Yolanda's worse case scenario reminds me of the typical fast of
a publicly accessible computer. In high-school i've used to help the
network admin (although the school did not want to accept me
as a helper officialy, the admin have given me access anyway due to my
"unusual" knowledge on DOS and general areas.). I've helped fixing
a computers every time and then, and the problems i've faced were not
the type you'll find with your home-computers:
* Missing disk-drives.
* Missing mouse balls. (the ball that triggers the mouse movement sensors)
* Missing mouses.. (in the case that the ball was not enough.)
* Key-less keyboards. People just take out the buttons out of the
keyboard. I've once cought them in the act, but they just ignored
me and kept pulling it out until the admin arrived. (he was bigger.)
* Missing files. Due to the goverment ordering schools to upgrade their
computers to Windows 95 based clients, we had to add harddisk drives to
the computers, instead of just using a network-boot like we used to do
with the 486s on the DOS-based network. Meaning, now kids can mess
with the local files. Meaning, trashed software, ETC'.
* Did I mentioned missing harddisks? It was thankfully rare, though.
Oh.. and lets not forget the kids who actually LEARNED how to use
a computer, but unfortunatly still like to destroy things. This time,
in software level, and with better efficentcy. Usually by using
cracker's tools. For example: one kid once brought a spy TSR software.
2 days later, I was working on one of the computers on DOS prompt.
After I logged out, I went passed the second computer lab to see
who was left in the area. I passed by the printer, which had a long
paper out of it.. I got curios, and I had a look. Guess what I saw?
my entire DOS season from a few moments ago.. on printed paper.
Matters became so bad that in the end the staff began to use
a pre-made hard-disk image, and every week the entire staff just
loaded the image over the harddisks of -ALL- the computers to fix
what was done.
My advice: when running a publicly-availble computer access, hold
a stuck of spare parts nearby. You're gonna need it.
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