jamesb

The engineer arrived, or at least an outsourced engineer. Very pleasant guy, gave me a new (much nicer router) and took away the old one. Checked the line, no problem, checked that I could connect to the internet and was getting a decent speed (more than 10x what I was getting on the old router). So in essence, if you're on Tiscali and have one of the old Gigaset routers, tell them its failed. They're defective. Request one of the Thompson ones instead.

Any adaptation of Phillip K Dick or Isaac Asimov's work since Bladerunner - particularly anything done by Stephen Spiel. Any American film which claims in the credits to be 'Based on a true story' or 'Based on a story by' or any variation of those phrases.

You're assuming theft for a reason, rather than just out of malice, boredom, curiousity, general vandalism, or stupidity.

If you're using AD, you may be able to use software restriction policies to kill it. File signature restrictions maybe? That way even if they rename it they're not going to be able to run it.

Suggestions maybe? They don't have the authority to outright ban words, despite what many of the news stories about this seem to be saying. Their list has reasonable replacements for a lot of the words (except in some cases, where the question was why the word would need to be used in the first place), and they're basing it on the fact that they've had a lot of complaints from people receiving bulletins, announcements and similar which are management gibberish. Or from people who have hunted for information and discovered that impermeable language is a much more effective defense than putting it in the cellar, then removing the lights and the stairs. I'm all for it myself. In a business, fine, but I certainly have sympathy with those who don't want to be dealing with another language when trying to research public services.

This is actually what's been done, but for some reason they've been left off on this. I guess it just doesn't make as good a story when someone's suggesting replacing management jargon with plain English in council publications to their constituents, as when someone's outright banning management jargon across the board. Oh you will, but you'll have to phrase it the second way rather than the first.

PEBCAK and its many variants Layer 8 error ID-10-T IUE Layer 9 error (refers to upper management rather than normal users) RTFM JGI All ones which I carefully taught to my techncian before I left.

The idea of teachers having even read access makes me shudder. I do remember one incident, where a certain senior teacher kicked up enough of a fuss that I was ordered to give them access to all student's work. As a result, one sixth former had their entire art photography portfolio deleted. That would've been their coursework. Similarly we lost two media student's videos, and almost an entire year's worth of music coursework. Needless to say the status quo was quickly restored and the only people permitted to have access to student files were the IT technical staff. If teachers had specific concerns, they came through us and brought a member of SLT. I always maintained the position that it was similar to searching a student's bag or locker, and should not be taken lightly.

Nope, its quite serious. I heard about it at the time the report originally went out. A lot more sensible than it sounds really. Alternatives are offered for most phrases. Some are just noted as to why they should ever be used. The idea is to make it a lot easier to read all those council announcements.

That's an old BBC one. I liked the last one they did as well, with the hyper-evolved penguins. Not seen their one for this year yet though.

I would heartily recommend buying the fat clients a Wii Fit and enforcing a regular regime until they become thin. More seriously, while I've got limited experience I'd suggest VMWare, partly because I've always found it fairly easy to use and partly because you mention you already have experience of it.

I always had Ubuntu down as more of an animalistic sacrifice cult. Gentoo strikes me more as koolaid and comet-watching.

I should've clarified I guess. Someone saying they're going to get a few friends round and do a sponsored 48-hour Halo mass tournament isn't someone I'd've thought would be infringing any copyrights. On the other hand if they're doing it in public, that's a different matter. Blame a bad night's sleep, my brain's not kicked into gear yet.

So, uh, why bother with Macs then? So like an all-in-one PC. How much are the current iMacs on sale? £949 for the basic 20" model? The few audio pros I'm familiar with tend to use variants of Linux. That way they can get their own software for their sampler and DSP cards. Half the price? Or a new hard drive, memory, processor, power supply, motherboard, tv tuner card, any other pci card you choose to name, swap it into a new case, cannabalise for spares, strip down and slap in a few terabyte drives to turn it into a file server, throw in a few extra network cards, load Linux on-board and make it into a firewall, or a router, or a proxy server... I'm not arguing against Macs in general, I'm still just arguing against going through a school, ripping out their network of PCs and replacing the whole thing with Macs. Macs have their place, but in a school network, I'll take PCs. Actually I'll rework that. I'll take computers which don't try to force me into proprietary manufacturer lock-in, rather than ones which do. Macs are PCs.

