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I meant to hit the top radio button. My bad.

Some teachers here are already making use of more popular methods of content delivery - such as podcasts and blogging - for example some teachers are surveying students to determine which topics in a subject are hardest, and creating podcasts to help with students' revision sessions. In addition, the headteacher also has his own blog on blogspot. Pretty ironic considering all other blogspot blogs are filtered.

Even if you did decide to build a "new VLE", when there are a large number of other options available - though my opinion is that most of them aren't great and will not be suitable for many schools by default - you still have a number of other hurdles to overcome. Mainly, the issue is once you have developed your "new VLE" your main two issues are uptake (e.g. marketing, investors, sales) and support & updates (I've compiled those into one criterion because they are interlinked). While I don't want to be too harsh here, it is my opinion that unless you have serious financial backing or the use of a fully established, experienced and knowledgeable team of individuals with a large amount of time (e.g. they'll need to be available during normal business hours and more, regardless, to support schools and colleges) you honestly have little to no hope of a) producing a usable, functional VLE system that would be suitable for a generic educational institution, b) understanding how to tackle the development of the application of the size required, c) being able to support such a system and integrate it with all required platforms (AD, Student Information Management Systems - Not just SIMS.NET, existing VLEs, SSO authentication gateways etc.), d) being able to maintain the system with the required future feature-sets and support required or e) all of the above.

Use file_get_contents() or a similar function instead of include. Print out the contents using the file_get_contents() function; for example: print file_get_contents($CFG->httpswwwroot.'/file.php?file=/1/theme/navbar.php');

If the computer can be used without all the disks in, remove one and test it again to see if it has the same issue. If it does, continue through with the removal of the next disk and place the previous one back in. I've had a similar issue to this with all the disks, even though they passed all tests, the primary disk decided it would rather make a noise and stop functioning. As soon as I disabled it and removed it from the system the computer was fine again. Then again, it could also easily be a power issue, or a number of other vital components that aren't easily tested except by replacement.

'Unless you have dedicated Direct3D capable hardware, it isn't going to run happily.. It doesn't like Intel 945G chipsets at all, despite Intel stating they are capable, so we have several rooms that half work and half don't work. Likewise, I've never been able to get much support out of them... I would go for the demo too, since we never had the demo, it just got bought and thrown in my face with a deadline of "next week."'

It's still in warranty; all RROD errors are covered by an extended 3 year plan regardless of the 1 year standard warranty. Just send it back - there's no point in beating around the bush.

vBulletin if the project you are working on is commercial, has financial backing or the desire is to show potential clients or visitors that your project is "professional." If the project is personal, no financial backing and the appearance doesn't matter, phpBB will do fine.

Getting my copy tonight; hopefully somewhere will still have a copy of the regular version (Xbox 360 obviously.)

Have to admit that I find Rainbox Six: Vegas 2 on the Xbox 360 (Xbox Live) much more fun online than COD4; just because I prefer the game play. COD4 is great online and it is a good feeling to get your own back on people online; but a better feeling doing it on Vegas 2. =P

You do get 13 year old kids moaning on COD4, but that's to be expected with any popular game. Just try and play with the right people. It's just fun shooting them in the head. Overall Xbox Live is fantastic.

Playing Halo 3, COD4 etc currently. PM for Gamertag if you want it.

Personally I like the Xbox 360, but that's mainly because I have one and I love Xbox Live - the alternative PS3 online play doesn't compare for me and those who have both consoles say the 360 is better in that regard. That said, the PS3 does have some good selling points such as exclusive console games (Kill Zone etc (unless I'm mistaken)) but so does the 360. You have to see which games you want to play, and if you are a fan of "playing together" online. Microsoft dropped their prices for the 360 series of consoles, Sony will probably do so in the next couple of months. If you want a 360, get one with a harddrive (120gb preferable) as the 20gb isn't that big (I have one) and a memory card doesn't cut it.

