Re: Privacy

[linas linas org (Linas Vepstas)]

On Wed, Mar 17, 2004 at 05:11:40PM +0000, Andrew Sobala was heard to remark:
> On Wed, 2004-03-17 at 10:26 -0600, Linas Vepstas wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > Jody, sorry, I'll try to recap succinctly:
> > 
> > -- User is running gnome or kde desktop at home, and shares the
> >    desktop with the rest of the family.
> > -- User wants to password-protect thier gnucash data sets (and/or
> >    thier word docs and or thier pornography/or whatever) so that
> >    the rest of the family (or at least the kids) don't get access.
> 
> 
> So what we *really* want in a star-trek solution is a good
> implementation of fast user switching, like mac os x (and windows?), and
> there won't be any problems in having everybody protect their data by
> being different users. Or are there problems with that too?

I suppose that fast user switching might be OK, I've never tried that,
Defacto, one is most comfortable with what one knows already, and 
what I know (and I suspect must 'multi-users') know is that its 
very easy to just never log out, and if wife wants to go web surfing
or kid wants music, its already there and ready to go.  

I'm concerned that even 'trivially easy super-fast user switching'
might already be too complicated.  Unless its as easy to use as 
the pager (aka 'workspace switcher').  I've trained them on the pager. 

FWIW, it might be useful to passwd-protect certain pager panels
as a possible solution, although this would not be enough to protect
the users data. (It would keep out my kids, but if used at the office,
it would not protect my data from malicious officeworkers).

--linas



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