Rydra

I would be interested to know other's thoughts on the difference in cost between in-house technicians and external support companies. The advantages to inhouse, is you have support on site when you need it, not 1-2 hours phonecall/drive away or part time. It's also, frequently cheaper for day to do jobs and general upkeep of the network. The downside, is often a lack of experience/qualifications of those who do it (For example, I do not have the ability/knowhow to reconfigure all the switches and managed Wireless devices in the school, I simply have no experience of doing it), where for those trickier or larger jobs, you can pay the company the same amount, and get a team on site whereas before you had just the technician. Something that was discussed in my area, was for the inhouse technicians we already have, to pool resources occasionally. EG, if I'm to do a full network rebuild over a holiday period, I would get another technician from the school down the road, in return when they need assistance with their network in a few months time, I return the favour. So we get the benefits of both without many of the pitfalls.

I see it as unlikely to axe it completely. Several schools in my area are literally partially dismantled and under construction/demolition. Others were due to start in a matter of a few weeks, with some of their support staff already Tupee'd across to the new companies. To axe it now would leave schools partially built/demolished, with support staff not employed, and facing unemployment as the money to pay them gets recalled. As described, it is more than likely that any that have no actually signed a deal, or at least started physical work will be axed. Even contracts signed can be pulled by the government, as it's cheaper to blow £1m on consultant fee's and right them off, than it is to pump a few hundred million/ few billion into a project.

Hi Karl. I am doing exactly the same thing here over the summer. I am using Italc as the viewer/client, which is a little more secure than vnc IMO (since it is designed to only talk via linked keys and their own client). It also has classroom management built into it, and demostration tools etc. Also, in a number of classrooms, we have a TFT monitor mounted on a Wal mounted-bracket, that sits just below/to the side of the whiteboard, where a VI child can sit on the floor and position accordingly, with a VGA splitter to drive the image to both projector and VI monitor. My school has a dedicated VI department which covers several schools in the area, who I will be having a meeting with tomorrow to discuss what they would like me to do ICT wise for them. If you drop me a PM with any other questions you might have, I'll either tell you my answer/point of view, or get some responses from our VI team to pass onto you.

simple. you remove the money that was going to pay for it. Anyone who complains too loudly will be pointed towards the big 0 in the wallet, ending all conversation. I want a pay rise and an office to work in, but I suspect the school's budget doesn't extend that far, no matter how much I moan I want/need it.

Heard something on the radio this morning about it, but not seen/heard anything else about it and missed the main report on it. Anyone got a reliable news link about it? In a meeting I had this morning, they announced the axeing of the Harnessing Technology money, but no effect on school budgets themselves; they cuts would come from LEA end, on such things as VLE's.

Difference between the 57x and 58x is processing cores. The 58x series has about 35% more of them, meaning more processing power to work it's magic. The 5830 will be a better card than the 5770.

If anyone else spots an ati 5870 for £175 legit, buy 50 of them; they are worth £300-400! The 5870 is one of the top 3 most powerful cards on the market right now, The ones above it being the ATi 5970 (which is actually 2 5850's bolted together) and, arguably, the Nvidia 480. The 5830 is right in your price bracket. Make sure with such a huge jump in graphics power you have a PSU that has the right connectors and enough raw power. These higher end cards require a decent PSU; your 300w cheap jobby's will cause trouble, as a benchmark should have 5-600w PSU for a household gaming PC, and go higher if you run a lot of drives, multiple graphics cards, or upgrade to a very top end card.

My old nan died some 6 or so years ago now, She had alzheimers and dimentia. But in the final years, she came over our house for xmas dinner, walked into the house, stood right next to the xmas tree, and proclaimed "Happy Easter!" To this day with family gatherings, we always fire off the first toast as "Happy Easter!"

I've been pondering how to do something like this, as I have a new AV to rollout, and multiple software suites requiring upgrades. But i've been told that I just won't be allowed to do it. It annoys me a little; the teachers are not technically paid to work during the holidays, and neither am I; but yet I'm still expected to have a completely working shiny network in the 1st September despite having no time to do it in, and not being given access to half the computers to get them working!

There is actually little reason for 'closed' toilets, except a lot of schools use them as changing rooms as well. At least pubs still stick with the old trough, and some schools; young boys and drunk men still can't aim straight despite thousands of years of evolution.

