I put this is GQ because it may have something close to a specific factual answer. If the mods think it needs to be moved to IMHO, please go ahead.
I’m a grad student, and our department has a small Grad Student Lounge, a place where we can hang out and talk and have coffee etc. There are also three computers and a couple of printers in the room. Today we received the following email from the department office:
Now, personally, i virtually never use the computers in the lounge, unless i need to check my email while i’m there. But plenty of students do use them, and it seems to me that a policy of not allowing anyone to save anything on the hard drive is completely pointless.
Such a policy isn’t going to prevent viruses or trojans (the computers are all connected to the internet), and i am truly at a loss as to why the policy is being enacted. Before i shoot off an email demanding an explanation, however, i thought i’d check with Dopers to see if there are any reasons i haven’t thought of that might make this policy a good idea. Because right now it seems to offer considerable inconvenience to some students, with no commensurate increase in system integrity or computer security.
WAG - concerns over copyrighted material. If students download directly to USB, it’s clear that they’re responsible. If the stuff is downloaded to hard drive, it’s on University-owned hardware and probably the person responsible is not traceable.
That never occurred to me, and it’s an interesting suggestion, but i don’t think it’s the answer in this case. This policy applies only to the computers in the History Grad Student Lounge. The university’s main computing labs, and other academic departments, all allow students to save material to computer hard drives.
Furthermore, about the only stuff that i’ve ever seen saved on the computers in question is people’s papers and other work of their own, as well as articles downloaded from academic databases. The university has paid subscriptions to all those databases, and downloading the articles is completely within the realm of fair use.
It could be to stop spyware and other nasty stuff. The easiest way to lock down a computer is to make it so nothing can install or execute except allowed programs. The easiest way to stop something from installing is to not allow any file downloads. Unfortunately, this means that legitimate file downloads are blocked too.
Copyright is also another worry, also, it might be to stop excessive downloading. If people can store stuff on the local HD, they might think nothing of downloading multi-gig files in the background. If they have to transfer it off using a USB key, then it makes it much harder.
Yeah, i guess you might be right, but as far as i can tell a policy of preventing any file downloads at all makes the computer effectively useless anyway. What’s the point of having a computer if you can’t use it for the things it was designed to do? I mean, our department has a tech guy, and if he can’t keep the thing free of crap then he’s probably not trying very hard.
Also, it’s not like the computer’s users—history grad students—are doing a whole bunch of untoward stuff with it. I’ve never seen an mp3 file or any other potentially-illegal material on the hard drive, and most of the internet use on those computers is fairly boring email and academic stuff, as well as some news reading.
It’s possible that their solution to the problem of viruses and spyware is to wipe the systems and reinstall the image periodically, so any files you do save locally are lost. I think you could even set up a public system so it gets wiped nightly.
Well, i’ve sent off an emial to the department requesting an explanation for the policy, and suggesting that they try something less drastic. I’ll see what they have to say.
Are the hard drives small? Maybe they get filled up quickly and then the IT people have to deal with complaints that there’s no room. Also, when the disk space gets really low, it prevents programs from running correctly, or at all - another problem for IT to deal with.
There’s probably a whole bunch more complaints that IT doesn’t want to deal with that are caused by people storing stuff on the hard drives:
“I accidentally deleted something and it’s my only copy - can you get me a backup?”
“I was using a different version of the software and the uni machine updated my document and now it’s all messed up. Can you fix it?”
“I don’t remember which version of my 20 docs is the latest - can you find out?”
“I am SURE I saved my doc here and now it’s gone. Who stole it?”
Even if the answer to all requests is NO, they are still annoying to get. It will probably save them a lot of aggravation to just tell people to bring their own floppy in.
Yep… there are a couple of automatic imaging packages out there for just this purpose. Not only does it avoid spyware/virus issues it makes trouble shooting much easier because you’re starting from a known point and you don’t have to wonder if someone has changed control panel settings or explorer folder settings.
I hope they have provided a way for students to share there work on removable media (bigger than a floppy that is) so that the computers remain useful.
