AMLinington

Perhaps the older mean age of edugeek members reflects the nature of women in educational IT, but I can't say that it reflects IT overall. I am 30 this year and whilst I might joke about being/feeling old the truth is that I am pre-family. I have worked throughout my IT career in the private sector in Managed services and Support roles and generally, the first line and 'lower technical level' roles tend to be occupied by younger people just out of college starting on their career path but as you get higher up the ladder mean ages start to rise - this is exactly what you would expect, except when you look at the public sector and school specifically, there aren't actually that many steps on the ladder for non-teaching staff - probably 4 at most - technician, snr tech, assistant NM and NM or some combination thereof. So people stay in the 'lower' roles for longer and since Edugeek is specifically aimed at the education sector, the demographic answering these questions is skewed. I do think that girls should be nurtured and encouraged to pursue technical roles but can any NM on here honestly say they'd employ a year 11 female leaver into a baseline role? Without experience? There will probably be 2 or 3 that have exceptionally bright pupils but the vast majority will want some experience so younger women in IT roles are probably in the private sector. Does that make sense?

I'm not sure that this is specific to IT or epidemic across the whole job market! It seems to me that ANY job where the 'standard' hours are between 8 and 6 will prejudice against working mothers, yet familes cannot live on 1 salary any more and will struggle with 1 full and 1 part time salary. There are so few highly paid, skilled jobs that have the flexibility to accommodate working mothers - most jobs that are suitable for working mothers are retail jobs in shops which we all know pay poorly or jobs in schools as TSAs - any role that needs longer hours is precluded. It's so frustrating for people my age that want to have a family but cannot afford to lose 1 full time salary. I think when it is my turn my child care will be a combination of nursery and grandparents - it's the only way we could afford it. I don't think it's fair that people should be 'priced out' of being able to have children.

Pastel Pink Nintendo 3DS. Nuff said. Hell, you can always get a can of spray paint and take that Chassis out into the garden and pink-bomb the ever-living-maleness out of it. Personally I am so hard on my hardware it doesn't last long enough to be painted. XD

PINTEREST ALL THE THINGS!

You're not going to get roasted at all - I agree completely. You see a lot of sub-standard male applicants for roles who have stumbled into IT because they didn't have anything better to do and it seemed better to do IT than nothing but some of the applicants I've seen can't even tell you what a Default Gateway is and claim to know about hardware but what they really mean is that they can connect their iPod to iTunes and know the difference between HDMI and VGA although struggle a bit with DVI and VGA! But usually when you see a female applicant she really has an interest and passion - you don't tend to see women in IT unless they really want to be there and have made the effort. I think it partly goes back to what I was saying about how not every female personality type is suitable for the environment and you'll probably find that a lot of women may have done IT but don't have the right personality and end up moving sideways into another type of role - administrative or training perhaps so the ones that are left are the ones that 'fit in'.

