Python on a public library computer

[alex23]

It's a thin line between philosophy, fear of breaking the rules and

having the security personnel throw me out of here, and trying to live
in a just world.

You forgot "and making the lives of those maintaining the public
terminal more difficult".

You know, there _are_ valid reasons for libraries et.al. 'locking down'
public terminals other than fascism...

-alex23

 

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jean-S=E9bastien_Guay?=]

Hi Anton,

I just did a "telnet://localhost" and
there was an error message from the appguard stating that "telnet.exe"
wasn't allowed to run.

Err, dumb question, did you try bringing python on a USB drive and
renaming python.exe to winword.exe? (yes, I have seen so-called "locked
down" machines with a "program black list" that were that stupid)

Worth a try!

And then you could rename ssh.exe to explorer.exe, perl.exe to java.exe
or something funny like that...

J-S

 

[Anton Vredegoor]

You know, there _are_ valid reasons for libraries et.al. 'locking down'
public terminals other than fascism...

Maybe, but in this case I can run only IE, word, excel and powerpoint.

Do you think there is a rational reason for that? Like Tim Peters
showing up, explaining that it's just a natural side effect of binary
floating point implementations?

On the other hand one might look at public libraries as places suited
to inspire people and showing them how one is to treat the users of a
public service.

Since Dutch government is beyond hope in that department and the local
governments of Cities are also becoming more and more corrupt (what
does one expect if one gives the City rulers a bag of money and says
"it's your problem now, do whatever you like with it, just don't come
back for more") one can only hope that public services stay functional
until there's an anti-fascistic movement that can remove those people
that sold public freedom, right, and dignity to the highest commercial
bidding party.

As to my personal situation, I just wanna run python here without
having to 'educate' the computer infrastructure persons of this
library.

Anton

'any buyers for the european constitution?'

 

[alex23]

Maybe, but in this case I can run only IE, word, excel and
powerpoint.

Do you think there is a rational reason for that?

Yes. It's easier to support. As someone who has worked at administering
small & large scale networks, you want that job to be as easy as
possible...

In this case, it sounds like the library is providing computers for two
purposes: access to Office tools and to the internet. Given the
"everything not forbidden is permissable" attitude of most people,
unless the use is restricted to only those two activities people
legitimately wanting access will tend to end up waiting for others who
have co-opted the services for their own personal end.

On the other hand one might look at public libraries as places suited
to inspire people and showing them how one is to treat the users of a
public service.

By _secretly_ commandeering public resources for your own private use
outside of the scope of their intended usage, you plan on showing how
the public is responsible enough to do anything they want with those
resources?

At the end of the day, some staff member is left with having to clean
up whatever is done to those public terminals. I think the motivation
here has less to do with "selling out" the European Constitution and
more to do with someone just wanting to get home from their job with
the minimum of hassle.

-alex23

 

[Piet van Oostrum]

There are several ssh and telnet applets on the web. Of course it depends
on the Java support in your IE.

 

[Anton Vredegoor]

In this case, it sounds like the library is providing computers for two
purposes: access to Office tools and to the internet. Given the
"everything not forbidden is permissable" attitude of most people,
unless the use is restricted to only those two activities people
legitimately wanting access will tend to end up waiting for others who
have co-opted the services for their own personal end.

But who are those people using this *public* library for their own
personal end? Is it the cannibal elite that is using this public space
to promote microsoft products and 'reducing' their workload (actually I
believe they are making their own job harder) or is it the user who
wants to run public domain software?

The current situation is such that in order to make the system 'safer'
I cannot clear my own cache, so my internet history is visible for the
next user, which compromises *my* security. Surely there should be a
balance between the interests of the provider and the client, but since
in this case the client is also the 'owner' of the service (it's a
*public* library) there should be room to run non-proprietary software.

The connection with the european constitution is exactly about this
shifting of the ownership of public buildings, institutions,
infrastructure etc. *from* the persons using the service *towards* the
people accidentally working in that place.

So social security starts to act like it's an employer, but since they
are also the state, they don't have to pay minimum wages, if one is
treated unfairly it's impossible to get a fair trial. If one doesn't
agree with this treatment they just keep the money they are obliged to
pay (according to our national constituton) to themselves.

Universities start to act like the buildings are extra living room for
the persons working there and in order to get a degree one has to
*work* for a professor.

The elite in the city starts building luxury appartments for their own
people (who are payed with public money stolen one way or the other
from the normal residents in the city) in the natural resorts because
their is some kind of 'shortage' in the housing market.

On the other hand one wants to "make the polluter pay" and creates
taxes for garbage. But these taxes are 'equal' for everyone, meaning
that they are negligible for the rich but a large part of the income of
the poor.

The same goes for fines for speeding or parking tickets. If you're rich
or know the people in the elite you can get away with anything.

The *european* constitution is related to this because our government
wants to limit the discussion to the merits of the document. The
problem is that even with a good constitution a corrupt elite can
interpret the terms in a way that is unfavorable for the poor (almost
anyone is poor or becoming poor by now). And secondly the document is
only intelligible for specialists, so even if it was good, there's no
way to tell.

So we might find ourselves in a situation one day when walking to the
water tap to fill our teakettle a voice will come out of it asking
whether we want *coca* cola or *pepsi* cola. When complaning about this
to our government we will hear something like: 'Look you *have* a
choice it's not like we prefer one brand over the other, so what are
you complaining about? Be silent out you will be removed from our
administration, which means no food, health care, money or friends."

I'm currently mentally analogizing this discussion with the one on
python dev about whether the decimal module should give users 'what
they expect' or conform to industry standards, but I guess one has to
be Dutch to see any connection at all here

The rationale for all of this is that the economy is bad and we have
close to zero growth. We should be like China or other low wage
countries in order to be more competitive.

However the rationale is false! Because we have better infrastructure
here we are *further* up the exponential development curve so we could
have fenomenal growth if we wanted! The fact that this isn't happening
at all has nothing to do with with the economic potential but all the
more with conservative power consolidation tactics.

The media play a very nasty role in all of this. For example the
newspapers are complaining nobody reads paper anymore because of the
internet. IMO it is caused more by nobody wanting to read the same old
selfpromotion anymore. Something comparable is happening with public
television which is not a true representation of the public opinion at
all. Not to say public opinion is always good, but if noone thinks you
are giving the right characterization of the current situation, one is
not likely to want to join the discussion.

Ok, this is getting way to far off topic. Thanks to all for the hints
to get python running here. I'm now contemplating to access the already
running java interpreter that must hide somewher in this IE, and to
start a jython console from there (without even running a new
jview.exe).

Anton

'if you disagree this probably wasn't explained properly'