PiqueABoo

Do you know how much personal time Primary teachers can spend doing their job? They like stuff like this because it's one less thing they have to do.

One thing to note about shockwave, or at least the official corporate MSI, is that it installs two versions: The latest 10.x and the latest 11.x.

Note this bit near the end: A spokeswoman for the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceops) said: "Daniel Kinge, the owner has been sentenced to 12 months in prison following charges by West Mercia Police. As such Ceops feels that schools can resume use of this website in line with their normal risk assessment and management processes and in consultation with local authorities."

YMMV but I've used ppm which is an easier free GUI for that on 2K8.

Just to add - I've been happy enough using the (free, easy) "Windows Installer Wrapper Wizard" to bundle CMDs, EXEs and a mix of them into MSIs. [Would link to it but the site doesn't work]. Not sure what they use but some vendor MSIs are like that, for instance the corporate Flash MSI is wrapper around an EXE installer.

Eh? 2004 was quite a while after that brave new world had flown, burned and dotcom crashed surely?

My baseline for XP is all the latest MS updates to anything that was already in the OS, plus a few bits I think should have been in the OS. New IE, WMP, latest-greatest post-SP3 hotfixes, GPP CSEs, csccmd and so on. I also add the dotNets. I'm reasonably confident I will never need to remove any of this stuff and if there are new versions and updates to any of it the MS install logic will just sort it out. Everything else that I may want to remove at some point in future is put on later (via deployment stuff that can handle EXE installers - if I can preserve the original vendors installation logic by using those I'd much rather do that than turn them into MSIs).

T'other day I caught myself saying that I missed Mary Whitehouse.

Exmerge does not work with Exchange 2007 and I doubt that's changed for Exchange 2010. Don't know about 2010, but on 2007 you can either: a) Import PSTs to mailboxes via some not-too-hard powershell commands. Sadly you can only do this from a second 32 bit machine with the 32 bit version of the Exchange Management tools installed, not on the 64bit Exchange server itself. b) Use Outlook - it can still open PSTs when connected to an Exchange mailbox and you can move folders and items from one to the other.

Ok, unless I'm misunderstanding you, this is an area of computer relevant law I think all professional computer geeks should become at least vaguely acquainted with, alongside DPA, CMA, copyright and so on. In this context the word "making" has special legal meaning that probably runs to several chapters since it was originally news and debated to death on at least one mail list. AIUI in a nutshell: The original CP relevant law was largely focused on production not consumption i.e. "making" was closer to the usual dictionary sense. Then PCs and the net introduced new problems but the law lagged behind, so around the turn of the century the existing legal meaning was stretched a bit : Viewing an existing image on a computer screen is an example of "making", so is copying say a JPG file from one computer to another. But the offence is really about knowingly making, otherwise network admins could have a few problems e.g. when they throw 27 trillion files (that other people 'own') from here to there or even just run a backup, they might be innocently copying a indecent image. This leads into what you do if in the course of your normal duties you stumble across a image like that or suspect, say because of file names, that some images might be like that. If you now knowingly view them or copy them anywhere then in principle you break the law, and you also also muddy the forensic evidence. Ultimately I think it's in your best interests to try and stop doing everything with that computer/laptop and discreetly pass the buck to the official local experts ASAP, and if you don't know who they are then ask your LA.

Would that set off alarm bells at your local nick then? Adding big long feasible academic-ish words to searches has been landing me in safe waters e.g. "recividism", "desensitization" and so on. The main problem doing this for any subject is how often you end up at a summary of a research paper where you need a paid subscription to read the full thing. The summary might tell you a bit, but it's just bound to end with something like "Finally, we discuss possible reasons for those counter-intuitive results" which for all I know could say "..so we concluded that our experimental design was inherently flawed". One of my interesting finds was that (now Prof.) Yaman Akendiz published a book 18 months ago. Can't read that without shelling out either but a review had this to say: Specifically, the author calls for informed debate as to the nature of CP related crimes and offenders and cautions against public and government distortion of the meaning of pedophilia. For example, he contends that those who solely view or download (i.e. “possess”) CP should not be necessarily cast as a sexual predator because no causal link has been shown to exist between viewing CP and active molestation. The latter does not mean there is not a causal link i.e. one might yet be clearly demonstrated and perhaps it subsequently has. This of course, although it's only just dawned on me(!), must be a difficult area to research - you can't, for instance, attempt to measure responses to illegal images. I'm still sticking with my "[basic facts] + inappropriate for an organisation.." thing. You wouldn't really need to wheel out the "income" argument as well to persuade someone would you? But I might pass this quote on too because some sparklebox content consumers may wonder: "The court heard that even though images of young people could be uploaded onto sparklebox.com, there was no suggestion that Kinge had been distributing pornography through it."

