duncane

Doesn't that roughly coincide with the time when the Labour Party committed itself to the former Conservative Government's spending plans? I think it was the first three years (1997-2000)?

No - how would we, the voters, be able to hold them to account if we don't know how they vote on issues?

I find it ironic that the Labour government was more about the "me society" than the Thatcher government. It wasn't the Conservatives that were selfish before 1997 - it was the people - and they carried on being selfish during the Labour years while patting themselves on the back for how wonderful and caring they were. The Labour Party enacted things that the Conservatives would not have gotten away with because there would have been opposition from the left to hold them in balance. The Labour Party has singularly failed to police itself.

It would have been misleading to say "doubled the tax" - but I specifically said "double the rate of tax". It might be a small fraction of the income of someone who's better off, but it's quite a lot when you're on a low income. It was done cynically - with the idea of calling a snap election before the effects would be plain to see - but that didn't happen.

I definitely won't be voting for the party that doubled the rate of income tax from 10p to 20p when I was on £12.5k a year. The scary thing about the Labour Party is that they genuinely believe their own spin - much like the American Republicans under George Bush.

Just to follow up on this - it was a mis-communication (via a third party): If they're not molded then we need to unscrew them and check the wiring inside - so molded plugs would be a time-saver when PAT testing.

I'd probably feel a sense of power and exhileration - mwahaahahahahahaha!

A hah! That's just the front page news item... which is different from this thread... although when you click on the number of comments at the top it should really link you to this thread... so I'm right at the same time as being wrong...

Ok, colour me confused... but why does it show "11 comments" at the top, but only show "3 comments" underneath? When I click on the "11 comments" it takes me back to this page...

My thoughts depend on how I view it... on my 32" (but only 1280x720 pixel) ubuntu-based machine in Firefox - it feels cluttered. It looks fine on my 19" 1280x1024 windows-based machine... although I prefer the rendering in Internet Explorer rather than Firefox. (The curves and shadows detract a little for me.) BUT... I shall get used to it, I'm sure.

I'll be 100 in 2071... so I actually thought "oooh, something to look forward to". HOW SAD IS THAT?!

In standard Frog a report is scheduled on the SIMS server to extract the information it needs, this is then picked up by the Frog server itself. The parental gateway will have real-time (read-only) access to the SIMS database - we don't have the parental gateway yet, but we are planning to. When it comes to general SIMS access, we use Frog's Secure Gateway to provide access to the staffroom computers, each of which has the SIMS client installed. Our staff seem to love this - they can use the same interface to SIMS they're used to, from home. It gets very popular around report writing time! I'm still not happy about the length of time it takes to handle support requests - everyone else says they're very responsive, I can only assume that I'm not pushy enough - or maybe I'm just asking difficult questions... although a "that's difficult, I'll need to get back to you" would be better than silence. I agree with Cue - Frog can be quite limiting if you're someone who likes to get under the bonnet and start fiddling. There's meant to be a PHP brick that's being beta tested, but we're not worthy to test it. (Unfortunately there's the good chance that by the time Frog gets round to releasing it, my school will be gone.) It would really come in useful - I'm forever having to tell staff, "erm no, I'm afraid it can't do that" - which is annoying when you can see that they're fired up enough to want to use it. (This usually revolves around the "write-only" database function - you can export the data to CVS, but that's it.) The forums are fairly poor, but I do like the ability to embed a thread into a web page - so a teacher can have a web page about a topic, then provide space on the same page for students to discuss it.

I can't imagine having expressly chosen 1GB chunks - but it's possible. The concensus seems to be "big and chunky" - so I'll go with that. Cheers.

They're broken down into 1GB chunks - and a single backup spans multiple chunks. I suppose as one *big* chunk they'd be easier to catalogue, and it is an NTFS disk (so no 4GB upper limit... as far as I'm aware... wikipedia says 16TB as implemented... so looks good). What's the advantage of 1GB chunks (given that that seemed to be the default setting) - does it just reduce the amount of data you'd lose if one of the files got corrupted?

I've been experimenting. We have backup exec writing to a (for now) usb harddrive, and I want to recover the data on a separate machine. (Effectively to simulate the original server dying, and having to recover). I'm using NTBackup on XP Pro via the Gui. I've set it to get the catalogue from the .bkf files (because it was done on another machine), but how do I find the right .bkf file? Is there a utility that will produce a catalogue listing, and the bkf file they're associated with? Or I'm I just being muddle-headed (and can you put me on the right track)? Is it made more complicated by the fact that we're backing up multiple volumes to the same disk, rather than having each one as a separate job?

