mitcheln

No response from anyone since last week. They're going into the bin. Sorry about that.

Hi Andy, Toner will cost £14.99 via Parcel Force 48 (2 days), based on sending to the post code of St George's Shopping Centre in the middle of Preston. I don't think the price will change if you're along way from there, I checked the cost for delivering a heavier parcel to Glasgow and it stayed the same. Do you know how you're going to pay for it? I'm happy to use my card to pay and then you reimburse me somehow, but wondered whether it would be easier (?) if I supplied all the details of the parcel, address etc., and you made the purchase online yourself. Let me know what you think. Regards, Nic

Hi Andy, Since you ask so nicely, I will try to find out the cost of posting them all in one box. I'll have a look at Parcel Force because I think they'll collect from the school, which should make it less painful. So, Andy, if nobody picks them up before the 25th October and it's not too much of a hassle, I'll get them out to you. Would you like the part-used ones still in the printer? What about the image drum, jetdirect card (I think it's removable). Obviously I can't guarantee how well those parts might travel... Regards, Nic

Following toner available free of charge, but for collection only from: N19 3SF (Hornsey Rise, Crouch End) Contact nmsns(at)mac.com 1xBLACK (C4191A) 2xCYAN (C4192A) 2xMAGENTA (C4193A) 1xYELLOW (C4194A) The printer is also available, again free of charge, but for collection only. Printer permanently displaying close cover error message and now abandonded. Very heavy. Will dispose on 25th October.

Probably the cost of the infection, which if it occurs in childhood provides immunization in adulthood, is less than the cost of the vaccine.

[yawn] [/yawn]

This is like QI.

From http://www.evilempirebook.com/ So with tongue planted firmly in cheek, Grasse founded the International Coalition for British Reparations. http://www.evilempirebook.com/mp3/download.php?file=44mp3_evilempire_bbc_radio4.mp3

I tell you what, they know how to party. They're shaking their tail feathers right now.

That's fantastic.

Fortunately, once set up there isn't much work left to do beyond the usual tasks one would expect to have to carry out with any curriculum network.

Hi, The following may prove helpful, but please forgive the random order as I remember things. The Storebox is a fileserver and you should think of it as only that - forget about the domain. You might want to create a permanent user on it for later administration usage, but leave that for now. Classmate is a front end security product that provides three types of user - a manager (you), a teacher, and a pupil. Additionally it provides a set of 'classes,' that can be edited, deleted, added to as you require, which glue the system together. When you add a Storebox to the set up the class files are stored on the Storebox, which acts as a fileserver and additional shared drives are made available. An example. A child logs into a computer in their classroom and chooses their class. The My Documents folder (in RM world, this is known as N:\MyWork), which is shared by all users of that class, exists on the Storebox. This folder is available to the pupils wherever they logon, providing they choose the same class each time. The Teacher user sees the childrens work, shares a drive (RMStaff) with other Teachers and can see the shared documents (MySchool) folder. Typically, when first set up the teacher would have their children create a folder using their name which could then follow them through school. The pupils also have access to the shared documents which, IIRC is writeable. Don't quote me on that, its easy enough to figure out. Within their documents folder (and probably the shared drive) is a folder called Handout - this is read only for Pupil users but writeable for Teacher users. The master you refer to is known as the Schoolshare master and its function is as follows: it dishes out an IP configuration to the other Classmate computers, that is it acts as a DHCP server for your network of Classmate (and other) machines - the Schoolshare network; it configures Internet Explorer on each of the clients with a proxy server address should you require one. If your network already has a DHCP server, then the Schoolshare master setup program will detect this, IIRC, and not be configured. If this isn't the case, it can be switched off manually. The process of setting them up is roughly as follows: Connect everything up to the network. Switch on the Storebox and then one of the laptops and login into the laptop as manager. This will be the master - this machine should ideally be left switched on, but in your case where you have laptops, should be the first to be switched on each day. Run the setup program - I forget its name, its on the start menu and should be obvious. If it isn't, refer to the documentation. This will do all sorts of stuff - asking for various details such as IP address ranges, proxy server address as mentioned above. Eventually you will need to reboot the machine. When it comes back up you will see that it has been renamed to, rather awkwardly, SSMASTER. Eek. Now visit each laptop in turn - I forget if you need to do this at the SSMASTER (eek), check the documentation - start them up, login as Manager, run Classmate Manager and click on the Locate Storebox link. This will trigger a series of installations and end with a reboot request. When completed you can begin to set up your classes... Please feel free to ask for further assistance. Refer to the documentation and RMs support site (http://www.rm.com/support) for further documentation and troubleshooting advice/guides.

