pcstru

I think this may have been started as part of Mark Thomas' "100 Acts of Minor Dissent" (IMO better than the review thinks it was) or did he borrow it?

"too business like"? IMO you should have a ticketing system as part of professional service delivery - even if you are a lone tech doing part time support. Broadly speaking A ticketing system should allow recording of jobs, communication about the jobs and analysis of the jobs. On a more detailed level, you will want each ticket to be able to show the time line both in terms of history, state of the job now and the forecast for when the next step will be completed. A good system should be central to communications, able to update the right people at the right time and reduce the need to do mundane things like type all the relevant names into the to field in an email. In analysis it can help spot trends and identify areas where being proactive or delivering training might reduce demand. Good analysis can also help senior management understand what we do, what the demands are and what happens when we are and are not effective. It should form a knowledge base - the first port of call for when you get "ah, we had that same problem two years ago" and the most time consuming thing was the research to know exactly where to hit the pipe. Does that mean a task list in outlook can't be a ticketing system? Personally, I don't think it is sophisticated or robust enough given that there are good (according to some), free systems. It's also the kind of requirement that is very easy to cater for with Sharepoint or (probably in some way) Google Apps, assuming you have made the investment anyway in the necessary skills.

My comment relates to @Cazale's accusation that the music industry uses the word as a scare tactic. My point is that the word "theft" and the notion of stealing are commonly used and understood in the context, even if they are not prosecuted as such in any arbitrary locale. In other words, it's perfectly acceptable use of English.

The law seems to be quite clear that the criminal provisions are aimed at industrial scale copying for profit. From what the OP says the person asking for the copy seemed to think it was OK (so they did not have intent to break the law), there didn't seem to be "industrial quantities" involved and there is no indication that the intent of the person asking for the copy was looking to profit from that. Given that, labelling it as a criminal act is a little absurd, any action would be a matter between the AQA and the School. Some of the comments here (including mine) stray away from that specific AQA CD to consider generally films and music and their use in Schools. I'm particularly interested in this because the issue is IMO far from clear. There are exemptions in the DCPA relating to education (and they seem quite sweeping), there are central licences and there are licences which accompany the media (or service). Can a teacher use a DVD which specifically says "for home use only" to show to a class? As I understand it, despite what it says on the DVD cover, they can. Can a teacher legitimately rip a DVD to MKV to show to their class? I would have thought not but the Educational provisions in the act might not agree with that provided the copy is intended for use in the course of instruction and that instruction is non-commercial. Can someone use Netflix in class - well, not according to Netflix T&C's but if the film is covered by PVS or MPLC licence which would necessarily involve breaking the terms issued with a DVD, how is that substantially different? In all cases, there is no easy claim for damages if the school could have watched it legitimately for free.

If you are focusing in on the definition of "theft" as a word and looking for how someone is deprived of their 'property', the property in this case is the fee they can rightfully levy rather than the work itself. So if you copy it, you have permanently deprived them of their fee and you have kept that for yourself. The word "theft" is quite appropriate in an ordinary context.

IMO that is exactly where you fall down insisting it would be a criminal matter. The context is someone trying to make a copy for what they believe (in ignorance maybe) is a legitimate use. That is very far removed from someone who's intention is to make copies in "industrial quantities" with the intention to offer them for sale for profit.

I don't think there is a problem calling it theft in the ordinary meaning of the word, and I don't think that is primarily where confusion arises. There seems to be more confusion from staff in schools that they have some kind of blanket exemption granted to them by licences via PVS, MPLC, ERA or even primary legislation (CDPA Section 34), so they demand we copy X,Y or Z, or they dump 500GB of torrented films onto the network to 'share' with students and think that is OK. It does seem ironic to me that our worst offenders with copyright are teachers of subjects like "film studies". I want to ask them how does leading by an example of piracy encourage anyone to try and get into films to make a living out of it?

