Comments on: Are universities locking down their PCs?

By: Seth Finkelstein

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 10:54:00 +0000

The answer is going to be “it depends”. Places with an experienced and skilled staff (e.g. MIT, Stanford) are likely to be much more open than others.

This whole debate was gone around in great detail more than a decade ago when the Internet and computers first became common in universities. Go talk to Carl Kadie, who ran the “Computers and Academic Freedom” mailing list back then, if you’re really interested. He collected policies, reports, recommendations, etc.

By: Andrew Martin

Andrew Martin — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 22:52:16 +0000

Yes, I don’t see many locked-down PCs around Oxford. But it is very evident that the network is profoundly locked down in places. I have argued on the IT support list that if, say, Larry Page and Sergey Brin had been Oxford students, Google would have been strangled at birth. There’s no way you could shift through an Oxford college the sort of data they were putting through their dorm – without a summons to visit the Dean.

I think this is much more problematic than any rise of tethered or locked-down devices.

On the other hand, universities are in microcosm a picture of the challenge of engineering a right kind of Internet. Campus networks often embody net neutrality, despite carrying everything from IPTV to the student’s bedroom, super-valuable intellectual property from some science labs, finance and personnel data, voice, massive (multi-terabyte or larger) data sets for analysis, and so on. Doing that with good performance and adequate security is a significant engineering challenge. My strong expectation is that campus managers will start to segment networks sometime pretty soon.

By: Matthias Bärwolff

Matthias Bärwolff — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 11:35:48 +0000

At MIT, so I am told, you’ll be thrown off the net should your Windows system not have the latest security patches — very reasonable. No issues with Linux systems that I know of. Plus, completely non-discriminatory wireless access for all visitors at CSAIL (save those unpatched Windows boxes).

What is an PC, open or not, good for if you cannot access the internet without cumbersome registration? This is not so much a philosophical but a purely practical question. E.g., an outsider attending a talk at Berkman will by default not have free wireless access for his laptop whereas museums, etc. do. (Heck, even the MBTA commuter rail has free wireless.)

By: Beth

Beth — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:19:05 +0000

Here at Oxford, the level of freedom seems to depend on who and where you are. You’re responsible for your own computer, but are expected to have up-to-date anti-virus (expected = the IT staff threaten to eat you, toes first, if you unleash anything onto their network).

Computers that are owned by the Colleges/Departments, though, are usually pretty tightly locked down, in my experience. Installing anything new is a no-go without permission, and there are more or less strict web filters to block out, *ahem*, certain types of content. In some Colleges, these web filters extend to personal computers on the College network. There have also been blanket bans on things like Skype and iPlayer in many places. I think p2p is pretty comprehensively disallowed.

You can kinda see the point, though. The average student/academic is very unlikely to know what they’re doing. I can just see some old Classics don thinking that a “Trojan Horse” would be a simply marvellous thing to have on his PC…

By: Scott MacLeod

Scott MacLeod — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 22:47:21 +0000

Here’s the nascent World University and School Wiki – http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University – a global, virtual/digital, open, free, {potentially degree- and credit-granting}, multilingual university & school
where anyone can teach or take a class or course. It’s designed in an open way: add a course or take a course. It’s like Wikipedia with MIT Open Course Ware, potentially in all languages and subjects, and for the developing world (OLPC countries, first) and everyone.