection + anti-cheating
Hi Carlos, On 11.01.2009 05:25, Chris Ball wrote: How do we protect children from accessing porn or other questionable content, and how do we prevent malicious persons from communicating with kids, like say, child predators in IRC? You can't prevent this, if you also want to provide Internet access. Absolutely agreed. By the way, a recent sociological study found out that children with access to unmonitored internet chat are less is danger of becoming victims of child predators. Although that sounds strange at first, it it obvious once you consider the fear of real-world child predators that someone might become aware of what they do. The risk that children tell their online friends about such predatory behaviour works as a pretty effective deterrent for real-world predators (which are a much bigger group than online predators). I can try to dig up that study if you need it for communication with officials. How do we prevent cheating between students? You can't prevent this. Like instant messaging each other during quizzes? The easiest way would be to have the teacher stand at the back of the class looking for anyone doing so. If network access is not needed during the quiz, you could also [...] turns off the wireless radio That would work, but kids are smart enough to turn wireless back on and make the LED light ineffective (with paint/mud). And even if you can prevent that, the kids can use the camera to look back over their shoulder and check whether someone is watching them and cheat by conventional means. Besides that, there's always the possibility of storing a cheat sheet on the laptop itself. Good luck trying to find that. A solution for that is to unpredictably exchange laptops between kids directly before a test, but it runs against the ownership paradigm. Someone with enough time and/or money can always cheat. In many countries, kids have some free time and learning to cheat is probably the topic with the strongest motivation. You can't prevent cheating, but you can make it difficult enough that most kids won't bother. Regards, Carl-Daniel -- http://www.hailfinger.org/ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: child protection + anti-cheating
On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 11:25 PM, Chris Ball c...@laptop.org wrote: Hi Carlos, I hope you don't mind if I give some blunt/opinionated answers: How do we protect children from accessing porn or other questionable content, and how do we prevent malicious persons from communicating with kids, like say, child predators in IRC? You can't prevent this, if you also want to provide Internet access. Do we have mechanisms in place for those or best practices to address these concerns? dansguardian and squidguard are free pieces of software that attempt to detect questionable content; they are often installed by schools. You could ask questions about these on the school server-devel list. I think of the filtering system like a fence around the school playground. In an urban environment would anyone argue there shouldn't be a fence? For me the target range for Sugar is 3-12. Just like the fence around the playground at 3, its actually reasonably secure and there is an expectation that the kid will actually always stay inside the fence. By 12 its a symbol that tells the child this is a safe place to play, if you walk out the gate be more careful. People don't put up barbed wire and locks on the gate just because a 12 year old might walk out of the school yard at recess. But the fence is still an important part of saying this is school and child friendly, this is outside school and the world of adults. My son is 16 and attends a public school and over the last couple years teachers have been trying to use technology more. He tells the story of a history teacher trying to show images and by accident running across a pornographic image during search despite the schools blocking software. Not a naked statue, real modern pornography that just happened to show up under the search terms. Were these teenagers scared for life? I doubt it. But it was slightly disruptive and not a pleasant technology use experience for the teacher. Providing an environment where students and teachers can find and use appropriate materials without wandering unintentionally into inappropriate materials is a very valid and mostly achievable technical goal for us. Providing an inescapable environment where the budding young hacker is prevented from ever escaping into the uncensored internet from any location is probably neither moral nor achievable. The good news is our competition can't do it either. Cheers, Caroline ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: child protection + anti-cheating