We have a similar setup on the computers in our newsroom, which are all Macs. IT partitioned the harddrives in two, and the partition with the OS and applications is locked with an application called DriveShield, so every time the computer gets restarted, that partition is restored to the original install. (Don’t ask me how this works.) The reason we’ve heard is that students were downloading their own software - media players, games, etc - and causing crashes/incompatibilities. Of course, with this setup, there’s no way to save bookmarks or other preferences beyond a restart.
This is the classic IT paradox. The IT guy’s job description may not be to help you get your work done in the most efficient manner. His job description may be to keep the computers from being a problem that requires attention from his bosses. The classic IT solution to this is to mandate that all computers will be disconnected from the network and power grids and locked in inaccessible rooms. Then they are guaranteed to never have viruses, spyware, need an OS upgrade, or any other issue. Since very few IT departments can get away with completely disconnecting your hardware, they try to find some middle ground that makes their life easy while not making your life so hard that you’re motivated to try to change the policy. Doing system maintenance by periodically wiping/re-imaging the drive is one way to do that because it frees the IT guy from all the messy analysis and decision making that goes into real administration.
But i still don’t think that justifies cutting off access to the hard drive. Students use the computers to store files that they are working on, or that they might need to access while on campus. Preventing us from storing things on the hard drive would effectively remove one of the very uses for which the computers were istalled in the first place. I mean, we were told by the Department that these machines were placed in the Grad Lounge specifically for our use and our convenience. If we’re not to be allowed to use them for the sort of purposes that we need, why bother having them at all?
Furthermore, to my knowledge no-one has ever asked the IT guy to retrieve an accidentally-deleted file. Everyone knows that they save files to the computers at their own risk, and that they should have backup copies on their home computers or on removable media. But it’s still often handy to have a copy of the file on the computer in the Lounge, in case you forgot your USB key, or if you just need to do some work on it while you’re there.
The hard drives are reasonably small by today’s standards—40Gb. But the type of files that we grad students need to use and store are also generally very small. For the most part, the only files that get stored on these machines are Word documents (which are very small files) and pdf documents which, although slightly larger, very rarely go over 3Mb.
As i said above, i’ve never seen mp3s, avis, mpegs, wavs, and other types of large media files on those computers. The only media i’ve ever seen playing on them is streaming audio or video from news sites, and those sort of streams are only ever held in the cache, which can easily be deleted.
As for the computer slowing down, this can easily be fixed by reasonably regular defragmenting, and by periodically removing all files that have been on the computer longer than, say, three months. And it’s not like these computers serve a massive number of people. There are only about 90-100 grad students in the program, and i estimate that only about 15-20 use the computers on any sort of regular basis.
I’m not suggesting that they open up the computer completely. I’m happy to have it so that grad students can’t install any new software. There’s always one jackass who will go ahead an install some spyware-laden piece of crap, and the computers should be set up so that only the IT person can make important changes like installing software. But to close off the hard drive altogether so that we can’t even store Word documents and pdf files seems to me to be a drastic measure that would make the computers far less useful and would undermine the purpose for which they were installed in the first place.
Another thing that has pissed a few of us off is that this decision was apparently made unilaterally by the IT person, without any consultation with the people who actually have to use the machines. And we were not even given an explanation for why the new policy is thought to be necessary.
I highly doubt it. The only people with access to these computers are the grad students, and there have been no cases of plagiarism among that group in living memory.
Furthermore, the decision to change the policy regarding the use of the computers appears to have been made by the IT guy and/or the department’s head administrative assistant. No faculty, as far as i know, were involved in the decision at all, which would not be the case if the policy change was related to an academic matter like plagiarism.
I work in an I&TS Department at a college. None of our lab computers allow any student to save files on them.
Hard drive space is an issue. If you have a hundred users on a computer, it fills up quickly. If the computer is old, it may not have the room. It’s less the Word documents as it would be downloading MP3s and PowerPoint presentations.