I accidently did something once that puzzled me for hours, but it was worth it for the trick I saw in it: If it's on a domain and you have a logon script called say "logon.cmd" then add a line in to enable to proxy in the registry, IIRC it's a value somewhere called ProxyEnable so set that to 1 via reg.exe or similar. Make another file called "logon.cmd" turning the proxy off i.e. in this one set ProxyEnable to 0, and throw that in %windir%. When you're connected to the domain it runs the logon.cmd from sysvol. When you're not connected e.g. at home, it runs the logon.cmd in %windir%. This just works for me and you can do other "if connected to the domain do X, otherwise do Y" tricks with it.

Yes, in that scenario I'm pretty sure I'd struggle to maintain my principles. But in a civilised, rational society there are clearly limits in how far you should accomodate a victim's wishes (which for a bunch obvious, excusable reasons are not always entirely rational). It's a factor to consider, not the entire case. Says who? I'm not saying escalation doesn't happen, but without evidence I'm not prepared to accept it as a general rule.

Maybe next millenium... I get that bit and it's nothing like an answer to the questions you highlighted. And your answer can be wrong e.g. innocent (no harm done, from Next catalogues or whatever) images can become indecent ones if they're in a child sex abuser's possession. Across the pond the US Supreme Court disagreed, but here but pseudo-images that were created without anyone being harmed are apparently considered like real ones. Let's try the question again from a different angle: Has the number of people directly "interfering" with children increased, decreased or stayed the same since everyone and their dog got hooked up to the internet?

The result according to the Mail "On Friday [08-01-2010] Kinge was jailed for 12 months at Worcester Crown Court after admitting downloading 424 indecent images of children." Yes I can. You could have caught me drinking a beer in a restaurant last night which puts me on an alcohol-dependency spectrum, so would you subsequently file me, and everyone else who has ever done that, under "not vastly different from an violent alcoholic"? I'm no expert on any of this and I'm willing to be corrected, but I doubt that "spectrum" (is it?) of yours is a steady slope. I suppose there will be some with sufficiently screwed up "wiring" to just breeze past it, but for most people the psychological barrier between getting off on CP in private and any related activity out in the real world has got to be a significant one, surely? Perhaps it's there, but I need to see some research on the risks of Person A advancing to actual harm. And given that this particular offence is relatively new, we can't know about the long term risks i.e. in principle they will end up higher than any numbers you can find now. Only if you want to live in Nineteen Eighty-Four, but perhaps we can gain some further insight into that from one of the gamers who get their adrenaline kicks from running around with BFGs maiming and murdering virtual people? Are people who enjoy that generally accepted activity more likely to be violent in real-life? Or are they model citizens in real-life because they've got the dark stuff out of their systems in those virtual worlds? I don't know the answer, but is the availability of CP via the net satisfying some "urges" and reducing the risk of people going out and doing actual harm to real children. Or is it helping drag people further away from reality, making child abuse more "normal" and acceptable and increasing the risk? Basically I don't know what to think, but I'm not going to fix that with anything that doesn't have some credible supporting evidence.

Who wants to do that in this thread? I'd say the main problem is the "general public's" mindset towards this area which, if it belonged to an individual, would likely see them sectioned. Amongst other things it's seriously, disturbingly voyeuristic (because those tabloids tastelessly raking over details, day after day after day, sell) and insanely contradictory e.g. the complicity in the increasing sexualisation of young children. I couldn't possibly accept that in isolation and it beggars (my) belief that so many people are apparently content to do so. As an example: * Person A is convicted for possession of indecent pictures downloaded from the net etc. Yes I appreciate the "contribute to actual harm" argument, but they didn't directly harm a child. They go on the register. * Person B is convicted for directly harming a child in a non-sexual way e.g. violent or other abuse. So what happens in the second case? How different are the recividism rates? Do they go on a register? If so, are there notification requirements? Why aren't people at least as interested in this then? I know some of the answers, but only vaguely because the sexual stuff tends to eclipse and push all the rest to one side and it's a lot harder to find out - that mindset strikes again. Sadly, and that's very sadly, I don't think we're ever going to get very far with any of this until the witch hunt mentality is superseded by a rational, calm approach that permits more open, honest debate. Who knows, maybe next millenium.. From where I'm sitting, devoid of any other information, CEOP have: a) Confirmed the director sex offence thing. Although we didn't need that because SWGfL wouldn't have published (internally or externally) something so defamatory unless they knew it was true. b) Essentially said they support LAs/schools blocking the site unless those LAs/schools are happy it's not a threat. Which is consequence-free advice anyone could give and arguably makes perfect sense for **any** site on the net. You can start reading things between the lines, and if you like imagine some forum there is a hotbed of Machiavellian child molesters, but I'm also perfectly happy to assume CEOP are professionals so between the investigation they mentioned and the more general scrutiny that site's doubtless under, I'll stand by my comments on that other thread. -- Honesty is what troubles me in all of this: If I'm honest I think I've recently read a bunch of patronising, specious artificial crap in those early (and some current) LA statements, several also with that witless safety-in-numbers "other LAs have done it too" stuff which just goes to show how little history teaches some people. If I ran the universe then I'd have waited until it could be published and the message would have simply been: "[facts about director] + Under the circumstances we have currently decided it is inappropriate for an organisation of our nature to continue to allow access to the site." And having just looked I'm delighted to say that is pretty much what my LA grid folk have just said albeit with a teensy bit of innocuous padding. ::sorry folks - shutting up now::