cjb wrote: I hope you don't mind if I give some blunt/opinionated answers: How do we protect children from accessing porn or other questionable content, and how do we prevent malicious persons from communicating with kids, like say, child predators in IRC? You can't prevent this, if you also want to provide Internet access. You definitely can w/ dansguardian can filter questionable content. It can be quite effective. It does register a lot of false positives unfortunately. Dansguardian is quite tunable. DG will still allow access to most sites on the Internet. We use it in my office and it is quite effective if sometimes annoying. There are probably ways u can block kids from accessing particular irc svcs. It is interesting to me that on the #olenepal irc channel we have to refrain from bad language and adult subjects because sometimes kids from our schools come onto the channel. I really hope they are not accessing the #molestme or #child_predators_here channels but I may have to deal w/ this sooner rather than later. From a moral perspective, parents and schools have every right to screen what content their 8 year-olds have access to. There is some highly, highly toxic stuff on the Internet. We all like to talk about freedom but would you let your 6 year old daughter walk around a strip club by herself? probably not. Do we have mechanisms in place for those or best practices to address these concerns? dansguardian and squidguard are free pieces of software that attempt to detect questionable content; they are often installed by schools. You could ask questions about these on the school server-devel list. How do we prevent cheating between students? You can't prevent this. I am inclined to agree w/ cjb on this, at least in the short term. In the long-term there could be a lot of different solutions Like instant messaging each other during quizzes? The easiest way would be to have the teacher stand at the back of the class looking for anyone doing so. If network access is not needed during the quiz, you could also tell the children to turn on Extreme Power Management in 8.2.0 (which turns off the wireless radio), and then the green wireless LED lights on the front of the XOs should remain visibly off for the duration of the quiz. Hope this helps, - Chris. -- Chris Ball c...@laptop.org -- Message: 8 Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2009 23:56:53 -0500 From: Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com Subject: Re: child protection + anti-cheating To: Chris Ball c...@laptop.org Cc: devel@lists.laptop.org, Carlos Nazareno object...@gmail.com Message-ID: 46a038f90901102056j1d907d3fi3979509b4efdd...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 11:25 PM, Chris Ball c...@laptop.org wrote: How do we prevent cheating between students? You can't prevent this. Exactly. I've been working with online tools for education for ~8 years now, and it's interesting to note - paper+pen technology does not prevent cheating either. A few times I've been confronted with this cannot possibly be used in education until there is no way of cheating with it, ignoring that books, pen and paper are *great* for cheating. And also for smuggling questionable printed materials into school too -- books and folders can hide magazines with porn or political manifestos. Ban paper, put anyone who owns a printer in jail :-) cheers, martin -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff -- Message: 9 Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2009 18:45:04 +0530 From: Arjun Sarwal ar...@laptop.org Subject: Re: Cerebro v3.0: File sharing and buddy management made easy! To: Polychronis Ypodimatopoulos ypo...@gmail.com Cc: Sugar Devel sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org, vi...@media.mit.edu,OLPC Developer's List de...@laptop.org Message-ID: dc942fa10901110515m42409c53sfc4eabc9f1378...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 (sugar changed to sugar-devel) 2009/1/9 Polychronis Ypodimatopoulos ypo...@gmail.com: Want to exchange files between your desktop and your XO laptop? It can't get any easier! In the latest version of Cerebro (currently 3.0.3) you will find simplified file sharing and buddy management. Just click on the buddy you want to send a file to and select a file to send! Screenshots are here: http://cerebro.mit.edu/index.php/Documentation#Example_GUI If you are a developer, there is detailed tutorial to do file sharing from Python prompt (!) here: http://cerebro.mit.edu/index.php/Documentation#Buddy_management Enjoy Pol This is really fantastic! :-) Has anybody gotten the GUI to
Re: child protection + anti-cheating
On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 11:43 AM, Bryan Berry bryan.be...@gmail.com wrote: cjb wrote: I hope you don't mind if I give some blunt/opinionated answers: How do we protect children from accessing porn or other questionable content, and how do we prevent malicious persons from communicating with kids, like say, child predators in IRC? You can't prevent this, if you also want to provide Internet access. You definitely can w/ dansguardian can filter questionable content. It can be quite effective. It does register a lot of false positives unfortunately. Dansguardian is quite tunable. DG will still allow access to most sites on the Internet. We use it in my office and it is quite effective if sometimes annoying. Long term it would be interesting to integrate one of the open source filtering solutions with Moodle so that the teacher could put urls into a Moodle class/group and the students in that group would automatically have that site white listed. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Help me developing for Sugar