Renault/Citroen may be good in France, but not here. The french like to charge us double for parts, and have some funky practices that see 'custom' kit. My best mate had a Citroen Saxo for years, just a bog standard one, and repairs to it cost more than I've spent on cars including fuel and insurance for the last 6 years. A vauxhall is stupidly easy and cheap to repair, especially for me, as there's a vauxhall plant just a few miles away in Luton. Ford are also pretty good as make a lot of stuff over here too. Honda have some factories here I gather, so they are expensive cars, but average costs on repairs (not the cheapest, but not like a BMW to repair!)

The size and type of the school will always have an affect on things. But the quality of the school, or the staff member should not. By the above arguement, if a person applies as a technician with 4 MS certs, 3 Cisco and a doctorate in computing, they should be paid twice as much as the other technician in the school who's straight out of college, and been there 5 years. They both have the same job spec, the same responsibilities, but because the other one is "better" you should pay him more? If the new technician takes on MORE responsibilities, or does a higher grade of work, then they are suitable for more pay. There should not be a higher or lower quality of staff. We all teach the same things, or manage the same computers one way or another. Our ability to do the job we're paid for shouldn't affect the salary, only how long you hold the job for. If things aren't working under your management you shouldn't be paid for it. You shouldn't have people paid more simply because they aren't incompetant at the job they were paid to do. The key word here, is shouldn't. We are unfortunately in a place where this shouldn't doesn't hold for all cases.

Credit cards and loans, outside of mortgages are all a waste of time. So many of my friends live in the red; they have credit cards or overdrafts which they run to the limit, get paid which brings them back in the green, and then restart the process. I'm 25 now, i've had one payment on a credit card, it was there for less than 2 weeks before I paid it (honeymoon in the US, they like credit cards over there). One training company loan (for a train at home scheme i got screwed on, long story for another day), and my mortgage, which I pay the repayments on comfortably. I have never got how people can live in their overdraft like that, and still do things like holidays, new TV's, new cars. My concience just wouldn't let me do it. All in all, as long as interest rates don't screw up, and they don't kill the school system completely, I should be fine with the new budget. I have no debts, not on any benefits, have a good lump of savings, due to inherit a fair sum from some recently deceased granparents (but not enough to really get stung on). I don't drink much, don't smoke, and I live close enough to work if I had to i could walk or cycle. My big worry is the screw up part; there is a good chance, that the cuts to the education sector could see me severely restricted on future prospects. I'm now looking at no pay rises, unlikely to get a paygrade review, less likely to get a new job elsewhere in my field, a nerf to my pension, and a complete lack of money and resources to do my job effectively. I liked education, because through the recession it was a safe place to be. Now, public sector is quite a dangerous place to be working, I'm wondering if I'd be better off in the private sector.

The point of education is it SHOULD be equal for all public schools. If a school is a bad one, sure move someone in who will be a better manager. But no need to pay them silly money. A school with a falling grades and poor discipline would benefit more from a head earning £50k and competant, and 20k to put towards improving other aspects, than a 70k head that is probably just as good as the one earning 50k. 20k is 2 more TA's the school could have.

The problem with privatisation, is it has to make a profit. You can see this in all the schools tupee'ing support staff over to private companies. In the end, either people are going to lose their jobs, or it's going to cost us more money (since we're still paying for those who join the other companies, just that now that company has profits to think of). Originally, services used to make profit so it could do better or more services. This fell apart when the idea of bonuses and expenses came in, and when some idiot gave the senior management control over them. If it's one thing i've learnt over the years of private, public, contracting, projects, and even outside of RL jobs and working.... Our bursar's/finance officers would never decide to pay our heads a few thousand as a bonus 'because they've been so good this year'. Why should we let those who run our other services, that we rely on do the same thing? I don't think I made £50 in interest on my savings account in the last year. So why should the CEO of my bank be given half a million 'bonus' this year? where has that money come from? I would bet if you traced our national debt, and that of most of the other countries, you'd find it in the pockets of a small handful of stupidly obscenely rich men, who are deciding wheither to platinum plate their custom built Mercedes, diamond encrust their 80 bedroom house, or gold plate their private jumbo jet with built in jacuzzi.

It's a little too sugar coated politics here. The budget doesn't affect the rich a lot, but affects those on below-average salaries more. Percentage wise it might affect everyone the same, but the couple barely earning 30-40k between the 2 of them with 2 kids is going to be hit a lot harder by these changes than someone earning 40-50k on their own. And in the most cases, those who work in the public sector are paid less than their private counterparts, regardless of other 'perks' or differences there may be in pensions/benefits etc. In other words, this smacks as a conservative attempt to win over those from the below-average side of the salary fence, in the hope of gaining favour should there be a new vote any time soon.

