Hari's Corner

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Papa Hari OS - a new era in secure computing

Filed under: Humour and Nonsense by Hari
Posted on Sat, Jul 18, 2009 at 09:54 IST (last updated: Sat, Jul 18, 2009 @ 10:32 IST)

Papa Hari News Service

Ushering in a new era in secure computing, the Papa Hari Foundation announced a new OS, innovatively titled "Papa Hari OS" which will completely revolutionize Operating System security as it exists today.

"The Papa Hari OS is one of our major successes!" said a developer who unveiled the Operating System in a test machine. "Our greatest achievement is that the OS is fast, easy to use and yet absolute 100% secure off the shelf. There is absolutely no way any malicious software or virus could ever get into the machine as we have completely disabled networking, USB drives, CD-ROM, floppy disks and other peripherals. The OS is totally self-contained and will not allow any user to execute any program without foolproof authentication. The OS has no GUI because we do not allow any third party software to be executed on the machine... so there is simply no need for a GUI. You will find that our command prompt is fairly reminiscent of a fairly old operating system but don't let the black and white fool you into thinking that our OS is ancient."

Papa Hari OS

Demonstrating the only built-in command to be implemented so far, the DIR command, the developer continued: "The OS requires that you salute Papa Hari every time you execute any command. This is to allow our users to express their gratitude to us at every opportunity. Currently the OS requires fingerprint authentication before any command will execute successfully; but because we have disavowed supporting any third-party software or peripherals, the Papa Hari OS doesn't support any finger-print scanners yet - however when we manufacture our own scanner with proper device drivers, that feature will work as expected. Till then your fingerprint must already exist in the system."

When a journalist asked how the fingerprint can currently be transferred to the system running Papa Hari OS without any scanning support, the developer promptly dismissed his concerns: "What the user wants is security! Features are always subservient to security, even if something doesn't work. Our users would prefer it that way."

He continued: "Our commitment to security is unrivalled in the OS world. We have gone one step further than a famous BSD operating system in ensuring that absolutely no software can harm your computer and we have achieved our results at a fraction of the effort... In the not-too-distant future, we are planning to release an OS which will require a Papa Hari World Government official to be physically present on location whenever any user powers on their computer. Our security systems go way beyond mere software issues."

A fan of the Papa Hari OS claimed that he had succeeded in getting the famous DIR command to execute successfully after he had written his own device driver for the fingerprint scanner he uses, but he was promptly arrested on charges of hacking before he could make the details known.

Most of those who attended the press conference were impressed with the commitment to security shown by the Papa Hari OS developers. "Executing the DIR command all day long is an uplifting and educating experience," said a committed user of the Papa Hari OS, "Other Operating System users will never have the chance to learn something in as much depth as I have learned in using the DIR command."

However, a discordant note was struck when a cynic claimed that his computer was even more secure when it was not switched on and his friend added that his computer was the most secure because he hadn't bought one yet. Neither of these two gentlemen have been heard from again, but rumours suggest that they could have been arrested on charges of sedition and could have most likely been taken to the Papa Hari Maximum Security Prison to await re-education.

"True security goes beyond computing..." said the Papa Hari Police Commissioner cryptically when asked to clarify on the status of the detainees.

6 comment(s)

  1. Yay for Papa Hari, Only Papa can save us from the eeeevil hackers 8-)

    Comment by Ray (visitor) on Sat, Jul 18, 2009 @ 14:00 IST #
  2. Ray it is eeevil h4x0r :-P

    Comment by Hari (blog owner) on Sat, Jul 18, 2009 @ 14:08 IST #
  3. This OS looks like something Google would do with their new OS.

    Comment by RT Cunningham (visitor) on Mon, Jul 20, 2009 @ 10:17 IST #
  4. Google probably would do it in a GUI based Operating System. :)

    Comment by Hari (blog owner) on Mon, Jul 20, 2009 @ 10:23 IST #
  5. Funny post, and brightened up my lunch hour :)

    See you in my feed reader, I'm subscribing!

    Comment by Dion moult (visitor) on Tue, Jul 21, 2009 @ 10:52 IST #
  6. Thanks Dion! thanks for letting me know.

    ( Note that when you subscribe, you get an excerpt and not the full post. I hope you don't mind.

    I know some bloggers publish their full posts, but I don't because it's a too easy mechanism by which some sploggers rip off content.

    I also don't want to waste the bandwidth by serving entire HTML pages in the RSS feed and leave it up to the reader to decide whether it's a topic worth pursuing or not. )

    Comment by Hari (blog owner) on Tue, Jul 21, 2009 @ 10:57 IST #

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