[Opensim-users] Banning "bad" viewers was Re: Can this be done?

[Sean Hennessee]

It seems that this discussion is about the impression of security vs 
actual security. On one side if something gives the impression of 
security, but does little or nothing to make it more secure, then it's 
better not to do it. On the other hand, every little bit helps as long 
as the users don't interpret that as making them perfectly secure. (You 
could almost say you might as well never do anything since nothing is 
really perfectly secure.)

My analogy would be this. If you have a convertible car, with the top 
down, and no security alarm, (essentially the equivalent of OpenSim 
now), would it be better to leave your laptop sitting on the passenger 
seat, under the passenger seat, or in a trunk that has no lock on it? 
(My 1963 Austin Healey Sprite was such a car.)

One could argue that you might as well leave it on the passenger seat 
with a sign on it saying "Take me", because it's no safer there than any 
of the other options. But if it was my laptop, I'd hide it under the 
seat or in the trunk. Does this give me a false sense of security? 
Perhaps. If it was an older laptop and I had backups, I'd be willing to 
risk it under the seat, but not on top of it.

So, my suggestion would be, keep backups, inform your users that things 
really aren't all that secure yet, and use an older laptop hidden under 
the seat. :-)

Peace,
Sean
-- 

Sean Hennessee
Central Computing Support
Office of Information Technology
UC Irvine


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