Moreon GreenPrint : The Daily D reports that Mike Hogan, director of computing services, “hopes to adopt a more secure method of identification similar to the Kerberos authentication system.” Yet he also assures that the College “does not plan to implement any charges” for printing. Had reporter Nathaniel Ward been thinking about it, this topic might have borne more questioning.

In the GreenPrint system, as it’s now implemented, users may assign to jobs any username and password combination they wish. For example, I could identify the “owner” of my print jobs as “andrewgrossman,” “grossman,” or “billybobthornton.” More secure authentication would fix jobs to a known user, probably by using Dartmouth’s authoritative name directory, the DND, which is used for BlitzMail and other applications that require positively identify users, such as browsing student records. As GreenPrint jobs are not printed until requested, students need not be contacted about wasted paper and the like. Really, the only reason to fix jobs to their actual owners would be for billing purposes (or to otherwise limit the amount that students may print). Whether Kiewit expects to implement these as soon as authentication is in place is unclear, but billing becomes possible only with authentication. Authentication brings no other benefits; users should be suspect.