rwright@cup.portal.com (Robert T Wright) (12/29/90)
I teach computer science at a junior high. I'd like to install a computer with a modem in our school library so students can call educational BBS's. There will be minimal adult supervision. How can I prevent students from calling 976 numbers and long distance? I need a telecommunications program that I can program to call selected numbers only. I'd like to run it on an Apple //e but I also have available a Mac and an IBM. The modems I have are Hayes compatibles. If no telecommunications program exists that will restrict access, perhaps I need to purchase a differnt kind of modem? Thanks, Robert Wright rwright@cup.portal.com 324-7114@mcimail.com
tomb@marque.mu.edu (12/30/90)
In article <37352@cup.portal.com> rwright@cup.portal.com (Robert T Wright) writes: >I teach computer science at a junior high. >I'd like to install a computer with a modem in our school >library so students can call educational BBS's. > >There will be minimal adult supervision. How can I >prevent students from calling 976 numbers and long >distance? ..... ........... >Robert Wright > When you have a telephone line installed, you can select not to subscribe to any long distance companies. That is how I resolved any potential problems of long distance calling on my machine. :)
manis@cs.ubc.ca (Vincent Manis) (12/31/90)
Someone else has pointed out that most telephone companies allow
selective subscription to long-distance and similar services. I have
nothing to add on that.
However, I do want to respond to an implicit assumption in the original
posting, namely that the solution to a potential abuse in an educational
computing system is to install a program which has several features
disabled. This seems to be a particularly common approach in PC/Mac type
environments. Of course, the approach has an obvious flaw: students
simply acquire another program which doesn't impose the limitation.
Standard microcomputer LAN's simply don't have enough protection to
enforce such limitations. Often, the ``protection'' in such a system is
a complicated menuing system, which the teacher (in a high-school
environment) may have difficulty figuring out, but which clever students
can circumvent at will.
That's the reason why we at the University of BC Computer Science did
not go with PC LANs for our student computing systems. UNIX certainly
does have security holes, but they are *much* less evident even to
extremely knowledgeable computer science students.
To conclude:
1) Protection mechanisms which are founded upon the ignorance of the
user are not so much protection mechanisms as mild inconveniences.
2) If students can figure out how to misuse a certain system feature,
at least one *will* misuse that feature.
--
\ Vincent Manis <manis@cs.ubc.ca> "There is no law that vulgarity and
\ Department of Computer Science literary excellence cannot coexist."
/\ University of British Columbia -- A. Trevor Hodge
/ \ Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1W5 (604) 228-2394