Tyiell

Oops, sorry - I just worked it out!!

Hi there, Right the school have bought a couple of MacBooks, and we want to disable the wireless networking. I have switched all this off and set the user up as a Standard account. Trouble is, even a standard user has the power to re-enable the Airport program, and join a wireless network (if they have the credentials obviosly). We don't want this, but being fairly unfamiliar with macs, I can't see how to stop it... Ideas?

We had one with a dodgy inverter - it died within a few weeks of purchase. Pretty sure it was a Dell Latitude - it was replaced on warranty - no quibble I've also had an HP delivered with a dodgy hdd. They were crap on the phone, but once I'd played the waiting 10 minutes to be transferred 100 times, they also repaired with no charge. I believe you get a 1 year manufacturers warranty on all hardware and suppliers are obliged to honour it - it doesn't even cost them, because they claim from manufacturers, so they're normally happy enough. The only trouble I've ever had is with extended warranties - some companies try their best to avoid honouring those!!

Secondary & 6Form here, 1200ish students, 200 staff, 700 workstations (+200 staff laptops ). We currently have 18 servers, plus 2 virtuals. 3 of the physicals are Linux servers, the rest are MS Server 2003.

Which would be a truly epic way of getting them to stop being a pain!! (Yes I am joking, and yes, I think they should be banned) On a serious note, I can't believe that the government are talking about banning air-guns, but allowing these things...

I don't care how many articles I see of this kind, I think internet filtering for students (and to a much lesser extent, staff) is a good thing. An Example: A while back our ISP very helpfully screwed up our internet connection in a way that meant nobody had internet or email of any kind for a day and a half. Cue teachers and students going ballistic. But. Go into an ICT classroom the day before the connection went down and they are studying web design. This means they have dreamweaver open and are copy pasting pictures of tinkerbell into the design view. And that is it. Go in the day the connection goes down, they just have blank rectangles where the pictures should go and they are actually filling in content and modifying layout (i.e. actually building a webpage). Then I happened to be in there when they noticed the internet connection was back online - and when one called out "Internet is fixed", as one the whole class minimised dreamweaver and started searching google images again. Back to timewasting. Moral of the story: I was educated perfectly well without the use of the internet. I'm not saying don't have it at all, but IMO it is too heavily relied on, and is provides too much opportunity to waste time. Filtering does no harm at all. Plus, many businesses filter their internet to employees so it is something they will have to get used to in their careers, which is what school is designed to do for them in the first place...

Glad to be of service!!!

And yet I've heard the PS3 online gaming function isn't as good. Just hearsay I'll admit - theres no chance of me swapping to ps3: they're still pricey, the only games it has that I actually like are available on both consoles, but many that I like on xbox aren't, and I don't have any blue-ray movies (not do I want to re-buy my extensive dvd collection!).

Not a macbook admittedly, but close!! Sorry, couldn't resist...

I love it!!! It's over-exaggerated and a little silly of course, but there are some absolutely classic lines in there. I just wish they'd can the canned laughter - it's way over the top... Favourite moment: Moss comes in to play his practical joke with the cups of coffee and throws the wrong one!! Favourite Episode: Employee of the month (...you used to be a man... Ooooh God....!!) :D

That's brilliant - like you, I'll always laugh when I see that from now on!!!

They are now!! They used bunny rabbits at first, but after they made them extinct throughout Northern America they had to move onto kittens and puppies!! Seriously though, I don't have a problem with them as such I just don't personally see the attraction. Or the point - I mean it's not like asimilar (and some would say better) product wouldn't do the same thing right? My point was people seem to buy them because they are apple and "pretty", not because they are useful. I'm sure there are exceptions to that, and at the end of the day: each to their own!!

The clubs might, but individual players get sponsorship deals and advertising revenue don't they? I thought that's where they get most of their silly money...

I don't disagree. But unfortunately firemen/women don't generate thousands of pounds for thier organisation everytime they show their face/put out a fire/cheat on spouse. It's the way the world works I'm afraid!! I don't think they deserve it, but they are generating that money - it's not like it comes from our taxes or anything. I don't have strong feelings either way about football. I sometimes watch England if they're on because I live here, Scotland if they're on because I'm Scottish (very depressing to admit in footy season). Very occasionally I watch West Ham play with the old man, because he's a fan. Other than that I don't pay much attention.

Due to the management team being tighter than a ducks **** over here, we can only dream of commercial products such as smoothwall. A free alternative that I can vouch for is a Squid/Dansguardian/Webmin install on linux (i like ubuntu). Can be a little fiddly to set up, but there are guides out there and if you choose to go this route I can probably help out (I did it fairly recently). I have mine bound to the windows domain, authenticating using ntlm on active directory users (not on groups), with various access level groups for staff, students, evil students, etc. Once it is set up, particularly with webmin, it is dead easy to use and maintain. I certainly have no problems with the interface (non-linux using tecnicians maintain the block lists and exceptions lists with no issues at all), and the reports just read from plaintext log files, so depending on what you report on can be dead quick or a little slow. Never had to leave it overnight though! That said, if there was the remotest chance they would give me some money for stuff like that, I would look into smoothwall - it may well be the case that a professional product with official support would be worth the investment! Hope that helps!

Ok. I'll give it a shot at some point, and come back with an informed opinion of OSX

Fair enough!! Mind you, I'm not saying it's bad. Just that it's not particularly good! Don't think I can put OSX on the powerpc type mac can I?

Hmm, interseting to hear you say that - not a common statement from Mac users IME... I dont have much of an opinion on the OS myself - just looks like a arty linux distro to me (which is not far off being exactly what it is, though based on freeBSD I believe). My issues with it are as you said: price and hardware. I also can't see a particular advantage to using them over their cheaper counterparts - even if they were the same price there doesn't seem to me to be a good reason to use them. And before I get blasted, I have a Mac (admittedly I got hold of it free. I think its a G4. Big server-type thingy, running OS9 I think), I have a Windows XP laptop, a windows 7 pc and my main machine is a laptop with Ubuntu on it. So I have tasted most flavours. Ubuntu (or linux in general) wins for me...

Truly. Without the good marketing that Apple have used to make themselves fashionable - and therefore making their otherwise unjustifiable price an illusion of exclusivity rather than just being a rip-off, I honestly don't thing they would even exist!!

I don't know, what if they connect several times a day. Could get a vitamin overload We're boring here, XXX-DC-01 type structure. The older servers were all by planets - we had all of them from Mecury - Pluto. But for some reason a previous NM decided to avoid Uranus. Can't image why...

Glad I could help

Why? My car talks to me... Admittedly it's not quite such a smooth talker, so I nicknamed it KLUNK rather than KITT...

Did someone sell it to you down the pub?

Or even a few less quid - I got the Harry Potter movie the day it was released to dvd for £7!! Generally you only have to wait 6 months and its in the £3 bucket at tescos. (I'm not cheap, honest!)

Possibly the reason I tend to be dismissive of macs is that I've never really managed to work up any enthusiasm for what a computer looks like - my current computer is in the same case as my first pc - it's the only bit that hasn't been changed out over the years!!! @jamesb: fair enough, maybe it my indifference to asthetics that is weird after all...