A recommendation here for Komodo Edit, a free editor from ActiveState (http://www.activestate.com). http://activestate.com/Products/komodo_edit/ As like most other code editors it can do syntax and code highlighting and a number of other things. If you are using Vista you will need to check their forums for a workaround in regards to setting a Windows Path for the temp directory. Best Regards,

@markcuk: I don't see what relevance your reply has to this discussion about OOo. Perhaps if you want to take something up with someone, contact them privately. -- There is no reason that OOo should not be installed on the network - just because it's open source. OOo is secure as far as secure goes, but there is this myth about open source software that it is scary, bad and insecure; which for OOo is rubbish. A policy against open source software shouldn't exist, instead it would be changed to a policy against insecure software (not OOo).

I disagree. Someone shouldn't have to resign because they can't get a simple piece of software installed on a minority of computers. You have a strong reason for wanting OOo - students use it at home, and it isn't terribly compatible with MS Office. This is a valid reason, and I can't see where you said you would force it on anyone who doesn't want to use it - instead allow students to use it if they wish. I think you should be encouraged to learn different pieces of software, regardless of which is the industry standard and which is not (as long as you have experience with both.) There is no obviously painful technical reason for not having OOo installed on those machines, and any issues that might come up (staff not being trained in OOo) can be fixed. For example, staff don't even have to use OOo if they don't want too - just make sure MS Office is the default for the majority of MS Office documents (e.g. .doc, .ppt etc) and therefore OOo can still open the documents from File -> Open. The software installed on most computers in a college is probably never touched by the majority of users; for example nearly everyone might use MS Word or Internet Explorer - but hardly any use Sage or Logos or something that is installed on there for the minority of users who need it - but it's still installed. If staff are stupid enough to try and use OOo when MS Office is installed, defaulted and not altered in any way by the OOo install - and they don't know how to use it - then this is their issue, and you can bring it up with them individually. As people have said, technical support in a school is there for a reason - to help and assist T&L, and help end users. Your T&L requires OOo for 3 computers; you should get it. There isn't a valid reason why not. A NM being lazy isn't one of them. Best Regards,

Absolutely, Eraser is great. It can either erase unused harddrive space (free space) or just specific files.

Very good advice, usually the more reputable companies will have an older account, rather than a newer forum account; as well as more reviews on them. Don't just check WHT for reviews, search Google for other forums. With that amount of visitors a control panel will hardly cost anything (£15 probably if you go for a dedicated server that deals with bulk orders). You might have to expand your budget dealing with that amount of visitors, though depends on the content and size of the content. Best Regards,

WHT (WebHostingTalk, as said by Jona) is the place to look for recommendations. You can get servers managed, with that specification, for around your price tag. Depends on _where_ the server is though. You will likely get a better deal in the US, but the server will be further away and the carriers may not be too good (for example, Cogentco isn't brilliant). It also depends on the level of management you get, and what support contracts you have. You might have to pay more for bandwidth (unmetered) or just a bit more for _lots_ of bandwidth. How much do you consider lots? The standard that comes with most servers now is about a TB, but can range from a couple of gigabytes to many many terabytes. Best Regards,

Plays here too. (IE7)

You could look into using rsync for synchronizing your "live" data with your "backup" data on another server. You can use rsync with a cronjob to automatically backup your files each night and get them transferred over to your backup server. Regarding your MySQL database you could either dump the database and backup the copy, sync/replicate the database or a number of other options. Sorry I don't really have any information links to hand right at this moment in time, but if any come up I'll be sure to post them. Best Regards,

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/showthread.php?t=15885

Glad we could help. Hope you enjoy using Joomla.

If your students are willing to do so they can apply for an ISIC or NUS Extra card for around £10 which will enable them to verify their identity online with Microsoft; only downside is it takes awhile to get the card, and you have to pay for it.

Not having a good time are you Your CSS files (the documents that control how your page looks (backgrounds etc)) are returning a 500 internal server error. Did you remove those .htaccess files that didn't work, and have the permissions set correctly on those files?