Hello My suggestion is that you try working with Ubuntu and install the sugar packages, they are pretty decent for developing.. Also you can check the new Activity team at sugar labs for resources. http://sugarlabs.org/go/ActivityTeam Hope this helps. Rafael Ortiz On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 6:44 AM, master puppetz dec...@yahoo.com wrote: Hi, My name is Lazim and I'm a student from Malaysia. I am new in open source especially in Sugar development. Regard to my proposal at projectdb, I'd like to develop an e-mail client called SugarMail. I'm not sure whether SugarMail is possible to be developed or not, but my proposal is to make SugarMail to be an e-mail client that don't required mail server for sending e-mail among XO users. It sound ridiculous, but it's not imposible. The problem is I don't have enough knowledge about developing a software for Sugar and currently I still don't receive my requested XO laptop for me to figure out. I've run the Sugar through emulation under the qemu but my laptop condition not very good at running 2 operating system simultaneously. I would like to ask for anyone that would help me be my mentor on developing this SugarMail. I also appreciate if anybody have any suggestion on how to develop the SugarMail under Windows environment as I'm using Windows XP on my laptop right now. Lazim, SugarMail, http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Projects/SugarMail OLPC Malaysia, http://olpcmalaysia.blogspot.com Lazim, http://www.mohdlazim.com ___ Sugar-devel mailing list sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Help me developing for Sugar
[adding sugar-de...@sugarlabs.org to cc] On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 12:44, master puppetz dec...@yahoo.com wrote: Hi, My name is Lazim and I'm a student from Malaysia. I am new in open source especially in Sugar development. Regard to my proposal at projectdb, I'd like to develop an e-mail client called SugarMail. I'm not sure whether SugarMail is possible to be developed or not, but my proposal is to make SugarMail to be an e-mail client that don't required mail server for sending e-mail among XO users. It sound ridiculous, but it's not imposible. Sounds interesting. The problem is I don't have enough knowledge about developing a software for Sugar and currently I still don't receive my requested XO laptop for me to figure out. I've run the Sugar through emulation under the qemu but my laptop condition not very good at running 2 operating system simultaneously. The activity team is being created as we talk, and I expect that tutorials, welcome irc sessions, etc will be prepared soon. I hope you will enjoy them and look forward seeing how you develop your activity. http://sugarlabs.org/go/ActivityTeam I would like to ask for anyone that would help me be my mentor on developing this SugarMail. I also appreciate if anybody have any suggestion on how to develop the SugarMail under Windows environment as I'm using Windows XP on my laptop right now. Easy way to install ubuntu in windows: http://wubi-installer.org/ Regards, Tomeu Lazim, SugarMail, http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Projects/SugarMail OLPC Malaysia, http://olpcmalaysia.blogspot.com Lazim, http://www.mohdlazim.com ___ Sugar-devel mailing list sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Fedora Desktop on XO
Am Dienstag, den 06.01.2009, 17:31 -0500 schrieb Erik Garrison: On Tue, Jan 06, 2009 at 10:54:24PM +0100, Bert Freudenberg wrote: On 06.01.2009, at 22:34, Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote: Carlos Nazareno wrote: Guys, maybe this can help. I whipped up a flash CPU benchmarking tool Currently, we are assuming that the issue will be RAM consumption, not CPU. I personally have no reason to expect either system to behave differently in terms of background CPU overhead or cost of common operations. At 25c3 I bumped into a guy from LXDE. It's said to be a lot lighter on resources than even XFCE. Unfortunately I did not stay long enough to see it run on the XO, but maybe someone else did already? Yes. AFAICS it runs nice and very fast, although/because it is not feature complete as Gnome or Xfce. My impression from playing around with it is that it's significantly less polished than Gnome or XFCE. Polish takes time, users, and development... it just seems that LXDE hasn't had enough yet. You can just look at the age of the projects: GNOME 1999-03-03 (initial release) XFCE 1996 (project start date) LXDE 2006 (initial release) This is only partly true since a lot of the LXDE components are older, for example lxpanel, pcmanfm and openbox. [dates pulled from Wikipedia] As far as I know all these projects have been under development continuously since their inception. Two, GNOME and XFCE, have had extremely large user bases. It does not seem that LXDE has. The Xfce user base is not that large as one might think. On the other hand LXDE is very popular in Asia, for example in Taiwan. In Brasil several vendors offer netbooks with LXDE and Mandriva preinstalled. Erik Regards, Christoph (Fedora package maintainer for both Xfce and LXDE) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
