LosOjos

I get the impression that Intel are trying to take a cut of the Pi/Arduino/Beagle market but have misjudged their audience. The thing that makes these boards great is that they're cheap, open and inherently "hackable" I think these Intel boards would make a great Media Center though - I don't care what anyone says, the XBMC experience on an R-Pi is painful, but that's not really what they were intended for. TL;DR: the Intel board could be a great choice for those people just looking for a relatively cheap, tiny form factor computer to use as a dedicated media centre but I don't see it as a viable alternative as an education tool due to it's price.

Excuse me if I'm telling you something you already know, but having SIMS installed does not neccessarily mean the database can be accessed. The SIMS client is just that; a client. Installing it on a machine does not automatically create a copy of the school database, so unless the laptop is being connected to the school network via VPN or similar, it won't be able to access any live data outside of school anyway (unless of course the database is being copied to the laptop, it's unclear from your posts whether this is the case or not) As for it being the norm, personally I see no need to have offline access to the entire DB, but I do have a laptop which download all emergency contacts and medical details each night so that we at least have vital information available offline in the event of a disaster (at least as long as the battery lasts!).

I use this photo of my own as my wallpaper because of the similarity to the XP one: I tweaked the saturation to emphasise the colours a bit but it's not far off the original, the key is a polarising filter (the original always looked over saturated in the hill to me, now explained by the fact they gave the green a good boost!)

The crop I accept as the aspect ratio of the film (I wonder which type of film it was?) would not fit exactly, but once you start selectively boosting colour I don't think you can call it "untouched" any more. Very nice photograph, don't understand the need to make false claims about it though - does it change anything? EDIT: also, I see your Bing map and raise you Google Street View https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/38%C2%B014'56.3%22N+122%C2%B024'37.0%22W/@38.249081,-122.410189,3a,30y,328.92h,89.21t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1se0e5VFd7Hl_1zFb5pCKn1Q!2e0!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x0!6m1!1e1?hl=en

Is the icon listed under the contact details panel? first thing that comes to mind is check if the Finance account has a Drive account, if so is the aforementioned document on there and shared with the Head? I'll be honest I haven't seen this happen myself, but that's the only logical explanation I can think of!

I didn't know there was a 64bit version of SIMS? I wouldn't move your SIMS installation, better to write a script and have that launch SIMS simply by checking if it exists in the "Program Files" or "Program Files (x86)" folder - if you need a hand with the script let me know. I believe simsload.exe as a wrapper to pulsar.exe checks for any available updates, installs them if found, then launches SIMS (pulsar.exe). If you launch pulsar direct, I believe you skip update checking (been a while since I experimented with this)

@seawolf - claim this as a "victory" if it makes you feel better but I am done with this. This argument is going nowhere, every time anybody points out anything Apple did wrong your immediate response is "yeah but so did $someone_else" which, as I have said so many times now it's getting really boring, is no defence nor would I accept it as defence for anyone else. You may not see yourself as a fanboy because you own and use other products but your actions online paint a very different picture. You accuse others of not being able to have a rational debate, yet you refuse to accept any wrongdoing on Apple's part - why, are they paying you to do that? No, didn't think so. Say what you like, but you are coming across as an Apple fanboy, in this thread and others.

No, he said "[Apple] have invented a new technology called multi-touch" - As I have already said in this thread, the patent system is massively flawed. Rather than protecting the actual invenotrs, all the patent system does is sell the right to sue to the highest bidder. It's a farce. Not saying (nor have I said) that's Apple's fault, but that doesn't excuse Apple's behaviour. By all means buy the patents to protect your company, but chasing people down to sue them over something you know you didn't invent is a dick movbe. Once again I'll say I am not saying Apple are the only people to do this, but this thread was started because Apple are acting likes dicks again. I do not accept "everyone else does it" as a defence, this is not a playground. It works perfectly for my argument; Apple didn't invent half the things they claim they did, they just bought up the patents to give them the legal power to make these claims and sue others for using them. Once again, flawed patent system, douchebag lawyers (are you seeing a pattern yet?) I think part of the problem is that you think because I pointed out Apple's dickish behaviour that I'm somehow some other kind of fanboy - I'm not. I'm well aware that Microsoft bought QDOS, did a little tweaking and released it as MSDOS; again, not accepting "they did it so I can" as an argument. Windows is a completely different beast. It may have been built on a DOS core but it added many, many things that DOS wasn't capable of, just as MacOS did with it's nix core. BTW, neither Microsoft nor Apple invented the now universal Windowed desktop interface, Xerox PARC did: PARC (company) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (I know Wikipedia isn't the best source of reliable info but it is well documented elsewhere, you only need to Google for more information)

Another good one, in Steve Jobs' key note speech announcing the iPhone back in 2007, he claims that Apple invented multi-touch; completely untrue. The term has been around since the 70s, various proof of concept designs and many different prototypes also existed long before the iPhone. On top of all this, Apple didn't even 'invent' the specific multi-touch screen in the iPhone; it was made by a company called Fingerworks, whom Apple acquired in 2005.

