in other news, the MPAA has severely affected lives of people just because they shared a song via... uh torrent.

It's always good to be able to restart the exam program and recover where you were before the crash.
But you could add into the exam binary a routine which simply checks if no other windows are present and if it's running on :1
If not, core dump.

and then not being able to run the exam? You can set up the boot media in a fashion that it's only useable with a lot of difficulty when not booting from the media. Special version of kernel which is checked by the software. You'll need to do library hacking or copy the kernel from the DVD onto the system (need root). Before all that is achieved, the exam time is over.

In the file /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config make the line
allowed_users=console
into
allowed_users=anybody

Create a file /etc/X11/kiosk.conf which contains
Section "ServerFlags"
Option "DontVTSwitch" "true"
EndSection

Now you can start your kiosk (no system access needed):

X -config kiosk.conf :1 & metacity --display=:1 & your_program

To kill the session: alt-sysrq-k alt-f7
or use the power button

one issue to solve: the "print screen" button brings up a dialog which can be used to browse the filesystem. But you can't read files or access the internet with that.

hmm, if I use my own xorg.conf in my home directory which uses a dumb video driver (ok, it's slow) and run that on display :1 it should be possible.

If I start an X server on display :1 it runs along the :0 instance. No need to do anything to the OS. And if that X server has ctrl-alt-F disabled, well then that's quite well locked up.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=776098
combined with
startx -config your-kiosk-xorg.conf -- :1

yeah, I didn't test it, don't want to lock up my office PC :-)

if those PCs have an USB or DVD drive, simply install a complete OS on an external media, and boot the PCs on thet. Original OS not changed. And you have complete control.
Disadvantage: you need to distribute the media or even walk to each PC to boot it (if the bios isn't locked down)

I want faster zapping.
E.g. with dual tuners.
I usually push P+ when I want to see something else.
So put 2 tuners in, the inactive one always tunes to the next channel.
Or even 3 tuners, if I decide to backtrack.

And also an intelligent zap, if there are ads on the next channel, skip it

Today's stock market is mainly ruled by automatic trading in the milliseconds.
So that's robots too.
And when the market starts to move, suddenly all silly automatic trading machines fire off, at the same time, running the stock market against the wall.

But we don't learn.
First we kill our finance system with computers
What's next? Public transport?
Or maybe health care.
Very probably the army. Hello Skynet!

you can breed rats, and they are rats. If you would get paid for a grey rat only once and not for every one, then you need to turn in brown, striped, checkered, white, blue, greeN, yellow rats. that would make the farming task way more complicated. Especially as there are other rat farmers out there doing the same.
And once all colors of rats have been done, it's over. no more rats...

I would rather go another way than of the quite visible glasses gadget and use a chest mounted micro-camera plus a headphone. And my "mp3 player" will tell me who this may be. And then I can take it out of my pocket to "switch it off" and so see the complete people's context on screen.

That should be possible with today's technology. But what if the machine gets the face recognition wrong?

best to have the rootkit reside inside the kernel so it's there forever. Clever system.

I think a non transparent one with the title picture in some crappy looking relief would be possible. The inlet you print on your newspaper replicator.
All cases would look the same, like those lightscribe CDs also look the same.

a good read on how it happened
http://pwnhome.wordpress.com/2011/08/22/php-crypt-bug/

upload the inciminating video to facebook and tag him :-)