[OLPC Security] Seamless Lessons & Security (commentary)

[Bryan Berry]

Martin's solution works for me.

This kind of dialogue is good for OLPC. Substantive and really thinking
about how kids and teachers will use the XO and Sugar.

We intend to embed all the activities relevant to a particular course
into one .xo bundle, excluding the pre-installed mainstays like Scratch
and Squeak. It has to be a super simple process to install an off-line
course, only two steps really.

For example, geometry module for Weeks 1-4 could include 2 flash
animations, two Squeak activities, and a relevant gcompris activity all
in the same .xo bundle. This way the kids and teachers won't have to
hunt down and install different xo bundles to cover a period of lessons.
Many of our kids are absent from school for a few weeks at a time to
work in the fields. We want them to be easily able to collect a period
of schoolwork all in one bundle and do it in the evenings after work.

How would JEB's work if the activities are installed as one .xo bundle?
And does anyone have a better idea?


-----Original Message-----
From: Martin Langhoff <martin.langhoff at gmail.com>
To: Martin Dengler <martin at martindengler.com>
Cc: Ivan Krstić <krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu>, Bryan Berry
<bryan.berry at gmail.com>, devel at lists.laptop.org,
security at lists.laptop.org
Subject: Re: Seamless Lessons & Security (commentary)
Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2008 11:54:17 -0300

2008/7/7 Martin Dengler <martin at martindengler.com>:
> ...yields:
>
> http://dev.laptop.org/~mdengler/launch-by-click-ie.jpg
>
> ...so perhaps I need a different understanding of "launch-by-click" for
> executables.  Please accept my apologies for wasting your/others time
> if I've misunderstood.

I think that the dialogue you captured is the "seam" people are
talking about :-)

In any case, I think this discussion has missed that what Bryan is
requesting is *much* saner from a security POV than downloading
putty.exe (which is as bad as it gets). Bryan wants to be able to
provide links that start existing activities on the XO - a
document-triggered launch (using JEBs) is good enough, and I think it
can be deemed reasonably safe. We trust (and confine) the activities
on the box.

So I don't think there's a major problem here.

cheers,



m