Consider your statement:
3 MB/file x 30 files = 90 MB x 200 users = 18 Gigs. That eats up a good part of your 40, and if one or two users start saving Gigs of data, things get pretty dicey. (I’ve seen it happen on our network storage).
And of course, I&TS no easy way of knowing how many of those users are actively using the files or how many downloaded them a year ago and will never use them. So you can’t easily delete outdated files and accounts.
Further, if anything goes wrong with the computers, the quickest and best way to fix it is to download an image. I&TS isn’t going to image all computers in the labs every week in order to preserve files: they’re going to use a single generic image. If you have files on the computer, tough luck. So it’s better for everyone involved if you don’t have any files on the computers (we haven’t allowed them for at least seven years for this reason).
I suspect that they want to restore the computers every night, but another benefit of not allowing students to store files on the hard drive is that it keeps the responsibility for files on the the students involved.
For example, if a student does something stupid and doesn’t realize it, the fact that “this computer ate my thesis!” is suddenly the department’s fault, as it is on their computer. Even if all they can say is “No, it’s not our fault, you screwed up”, getting in that arguement with a distraught student is emotionally draining and time consuming.
And having to buy a memory stick is not exactly going to destroy anyone’s budget: it’s a school supply, and costs less than a textbook or a decent calculator. I don’t see this as an onorous burden to put on graduate students.
I do something like this in my (high school) classroom: students are allowed to use my computer to print things, but not on the day they are due. They have to come in the day before. I found that if I let them print things the day they were due, every corrupted floppy, or file saved in the wrong format, or email that didn’t go through was my problem, not theirs, and there was a huge expectation that it would be ok to turn that work in late. Now, they do it 24 hours in advance or they find somewhere else to print it (and there is a library full of printers).
Well, our university’s main computer lab, which has over 100 machines, does allow students to save files, so i don’t see why a small lounge with thee computers, catering to a small group of grad students, can’t do the same thing.
Well, as i’ve already pointed out, there are fewer that 100 people in the department who have access to these machines, and only about 15-20 people use them on a regular basis.
Well, again, as i’ve already said, there are far fewer that 200 users. Furthermore, that figure of 3Mb for pdfs was a high estimate; most are considerably less, and there are very few stored on the computers at any time.
Well, i’m no IT genius, but even i know that you can open a folder, slect the “Details” view, and quickly see when a file was created, last modified, etc.
All we need to do is have a policy whereby the hard drive is cleaned up every three months or so, and all files not used in the previous three months can then be deleted.
And, to reiterate, in my experience the computers in question don’t have a space issue. Last time i looked, a couple of months ago, the computer i was using had well over 20Gb of its 40Gb HDD available.
It may surprise some IT people to know this, but these computers were not installed with the specific idea of keeping IT staff in a job; they were installed to allow the users to carry out a variety of university-related tasks. I guess we could, as micco suggests, ensure that the computers remain trouble-free by unplugging them and locking them in a storage cupboard, but that would rather defeat the purpose of the machines, even if it would make IT’s job easier.
But that’s not the point. Most of us already have USB keys anyway.
The point is that restricting the computer’s functions in this way defeats most of the purpose of the machines being there in the first place. It turns them into little more than $1000 web browsers. Fucking pointless, if you ask me.
When this kind of change is made in an academic environment, especially without consulting the faculty, what often turns out to have happened is that someone has hacked into one of the computers. I know the IT guys at the university where I went to grad school got complaints like this when they had to disable telnet access to our network after we got hacked.
Or you might have a new IT guy who’s paranoid about security, or who just doesn’t want to bother with these machines.
I would only agree with you if the computers did not have a reasonable complement of “approved” software on them. Assuming they have all the software that most users might need on a day-to-day basis then I would have no issue with what they did. As you said “most of us already have USB keys anyway”. Given how much memory you can get in one of those things these days, why are you concerned about not being able to save your files on the hard drive when you can carry your computer files with you and not worry about whether you can get on to the one computer that has your Important Stuff on it or whether some goofball has screwed around with it?