Maybe I just got lucky with my definitely random walks-of-life lot then. OTOH I think you got unlucky.

You can make a global configuration file called mms.cfg for Flash Player that you throw somewhere under %windir%. Can't promise you'll be able to configure what you want because I mostly use it to turn off checking for update, but that's where I'd look first. This is documented in the Flash Player 10 Administration Guide which will be somewhere on Adobe.

You can get (free) mutually authenticating SSL/TLS tunnel apps for Windows and they're not too hard to configure.

I'll just add that if CC3 accounts are logging on to the vanilla machines you definitely need that loopback, plus it has to be Replace mode.

I did jury service on an "interesting" predatory paedophile case. Another one had recently been too much national "news" for much too long, so I expected to be amongst a hysterical lynch mob but everyone appeared to be extremely objective i.e. when making decisions that would definitely affect a real person, they seemed to take it very, very seriously indeed. It took years for my natural cynicism about the Great British public to recover. Anyway, we unanimously settled on guilty re. the charge that mattered and afterwards (because you were not allowed to know before) learnt they were a repeat offender. That was a consolation given our verdict and the likely sentence i.e. the probability we were right went up a bit more. Later I wondered enough to go looking, and the numbers I found said the chances of a sex offender (which covers a wide variety of things) being convicted for a second sexual offence was apparently about 1 in 4. The highest for a specific offence was 1 in 3. Of course some might not get caught the next time, but it seems reasonable to guess at a worst case of 1 in 2 do NOT reoffend. So if we put two first offenders in front of you with some kind of big red button for you to press, which one(s) are you going to put "out of their misery"? And what would pushing that button make you? Or is this just something you just want other people i.e. the "authorities", to do for you? [if anyone's got some better recent numbers then please share. Not that you'll find anything meaningful re. this thread's specific and relatively new first offence until another decade or two has passed.]

Hmm.. meanwhile some LAs didn't feel compelled to do anything at all, or at least not until they could make a relatively honest statement about why. Were some being negligent towards that duty of care? Or were others peeing away time=public money [that perhaps could have done something small but **real** for a victim or vulnerable kid or two?] fretting, debating and then publishing advance half-truths? There are risks in breathing, the trick is quantifying them and no one, but no one, seems prepared to try and quantify the risks of not filtering in this case. No doubt because there is another set of risks in doing so, but I expect no one has bothered to size those up properly either. Be afraid. Just because. Perhaps I'm wrong, but having done a fair bit of that breathing over the years my instincts say "negligible" i.e. this is yet another case of Moral Panic[tm]. From where I'm sitting the story so far doesn't appear to have done e-safety any favours.

Sout ^H^H^H^H.. Northerners! ;b We've had loads of crap for making snowmen but high quality sledging stuff starting last Friday. It's been cold e.g. was still -5C at 9AM yesterday. The best bit in sprogette enchantment terms (next to a few near escape velocity downhill speeds) was the dusting of "magic" snow we got very early both Thu and Sat morning: 3- 5 mm flat/2-D reasonably perfect six pointed stars, with that fractal detail if you looked close. Kind of thing you get on some xmas cards, but I don't recall ever seeing for real

Here's a long Daily Mail (naturally) article with more detail on what did and didn't happen. As a godless sinner, I believe that sincere Christians (who tend to be the ones who offer to pray for you) although a bit irksome at times, are generally worth their weight in gold. Can be obtained elsewhere, but that little revelation came to me when I had cause to spend a couple of months hanging around a hospice. Anything more than that "quiet word" seems like an absurd waste of public money.

I did a (vocational) year at BS Redcar, attached to a very well paid team of freelancers, in which I did the VAX/CORAL "recipe" tweaking s/w work that took current data from the plant and spat out recommendations. For quite a while afterwards I bit worried that: a) They would start using it seriously, and b) It would work well enough that they'd be lulled into a false sense of trust and then some bug of mine would strike. Was around 1/2 million quid per ladle in those days. Anyway, this is fundamentally the Engineering vs. Science thing. [i'm on the Engineering side of that fence].