lina wrote:
On Friday 23,November,2012 01:00 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:I've a laptop whose *SOLE* purpose in life is to be used in a manner that a even I would never do on a machine with real data on it. It has intrinsically the best security in place Only _*I*_ have physical access to the machine. It has no possibility of connecting to the internet. It will *never* be updated. The installation CD lives in the drive, for various reasons the hard drive is wiped and reinstall done 2-3 times per week. When I boot I want to do *ANYTHING*! HOW? {Owl now ducks for cover from incoming brick-a-brac ;}Out of pure curiosity, why this machine to be "chastened" in this way?
*ROFL* - you were much gentler than various long time friends and relatives ;)
Actually there are solid reasons my work pattern. As to the dramatic description, that has a different rationale.
As to the machine, I'm a "learn by doing" learner. In my three score and ten I've learned that failure can be much more instructive than success. Therefore I can assume the machine will eventually be trashed in varying degrees. As to the frequent reinstalls, I haven't decided what configuration I want. The only way to find out is to try each of the options.
As to the statement, I was editorializing a bit (my bits are larger than average). One of my pet peeves are those saying that automatically applied security blankets can solve all security problems. I was trying to hint that security in the end depends on the user. *nix environments have historically been multi-user. That made it reasonable that the OS be very security conscious. Personal computers are called *personal* for a reason.