Hell, you don’t even need fancy group policy, since I think it asks you if you want to keep it on when it activates. They know most people don’t need it, so making it easy to customize to fit the owner of the computer is the right move, but accessible by default is also the right move, since someone who needs it might not even be able to turn it on if it were the other way.
Accessibility in computing (and in general but I only know computing in depth) is crazy hard, and super important. Everyone ends up with a disability at some point if they live long enough.
Now, I can picture a system that would be able to make it easier for people by letting them store a configuration profile on a keychain or bracelet or something that uses some manner of proximity communication to share a users input and output preferences to a computer, and maybe some type of Bluetooth fast-pair information if the user does have their own keyboard or input they bring with them, and that would be sweet from both a disability perspective and also for the rest of the user base, since the accessible way is also usually better in general. (It’s why you remove snow from wheelchair ramps first, and some buildings don’t even bother with external entryway stairs, since everyone can use a ramp, and dual partial ellipse ramps let you put flowers or a water feature in the middle, and it looks quite nice)
You’d have to be careful with privacy considerations to avoid tracking, and it wouldn’t let you not be accessible by default, but I could see it being a nice addition.
There was a movement years ago to get folks putting their operating system and configuration on a thumb drive, and then make computers more of a generic commodity. You could stick your drive into any computer, boot from it, and you’re good to go. I was kind of sad that that never really went anywhere, though I’m sure it was a cyber security nightmare scenario.
Yeah, I remember that. Definitely not great from a security standpoint, since once you’ve booted your own OS you can do nearly anything you want with the computer, like patch the firmware to automatically install a rootkit when the system boots.
Not terribly likely, but since a lot of public computers are in libraries and are used by people without home computers to do things like their taxes or online banking, a nasty compromise would hit a lot of people who wouldn’t know their identities were stolen for quite a while.
The fix makes it a lot harder for computers to change operating systems dynamically like that, which is a bit of a loss, but ultimately worth it I think.
What I’m picturing would be a lot more like a static file format for sharing that information, without either device having the ability to actually “change” the other directly.
Hell, you don’t even need fancy group policy, since I think it asks you if you want to keep it on when it activates. They know most people don’t need it, so making it easy to customize to fit the owner of the computer is the right move, but accessible by default is also the right move, since someone who needs it might not even be able to turn it on if it were the other way.
Accessibility in computing (and in general but I only know computing in depth) is crazy hard, and super important. Everyone ends up with a disability at some point if they live long enough.
Now, I can picture a system that would be able to make it easier for people by letting them store a configuration profile on a keychain or bracelet or something that uses some manner of proximity communication to share a users input and output preferences to a computer, and maybe some type of Bluetooth fast-pair information if the user does have their own keyboard or input they bring with them, and that would be sweet from both a disability perspective and also for the rest of the user base, since the accessible way is also usually better in general. (It’s why you remove snow from wheelchair ramps first, and some buildings don’t even bother with external entryway stairs, since everyone can use a ramp, and dual partial ellipse ramps let you put flowers or a water feature in the middle, and it looks quite nice)
You’d have to be careful with privacy considerations to avoid tracking, and it wouldn’t let you not be accessible by default, but I could see it being a nice addition.
There was a movement years ago to get folks putting their operating system and configuration on a thumb drive, and then make computers more of a generic commodity. You could stick your drive into any computer, boot from it, and you’re good to go. I was kind of sad that that never really went anywhere, though I’m sure it was a cyber security nightmare scenario.
Yeah, I remember that. Definitely not great from a security standpoint, since once you’ve booted your own OS you can do nearly anything you want with the computer, like patch the firmware to automatically install a rootkit when the system boots.
Not terribly likely, but since a lot of public computers are in libraries and are used by people without home computers to do things like their taxes or online banking, a nasty compromise would hit a lot of people who wouldn’t know their identities were stolen for quite a while.
The fix makes it a lot harder for computers to change operating systems dynamically like that, which is a bit of a loss, but ultimately worth it I think.
What I’m picturing would be a lot more like a static file format for sharing that information, without either device having the ability to actually “change” the other directly.