AngryTechnician

We use PASS. Started using it for the whole school this year; the Bursary have been using it for a few years for accounts & billing. The decision to migrate had already been made when I was hired, so I was brought in a little late to the party. Since then I have become far more intimately acquainted with its inner workings than I would like, though we currently have very few problems with it. First off, we have no real problems at all running it on Windows 7. Yes, the fade effect on the Windows client is pointless but I'm honestly not sure it accounts for that much of the slow initial load time. The client interface is quite dated, and as ZeroHour has said, could definitely do with a lot of work to bring it up to scratch in terms of UI design. Most of the problems of the product stem from the somewhat organic growth of what is now quite an old product design. Overhauling both the database design and the UI would be a massive undertaking, and would be deeply unpopular with a lot of entrenched users, so I can understand the quandary they have gotten themselves in to on that front. The only problem we have with Office 2010 is with mail merge sometimes not quite working as expected, but I know that is being worked on right now. I am told it works better in the patch that is on the cusp of being released, but I think it won't be until the one after that it is fixed completely. Almost all of our staff use the web version so never see the older Windows client. We have just switched to the new 3Sys interface after an experience with Pass.web that was similar to jc1875's. The new interface is miles better, though it is a work in progress so there are still a few rough edges. Things I like: The Report Builder is quite good once you get the hang of it. Being able to hook into it via SQL and/or ODBC is very handy. The support desk is not afraid to escalate things quickly and 1st level are very good at recognising when they need to do so. It's not nearly as bad as SIMS. My overall opinion is that you could do a lot worse. I've yet to see an MIS that is even close to perfect. If you are thinking of moving to it I would say you should definitely be prepared to project manage the migration quite closely yourself, as your WCBS account manager will only have a light touch on the tiller, so to speak. If you'd like to chat in more detail, drop me a PM - I'd be happy to discuss further by phone.

Just me. 600 users, 138 workstations, 14 servers (on 5 physical boxes). Independent Prep school.

Cartoon Profile Pictures On Facebook To Fight Child Abuse - Geekosystem It originally had nothing to do with child abuse, paedophiles, or anything else whatsoever - it was just a fun meme that become distorted due to the usual "Chinese Whispers" method by which these things spread.

Job agencies are always screwing listings up like that, I saw one not too long ago that was paying £42,000 an hour. They'll get someone to do it... ...badly.

USB CD drive (or RIS/WDS) and a fresh XP install. Not much more you can do at this point.

How is the dropdown list populated? Using a datasource or manually entered?

I recently dealt with two machines side by side, supposedly identical spec, one of which exhibited the above symptoms while the other did not. After a lot of cursing, a careful examination revealed that the only differing components were the RAM sticks. The working one had DDR400 in it, while the other had DDR333. The DDR333 didn't report any errors in Memtest, and the machine otherwise worked fine, but swapping it for DDR400 that was identical to the working machine immediately solved the problem. I'm not sure whether it was the speed change that helped, or some other minor specification difference - but it did demonstrate that some machines can be unreasonably picky about what memory you use in them. If you have some spare lying around, it may be worth swapping the RAM in one of your problem machines and seeing what happens.

Exactly what Elsiegee40 said. Think of it from the pupil's point of view: they come to a teacher and say "I'm being bullied on Facebook." Teacher says "Did it happen in school?" "No." "I can't help you then." I think you'll agree that sounds pretty awful. Simple answer: if it's happening at a time when the school is not supervising the child, then you probably need to involve whoever is (or is supposed to be) supervising the child, but you can't just ignore it.

Do you know of a free editor to change the internal name of a font? It's not as simple as renaming the .ttf file.

The biggest problem with selling off art to raise capital for things other than reinvestment in the same collection is that it destroys the reputation of the gallery in the art world. That means you can kiss goodbye to visiting collections, loaned pieces, and support when the gallery needs it. Some of the pieces may be junk in some people's eyes, but the fact that it's worth selling means it has value.

I think Orca has always been unsupported officially, so that's probably boilerplate. It's still being distributed with the latest version of the SDK.

Mrs AT believes the birds were goading the cats to try and lure them away from a nest in the long grass. So the white cat has his hackles up, then the black cat, who is clearly a chav, is like "Are you lookin' at me? Are ya? Do you want some? DO YOU WANT SOME, DO YA?!" That's how chavvy cats talk, you know.

Am, I missing something, or does this do exactly the same thing as Orca?

Have you checked the proxy settings? It's possible to set different proxies for HTTP and HTTPS, so if the settings are not enforced by Group Policy, a wrong setting could affect one and not the other.

Oh Sanako. Is there anything you can't break? We had a language lab from them in my last school. In the 4 years I was there it was actually operational for a grand total of about 2 weeks.

Someone's already had the battery out of the D520!

I'm 99% sure that GPP is executed after the rest of Group Policy. It will therefore take 2 refreshes of Group Policy to get your ACL applied to the folder.

Basically this comes down to rules, discipline, and perhaps most importantly, making it crystal clear to the parents that if a pupil uses their own connection to the Internet, the school cannot be held responsible for anything they do on it. As plexer suggests, it should really substantially the same as the schools mobile phone policy.

It's about damned time! Perhaps now organisations will start taking the DPA seriously instead of just invoking its name as an excuse for poor service? BBC News - Commissioner issues first Data Protection Act fines Press Release

Maybe I can finally get that git on Twitter with the @AngryTechnician username who clearly never used his account for more than a week!

Done. I haven't uploaded the full PDF as it's huge, and I'm assuming people here know how to use links.

Vodafone's new Digital Parenting magazine from Vodafone Parents' Guide: Vodafone Digital Parenting Magazine (Flash based, PDF download is available once you're in).

Longer version, with a wider range of subjects: , and

I don't have a pre-made list but I can answer all of your initial questions: 1. The recording can only be made by an ERA licence holder, or by a third party under contract by the licence holder. The recording must also be marked with: Source: http://www.era.org.uk/doc/ERA%20Licensing%20Scheme%2009.pdf 2. As far as I know, none of the available copyright licences available to schools make provision for copying CDs (unless they are not covered by copyright, or you have express permission from the copyright holder). This is true even if the school owns the CD. As a side note, even ripping a CD you own for your own use is not technically legal, as UK copyright law does not currently include a fair use provision such as that which exists in US law. (Indirect source: BBC NEWS | Business | UK 'has the worst copyright laws') 3. Even if it were technically feasible, this is expressly not covered by the ERA licence. Source: The ERA Licensing Scheme More information: A Guide to Copyright Licensing in Schools On the topic of being instructed to do these things by SMT, this is just one more reason to be in a union. Nobody can be instructed to do something illegal in the course of their work (even in the Armed Forces you can legitimately refuse an illegal order), and your union's legal department will back you 100%.

What antivirus are you running? I've known Symantec to bork roaming profiles before. Also, if you're on XP, are you running UPHClean?