AngryTechnician

It amuses me that the top answer in that thread points right back to Edugeek

Don't have a specific time set for lockout, but the computers go into standby after 35 minutes (the length of 1 period) so, technically, 35 minutes.

I agree with your stance on government censorship, but why should Facebook not have the right censor their own website? It's their site, their rules. You're still free to say or post whatever you want somewhere else. Example: I invite you to my house (a private abode) and ask if you'd like leave a message using my fridge magnets. If you write something I find offensive, I'll remove it. Does that amount to me infringing on your right to free speech?

Application policies are fine when you control the device. You usually don't when the device belongs to the pupil. And if blocking chat networks was all it took, this wouldn't be much use vs. repressive regimes so I very much doubt it will be that simple.

Well, great. An upcoming distributed VPN system specially designed so it can't be centrally blocked at the network level. Sounds perfect for schools with BYOD. Google's uProxy: A Peer-to-Peer Gateway to Internet Freedom uProxy

A shame for the people losing their jobs, but RM should have got out of the system building game a long time ago. Their kit hasn't been particularly cheap for a long time and lot of it was utter tat.

On File Extensions - there is a small and (at present) fixed list of file types that are blocked on SharePoint Online. .exe., .bat, and .cmd are allowed and there is no built in mechanism to block them. I'd also love to be able to auto-configure SkyDrive Pro but that sad fact is that the Microsoft Office team are focused on BYOD and no longer even perform testing in managed AD environments like we use in schools, let alone give us the tools to manage these sorts of features. The fact that Office 365 sign-ins are still horribly broken in Office 2013 when you use roaming profiles tells you all you need to know about what the focus is now.

The biggest problem I have over it this is the lack of consistency in their censorship. Ultimately Facebook is a business and so long as the content they are hosting is not illegal (see below) it's up to them what they do and don't allow. At the moment they seem to lurch back and forth over allowing this sort of violent content while consistently and aggressively censoring even partial nudity such as images of breastfeeding. In my view this a reflection on the shambolic and hypocritical nature of their acceptable content policies, and in a wider context, US public opinion over acceptable content at all. It's worth noting that a perusal of US news websites last night seemed to indicate there has not been as vocal an outcry stateside. Ultimately, Facebook need to come up with sensible policies, apply them consistently, and be honest with users about what sort of business they are. Raking in cash from children using their games platform while allowing this sort of disgusting content is not on in my book. As for legal jurisdiction, one of the links @plexer mentioned is relatively clear: It's difficult to see why this isn't therefore being pursued legally. I can only suspect that the army of lawyers Facebook has at its disposal is giving the CPS pause over whether they have a realistic chance of winning.

I'm currently looking at handwriting apps for our iPads for use with Year 2. Can anyone recommend a reasonably priced stylus that I could buy a bunch of for this purpose? They would need to be about the same diameter as a normal pencil, both for familiarity and so we can fit grips to them if required. (If anyone else is using a particular fabulous handwriting app I'd be all ears too, but I'm mainly looking for stylus recommendations at this point.)

Isn't it funny how some schools become obsessed with the ergonomics of computers, with everything having to promote good posture, yet in a normal classroom the pupils sit on hard plastic chairs hunched over books lying flat on the table and no-one bats an eyelid?

On Android it actually requires fewer permissions than WhatsApp, Google Hangouts, Facebook, and Skype. Unless you also have problems with all of those, this doesn't seem like a legitimate reason to boycott BBM. There are plenty of other reasons not to use it, but the permissions are fairly typical of similar IM apps.

My TechNet Plus is still going, and it was the freebie from EES. I activated before August 31 though.

This was part of the TechNet Plus subscription we got free with SA/EES, but which has been discontinued as of August 2013. If your renewal was before August 31 you should still have TechNet Plus until the end of your agreement period. Not sure if you already need to have activated it though.

Perfectly feasible to do it yourself. I do small jobs myself here as I was trained to do it in my last school. For larger jobs such as cabling for extensions/new builds, we often get the ducting put in by the electricians and I do the cable pulls and termination. This is especially true when the ducting is being flushed into the walls as that's a messy job I can do without! Apart from the LS0H rules and asbestos, I believe if you are doing any substantial amount of drilling it would be wise to check you are covered by the school's insurance in case you drill through something important/dangerous by accident, such as embedded electrical cabling or pipes in the walls. External companies (should!) have public liabilities insurance to cover this, so make sure you have equivalent protection - and buy a good stud/pipework finder before drilling into anything.

The Blacberry store is already stuffed full of cookie-cutter apps, so cookie-cutter reviews just seem like par for the course for RIM: ONE App Developer Responsible for 47,000+ Apps in BlackBerry World? - BerryReview

Looks like I got off lightly, my Surface RT updated without any problems. I'm more concerned about Exchange 2010 OWA being forced into the rubbish 'light' mode in IE11 because the Exchange team still haven't sorted out a fix despite knowing about the problem since July. (2013 is also affected but fixed in CU2)

Configure Windows firewall on the Exchange server to only accept connections from the machine(s) that will be used to purge the offending email. Once done, revert firewall rules to normal.

Same problem on my Surface, except it was doing the same thing in Desktop IE as well as Metro. There is a quick fix though. Open desktop IE and go to Settings > Compatibility View settings, and untick Use Microsoft compatibility lists. Looks like Microsoft have added it to their compatibility view list for some reason, and once on there, you can't turn it off (even using the F12 dev tools) without opting out of their lists entirely.

RSAT for 8.1 RTM has gone live today: Download Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 8.1 from Official Microsoft Download Center

It's probably blocking the CSS files as they are stored on Twitter's image servers instead of the main twitter.com domain for some idiot reason (Yahoo does the same). Try whitelisting abs.twimg.com and see if that helps.

I'm actually wondering whether Enterprise SKUs might be left out of the Store upgrade process entirely due to our normal penchant for not wanting users to upgrade stuff...

Do you have SMART Notebook 11 installed? SMART Ink was doing something very similar to this for some websites before I disabled the bugger.

Some LAs and councils have been fined, but to date, I don't believe there has been a single publicised case of a school being fined. As much as I hate to wish that on someone, until it happens we will all be facing an uphill struggle. Whoever is the DP officer will be the fall guy if you are caught out. Schools are required by law to register individually, you can't just leave it to the LA, so legal buck-passing is out of the question.

InstEd It! - InstEd - Make packaging more productive

Are you making changes directly to the MSI or creating a transform? Transforms are almost always the recommended approach, and it worked for me when I deployed 7u45 this morning.