There is quite a difference between having a civil court lodge a judgement against you and a having a criminal conviction on your record. If you are employed in a school and within that employment are committing a criminal offence, there are likely to be much more severe sanctions than otherwise. Also when it comes to Music, Films and other published works, the situation in schools is more complex than other businesses since there are specific exemptions in the law and there are a bunch of licences which may have been procured on a schools behalf. It really isn't terribly surprising that people are confused!

I think you are right in the context of a school technician being asked to copy a CD for use in a classroom. There is certainly provision in CDP for breaches of copyright to be prosecuted as a criminal liability although I believe it is aimed at large scale piracy and such acts are more likely to be prosecuted as Fraud. From CPS guidelines : Is infringement of copyright a criminal offence? Deliberate infringement of copyright may be a criminal offence. Pursuing the criminals (e.g. when pirate or counterfeit copies of CDs/DVDs etc are being made, distributed or sold) can involve the police or trading standards departments. However, many of the copyright-based industries concerned about this type of crime have formed organisations representing their interests that are actively involved in enforcement work, often in collaboration with the police or trading standards departments. In some cases these organisations undertake criminal prosecutions in their own right.

A "CD disc" may well have "legal standing"; specifically the content will be classed as a 'work' under UK copyright legislation. If it didn't have any "legal standing", then it could not have protection.

Teachers are often confused on copyright because there are various licences kicking around which allow schools in the UK to do things that would otherwise breach the copyright holders licence AND there is a specific exemptions in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, section 34, relating to performance in schools. The confusion is added to because prior to 2015, it might have been OK to copy a CD for 'backup' (or even to format shift) provided you owned the original, but in 2015 the high court overturned that, so now the act of making a copy is illegal. So ... the answer is (probably) no. In terms of you having to find something to back you up, that would be the wrong way round! If someone believes they are covered to copy a CD/DVD/Blu-Ray etc, they should be able to produce written evidence which says so. So the back of a DVD will say for "home use only", but most schools could produce evidence that they are covered by MPLC or PRS licences which cover the use of those discs in schools.

I switched from chunky Lenovo's to a Surface Pro a couple of years ago which I love for it's power and portability. However, cost is a factor so it might help if you say what your budget is (or if you are very very lucky indeed, isn't!).

We use pfsense's Capitive Portal with a Meru system for customers of our leisure facilities. From a users POV, they collect a voucher from reception, connect to a guest SID, any browser request will then be sent to the login page where they accept an AUP, type in their voucher number and are then redirected to the page they requested. Technically, we operate a dedicated VLAN for the guest SID with the pfsense LAN interface set as the gateway. We point the WAN interface at our smoothwall and smoothwall treats the whole VLAN as not requiring any authentication but student level filtering is applied. ETA - we also do BYOD for students where we register their MAC address and they authenticate via RADIUS.

Pirates of Silicon Valley. 1999 made for TV movie which covers the early days of Microsoft and Apple following Jobs, Gates, Allen, Woz, Balmer etc. A few liberties take with the history but otherwise it gives a good insight into the times and it is generally quite amusing right from the first lines : Steve Jobs: I don't want you to think of this as just a film - some process of converting electrons and magnetic impulses into shapes and figures and sounds. No. Listen to me. We're here to make a dent in the universe. Otherwise, why even be here? We're creating a completely new consciousness, like an artist or poet. That's how you have to think of this. We're rewriting the history of human thought with what we're doing. Ridley Scott: Right. Well, Steven, at the moment I'm a touch more worried about getting light on the actress. Do you know what I mean?

Something like : SELECT Trans.Id, Trans.Amount, Item.ID, Item Name from Transaction Trans left outer join TranscationItem Item on (Trans.ID=Item.TransactionID and Item.ProductId = 251) where Item.ProductID is null should work or at least point in the right direction.

Either that or there is a cozy "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" thing going on between all those old Eton and Oxbridge types that find the BBC a nice cozy little club. Almost takes you back 90 years to the early days of the BBC and Reith conspiring with the government to bring citizens 'news' during the 1926 general strike!

