Tyiell

Ah but whose studies? The only ones I have heard of are the government ones, and they tell you that the car = Seriously though, if I ruled the country (let me dream), I would not necessarily increase the number of roads, but bad layouts themselves almost seem to be designed to cause congestion (and therefore pollution)...

I have a tab open with iSpy and another with my Settings showing the subscribes posts. Glance at it and refresh it in all the quiet moments between irate phone calls

Is there not an argument that more (and wider) roads would decrease congestion, speed up traffic and thus reduce the amount of wasted time on the roads. The longer people are stuck on the m25 not going anywhere, the longer they are polluting the atmosphere. IMO you will never reduce car usage because no other mode of transport is even half as convenient. So it's best to make the car as economic as possible and reduce traffic rather than the number of cars!

www.howtoforge.com is the best resource I have found for Linux help and how-tos. Here are the guides I have used in the past: How To Install And Configure Dansguardian With Multi-Group Filtering And Squid With NTLM Auth On Debian Etch | HowtoForge - Linux Howtos and Tutorials Dansguardian Content Filtering With Transparent Proxy On Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic | HowtoForge - Linux Howtos and Tutorials That first one will work for Ubuntu as well - they are similar to use. The first one authenticates users with ntlm meaning you don't have to run anything on the client to identify the users - the best method I think. I have recently set this up on the latest Ubuntu release (9.10 Karmic), so feel free to give me a shout if you have a go and get stuck!!

You will need a server running a form of linux (my preference is Ubuntu or Debian - I find Ubuntu easier and reliable enough, but debian is more stable). Then you set it up with squid and dansguardian (how-to links to follow) and set a GPO on your domain to force all browsers to use the new server as a proxy.

I can imagine!!! If I tried that I would be shot, stabbed, hung, drawn, quartered, castrated and burned...

I agree with all of that - and could add a litttle more: Performance Management is getting better for pupil tracking in AM7, but there are still issues with filter groups: you can filter by SEN Status, but not by SEN Code. You can filter by EAL, but not by ethnicity. Not sure why they don't just let you filter by anything recorded - that is what databases are designed to do after all!!!

I see - you can see why they say that there are lies, damned lies and statistics!!! So you read it as saying all planes flying through the ash have a 10% increase of risk? It's all down to interpretation - When I looked at it, I read it as 1 in 10 will experience negative effects of all the planes flying through the ash. Maybe all of them will be effected in some way, but 10% of them are at serious risk. Re-reading it I suppose the former is more logical, but either way I think it's unnecessary risk to peoples lives!!

10% = 10 chances out of 100, which is the same as 1 chance in 10. Hence 1 in 10 planes are at an increased risk if they fly through the ash...

That document seems to highlight what you should be doing without really going into how - most particularly it is not specific to Sims. I can't speak for CMIS, but SIMS does not currently have an in-built solution to provide the extensive data analysis we are asked to provide (although I believe we are asked to provide slightly more data than the guidelines require). It does have some tracking and assessment tools which we use quite effectively, but they are not complete, nor are they flexible enough to allow us to tailor the results the way we do in our tracking spreadsheets. Obviously it would be preferrable to keep it in the mis, but until the features are available, we have no choice...

Pretty sure you can't I'm afraid. AFIK the Synetrix proxy doesn't provide multiple levels of filtering - it's either on or off. This is what prompted us to implement a DansGuardian/Squid proxy that filters internally then forwards on to Synetrix. That way we allow youtube on Synetrix, but block it for students only on our internal proxy. EDIT: We implemented this 2 years ago or so, they may have implemented multiple groups since. However even if they have we find we get a greater level of control from our internal set up...

True, I suppose office gets upgraded more often than Windoze. Even so, I reckon it would work out more expensive - Office 2003 lasted us 5 years, and we got office 07 pro plus licences for £30 a go...

...and the tone was lowered!! Tsk

Wouldn't work - he's so hard the plane wouldn't take off...

Good to hear some positive points - I had no doubt there were some, but they seemed a little thin on the ground!!! So the new deployment system - does one image work for all machines then? This is the first I have heard of this - sounds like a massive benefit... We don't have a schools agreement - we have bought XP individually with each machine. This means we either have to begin an agreement, or buy individual win 7 licenses. I'm not convined the Schools agreement is worth it from what I have seen. The annual payment is about 1/3 of the price of buying them outright, which means it is only cost effective if you upgrade to Windows 8 (or whatever) within 3 years. Otherwise it evens out on the 3rd year, and you start paying over the odds for each year from then. Given XP lasted easily 9 years - thats triple the price of buying them outright!!

Worrying that some Adobe products aren't compatible - we have the CS3 Master Collection - is that the same version as your premier I wonder? Media will kick up a hell of a fuss if that doesn't work and I can't blame them!!! Thanks for your input!

Agreed. And you can't win either way since the airlines are already lobbying for compensation for being grounded in the first place. I'd rather they got that than planes start falling out of the sky to appease irate passengers who don't know what they're talking about and company directors that want the cash...

We announce all our changes in the Briefing and post notes on our Bulletin on our VLE. Both of which are invariably ignored, but we can only try!!

Don't know about Matthews, but we have tried those, and while they are useful, we find that they don't provide the flexibility we need to satisfy the powers that be!!! Wish it did!!!

Hi All, I didn't want to post this in the Windows 7 group because this post exists (in part at least) because I can't be bothered to do any proper research - I just want opinions from those who have the time and inclination to give them Basically our network manager has decided to roll out a mass upgrade of the servers to Server 2008 and the clients to Windows 7. I fully approve of the server 2008 part, and and the roll out is scheduled for the summer so no criticsm that we are rushing into it is implied here, but I am interested to know what real advantages there are for going to Win 7. Many of the staff laptops and some of our desktops are not going to handle it (many only have 512 MB RAM, some even have 256...) causing more expense than the already considerable cost of the licenses. In the face of these disadvantages, the overall cost, and the inevitable outcry of "it looks different I can't cope!!" from staff and students, I haven't seen much to really justify doing the upgrade as a priority - I understand MS will supply security updates for XP until 2014. I am curious to know what the advantages are of upgrading so soon... Oh and I don't count "it looks nice" as an advantage - I get that enough from the media department when they want to buy Apple Macs

@Mathews: Our brilliant data manager has built a phenomenal spreadsheet that does this and more - it's mind-boggling to behold, but she can more or less export the data from sims and copy it in and boom - it all works. I can ask her if she will let me post it for you if you like, but be warned - it's MAAASSSSIVVE (and pink, she likes all her spreadsheets to be pink!!).

I found this helpful, though there are minor differences and the version numbers are a little out of date. I got it working on ubuntu though so feel free to pm me if you choose to go down that route and get stuck. There are other how-tos on that site too - after edugeek its always a great place to check!!

A friend of mine brought me some ultra-fancy filter coffee beans from Italy. Literally from Italy - I would tell you what they are, but I can't read Italiano!!!! Bit of a faff to keep the beans in the fridge and grind the beans up and all, but the taste.... heaven. I drink waaay too much of it though

As I understand it they just extended the warranty to 3 years to cover it...

Heh, they're awesome. Buying some of those!!!