MaxIBoy
September 10th, 2009, 06:21 AM
OK, I'd like to start with saying that this post is NOT what it seems. I am merely trying to fulfill a bull**** school policy. I am VERY confident in the security of my Debian laptop... (If anyone wants to skip the backstory and get to the actual technical question, just scroll down past the line of equals signs. However, it's worth a good laugh to read it through, so as to appreciate the bitter humor of my situation.)
...However, the county office (which oversees my school district, which oversees my school) isn't quite so sure. The school district's IT department (all one person of it) is absolutely clueless. Probably some idiot who actually needed to cheat in order to get an MSCE.
Also, last year, some equally clueless student (I can think of a few suspects) brought an unsecured Windows laptop to school, infecting the content filtering servers (which run Windows for some reason) and turning the whole LAN into an actually-pretty-hilarious-if-you-think-about-it maelstrom of worm infections, driving up the school's bandwidth usage to something like 100 times normal amounts.
Now, an intelligent person would put FreeBSD on the servers and potentially rig it up to cut off any connected computers which broadcast huge bursts of packets. Their solution was to turn all the school WinXP machines into thin clients, take down the school WiFi networks, and issue an edict from on high against any personal laptops being connected by personal cat5 cables to the many extra sockets in the building.
According to the school principal, there are in fact plans to allow people back onto the WiFi, but only by getting your MAC address white-listed. In my opinion that makes perfect security sense. However, they are also potentially planning to require EVERYONE to run an antivirus. I told the principal, "OK, I could put clamAV on it if it makes you feel better, but that only scans for Windows viruses." He said, "Actually we were planning on requiring either MCafee or Norton, we haven't decided which yet."
Now, I'm pretty sure I can talk my way out of this one, as one of the student technical advisors is a very smart Macintosh user who also plays with Linux from time to time. He was the one who suggested the MAC address idea. Beats the hell out of the previous plan, which is "if one kid screws up, everyone else gets their WiFi privs taken away too." I pointed out that in freshman year I got my chair privileges taken away in Algebra, for leaning back too much (OK, so that teacher was also kind of a nut.)
However, I might wind up being stuck running MCafee or Norton. SO:
================================================== ===
Is it possible to run these under WINE? I plan on getting a copy of it, and never touching it unless I need to prove that I have it installed. Updating is not an issue. Whether it runs to a functional extent is also not an issue.
An acceptable substitute is a dummy icon in the systray which shows a screenshot when I click on it, although it might be a bit too risky to bluff through it with only that.
Searching for Norton and Mcafee on WineHQ's appDB brings up only the original Norton Commander, plus Mcafee Visual Trace, whatever that is. I think I may be in uncharted territory.
...However, the county office (which oversees my school district, which oversees my school) isn't quite so sure. The school district's IT department (all one person of it) is absolutely clueless. Probably some idiot who actually needed to cheat in order to get an MSCE.
Also, last year, some equally clueless student (I can think of a few suspects) brought an unsecured Windows laptop to school, infecting the content filtering servers (which run Windows for some reason) and turning the whole LAN into an actually-pretty-hilarious-if-you-think-about-it maelstrom of worm infections, driving up the school's bandwidth usage to something like 100 times normal amounts.
Now, an intelligent person would put FreeBSD on the servers and potentially rig it up to cut off any connected computers which broadcast huge bursts of packets. Their solution was to turn all the school WinXP machines into thin clients, take down the school WiFi networks, and issue an edict from on high against any personal laptops being connected by personal cat5 cables to the many extra sockets in the building.
According to the school principal, there are in fact plans to allow people back onto the WiFi, but only by getting your MAC address white-listed. In my opinion that makes perfect security sense. However, they are also potentially planning to require EVERYONE to run an antivirus. I told the principal, "OK, I could put clamAV on it if it makes you feel better, but that only scans for Windows viruses." He said, "Actually we were planning on requiring either MCafee or Norton, we haven't decided which yet."
Now, I'm pretty sure I can talk my way out of this one, as one of the student technical advisors is a very smart Macintosh user who also plays with Linux from time to time. He was the one who suggested the MAC address idea. Beats the hell out of the previous plan, which is "if one kid screws up, everyone else gets their WiFi privs taken away too." I pointed out that in freshman year I got my chair privileges taken away in Algebra, for leaning back too much (OK, so that teacher was also kind of a nut.)
However, I might wind up being stuck running MCafee or Norton. SO:
================================================== ===
Is it possible to run these under WINE? I plan on getting a copy of it, and never touching it unless I need to prove that I have it installed. Updating is not an issue. Whether it runs to a functional extent is also not an issue.
An acceptable substitute is a dummy icon in the systray which shows a screenshot when I click on it, although it might be a bit too risky to bluff through it with only that.
Searching for Norton and Mcafee on WineHQ's appDB brings up only the original Norton Commander, plus Mcafee Visual Trace, whatever that is. I think I may be in uncharted territory.