New joyride build 2624
http://xs-dev.laptop.org/~cscott/olpc/streams/joyride/build2624 Changes in build 2624 from build: 2623 Size delta: 0.00M -cerebro 3.0.4-1.olpc3 +cerebro 3.0.5-1.olpc3 --- Changes for cerebro 3.0.5-1.olpc3 from 3.0.4-1.olpc3 --- + 3.0.5: Fixed options in initscript -- This mail was automatically generated See http://dev.laptop.org/~rwh/announcer/joyride-pkgs.html for aggregate logs See http://dev.laptop.org/~rwh/announcer/joyride_vs_update1.html for a comparison ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: child protection + anti-cheating
Like instant messaging each other during quizzes? The easiest way would be to have the teacher stand at the back of the class looking for anyone doing so. If network access is not needed during the quiz, you could also tell the children to turn on Extreme Power Management in 8.2.0 better yet, tell them to put it away. Since when is more equipment then a pencil and a sheet of paper necessary for a school quiz?? JK ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Help me developing for Sugar
Hi, My name is Lazim and I'm a student from Malaysia. I am new in open source especially in Sugar development. Regard to my proposal at projectdb, I'd like to develop an e-mail client called SugarMail. I'm not sure whether SugarMail is possible to be developed or not, but my proposal is to make SugarMail to be an e-mail client that don't required mail server for sending e-mail among XO users. It sound ridiculous, but it's not imposible. The problem is I don't have enough knowledge about developing a software for Sugar and currently I still don't receive my requested XO laptop for me to figure out. I've run the Sugar through emulation under the qemu but my laptop condition not very good at running 2 operating system simultaneously. I would like to ask for anyone that would help me be my mentor on developing this SugarMail. I also appreciate if anybody have any suggestion on how to develop the SugarMail under Windows environment as I'm using Windows XP on my laptop right now. Lazim, SugarMail, http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Projects/SugarMail OLPC Malaysia, http://olpcmalaysia.blogspot.com Lazim, http://www.mohdlazim.com ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: anti-cheating
Oh sorry, correction, please scratch completely eliminate cheating as kids are very smart and can always find a way ;P - in a way, maybe a form of this that is possitively channeled should be encouraged in order to nurture lateral thinking? Like MacGyver competitions? Part of the reason why there's a lot of mess around right now is that there's not enough thinking out of the box and typical systems oft lazily foster the production of sheep :-/ Re: Browser-based testing system, one possiblity is to give time limits on each section which are tight enough that students will not be able to pass answers to each other since they're randomly given different problem sets + time limit. Since time pressure cannot always be applicable or appropriate though, the randomization of questions and answers will at the very list least make cheating harder. Best, -Naz -- Carlos Nazareno http://twitter.com/naz404 http://www.object404.com -- interactive media specialist zen graffiti studios http://www.zengraffiti.com -- User Group Manager Phlashers: Philippine Flash ActionScripters Adobe Flash/Flex User Group http://www.phlashers.com -- if you don't like the way the world is running, then change it instead of just complaining. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
administrative security
Hi guys. Just a quick question: I haven't tinkered with the XO on an admin level, and it's something I don't plan to do as it's not my forte, but are mechanisms in place to prevent students from installing unauthorized apps, or malware? Basically stuff that will destabilize their productivity? (malware - linux is not a silver bullet for security, simplest point of failure is always peopleware - social engineering. It's so much easier to hack and program people than inorganic machines.) Anyway, default installation of XO OS gives easy access to admin controls. This just a G1G1 thing, or is this something that's disabled by default? Best, -Naz -- Carlos Nazareno http://twitter.com/naz404 http://www.object404.com -- interactive media specialist zen graffiti studios http://www.zengraffiti.com -- User Group Manager Phlashers: Philippine Flash ActionScripters Adobe Flash/Flex User Group http://www.phlashers.com -- if you don't like the way the world is running, then change it instead of just complaining. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: administrative security
