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

[Karen Palen]

This is the difference between what you tell "the world" and what you tell yourself (and your team).

Certainly no one leaves a sign on their car saying "I often forget to take my keys with me", but "leaving a key under the mat" is a time honoured tradition in many families. My mother in law's house being one such. :-)

If it makes everyone a little more careful then it can only help, but if someone gets the idea that only "bad viewers" cause harm (as I have seen loudly touted on less "techie oriented" forums) then it can give a false sense of security.

When that "fools paradise" is exposed it tends to lead to the kind of panic we see among some of the larger content creators in Second Life. That does nothing but harm for everyone!

Karen

--- On Wed, 1/13/10, Sean Hennessee <sean at uci.edu> wrote:

> From: Sean Hennessee <sean at uci.edu>
> Subject: Re: [Opensim-users] Banning "bad" viewers was Re: Can this be done?
> To: opensim-users at lists.berlios.de
> Date: Wednesday, January 13, 2010, 9:20 AM
> 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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