Just a small note, the guy who I want as my local rep, is not necessarily a member of the party I want to run to run the country *Cue broken-record style discussion on alternative voting etc* Sometimes I long for the Discworld style of management. At least that way we'd have a viable option when we have a madman on the driving seat...

AH, but he didn't.... his alter ego did... He hasn't broken his promise, cos someone else did it...

Oh, and I'd like to see tighter controls on more workers from other countries coming here for work. In a time where we have high unemployment of those who are already here, shipping people in still from other countries to fill the few jobs we have is downright idiotic.

How much did it cost them to send a letter to 20% of the country? 1p per letter, plus Postage, plus paying someone to write it... But if we're going to discuss suggestions (I haven't had my bin-filler yet to send it officially) 1) Better controls on the stupidly overpaid; Noone is worth being paid millions a year, while those who work on the 'frontlines' of the business get paid national averages or less (currently about 24k if I recall?), especially those who work in the financial sector, which is largely responsible for this mess in the first place. A manager should not be able to give themselves a half a million bonus, while those who earn't him that money get, if they are lucky a couple thousand. Having a minority of rich people and a majority of poor people is bad for the economy. If instead of 1 man earning 1 million a year, and 100 people earning 20,000 a year making him that profit, He could be paid 100k, which is still a very good salary, and everyone else is then paid 9-10k more per year. Can you imagine what you could do with another 10,000 per year, for the same work/time? How much happier would you be with your work, and how much more willing would you be to hang around? Investment in employers instead of Exploitation. 2) Scrap pointless testing, assessments and league tables on rubbish. We don't need to know and shouldn't have to know which school has the best score in science, or which hospital "Is the most uberest of them all." They should all be of the same standard. Spend the money on training those who are lacking instead; even within the field of IT techies, the disparity in level of service is huge, let alone within teaching, hospital care, or otherwise. 3) Directly tied to government manifesto etc, scrap the ridiculous Trident project. The only ones who will benefit from that will be the company managers who designed/planned it. More rich people getting richer, for a government funded project that noone benefits from. The ability to drop a nuke on someone causes more trouble than it's worth, and I shall not go into a discussion on nuclear arms deterrent. 4) When facing major unemployment on a national scale, cutting budgets on the countries primary employer (the government itself) affects those at the bottom already, not those at the top. When you tell a government dept (or any company for that matter) they have to cut their expenditure by 10-15%, that cut will come by cutting services on the frontline, not from the management. Combine this with increase in costs (VAT), freezes on existing salaries for those who were lucky, and a reduction in support for those who are unemployed, and we're in for more than a rough time. But after all this, what's the point anyway. The government comes up with what they want to do, and we agree with them. It ought to work the other way round, but that hasn't happened for a long time. This whole scheme is nothing but a gimic in my mind, and my suspicion is they'll do what all those who have power will do. Ask people for their thoughts, opinions, and ideas, listen to them all, and then do whatever the hell they were going to anyway.

It's not bad enough that we're paying more taxes, and doing more work due to increased redundancies.... Now the politicians want us to do their job too!

And all this, from an island.... in an ocean... Reknowned for it's rain.... Also RE water usage/wastage: The spanish use just as much water. Since they get even less rain at times, they have to spend their time throwing water on the green bits to keep it green.

love the banner at the top, very nicely done. The clock is a little gimmick-ish though.

News | DriverPacks.net I found this great little program from the edugeek essential software list. Basically, take a copy of your XP install disk to hard drive, run the driverpacks software with the driver packs you want (I made one with all of them), point them towards the copied disk folder, then use The Official ImgBurn Website to make a new bootable XP disc; which comes with all the drivers built in. All the instructions you need are on those two sites. (You likely need to make a bootable DVD, unless you are only using specific driverpacks. All the packs takes up about 1.2-1.6GB) I made one of these this week, and shoved it in an old laptop i found in a cupboard. It took about an hour longer than normal as it had to decompress all the driver packs, but installed with no fuss at all, and installed itself with every driver fully working except for the modem, the pack for which I left out.

The airline companies aren't stupid; Same reason they bump up costs for school holidays. When people don't want to fly, flights are cheap. But when everyone is flying, they all bump up the costs. If i wanted to go out to South Africa next week for 1 week leaving midweek, £2,000. If I go on 30th July, £1600. So at £1,000 per person for flights, and £100 per night in a hotel as a guess (all the 'good' hotels near the stadiums will be booked out for the football teams, so availability will be low). The costs soon rack up.