Physical access to the system gives full access, especially once the developer key is obtained, to install applications that their teachers or government had not considered. The system considers the user to be the authorisation authority. If specific applications are not welcome in a deployment, they should be checked for. (At my primary school it became illegal to use green or red pens. But they could never stop us, we just bought them from shops or each other.) -- James Cameronmailto:qu...@us.netrek.org http://quozl.netrek.org/ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: anti-cheating
On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 10:35 PM, Carlos Nazareno object...@gmail.com wrote: I've thought of a good method to do quizzes and eliminate cheating at the same time: Moodle's mod/quiz can do most (all?) of that. And - kids cheat anyway (check in the moodle.org forums for teachers discussing the cheats...) - you can only ask really limited questions in a quiz ... the real lesson, and this comes from working for a long time in an education community that uses quizzes lots, is to not take online (simplistic!) quizzes too seriously (in other words, mix several evaluation methods to see if kids understand), and to know that cheating is possible, just like with paper exams. it's not a technology problem, it's a challenge in the social and pedagogical space... cheers, m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: anti-cheating
On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 10:35 PM, Carlos Nazareno object...@gmail.com wrote: Since when is more equipment then a pencil and a sheet of paper necessary for a school quiz?? When they are not available. Im confused if the basic necessities like paper and a pencil arent available, what is any responsible government doing spending even $200 a child on computers?? Not to mention the infrastructure to support them? Sorry, it just seems really really ass-backward to me. jk ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: anti-cheating
On Jan 11, 2009, at 11:06 PM, Jeffrey Kesselman wrote: On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 10:35 PM, Carlos Nazareno object...@gmail.com wrote: Since when is more equipment then a pencil and a sheet of paper necessary for a school quiz?? When they are not available. Im confused if the basic necessities like paper and a pencil arent available, what is any responsible government doing spending even $200 a child on computers?? Not to mention the infrastructure to support them? Sorry, it just seems really really ass-backward to me. A laptop can be written on for a child's entire school career. A single piece of paper only works once and then must be discarded (maybe composted at best). --Noah ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: administrative security
On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 12:00 PM, qu...@laptop.org wrote: Physical access to the system gives full access, especially once the developer key is obtained, to install applications that their teachers or government had not considered. The system considers the user to be the authorisation authority. so does that mean that XO OS ships with all the kids having admin accounts? If specific applications are not welcome in a deployment, they should be checked for. how about after deployment? like setting user permissions to prevent kids from installing unauthorized apps? thx -n -- Carlos Nazareno http://twitter.com/naz404 http://www.object404.com -- interactive media specialist zen graffiti studios http://www.zengraffiti.com -- User Group Manager Phlashers: Philippine Flash ActionScripters Adobe Flash/Flex User Group http://www.phlashers.com -- if you don't like the way the world is running, then change it instead of just complaining. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: administrative security
Hi Carlos, Anyway, default installation of XO OS gives easy access to admin controls. This just a G1G1 thing, or is this something that's disabled by default? We intentionally give admin controls to children; we are trying to encourage them to explore, create, and solve problems with their machines. If they break something, the school can keep a USB key available for quick reflashes via holding down all four game keys, or the student can hold down the O key to boot into their previous build from olpc-update. I hope we will soon have a key to hold down at boot that restores you to the root filesystem as it was before your modifications, too, as an undo button. The children do not, in fact, regularly get malware, hacked, or stop their machine from booting through installing unauthorized software, so I don't think this is a large problem -- certainly not one worth crippling the machines from being able to install new software for. The undo button functionality or olpc-update's boot into previous build are sufficient to mitigate the sort of problems you're thinking of, though. Personally, I'd encourage deployments to continue to give root access to their children: there are other laptops that are designed to be locked-down and restricted, but this one is not one of them, and the combination of totally open-source software and restrictions on installing or modifying software do not mix well together. Thanks, - Chris. -- Chris Ball c...@laptop.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: administrative security
