arstechnica.com — OLPC has built a remote kill-switch into XO laptops so they can be remotely deactivated in the event that they are used without authorization. OLPC has responded to such concerns by developing an anti-theft daemon that the project claims cannot be disabled, even by a user with root access.
Feb 19, 2007 View in Crawl 4
aliengoodsFeb 19, 2007
Exactly. And even if the computer won't start, whats to stop a thief from removing the flash drive/hard drive and retrieving the data. Seems like simple file encyption is far more effective than a kill switch. That way even if the laptop is stolen, the thief still can't access the sensitive data.
krazyjimFeb 19, 2007
Mobile phones have a similar feature (or at least ones running on GSM) - if your phone gets lost/stolen you call your provider up and tell them your phone's serial number and a password/PIN you have with them and they'll remotely disable it.This is a similar thing; the exception being there's no always-on data network available so the timer and the internet are used instead, which seems OK to me, this will probably prevent theft of the devices for the most part, excepting people smart enough to open them and put their own OS on it by replacing the ROM.The 21 day limit seems reasonable assuming the laptop will be used regularly, if it isn't then the inconvenience getting it reactivated is probably worth the peace of mind.I don't think this is something to get hyped up about, as long as the operator doesn't start imposing stupid restrictions on them.
nogamiFeb 19, 2007
Submitter: You are confusing anti-piracy with anti-theft. Two totally separate things.Basically what this article says is that the units will lock if stolen - says nothing about pirated software (probably because they're running an open-source OS).
Closed AccountFeb 19, 2007
So basically, the whole idea is to give kids an open-source, totally customizable computer to expand their creativity, yet have the whole thing still controlled by someone back home via a rootkit-like override...just in case.
guerrilla_suitFeb 19, 2007
The only way to prevent a black market for these things, is to release them to public.They have already mentioned some challenges to releasing them to the public, but it's a reality they are going to have to deal with.I'm sure if they are released to the public the fervor will die down a little bit. The title is bogus, as the OS is basically linux. You can download beta versions of it from their site.
evilgoldFeb 19, 2007
WGA is to stop software piracy. This is top stop laptop theft, there is a rather big differance between stealing a computer, and stealing a program. Besides that, these systems run linux, its not possible to pirate somthing thats already free.On a side note: nothing will make WGA look friendly becuase WGA is an insult to users. To me it looks like microsoft is saying that they dont trust people who use there systems. However instead of reccomending they use a free alternative, they opt to simply lock out users who pirate (and some who dont) the OS, Whenever someone tells me they have a WGA problem, I hand them a copy of ubuntu, fixes it every time.
erquaFeb 19, 2007
It won't fit.
erquaFeb 19, 2007
The OLPC laptops have a built in mesh network capability. It connects wirelessly to the nearest peer, who connects to another nearby peer, etc. If only a few of these are connected to the Internet, the whole group are online. Not enough for everybody to download video from youtube, but enough for webbrowsing. And to check if the laptop is marked stolen.
dan2552Oct 6, 2007
Win 3.1?