Exact ... ly. ETA - which I thought might help but ... Why the need for uppercase? If it is to be used as an input further down the chain, perhaps use a second cell to hold the value of the list validated cell converted to uppercase. Another option if users are averse to turning macros on, might be to look at macro signing.

Probably a lot less than a punch in the mouth.

The argument is all of what they do, how they do it and why. The 'argument' is run in anger every decade with the renewal/amendment of the charter. Within those constraints there is always, despite the huge size of the BBC, the issue of money. Even in areas where there is no dispute that the BBC has a remit to compete, there are questions about how the decisions about what gets made get made.

IMO that is reasonably part of their local service and is within the remit of "informing" listeners to their local broadcasts. Should they do a UK wide iPhone travel app which would exploit that information in a new webby/digital world way? No.

The BBC has been subject to enormous pressures in the past from governments. I'd agree that they have mostly maintained a reasonable balance in spite of the pressures although they are often a bit wobbly when looking at their own issues. IMO the scrutiny that the BBC gets from other high quality news outlets is a major factor in maintaining neutrality. If that scrutiny evaporates because those organisations that do the scrutiny cannot compete with the BBC in a new online world, the balance will inevitably shift.

I'd agree that the comparison with the USA is not good (they do have some public service broadcasting but not nationally) but I don't think the situation is comparable to the situation we are actually in. We have a BBC and we have private enterprise and we have a (fairly) new means for people to access information and content. That situation is proving extremely difficult for the private sector - Broadcast TV is losing ad revenue as people go on-line, newspapers are being challenged because people do not want to pay for content when high quality content is provided FOC by the BBC. I accept that a large part of the problem those enterprises face will need to be solved by those enterprises (I'm not trying to deprive them of fair competition or have the government spoon feed them), but that is being made extremely problematic by the BBC moving into the same space while funded by licence payers. I am saying that we need to be careful or we risk losing independent, high quality journalism that is provided by the likes of the Guardian, Independent, Telegraph, The Times etc. We will then be left with something that is within reach of political tinkering and the BBC will lose it's motivation and ability to deliver high quality news, entertainment and information. I'm saying that recipes and travel review websites do not seem to me to be in the remit of a public service Broadcasting organisation and the fact that the BBC now finds itself curating such content strongly suggests to me that their remit is/has not been clear enough.

You must read a lot into my 'argument' to get that! My point is just that it needs a very clear remit and that we do need to be careful about how it competes with commercial operations. Perhaps by corollary if I read a lot into your argument, I'd say that leads to a lack of competition by private sector, diminishing choice and a monopolisation of (say) news (because others cannot compete) by an organisation that is easily subverted by political pressures and biases. I think this highlights the mistake on remit and clarity. Just because the BBC can/could/would do something better than others, does not mean it should be doing that. They would probably do a good EduGeek site, maybe even better than this - no annoying ads etc. That could be said to "inform, educate and entertain". So do you think they should do EduGeek? If not, why is that out of their remit, but a travel site (of which there are many to choose from) is a good thing for them to do?

Up their game how? Most newspapers are struggling to find ways to fund themselves in the new 'web age' - sales of actual papers are struggling to fund the enterprises. The guardian - arguably one of the leading news websites currently loses money on their website. How exactly do they compete with a corporate entity that is publicly funded to the tune of nearly £3,600,000,000 in 2015 with nearly £190,000,000 going into "online"? I'm a huge fan of the BBC and am comfortable with public ownership of infrastructure and services but there needs to be a clear remit, one that is stuck to and one that allows private enterprise to compete. The BBC should be taking risks and doing things where others will not. They should be making content that appeals to minority interests or would never get commissioned in the private sector because it is simply not a commercial proposition. Are a collection of recipes really part of the BBC's core purpose? Sure they could be said to "inform" "educate" or "entertain", but they can also be done extremely well by anyone (and are) and the BBC doing them as a public service is of little real value.

If they fixed the 'shortcomings' so that £150 PA licence gave such a good offering that payers didn't want any other service, those other services would have even more of a claim that the BBC were being given a hugely unfair advantage and exceeding their remit.