On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 12:28:41PM +0800, Carlos Nazareno wrote: so does that mean that XO OS ships with all the kids having admin accounts? In deployments, the XO ships in a locked state with an activation security system for theft reduction. The operating system builds used by a deployment team are up to them, they may customise, but if they base it on the OLPC builds then the Terminal activity grants them full access (a root prompt), and the virtual text console does the same. You can verify this by running the OLPC builds yourself. If specific applications are not welcome in a deployment, they should be checked for. how about after deployment? like setting user permissions to prevent kids from installing unauthorized apps? I specifically mean in the context of a deployment in progress, which includes support and ongoing monitoring by the deployment team. Deployment involvement for a child would end when they leave school. After deployment, if the child keeps the laptop, they would have full authority over it, and presumably no longer be cared for by the deployment monitoring systems. -- James Cameronmailto:qu...@us.netrek.org http://quozl.netrek.org/ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: administrative security
On Jan 11, 2009, at 11:28 PM, Carlos Nazareno wrote: On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 12:00 PM, qu...@laptop.org wrote: Physical access to the system gives full access, especially once the developer key is obtained, to install applications that their teachers or government had not considered. The system considers the user to be the authorisation authority. so does that mean that XO OS ships with all the kids having admin accounts? If specific applications are not welcome in a deployment, they should be checked for. how about after deployment? like setting user permissions to prevent kids from installing unauthorized apps? You use the term authorized without defining it. What constitutes an authorized application? OLPC itself has steered clear of this job, since it is a political minefield. Governments are certainly an option, but this also makes censorship a major concern. The teachers at an individual school are probably less likely to engage in mass censorship, but also lack a lot of the technical knowledge and time to deal with these kinds of issues. The children themselves are probably the best place to determine this, but they also (moreso at first) will lack much of the technical sophistication to really know what is malware and what isn't. Bitfrost was always supposed to provide at least some form of a barrier, but I think it hasn't really fulfilled its original design in a lot of ways. So we are left with the status quo; users have final say, but the default policy for most things is accept. --Noah PS: Questions like this are probably better suited to the security list. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: child protection + anti-cheating
Something I hope will end up in Sugar someday are more classroom management tools. Maine's Apple-based classroom laptop system gives the teacher the ability to remotely watch the screens of all the kids in the room. No need to stand at the back of the classroom. Just the knowledge that the teacher is capable of doing this is usually enough to keep kids from IMing answers to each other. Perhaps a 'Classroom' activity will make it onto the AT proposals list :) -Wade On 1/10/09, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 11:25 PM, Chris Ball c...@laptop.org wrote: How do we prevent cheating between students? You can't prevent this. Exactly. I've been working with online tools for education for ~8 years now, and it's interesting to note - paper+pen technology does not prevent cheating either. A few times I've been confronted with this cannot possibly be used in education until there is no way of cheating with it, ignoring that books, pen and paper are *great* for cheating. And also for smuggling questionable printed materials into school too -- books and folders can hide magazines with porn or political manifestos. Ban paper, put anyone who owns a printer in jail :-) cheers, martin -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: administrative security