You can get form-factor PCs, I don't see how there's any real difference there. And a form-factor is not more versatile, it is simply designed for a different implementation than say a tower, a mini-form factor, an all-in-one, a desktop, a built in desk-computer, or whatever other configuration you feel like getting. Unless one of them can shape-shift, they're no more versatile. Actually I tell a lie. A pen through a TFT screen for a PC means a new screen. If you've got an all-in-one Mac on the other hand... Scratches on the screen, bled pixels, pens shoved through the glass, bits of paper through the heat vents? Equally, I'd see no reason to upgrade a similarly specced PC, but the point is that I'd have the choice to do so, cheaply. Again, I don't really see the difference. Sure, the resale value on the PC might be lower, but how often do schools sell off old hardware rather than repurposing it? I know which I'd prefer. Gimme £50 to throw a few upgrades at some PCs rather than going through the hassle of trying to sell them off. In fact with a good upgrade program I don't see any need to retire them at all. How does the environment its going to be in make any difference at all? Most likely it'll still be in a classroom, or in an office, but either way there's no specific advantage to Macs in these situations. Equally I find the current hardware models of PCs to be very reliable. I'm not anti-Mac by any means, I just don't see the reason for replacement in this case rather than using the funding to add a new suite with Macs, space permitting. In fact as there's already a Mac suite a new Linux suite might be interesting, really give the kids a chance to experience different flavours. But the point is, why rip out a perfectly good, functioning network of cheap, easily repairable, easily upgradable machines and replace them with pricey all-in-ones where the repairs require special tools simply to get the boxes open, on which large bits of your software probably won't run, or isn't supported (SIMS, as far as I'm aware, is not supported on Parallels, that's gonna sting if it goes wrong).

Are they going to be asking for donations for people to play, or doing some sort of sponsorship? If its the sponsorship option I don't really see that there'd be an issue. Its not like a PC game, so long as people have legal copies and legal XBoxes I'd've thought it would be fine. If they're going to be asking for donations I'm not so sure, but talking to a local internet cafe (preferably one which also offers XBox time) would shed some light on what's required.

I'm genuinely curious. Since they're based on the same hardware as PCs, how does this make them more useful for a longer period?

If I ever see them, I will do. Why d'you say 'a' Tiscali engineer? Do they have more than one?

I don't want to provide a case against introducing Macs in some capacity, although I'm rather glad to hear that my argument was convincing. I just don't think a replacement strategy is the right way to go about it. Macs are more expensive than equivalent PCs, and they are harder and more expensive to upgrade. As to only having the option to upgrade memory on older PCs, I've upgraded hard drives, graphics cards, processors and so on as well as memory in order to keep systems running before, and to give them a boost.

Probably about the same lifespan, though repairs and spares would be more costly, and there's less scope for upgrading older machines in order to extend their lifespan.

Given that he's still not turned up? A good question. To say I am a little annoyed is an understatement. I am currently in the mood to start ordering seige weaponry. I'm now on day 9, and have received a second callback from the Tiscali Fault Management team. Apparently, because of a fault in their software, an engineer was not booked to visit me. An engineer has now been booked for Friday. They offered one earlier, but of course the only available slots then were during working hours. I made it quite clear that unlike their engineers I am unwilling to slack off from work for my own conveniece. They have, kindly, offered a refund for the days where I have been experiencing this problem. They have also told me that I can e-mail their complaints department, which I have already done several times. Several requests for a contact number for their complaints department were met with polite refusal. My latest two e-mails to their complaints department have so far gone unanswered. I have now got the phone numbers for OfCom, and will be calling them shortly. This has now gone beyond the point of being a mere inconvenience and into true warfare. I took a similar approach to tv licensing, and eventually received a full apology, but in that case the incident did not cost me any money. This one has, as well a large portion of my temper. If you know anyone on Tiscali near the end of their contract, tell them to get out. Anyone who suggests that they might be getting Tiscali should be warned off with great speed.

I'd've thought you'd probably need the change the servers over as well if you want to go over to a Mac network, but I'm not absolutely sure. As far as I'm aware, these all have equivalents under Mac. However, you may need to change your licenses which would be another financial argument. The SIMS client won't run on a Mac, simple as that. You'll either need to keep some PCs, dual-boot the Macs, or have something like boot camp. Alternatively I suppose you could look into SLG. I suspect the same applies to a lot of general educational software though. Strikes me as a bad move. Bringing in more Macs is one thing, adding a few more IT suites populated with Macs sounds fine to me. Replacing your entire infrastructure might be unnecessarily drastic, particularly with their recent price hikes and the current recession.

Scheduled tasks to add and remove rights to the directory at appropriate times? Edit: Alternatively, what about a logon script that allows access to the files only when they're logging in within the school?

Having looked around a bit it does seem very basic. Now on the other hand if they were to introduce the theories of psychology behind social networking, and the algorithms which can be used to define, describe and influence such networks they'd be offering something immensely valuable. I'd be tempted by it myself.

I seem to remember when I looked at Frog it was fairly easy to set up an embedded page, which would probably allow you to do it. Alternatively (or in addition) as Messa says, Frog did strike me as a company very willing to listen to their customers.