RFC: "usb kiosks"?

[Gavin McCullagh]

Hi,

On Sat, 30 Jun 2007, Simón Ruiz wrote:

> How do you deal with people losing their USB drives?

This is up to the institution to decide.  It might not always be a school
(an internet cafe perhaps) and even where it is, students are expected to
bring books to class.

> "I need to use a computer, but I left my key at home."
>
> "I spent WEEKS working on that assignment, and now it's gone!"

One answer is that it's the same as for a textbook.  The student is
responsible for bringing theirs in and keeping it safe.  "I lost my
homework" was not an acceptable excuse when I was in school and I don't
imagine it should be now.  It's possibly true that usb keys are more open
to theft, but it's also easier to protect them against theft in that they
fit in your pocket or around your neck.

A fall back might be that a user could login as a guest without a key but
that no settings or data would be stored once they logged out.  They might
then email data to themselves or something as temporary storage solution.

As Jonathan says, you might consider backing up what's on the usb device
but I'd foresee problems with that.  For example, when does the sync happen
(login, logout?), what if they pull the usb key during the sync, how much
data can we back up, etc.

> Just a thought.

Thanks for the input,

Gavin