jamesb

Who wants to bet Microsoft start pouring out IE CDs like the old AOL ones that used to come through the door? Can't complain about a monopoly then, after all, any other browser manufacturer could do the same thing.

I honestly can't think of a single scenario where a teacher would need read access, let alone write access. In which case the whole thing comes down to basic security principles. Least privilege.

And in towns where there's only a Starbucks they should have to provide other brands of coffee!

The receptionist comparison was probably a bad one, but I was trying to highlight that giving complete access to student work to someone who doesn't know exactly what that entails, and any issues that come up, isn't the same as providing a doctor with medical drugs. A doctor with medical drugs knows how they should be prescribed and used. An end-user (not just teachers, any end-user) with any sort of administrative access is not a doctor with access to those drugs, maybe a physics expert would've made a better comparison. It doesn't matter how good they are their role, a physicist is not going to be able to make a valid diagnosis and provide the right drugs. There are also plenty of networks where pen drives are locked down, or locked out entirely. Besides which if they're using the computer on their own personal time (after-school clubs, lunch breaks and so on) why should teaching staff be able to see their own personal work? Now the textbook argument doesn't really compare either. It would be more like allowing a teacher to insist that a student show them all textbooks, exercise books and personal books that they might bring into school. A science teacher has every right to look at a student's science exercise book and textbooks during the lesson. Why should they be checking English books?

Backups existed, but in the photography case half of the photos had been taken and uploaded that day.

In many cases I'd say its more like not giving a doctor's receptionist access to drugs in case they prescribe the wrong ones for patients. With full access to student areas a lot of damage can be done, just by hitting the wrong key. The blame for that isn't going to laid at the feet of the person who did it, its going to be placed on either 'the system' or on the support people most of the time. Not only that but to a point students should be able to have a little privacy in their areas. There's no rule that they can't keep, say, a diary or their own personal writing in their area. In cases where a student's suspected of abusing that privacy then fine, remove it, but in most cases its not going to do any harm and providing that sort of access is just an extension of the Big Brother system that's spreading far too quickly for my liking.

About $200.

Personally I just use my EEE PC and a pocketful of bootable SD cards. Means I can choose whichever distro I feel like at the time.

If there's any data on there which could identify students (and there will be) then you'll need HTTPS. To do that you'll need to get an SSL certificate, I believe there are a few threads around here which tell you where you can get free ones for education.

Are you talking about a one-off, or a regular thing? If its a one-off then you could just upload the file and slap in a link. If its regular then look around for some sort of podcasting syndication host, there's a few free ones ((http://www.libsyn.com/ is one that I know of, not sure whether its free or not though). Or you could just upload it to your site and setup an RSS feed .

Well, doing it that way would give you a list of teacher, subject, subject_mark for each teacher quite happily, but it would involve typing out each subject in the CASE statement. Can't find anything to simply pull the CASE statement out of the table itself but I'll keep looking. (Note: Started typing this before reading localzuk's reply, so it has no bearing on that)

SELECT teacher, subject, CASE subject WHEN 'science' THEN science WHEN 'maths' THEN maths WHEN 'english' THEN english END FROM table That might do it. I assumed you didn't want a simple 'SELECT teacher, subject, science FROM table' query.

Haven't done for coming on a year now, but prior to that yes. When an MSI wasn't available I used to use a script. Usually a startup script assigned by GPO on the computer. You can run a startup script, which'll run as the local system account. This account has permission to do pretty much anything it wants. No to the first, yes to the second when I've forgotten to include command line parameters, or where the software doesn't allow them to silence the install. In those cases I've generally either resorted to manual install, tried to make an MSI, or tossed the software in the bin. For certain programs, yep. I did this for exam software a couple of times as I didn't want the software available outside of exams. A logon script would install and run it (as part of an exam lockdown GPO), and a logoff script would remove the program afterwards. Probably overly paranoid as the kids couldn't access any local drives anyway but it was more because I wanted to see if it could be done. Manual error handling. Basically I'd get the script to create a text file based on the name of the computer, on a central share. Then it'd write when it started, and when it exited successfully. If it didn't then I'd find out quickly enough through a Delphi program I had which turned the text files into a nice series of colours next to each computer name. Mine was a rather simple method, but with WMI and a bit more expertise I'm sure it could be expanded to give a lot more reporting on errors. Yep, that was it. Crude but effective. I did have custom scripts but I no longer work for the school, and haven't for some time as I said. I'd recommend though that you look at the technet website, particularly the Scripting Guys. It'd probably also be worth investigating PowerShell. All of this relies on an installer that allows you to run it in a silent mode however. Feel free to drop me a PM if you have any other questions. I'm always happy to help, even if I am a little rusty.

You can get one from the MCPeStore, but the shipping's three times as much as the kitchen.

Nice to know I'm not the only one. Got to find a way to improvise a steamer for tonight, I've got about 2kg of mussels to cook.

Again, out of curiousity, if you stop one of the OpenVPN services what happens to the other one?

Just as a thought, which ports are the two OpenVPN services running on?

The Scripting Guys are your best bet - I posted a link at the beginning of the thread but here it is again: Hey Scripting Guy! How Can I Create Users from a CSV File? Goes through a script to create users from a CSV, with careful notes on each step. There's also a Powershell Scriptomatic utility that might be useful: PowerShell Scriptomatic

If it comes with an installer which'll allow command-line switches then you can always go for putting the installer on a hidden share and setting up a startup script to run the command. The script can then log what's been installed on the machine to check that it doesn't try to install things twice. Set up an uninstall script the same way to apply if you want to remove software again.

PowerShell.

Two years ago?

I love cooking. Even went so far as to ask for a set of good cooking knives as a present. However, that doesn't mean if I've ordered some computer hardware I want a kitchen catalog to appear along with it.

Don't forget to present your ID card when you make your vote in the local election. Voting for the wrong candidate may reduce your eligibility for certain council services.

How do the cards work? RFID or a barcode? If its RFID, why not microwave it. It'll be interesting to see how they react to 'broken' cards.

The Business link website has quite a bit of advice on this. I'm not aware of any forums though. Sole trader | Business Link