[efh] Demonstrating code in the ACTLab?

[Allucquére Rosanne Stone]

>
>>  By the way, we hope to go dual boot to Linux on most ACTLab machines
>>  next year.  We were ready this year, but the tech staff asked us to
>>  slow down so they could explore the situation, particularly to find a
>>  way for UTIT, Microsoft-like, to control all Linux boxen remotely as
>>  they do now with Macs and PCs.
>
>Eeeagh.  Is mass SSH with public-key authentication not good enough
>for them?

Absolutely not.  Are you sitting down?  Each time you log off, they 
RELOAD the ENTIRE OPERATING SYSTEM.  This is true for all UT lab 
machines, Mac or PC.  It is an insurance-driven thing, meant to 
protect the university from lawsuits arising from identity theft. 
Hence we encourage people to work from their own laptops.  These are 
strange times, my friend...

(p.s. I'd assume it's not quite so draconian...they probably reload 
only the user-accessible stuff: binaries, apps, config directories, 
and desktop.  They probably do a checksum on the kernel and reload it 
if the checksum has changed.  But what else is there, really?)