Round 1

[Jeff Spaleta]

On Jan 10, 2008 12:53 AM, Nicu Buculei <nicu_fedora at nicubunu.ro> wrote:
> > When you'll install a new system, you'll get a unique (smolt-system)
> > id-number; maybe it is possible that that id-nummer is the "code" shown at
> > your dsktop?!
> >
> > So everybody has his "own unique" Desktop wallpaper/theme and also maybe
> > with the changing color as in F8???
>
> Wow! That would be indeed cool, to have your own code somewhere (it may
> be even a bar code).

This is NOT a good idea.  The whole point of the smolt ids are that
they are suppose to be somewhat anonymous.  If the id numbers are
encoded into the desktop, by default, without people's knowledge, then
people doing screencasts using the default desktops are essentially
leaking smolt id information without their express knowledge.

You want to use another random algorithm based on system entropy to
produce uniqueness..fine... but don't use the smolt id as the basis of
the uniquness for the desktop image generation in any way please.
Considering the choices made concerning how smolt operates I would
have a real hard time support seeing any such smolt id based graphics
generation being shipped in fedora. It's not self-consistent with the
effort put into smolt to get the id's anonymous.

-jef"Hey instead of the smolt id, for US citizens lets encoded the
social security number into the desktop image"spaleta