... are mechanisms in place to prevent students from installing unauthorized apps, or malware? That is a social issue - how can kids be motivated to do acceptable things, and forgo immoral ones ?? I am much more concerned about how to prevent *adults*. The original thought was that if an OLPC were stolen, it would eventually de-activate unless refreshed by the school's server. But lately, OS on a stick have become available for the OLPC. If I were in an armed gang (and authority were weak), I would hold up a school, confiscate all the OLPCs, reload them with software that did not have security features, then sell those systems for cash. mikus ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
HTML-based/Browser apps (was Re: anti-cheating)
Carlos Nazareno wrote: - I'd also like to see more work done on a method to easily bundle Gnash or HTML-based/Browser applications as stand-alone activities, or at least launch the browser with the wrapped activity loaded upon startup. See the Help activity in 8.2.0, it instantiates the WebView from hulahop that underlies Browse and points it at help/XO_Introduction.html. But is it so bad to make your HTML-based application an installable collection that shows up in the OLPC Library navigation on the Browse home page? See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Creating_a_collection. Just because most library content is static non-interactive ebook material is no reason really cool browser apps shouldn't go in the OLPC Library. One thing that might make collections more appealing and feel like applications is if the collection's library.info icon (which seems otherwise unused?!) or the web site's favicon would appear in the Journal instead or as well as the generic globe icon of Browse. I filed a confused ticket #9188 for this enhancement. - Using a local daemon or service of some sort, the method I previously outlined can also be used here for standalone mode of the tests. This way, the learner can also practice with them and learn outside of class hours. The WikiBrowse activity (WikipediaEN.activity on G1G1 8.2 laptops) starts a local python Web server and fires up a WebActivity (Browse) instance pointing at it. Better, Browse's engine is XULRunner 1.9 and it has support for most of the HTML 5 offline application spec http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-html5-20080122/#offline. E.g. http://starkravingfinkle.org/projects/offline/todo.html is an expanding form you can fill out while offline that will update the web server when next online. It should work on an XO (I can't try it, my wireless router is bust! :-( ). I concur with where you're going. *Never* ever bet against the browser. Browse or a custom WebView activity can do everything that Firefox 3 can do, without worrying about compatibility with abysmal MS Internet Explorer that's keeping the web stuck in 2004. E.g. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/FindTheCountry -- why bother with crappy static PDF atlases when interactive technology like that is available? And you can View Source it! Cheers, -- =S Page ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: anti-cheating
You should have a look a Wims. It seems like it does most of your requirements: http://wims.unice.fr/wims/wims.cgi?lang=en+session=UVA84EAD95.1; +module=home Le lundi 12 janvier 2009 à 11:35 +0800, Carlos Nazareno a écrit : Since when is more equipment then a pencil and a sheet of paper necessary for a school quiz?? When they are not available. I've thought of a good method to do quizzes and eliminate cheating at the same time: - For tests like multiple choice/true or false - Browser-based frontend where exam is served - Backend (PHP/MySQL?) serves randomized questions and answers to render typical cheating methods obsolete. - Have time limit for students to answer quiz, after which session will time out - Saves teacher time on having to manually check test papers - Scales all the way up to college level - Can be used for entrance tests and other large-scale exams - Platform independent, thus making any work we do on this forward-compatible and usable by practically everyone who has a net-enabled computer - Can be used by mobile phones that have web browsers - Can be used for remote testing of learning - I'd also like to see more work done on a method to easily bundle Gnash or HTML-based/Browser applications as stand-alone activities, or at least launch the browser with the wrapped activity loaded upon startup. - Using a local daemon or service of some sort, the method I previously outlined can also be used here for standalone mode of the tests. This way, the learner can also practice with them and learn outside of class hours. - consider a system with multiple correct answers/alternate phrasing of correct answers is also used (but serve only 1 tagged as correct answer per multiple-choice question) to better test learning of concepts. This way, student will be less prone to the weakness of rote memorization. Your thoughts, guys? All the best, -Naz ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