Hi, I think you should keep your printers in the existing range. Placing them in a different IP space is inpractical because you will have to provide a means of routing traffic between your clients and printers. (unless they are shared from a dual homed server, geez the possibilities) I can't from experience advise on your wireless access points, but the received wisdom ASFAK is that ones wireless network should be isolated at least by logical means such as using a different IP range and at best by physical means (or VLAN) - i.e. you maintain a means of controlling traffic between the wireless and wired networks by forcing any communication through a firewall. The switches can be put on a different IP range quite happily. Spose most of the above depends on network equipment being used. If you're running out of addresses you could consider revising your addressing to provide for more hosts. Regardless of what you end up doing, make sure you document it.

it needs? hic.

I'd be really interested to hear how your testing goes. When you say "reload the groups" do you mean restart dansguardian? My dansguardian can take a few moments to restart which suspends things for those moments, which might result in patchy access elsewhere as a whole bunch of users force the process to restart. Ta.

Fronter and FirstClass are both worth considering. Enthusiastic (almost evangelistic on the FirstClass stand) individuals on each of these stands spent a considerable time with myself and a group of interested parties and answered our questions both thoroughly and honestly (IMO). As appears to be the nature of these products, each had strengths in certain areas (e.g. FirstClass seems to be more focussed on communication and collaboration), and one of our questions - what is the history of your product, where has it come from, etc - elicited, perhaps, the reason for the differences that exist between the various offerings (I mean, everyone's got one haven't they - even, (weasel warning) apparently, Promethean). For example, Fronter was created as a reaction to weather conditions and related transport problems affecting the ability of students in all edu-strata (you heard it here first?) to attend school daily thus creating a need for distance learning solutions. FirstClass was built as a reaction to its developers need to communicate and collaborate with each other and their peers. Finding this out certainly is illuminating. FirstClass is unusual in this (hmm momentary 2nd thoughts as I consider Kaleidos) area because it provides client software (with encouraging low specs - given the trend towards thin clients?) that runs on a variety of archs./OS including, they boasted, W95. In addition of course the system is also accessible through the browser. Another question we asked was whether the system is hosted by the client or the vendor. Both have their merits, but its worth considering since a locally hosted system would likely require local support, which obviously means cost. Er. We went to Capita to look at Learnwise. Learnwise is Granada Learning's offering but is delivered (?) by Capita. It might be developed by Capita since it obviously integrates with SIMS as reliably as a SIMS update. I don't know I'm afraid, because the rep we spoke to yesterday was such a bizarre individual that I found myself tuning into their behaviour rather than their words. The rep today was very thorough and really happy to answer questions. The thing is, sometimes, you just know. FirstClass get a bonus point for having a freebee I have never seen before - a screen sweeper. A small thing, looks like an ice scraper for your car but with a brush where the scraper should be. Fabulous. I got a green one.

Hello Simon, this was meant as a lighthearted introduction to the post. It isn't a description of my attitude but a reflection on the responsibilities we have when making decisions that affect our clients experience of the ICT they use. It is difficult to predict what might be the affect of making a filtering system more strict until one tries and with limited resources this usually means experementing on an unsuspecting public in order to reach a satisfactory balance. Hence my thinking about written policies that are agreed and reviewed as necessary and the education of the users. Best regards, mitcheln

Hello. I've been thinking about filtering policies recently after enforcing quite draconian filtering (for a bit of a wheez) in response to corridor complaints from staff in one of the (primary) schools in which I work about inappropriate material popping up here and there. Naturally, as a result of this, numerous sites ceased to work as expected and the volume of complaints increased dramatically. It got me to thinking that this was something I needed to discuss with the management in the school to develop a program of education for the users and agreeing on a filtering policy to determine roles and responsibilities etc., etc. This is now in progress and I'm wondering what other schools have in place. Anyone care to comment?

just for information about hardware really: i run a shorewall/dansguardian/squid setup on debian stable on a 733 P3 with 256MB of RAM and a 20GB hdd. Its a small site - 60 PCs - but it runs very happily.

in my experience, if the board uses USB for its connection, when attaching that board to another computer, despite this computer having previously been attached to a USB board, you will have to manually choose the driver in device manager from those available on the machine.

Hi, this is an iTQ (the new NVQ for IT Users, see this page, based on the National Occupational Standards which are outlined in detail here.) unit. I don't know which awarding body you are subject to, but City and Guilds has a 'candidate logbook' that contains useful advice about how to gather the evidence you need to provide in quite readable English. It can be found here. Best wishes. NM

Also see Studio To Go: http://www.ferventsoftware.com/

safari.oreilly.com - an online library containing many if not all of O'Reilly's pubs, and books by several other publishers. They have various subscription levels from $10 - $35 per month depending on the number of books you want to have on your shelf at one time, and whether you want to be able to download chapters.

The previous version of WININSTALL LE is available on a Windows 2000 Server CD in \VALUEADD\3RDPARTY\MGMT\WINSTLE

It might be worth your while using the Group Policy Modelling Wizard to see which GPOs are being applied to the computers/users of this room.