UCSB Bans Windows NT/2000 in the Dorms

nick58b writes "The people in charge of the networks for all of the on-campus dorms at UCSB banned the use of Windows NT and 2000 on their networks citing security and network problems associated with them. While there are problems with NT/2000, Windows 98 and ME computers are still permitted. Students using these are "recommended" to upgrade to XP Home Edition. In other news, sales of Windows XP are way up at the campus bookstore."

Ultimate security...

[JakiChan]

...means unplugging the computer from the network. I guess this is the next best thing. :-)

You mean, XP with universal Plug and Play

[addikt10]

The one that ships with Universal plug and play as it's easiest to crack automatic service? Good Call.

What does XP offer that Windows 2k doesn't in terms of security?

Re:What a scam

[Anonymous Coward]

In related news, UCSB will require students to use ONLY textbooks from 1960 through 1975.

In other related news

[molrak]

Intra-campus bandwidth has skyrocketed. Transfers of pirated or hacked copies of XP over the campus network seem to be the cause of the campus congestion.

hmmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

i thought campuses would be more afraid of the EULA. i think thats biggest security issue with windows today ;P

good ol' campus LANs

[dotgod]

I remember when I lived on campus I used to get a kick out of busting out with a "NET SEND ALL blah blah" command. Good way to annoy everyone with an NT box. Of course I'm sure this isn't the reason they banned NT/2k since it'll automatically pop up on XP boxes too. The funniest thing I did with NET SEND was to send out a message asking all the single ladies to IM my roommate.

Re:You mean, XP with universal Plug and Play

[Ted_Green]

"What does XP offer that Windows 2k doesn't in terms of security?"

Obsecurity of course!

LOL! They did the opposite here at SLU

[tx_mgm]

if youre caught in the dorms with a copy of windows xp, you win a brand new disk format and a fresh install of windows 2000. they say its because xp exploits someting on the network that they dont want to fix....i dunno.
just kind of funny

Re:good ol' campus LANs

[Zayin]

The funniest thing I did with NET SEND was to send out a message asking all the single ladies to IM my roommate.

So, did he get laid?

I know an IP block to scan to test new XP viruses

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean really, why not just announce to the world that anything from 128.111.0.1 to 128.111.255.255 is probably now running XP?

Re:What a scam

[MtViewGuy]

You're right about that!

Windows 2000 Professional with its Service Pack 3 and McAfee AntiVirus 7.0 (antivirus + firewall) is actually a reasonably secure OS setup.

Re:good ol' campus LANs

[dotgod]

So, did he get laid?

No, actually he got a bunch of IMs from guys who were pissed of because they thought he was the one who kept sending the popup messages. He came closer to getting beat down than anything else.

hypocracy U. they use win2k server for that page!

[kraksmoka]

being a die-hard *nix user, seeing stuff [netcraft.com] like this cracks me up . . . . check out what netcraft says they're serving the page announcing [netcraft.com] the win2k ban on.

typical

We've been Slashdotted. Hehe. Thanks

[jasonla]

I'm the Online Editor for the Daily Nexus (the newspaper site that article links to). We've been Slashdotted, LOL. Thanks guys.

The site is still up and running though. Thank god I rewrote the site's PHP code, otherwise, we'd actually be down.

Re:good ol' campus LANs

[Dynedain]

because I'm betting there were a lot of single ladies running winNT/2K

Kings College, London

[isorox]

KCL [kcl.ac.uk], UK ban linux [kcl.ac.uk], stating You may not run any Unix operating system since they can represent a serious risk to network integrity. Any student found running a Unix system (e.g. Linux) connected to the College network will have that system disconnected.

I tried emailing them a corrected version, but their email address was down - so much for network integrity.

"You are encouraged to run a Unix based operating system since they dont
suffer serious risks to network integrity like Nimda, Code Red and Outlook
Worms. Any student found running any insecure system (e.g. most windows
boxes) connected to the College network will have that system disconnected."

Confusingly they do allow the unix based Mac OSX.

Re:Not a scam

[The Dobber]

The key factor here is that they are banking on the fact that Win9X will crash frequently enough as to be "offline" more often then not. You can't exploit what you can't see.

Re:What a scam

[Corrado]

Nah, it's more like:

"UCSB will require students to use ONLY textbooks published in 2003 which you can conviently purchase at the UCSB bookstore." :)

Back in my day... :)

[cjsnell]

Here is a fun little prank that I did back when I was in school (1993-1997):

When I was a freshman at Vanderbilt University [vanderbilt.edu], we used the campus VAX to register for classes. It worked like this: you would go to one of several large computer labs on campus and log onto the VAX as user REGISTER (or something). Once you logged in, the registration program would fire up automatically (via the VMS equivalent of .login). Anyway, one day at the beginning of the semester, I was feeling a bit mischevious. I was in one of the larger labs and it was packed to the gills with students trying to register. I logged on to the REGISTER account and did something that was similar to ctrl-z suspending and suspended the registration app. Now I had a command prompt. Next, I used the VMZ equivalent of write(1) (...gosh, what was it?) and sent a message out to everybody else using the REGISTER account--literally hundreds of students...

ALERT: THE REGISTRATION SYSTEM WILL BE CLOSING IN 30 SECONDS. PLEASE MAKE YOUR FINAL CLASS SELECTIONS AT THIS TIME.

The first thing that happened when I sent the message was several hundred PCs beeping loudly all at the same time. And immediately after that...you should have seen the looks of panic on all those sorority girls' faces! :)

Re:Why not....

[thunderbird46]

Umm... how are you supposed to download anything when your LAN jack is disabled? :)