How to Create an Internet Kiosk in 10 Easy Steps

If you own a business and would like to provide an “Internet Cafe” to your customers but do not want to worry about them trashing your computer or snooping around your network, there are some things you can do to create a more secure environment. This secure internet browsing mode is commonly referred to as an Internet Kiosk.

Disclaimer: This article is designed to cover most angles but does not claim to be conclusive in securing Windows (if there is such a thing!) What we will essentially do is create an automatically updating machine that grants the user access only to Internet Explorer by changing the shell value for that user and
by applying local Group Policy to restrict the user.

Steps to Create Your Own Internet Kiosk:

1. Install Windows XP (Pro is recommended, but not required. This how-to is based on Pro edition) on a NTFS formatted hard drive.
2. Install all updates via windowsupdate.microsoft.com and set automatic updates to install automatically in the future on a daily basis
3. Install your anti virus software of choice and set it to auto update
4. Install Flash, Macromedia, and acrobat reader if you so choose
5. create a new user account with admin privileges, set the password to never expire and to not be able to be changed by the user
6. log in with that user and make the following registry change:
   • click Start -> Run and type regedit and click OK
   • Once the Registry Editor opens, click File and Export… to create a backup of the registry (in case something goes wrong). Place this in the C:\Windows folder.
   • Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\Current
     Version\Winlogon
   • Create a new string value called shell (Edit -> New -> String Value)
   • in the Data portion of this new string value type: C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE
7. Close the Registry Editor and logout of Windows
8. Log back in with your original admin account
9. Reduce the privileges of the new user account you created earlier to user
10. Click Start -> Run -> Type “mmc” without the quotes. On the File menu click “Add/Remove Snap-in“. Click Add.
    Under Available Stand-alone Snap-ins, click Group Policy, and then click Add. This will open the Group Policy editor where you can limit user rights to your heart’s content. I would recommend dis-allowing control panel access, Active Desktop options, Task Manager from Ctrl-Alt-Del, and other obvious settings to ensure that your users can only
    do what you say.

There you have it, 10 easy steps to create your own secure Internet
Kiosk. When your newly created restricted user logs in, they will only get an Internet Explorer window. No start menu or desktop options.

If you have any suggestions on how to improve the security of your newly installed Internet Kiosk, please share them with our readers.

Technorati Tags: kiosk, Windows, internet, work, office, how-to, list, lists, steps, easy, internet kiosk, Windows XP

How to get your company to foot the bill

Great article on I Will Teach You To Be Rich on getting what you asked for:

Companies don’t care about spending money on their employees as much as you think. As I wrote in Don’t Quit Without Asking For What You Want,

One of my friends, for example, was unhappy about
having to pay the toll every day for her commute–a very understandable
complaint. But she didn’t tell her boss about this, who I guarantee
would have moved heaven and earth if he’d known an employee was close
to leaving. $6.00 per day is nothing to companies.

That’s a simple example. But there’s more. See, companies don’t care as much about spending money as they care about getting things done and making more money–much, much more than could be saved by being stingy with you.

Technorati Tags: bill, expense, company, economics, development, professional, personal

How to use rsync to backup files in Linux

Great article on using rsync in linux:

There are two types of backups that I do. The first is a backup of
several key folders, not my entire system. This is in case I blow
something away, or lose some data that I’d want to get back quickly.

I use the rsync command for this. Rsync is a simple and
fast way to make an exact copy of something. That something can be a
single file or a whole file system.

Now my external hard drive is a firewire drive, which Ubuntu
thoughfully mounts in /media for me with the wonderful name of
‘ieee1394disk’. That’s where I want to keep this backup copy. Let’s
open up a terminal session and go backup some stuff.

cd /media/ieee*

Now I’m in my external drive. If you have a USB disk, chances are it’s under /media/usbdisk or /media/whatevertheheckyoucalledit. I’m going to make a folder to store this backup in because I’m something of a filesystem neat freak.

mkdir arsgeek_backup

cd arsgeek_backup

Now there are four directories that I back up on a regular basis. These are my /home directory, my /etc directory my /opt directory and my mp3 collection.
My mp3’s are located on a FAT32 partition mounted in /media/sda5 in a
folder called music. So here’s the command I use to copy all of these.

rsync -arvu /home /etc /opt /media/sda5/music .

Here’s what the switches after the rsync command mean. a= archive, r= recursive, v= verbose, u= update and z= compress.

What I like about this is that while the first rsync does take some
time to copy all of these files and folders the first time it’s run,
the next time it’s run it only adds new stuff. So if I run this once a
week and the only changes that were made was that I added several new
mp3s to my music directory, it will only copy those new files.

If I accidentally deleted an mp3 that I wanted, I could easily (and
through the GUI) go to my external drive and copy it back. Or if I
accidentally deleted my /home directory (yikes!) I could rsync it back
by reversing the command:

cd /home

rsync -arvu /media/iee*/arsgeek_backup/home .

Technorati Tags: rsync, linux, backup, files, ubuntu, media, music

How to Update Drake to Eft

If you are using Ubuntu Dapper Drake and would like to upgrade to Edgy Eft, this site has a great tutorial.

I haven’t made the switch yet myself due to my upcoming Vegas trip (I don’t want to hose my laptop before I go) and at work I depend on some things that I am not sure if they work yet in the new release.

Technorati Tags: ubuntu, upgrade, edgy eft, dapper, drake, dapper drake, linux

Pedro Watches TV!

The other night I took a quick video of pedro with my camera as he watched TV:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1WkIjMAICI

Technorati Tags: funny, humor, pedro, dog, tv

Why does the toilet paper holder hate me?

I’ve noticed something over the last few years that may not bother many people but it drives me nuts.

I have a certain way the toilet paper roll gets “hung”. The paper must be delivered from the bottom. A trait that was instilled in me since youth to stop the cat from unraveling the roll while unattended.

Whenever I go to put a new roll in the holder. It never fails, it is placed in the wrong way once I “un-stick” the end of it. Why is that? You would think it would be a 50/50 chance but the odds are much greater, I would say somewhere around 90/10.

Does this bother you also? Am I the only one this happens to?

Technorati Tags: toilet, paper, roll, hanger, life