How long have you been working in IT? 5 years in 2 different jobs. Is this your first, second, third, etc career? My career path is convoluted. I graduated with a degree in Geology but wasn't able to pursue my real interest due to lack of money (I couldn't afford to go to London to do my masters) so I ended up bumming around working in a well known high street newsagent for 2 years while I applied for various graduate management schemes I wasn't massively interested in but didn't know what else to do. In the end I was so bored of the Sales assistant role that I took a job as a Merchandising rep for a computer games supplier. When the company went into liquidation and we were looking at redundancy I took the opportunity to do my PGCE. I reached the end of it knowing that I would LOVE to teach IT and was advised by the head of IT in a school I wanted to work in that I should get a years experience in first line support and apply for an NQT role (there was more to it than that but basically he didnt have a position at that time but he had plans to increase the department the following year except he ended up leaving and nothing happened). Long story short, my Best Friend worked as a 2nd line tech in an IT company and told me they were recruiting so he got me an interview (there was a referral bonus involved here too) and I got the job. I worked there for nearly 2 years and got some experience and qualifications out of it. They made my friend redundant and he ended up working for Smoothwall and when I was looking to leave my previous job (I decided that teaching really wasn't for me after all) I had several interviews with all sorts of companies but no job offers so half jokingly he sent my CV to Smoothwall, I got an interview and the Support Manager at the time liked me and took me on. But I'm under no illusions that both of my roles in IT have largely come about because Jason has recommended me and vouched for my skill. So technically, this is really my 5th career - Geologist > Sales Assistant > Rep > Teacher > IT Support Engineer. My interest and skill in IT started really early though - in my early teens and took off when I met my best friend as he encouraged and shared knowledge with me and I learned from him. By the time I was 18 I was able to build my own hardware but never thought to pursue it as a career because I had other interests I wanted to pursue. It doesn't help that we didn't do IT properly at school - it was a 'short course' worth half a GCSE and I was on track for an A* until someone stole my coursework and resubmitted it as their own. I couldn't prove it because they'd stolen the disk with it on as the school wouldn't let us keep backups of our own (some weird coursework rule) so even though 50% of my grade was stolen, I STILL managed to get a C which just goes to show how well I must have done in the exam... What other jobs / roles have you done previously? Geologist > Sales Assistant > Rep > Teacher > IT Support Engineer How many interviews did it take to get your first job in IT? Just one, but when I left my first IT job I had 5 or 6 interviews at other places. Have you ever felt that being female is a help or a hindrance to gaining a job in IT? I've never felt that, although it really does take a certain type of woman to do this job. It IS a heavily male dominated environment and I don't think every female personality type is suited to that. I've always got on better with men than with other women so I've never found it a problem - in fact I'm happier in an all male environment. I went to an all-girls school and I was miserable - I struggled to make friends because other girls find me quite intimidating. Men don't seem to have this problem so the majority of my friends are male. I do think there can be a lot of underestimation and assumption around women in IT though - I frequently answer the phone (both now and in my previous role) to customers and they ask to be put through to an Engineer. If I visit a customer site (and I don't currently do this but have before in my previous role) they are expecting a man and are visibly taken aback when I introduce myself. Some people have also had a tendancy not to trust my diagnosis and ask for a second opinion from a 'proper engineer'. This sort of attitude is becoming less and less prevailant but it still exists in places. I certainly encounter it a lot less now then I did in my first IT job. If you were considering IT (or other engineering / programming careers) whilst at school what support did you receive? Very little, but then IT wasn't a 'mainstream' subject when I was doing my GCSEs - the school only had one Windows machine with a 28.8kbps internet connection and MS Encarta! All the rest were non-networked Acorns (Wow, I really feel old when I remember that and it's my big 30 this year too!). When I was at school the IT teachers WERE the technicians - infrastructure was not sufficiently advanced to require separate management. I had a good relationship with them and they often afforded me additional priviledges. The Coursework situation really stung especially when they said they couldn't do anything. My teacher said to my face that he KNEW Zahra had stolen it because her coursework was 'too good' to be hers but he couldn't prove it and there was no actual evidence. When I chose my A-levels at college our deputy head advised me to take Maths as it would support me in technical careers but that was about it. My 6th Form College didn't offer an IT A-level and I didn't have the proper GCSEs to do it at college so I did A-levels in Geography, Chemistry and Physics instead. You're welcome to use this information for the discussion. I'm sure my observations that certain female personality types are not suited to the IT environment would be a source of great debate, but I honestly believe it's true - all the women in IT I've worked with have been analytical with strong personalities and a tendancy towards being quite no-nonsense. I'm so much happier in a nerdy, techy environment - even when I was teaching I used to escape over to the IT department. I find other women very difficult to work with. That is not to say that I'm a 'tomboy' type - I'm totally the opposite. I adore Cats and have a Disney Princess obscession. I sew and crochet and make cute felt christmas decorations. I love looking at home furnishings and planning colour schemes and decor, I have minimal interest in cars and loathe sports. But I play World of Warcraft, tinker with computer hardware and have a technical screwdriver kit in the bottom of my handbag next to the lip balms, Kindle and pink cupcake diary!

In theory the USB interface could be used to install 'driver' software containing a keylogger or similar. Unless you have a test environment with rigorous process auditing I'd probably not risk it tbh. Which is a shame as if it's genuine it's probably handy.

I played a bit last night and it's kinda tedious. I play the Oregon Settlers game and it's less 'complicated'. Will likely uninstall this.

That seems like a dumb question to ask because we know that the top light is 'red' therefore if the top light is on then the lights are red, and so on. I don't get why people don't logically understand this. It wouldn't matter if you were totally colour blind and saw only in greyscale, a light that is on is still on so as long as you know the sequence of lights you're fine.

