ITWombat

If students are running as restricted users then there shouldn't be anything they should be able to do by right-clicking that they can't do with Windows Explorer. The Open and Save dialogs of Word, Excel and other Office apps present more of a problem. No matter how much you tie down Explorer, these file browsers can still be used to drill down to any area of the file system that the user has read access to. Speaking of which does anybody know how to disable filename completion?

Channel 5 did a short bio of Bonds on their latenight sports program. I liked two placards held up by some 'fans'. 'Pitch to Barry' and how about '715*' Ouch!

You know Russ, you're starting to sound like an American sportscaster . (Ugh! Did I just use that word.)

and *nix browsers (MacOS X and Linux) ignore the $ anway . Does having a share per folder have performance hit?

Doesn't that apply more to adults. Can students really expect that to have an absolute right to go on chat sites during lesson time?

So that's your dark secreat other than why you have a London number while located in Leics. What's the attraction of rounders palyed by men in pajamas anyway?

Many times staff seem to be using email as instant messaging (IM) system. Has anoyone here implented a proper IM system using either MS Exchange Server 2000 or Live Communications Server? Do any of the Lnux schools use Jabber? Do you bother with logging?

Microsoft are trying to wean people off drive letters and on to UNCs. Has anybody done this in thier school? Wiithout drive letters how do you make shared folders visible to users. Basically, how do you auto-populate My Network Places. Is it jist a case of downloading a set of prefab LNK (shortcut) files into a user's profile? Alternatively do you make shares visible using active directory?

AD is used primarly for system administration but does anyone use it as... well... a directory? Do you populate all those wierd and wonderful fields in a user record in Users and Computers snap-in. How do you give users access to this information?

You should be more precise on how the section on bulletin board systems and internet forums affects VLEs, especially those hoste by third parties.

You should make it more explicit that unauthorised access to systems in school or off-site is prohibited. This a catch-all for hacking/cracking. The section on representing the school be expanded to inidcate that the no user should try to make any statement about the school that they have no authority to do so, whether or or not it is defamatory

@gatt: It covers most of the important points but the language drifts a bit, making it unclear who the target audience is. Is it for students, parents of students or staff? There should also be an AUP for staff as there is often a greater feeling of entitlement coupled often with less expertise.

:toimonster: Cheers Russell for lowering the tone. I thought you were the sensible one. [-X

:hello1: Thanks Russ. Much better

Can I make a plea for a greater range of smilies and of a better design. It's not right that Capita's forums have better smilies then eduGeek

Well ... I think you've won the prize for gross out post of the week eeugghh!!

In an interview for G2 comic actor, Chris Langham, ponders why his line of work appears to attract such a unusual number of addictive personalities. Show business, it seemed to him, offers "one of the most powerful and headiest narcotics on the market -- it's called approval". Compare this to other professions, suggested Langham. " My accountant does not, when he's on the street, have people come up to him and say, 'You don't know me, but I loved your audit' Makes you wonder what it will be like in years to come for us edu geeks. Will we have strangers approcahing us in the street. "You don't remember me but I want to thank you. Because of the rigorous way you policed internet access, I was able to focus on my studies. and look at me now! I am a middling corporate accountant."

A little while back there was criticism of some nurses who considered that their increasing high level of training meant that they had no interest in doing the basic tasks of nursing such as bathing patients. Are edu geeks to clever to clean? OK it might not be just a case of status but of practicality. It may be just too much to expect technical staff to clean all end user equipment as well as doing the other support work we do on a regular basis. What do you do in your school? Do you ask individual departments to clean their own machines? Do you special contractors, like in the corporate world, who come in every so often to clean computers. Are your normal school cleaning staff approved to clean computer equipment? Or do you just accept the inevtible, roll up your sleeves and don the Marigolds? I have been in some places which seem to use the 'factory method'. That is, the only cleaning a computer might see is when they are given the once over before leaving the factory and shhipped to the warehouse.

This is abit dangerous as it makes any member of staff an administrator on any staff laptop whether or not they have signed for it. This means an attacker just has to get of staff crendentials from a careless member of staff then they could mount remote attacks on any laptop. You may get some protection if the staff laptop has an operational software firewall (XP or 3rd party) with well defined exceptions. Or maybe a kid gets physical access to a teachers laptop to give a power presentation. While he's groups preparing he could do the odd runas install the odd keylogger. That's on the extreme end, more likely it just increases the chances of a member of staff causing a problem on someone else's machine. They come in to cover a lesson and borrow someone's laptop for electronic registration. They may browse the web install the odd tool bar or spyware etc. User education and good manners should stop a lot of this but there is no safety net if everyone is an admin on everyone else's machine. Does Ranger have offline logging? Once a kid has admin they own the machine in the hacker sense. They can do all the nauhgty stuff at home, even disabling the Ranger client. Ultimately, a good school displinary record is probably the only defence when you have to give admin to kids and staff with varying levels of IT expertise.

For some organisations there will be problems but schools shouldn't be that badly afftected. No-one in a school should be using any communiction channels that you don't have administrative control over except SSL webites for e-commerce or secure logins to Hotmail and the like. If you can't monitor communiction between wifi NIC and WAP then you can catch the suspect at the switch, web proxy, file or intranet server. Because you work in a school you maybe able to insist on a lot mre control then in other orginsation. You're not running a cyber cafe with ad-hoc wifi hotpspots.

You could aways put the affected machines in a different organisation unit in Active Directory. Another possibility is to publish rather than assign the software to the macine. That way the administrator can choose to install rather have the install forced on them at boot time.

Consecutive JRE updates seem to be installed side by side. Two issues: 1)If the main purpose of the update is security, why leave the broken code in place? The Add and Remove Programs wizard 2)If you maintain the same Windows over several months this could use up a lot o diskpace. Is there way of making the JRE update process uninstall the old version before installing the update?

OK I guess I deserved the RTFx. I should have searched for VPN as that brings up more relevant hits. I may post a list of the best ones (IMHO) a little later.

It's going to happen soon or later. It's probably better I have a proposal put together before SMT come in with one of their well thought out directives So geeks what do you do? VPN or web(e,g, OWA), reverse proxy, ISA, SmoothWall, on-site VLE, appliance or server (Windows or Linux). Most important of all security. Remote access would be great boost for learning and admin but I'm just afraid of extending the network perimeter into people's homes with all that would mean security and confidentaility. Can it be done with out bringing the walls down

Can't say that I have. My sartorial elegance may have suffered but I get the feeling that my mental health is all the better for it. Was anyone brave enough to make Jimi Hendrix references