RobertB-DC's Journal: Ghost Article: The Radical OLPC Security System

Ghosts of Slashdot: 02/08/2007
[This is the second ghost in two days, but this time it's likely to stay dead. It's a dupe of yesterday's OLPC security article -- which was still on the front page.]

The Radical OLPC Security System
Posted by kdawson in The Mysterious Future!
from the tighter-than-yours dept.

CHaN_316 recommends a Wired article about the One Laptop Per Child project entitled "High Security for $100 Laptop":

"The laptop... will premiere a security system that takes a radical approach to computer protection. Krstic's system, known as the BitFrost platform, imposes limits on every program's powers. Every program runs in its own virtual machine with a limited set of permissions... Krstic contrasts this approach to Microsoft's Windows XP where every program, including Solitaire, has the right to access the web, turn on the video camera, open spreadsheets and send e-mail... 'This kind of model makes it more difficult for glue between applications to be built,' Krstic said. 'But 99 percent don't need glue.'"

What are the Ghosts of Slashdot?
As a Slashdot Subscriber, I get to see stories before they're posted to the general public. This means that I get to see the mistakes -- the articles that almost made it, but got sent to the cutting room floor at the last minute. They become the Ghosts of Slashdot, a URL that points to nothing.

Note that this is NOT the same as whining about article submissions that didn't get accepted! These stories were accepted, posted for subscribers, and then pulled from the site. Their brief existence gives us a glimpse into the Slashdot post-submission process, for those who are interested in what's going on behind the curtain.

By the way, any Subscriber can join the Ghost Hunt, but so far only morcheeba has shown the requisite sensitivity to ectoplasmic vibrations.