Bulletproof Tool For Golden Age Browsing? 366
An anonymous reader writes "I work in a retirement/assisted living home. Many of the residents had never used the Internet but really find it fascinating once they are given a little training. However, I've stopped introducing it to them because of the drain it puts on me. There are a million and one things that a computer novice can screw up, and I don't have time to solve all of them. These folks don't need any sophistication. and they need only the most basic options. Adjustable text size would be nice, but otherwise — no email, no word processing or editing, no printing — just Internet browsing. This may not seem like a big market, but it's getting bigger every day! Is there an absolutely fool-proof device that can provide this without requiring virus scanners and constant attention?"
Wii (Score:5, Interesting)
Opera on Linux (Score:4, Interesting)
Dlugar
Look at the OLPC project (Score:1, Interesting)
I believe this is one feature of the One Laptop Per Child [laptop.org] project. (See also Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org].)
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Metagovernment [metagovernment.org] - Government by ALL of the people.
Re:VMWare to the rescue! (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, someone did just put your sig through 5 rounds of base 64 decoding...
LAME!
Re:VMWare to the rescue! (Score:3, Interesting)
Automatic hard-drive reset on reboot (Score:1, Interesting)
So, when you reboot the computer, it's completely clean, just as before.
You can still install patches, upgrades etc, by entering a password to take it to a special maintenance mode.
Example of the effect of the special driver:
- you plug in a usb key, and can read your files
- you make changes to the files, save them, reopen them, it looks like you changed the files
- you take the usb out and plug it into another computer. Whoa, thats wierd, the files are just like they were before you changed them!
It's an awesome system. Chinese cybercafes are decently free of adware.
Jamie Zawinski has already done this. (Score:2, Interesting)
use a sandbox (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Opera on Linux (Score:4, Interesting)
Install the Wikipedia search plugin too (Score:4, Interesting)
Sifting the signal from the noise in a typical google search is just too complex for people that are computer novices as well as internet novices. But show them the Wikipedia plugin, where they can just search on whatever they're curious about and immediately get a single response that probably answers their question, and they'll immediately grasp just how cool the internet can be and they'll want to learn more.
I usually set windows to large or extra-large fonts, too. Just ask them which setting they find most comfortable while they are in front of the computer.
Re:Opera Kiosk Mode (Score:2, Interesting)
NO! Don't do this!
Quitting is by far the easiest way to ensure that cookies and current login sessions and whatnot are wiped.
You want to set it up so that when your browser is exited, it is automatically restarted. U Wisconsin has public kiosks around campus that work this way.
(I don't think you want to make them log in and out and such. Just make it so you walk up, and the browser is there running.)
Stop using terms you don't understand !!! (Score:1, Interesting)
Javascript is a type safe language. A language is "type safe" if every operation allowed by the type system has a well-defined runtime behavior. C type casts are not safe; for example, the type system allows you to cast an integer to a pointer and then deference that pointer, even though at run time it may point to garbage. Javascript's implicit casts, while arguably a bad idea, have well defined run time behavior. Javascript is a type safe language.
See here [wikipedia.org] and here [wikipedia.org], or even better, read Pierce's excellent book "Types and Programming Languages" [amazon.com].
Re:Turn Off Javascript (Score:2, Interesting)
Perhaps you could use a browser on some TV box thing, e.g. a Wii or PS3, those have less that can be messed up.
Re:LiveCD DSL linux or Mac OSX Simple Finder (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Obvious (Score:3, Interesting)
You've sort of bracketed the right answer there. Almost all malware attacks today are aimed at Windows users. Using Windows pretty much mandates using a virus checker that will need to be attended to. And a firewall and/or NAT router is pretty much mandatory with Windows. The specifications say minimal maintenance. So Windows is probably the wrong OS for this application.
So -- Linux or Mac -- whichever the guy who is setting things up with is more comfortable with. I've never found Macs to be especially easy, natural, or intuitive despite undending claims to the contrary. So, I'd probably go with Linux -- probably using Xfce which seems to be evolving as simpler but adequate user interface alternative to GNOME and KDE. Someone who is Mac compatible would probably go with a Mac.
Browser? They are all baffling to the uninitiated.
Re:LiveCD DSL linux or Mac OSX Simple Finder (Score:3, Interesting)
I will also add the following trick to this. You can safely test any improvements, configs, desktop settings, locks etc with a 5 year old prior to deployment. If it works and he does not break it, you can safely roll it out onto the unsuspecting golden age population.
Re:Turn Off Javascript (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:LiveCD DSL linux or Mac OSX Simple Finder (Score:3, Interesting)
The OAP has the possibility to elevate his privileges to install an applications and has the instructions on how to do it.
Based on experience the OAPs never ever uses that. He/She always coopts visiting grandchildren to do that. While you can create them an account as well it always ends up being done from the OAP account as well so no need to do that./
In the meantime he/she has 0 privileges on the machine and keeps on using it and it does not break.
By the way - these are simple practical observations on a number of Linux installs done by me or some of my friends for the parents. While they may seem weird, that is the way it turns out to be in real life.
Re:Turn Off Javascript (Score:3, Interesting)
I even removed the hard drives, boots from a old useless 256 meg CF card (80X card) stuck in a $2.00 adapter in the IDE port on the motherboard. works great and the church has not needed me to even touch it for almost 4 years now.
Flash and firefox is out of date on it but who cares, we don't need elderly going to albinoblacksheep.com or happy tree friends now do we, and security holes are a non-issue when you run from ram and have no mounted writable drives.
Don't make it complex, make it a diskless kiosk that runs from ramdisk, no fuss, no work, just call it done. and certainly don't make it windows based that would be way more work to do the same thing as well as cost a lot more for the copy of embedded XP.