In the past I've tried Joomla and found it quite hard to get it to do what I wanted to do - ending up making compromises to get things to fit in with it's way of working. I'm using FrogCMS at the moment - it seems to give me a good balance between customising it with PHP code to do what I want (it's almost a framework) and wysiwyg editing for content. It has three levels of user - administrator, developer and editor. Editors can only edit pages that haven't been marked as locked, but can add new pages (such as news items... finally I get to why this is relevant for you! ) It's allowed me to start with basic HTML and CSS, then move it across to FrogCMS. I can use PHP to select links/pages for building menus, sitemaps etc automatically, snippets to re-use code, and page part forms to set up specific types of page (making sure submitters of job vacancies, galleries etc, keep to a specific structure). I would probably go with WolfCMS (a fork) if I started again, because it seems to have more life in it. Hopefully it won't be too long before we go live. *Edit* There's also a twitter plugin: http://ajcates.com/projects/twitter-plugin-for-frog-cms that looks like it may be of interest to you. I like the idea of a real-time twitter feed for something like "Latest sports results" when the school's competing in football or something... unfortunately our authority blocks twitter feeds...

Doesn't Yenka need to be continually connected to the net for the online files? Or does installing from the server download all the parts and serve it from there? (Basically, we're in the same postion as kesomir, but before I swap from NTLM Identification to NTLM Authentication, I want to see if there's another way - largely to avoid any potential knock-on problems from switching.) My admin account bypasses the proxy, so I've been able to install and activate the software. Its only when accessing the online files (the majority of the content) that there's this problem.

Is there any common ground - for example, are you using the same fire-wire cable to test all of the cameras, and the computers? If so, it could be the cable. > edit : "known good FireWire port and cable." - sorry, I missed that bit. < Is there something special you need to do to get the cameras into the mode to connect to a PC (for example, on my old Canon DV camcorder I need to swivel a dial)... sometimes you do things unconsciously, and you might have forgotten. Have the cameras all gone out to the same person/group recently - could the same fault-inducing incident have been done to them all? (It can happen, A tries to do X, it fails, they try it on the next camera etc. If X kills the camera...)

I'm probably being dense - but what are the main differences between "School Guardian" and "Network Guardian"? I used "School Guardian" at my old school - and it seemed more straight forward (from memory). Is there a price difference too (and in which versions favour)? Cheers, Duncan.

You could give everyone who wants to collaborate together access to a common folder, then let them create pages as they want to. (Creating and editing pages in a WYSIWYG way is one of Frog's strong points.) I'm not sure how it goes about locking the pages though - I presume it must, otherwise it would be quite an oversight on Frog's part. If you get in touch with Frog for their advice on this, please could you post back on here too with their reply? Cheers, Duncan.

You could say the same of all the parties - even when they pledge to something, it doesn't mean they won't do the opposite. (See Labour's pledge to not introduce tuition fees in the 2001 election - they introduced them before the next general election.) All the main parties are talking about not cutting spending on front-line education - the question is what they define as front-line? I'd argue that IT (and its support) is every much as front-line as teaching staff and teaching assistants. I think that's something we need to ensure is recognised. I suspect we'll end up with a two tier system. Non-BSF will have to "make do and mend", while BSF IT spending will be ring-fenced because it's a contract. At some point someone will turn around and point out how much better IT is under BSF, completely failing to recognise the difference in funding. (Alternatively, others will point out some schools without the budget who have been agile and innovative on a shoe-string, and hold them up as an example of how we can cut IT spending in BSF IT!)

It seems to be back up and operational this morning. Maybe it's done some house-keeping overnight, and that's resolved the issue? Phew.

Nope It was a good idea though. Unfortunately I can't set the page settings for the gateway page without getting javascript errors. Sigh. Anyway, bedtime.

I logged into our Frog VLE and the accordion menus have stopped working - displaying as straight forward links and giving a javascript error. Worse, the javascript error stops other things working - including the Secure Gateway (you can't double click on a computer to open it). We extended the reports deadline to Monday (due to snow closing the school twice this week), but of course no-one can log in remotely now to do it. I've just filed a ticket with Frog, but I'm not sure they'll get back to me until Monday. If I go into the toolkit and try to edit any of the menus I get a javascript error, and it won't edit them. If I try to create a menu, or even a file, in that directory it gives me a javascript error. I've tried different browsers and computers, but to no avail. Any ideas? I'm thinking of trying to add a link to the secure gateway that doesn't use the site template - that way there won't be any accordion menus, so the javascript error shouldn't occur. Hopefully the gateway will be usable then.

History: I received some monitors from a supplier, which came with IEC cables with fitted, but not molded, plugs. I had vague memories about some legislation saying that they had to be molded. However, before going back to the supplier, I checked on line, and the only reference related to the need for all appliances to have fitted plugs. (In other ways, you couldn't sell something which required the user to put their own plug on it.) However, the person who'll be training me to PAT test in a couple of week times says they must be molded. However (part 2), I've just bought a new rice cooker from a major store, and it's plug is fitted, not molded, so I'm doing some more research. The only reference I can find is to the "The Plugs and Sockets etc. (Safety) Regulations 1994" and that, again, only refers to fitted plugs, not molded plugs. Does anyone have a definitive answer? (I've been told to go back to our supplier of our LCD monitors, but I'd prefer not to do it on wrong information.)