There's something very therapeutic about this. Rather than arguing with people today, I'm just going to shoot the posts I disagree with to smithereens I vote for this to be a permanent feature! EDIT: here you go: http://o.cdngeek.net/1d/ai.php?filename=april_2014.jpg&contenttype=jpeg

Haha, brilliant

Worst. Prank. Ever.

Yes - select all your students, then click on the 'Reg Group' heading in the 'Generate' list to sort them and that's the order they'll be printed in

You can also get a can holder for it: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bigtrak-Can-Holder-Junior/dp/B005G3R4Z0/ref=sr_1_1?s=kids&ie=UTF8&qid=1396276002&sr=1-1&keywords=big+trak+cup+holder

Is there some reason you want to use switch statements? They only work with constants so are pretty awful for conditional numerical values. You can drop multiple cases in to a single statement by just not 'breaking' out of them, e.g. switch(value){ case 1: case 2: case 3: case 4: case 5: case 6: case 7: case 8: case 9: system.println("The value is less than 10"); break; } ...but that's a horrible way to code. Stick to your if-else statements I'd say. Switch statements are only really suited to constants.

For questions as to network security, this thread has a few suggestions: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/network-classroom-management/89661-python-school-network.html As for an IDE, there is IDLE. Very basic but should be all they need, offers syntax highlighting, error source identification, interactive shell. Comes pre-installed with Windows version, may need installing separately on Linux depending on the distro. Oh and it's free Oh and also tell your teachers to look at Scratch, it's a lot simpler than Python but still teaches core programming logic so can be a gentler introduction: Scratch - Imagine, Program, Share

Well I had to get up and get to work in the end, not my idea of a happy ending!

That'll explain why it took me so long to get out of bed this morning - must have been buffering!

Well I didn't name any of those things but it's interesting that you choose those as they are perfect examples I think. Apple didn't 'invent' any one of those products, they took existing products and undeniably gave them a good polish, which is fine. To then claim they invented those products is both false and a huge two fingers up to the many, many developers before them who put in the work to get those early products to market, products which Apple's R&D team could use as a basis to say "this is what's wrong with these, this is how we can improve them." Again, it's the audacity of Apple's marketing that causes such strong reactions from the tech community at large. Finally, we agree on something! You're quite right, Apple did improve the UI on a lot of early smartphones and tablets. But an improvement is not an invention, and therein lies the problem. Yes, that is correct, they've all done their fair share of patent trolling. I never claimed otherwise. This thread started as a reaction to Apple's latest round of patent trolling (potentially) though, hence them being named in the OP. Oh yeah the buck definitely stops with the current patent laws, no doubt about that. I think the reason a lot more people get angry when Apple do this as opposed to others, is that Apple have then gone in the past to advertise these 'new' technologies as their own, duping people in to buying in to technology Apple did nothing but polish.

To be fair, your average user wouldn't know what to do and would likely end up paying a shop to repair it, so I do think it's a valid issue that needs addressing, but it is good to know that those of us with decent tech know-how could easily recover from the problem at least.

Thanks for the heads up. I do think it's worth saying though, this is not 'bricking' in the widely understood definition of the word. It will render your phone unusable, but a factory reset will restore it (albeit meaning a total loss of installed apps and data if you don't keep back ups). It will not make your phone irreparable, which is the common use of the term 'bricking.' EDIT: also worth taking a mental note that you can remove the problematic app via adb to restore your phone's functionality without having to do a factory reset. Not much good for the lay user but may help one or two people around here out of a bad situation!

@Trapper - as others said, it's public data and could be retrieved by anyone putting in an FOI request even if it wasn't. If they have genuinely implied that you have 'hacked' the system to get this information, you need to make sure it's very clear you haven't as that could get you hauled over the coals if overheard by the wrong person. Got to watch your back!

@Xeba37 - there are a couple of ways you can do this but none of them are going to allow you to summarise by teacher from within SIMS, unless you're willing to put together some user defined groups containing all classes of each teacher - I'd say that's going to be more work than it's worth! On the SIMS side, a good way to display the residuals class by class would be to set up the aspects as you have done already then drop them in to an Analysis grid (depending on how you want the data displayed, there are various options there - take a look at the training manuals for each type of analysis grid and see which works best for your needs) Personally, I do this all in Excel as I find it much less laborious. I create a template containing all of my prediction aspects then a marksheet for the whole year, then export that to Excel. I then drop columns in for each predictions equivalent exam result and do a vlookup to pull those in from the PI data (exported from Exams Module, 'full' detail, discounted excluded).

Irrational? Hardly! I posted a link to an article I had read and my opinion on it and asked others for their opinions. At what point did I become irrational? We have all the evidence we need - as they have done many times before Apple are patenting an idea that they did not come up with and that has already been well implemented for years before they filed for the patent. They may or may not get the patent; they shouldn't, but somehow seem to succeed quite often; and they may or may not use the patent to sue others who have already implemented this technology. Obviously we cannot see in to the future, but we can reflect on the past and I don't think even you could argue that Apple has a track record of doing exactly what I've described. I have already acknowledged that Apple are not the only ones to have acted like this, but this thread is about Apple's latest 'offence'

According to the article, Apple filed patent in September 2012. The second app I clicked on in Play store (so semi-random choice) was published in February 2012: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ellipselab.android.transparentscreen.free