I got 100/100 on 9/10 but accidently hit 'compare' with my super sentitive mouse on the 'Toronto' one

LOL LeBoyfriend was playing that last night... Apparently Homer has blown up Springfield.... again....

Either scam or they went bust: This is on their homepage today: Jamdup.Com Jamdup.com are no longer taking orders, should you have placed an order or are waiting for a refund please contact your bank or card issuer to arrange a chargeback. Might want to have a read of : http://www.jamdup.com.is-a-scam.com/

Given that support is based in Southampton, it's unlikely to be a contributory factor.

LOL I have that exact model at home as it happens. It's good although I recommend the use of paper filters rather than have to wash out the mesh one every time - it's easier to just bin the paper filter.

As usual, the Daily Fail choosing the most terrifying 'facts' and overlooking reality in favour of scaring the ever-living-doodah out of everyone due to fly on Emirates...

I think the Pancake horse heads are sweet. Barbie in a pancake dress is still genius although the delicate touch of ribbon and flowers is far too parental. The parents ought to just cook the pancake and leave the sproglet to do their thing.

It is worth pointing out that Smoothwall does not rely solely on Dynamic content analysis, we also have a blocklist team who compose and manage URL lists, so the smoothwall does filter based on URL lists as well as dynamic content analysis. There are several other componants of filtering that Smoothwall includes too although you would be best to ask your sales representative to explain these when you have the demonstration as it is easier to see than for me to explain. RTFM's post is interesting because there are 3 ways to allow a site - 'Allow' which still applies content modification, 'Whitelist' which bypasses all content modification and 'Allow by default' where you don't tell the smoothwall what to do either way and let it decide based on DCA. As others have said, the best thing to do is to trial some solutions and see which works best for your setup.

We are working on improving the 'Out of the box' rulesets available to schools and we have several projects in the pipeline to support zero-touch installs so keep your ear to the ground.

Yes, the WHITELIST action is vitally important - this is a commonly misunderstood configuration. Whitelisting bypasses content scanning and any content modification rules which can interfere with the iTunes traffic which explains why it doesn't work with an 'Allow' rule but does with a Whitelist rule.

Essentially the output is graphical. Bandwidth is the Axis along the top and results are sorted by highest-throughput-first and the IP is displayed. So if you have 2 or 3 client machines using a whopping amount of bandwidth, it might be worth checking that they aren't downloading something they shouldn't.

Bear in mind that URL list filtering is not the same as dynamic content analysis. Smoothwall Dynamic content analysis can analyse a page it has never seen before that is not a member of any known URL list and categorise it based on the content potentially preventing access to inappropriate content. This even works on 'safe' sites like 'Yahoo' that might have inappropriate news feed headers or adverts. So you may like to compare the filtering features and the pros and cons of each type of filtering as part of your report.

Best way would be to put a device straight on your external router. The only thing this doesn't reflect is how much bandwidth is shared among all clients. On your Smoothwall command line, if you run ifconfig and find out which ethernet port is your internal lan (say, ethA) then you can run iftop -i ethA to check if a particular client on the LAN is bandwidth hogging.

May parents had HUGE problems with 'Bowater Zenith' a few years back - it go so bad we ended up sending them a solicitors letter although I think the idea about informing them they will be invoiced for your time is GENIUS, the only problem is proving it...

If you are using Smoothwall, Please configure the following: Browse to Web proxy > Authentication > Exceptions Add the following categories to Auth exceptions: SSL/CRL Software Updates Authentication Exceptions iTunes Save. Browse to Guardian > Web Filter > Policy Wizard Create a policy with the following conditions: Who: Everyone What: Authentication Exceptions, SSL/CRL, Software Updates, itunes Action: Whitelist Where: Everywhere When: Always Action: Enabled Confirm and save this rule. Browse to Guardian > Web Filter > Policies Move the policy you created up the table until it is above any block or blanket block in place for the group Unauthenticated IPs. You may have this group in a policy folder in position 2 in the table by default if you did not have Unauthenticated IPs allowed to use the web proxy prior to migrating. If this is a fresh install please check whether Unauthenticated IPs is included in the aforementioned policy folder. Please then edit the 'Recommended security rules' content modification category group and remove 'IE remote code execution'. Save and restart the web proxy.

It doesnt have the Grandvalira :-(