wow, I seem to have opened a can of works to this. I notice that most of the people who are "having a go" are the students who are being locked out.
I'm sorry to say, nothing that has been replied has at all made me change my views. Unless the course requires it you won't get it.
Banning executables? Why do you think thats done? It's to stop people coming in and running whatever they want. Web proxy bypass? Password crackers? Screensaver junk?
And I'm sorry, giving any student extended access for unsupervisied use means that they will abuse it. "Hey lads look what I can do!"
> locking down the computer makes the computers really expensive pieces of crap.
No, it means that people like you can't mess about with the settings making sure the PC doesn't work for the next student. A locked down PC will still run applications, it will still allow you to program, it will still allow you to browse the web.
> how about unlocking the PCs and just restoring them to their original state during the night?
Because people like you will mess with the settings during the day. Your profile setting will stay with your profile, 600 pcs reinstalling at night means there *will* be problems in the morning.
> Your job is not like in an industrial setting, but is something much more important.
It's to keep 600 PCs and 200 various applications running for the use of 1500 students to facilitate teaching and learning. It doesn't mean allowing students to fiddle with the background so they can have a picture of (insert latest celebrity here).
Its to make sure when a teacher walks into a classroom all PC's are working, it means being responsive to breakdowns. A school different to industry or "Private Sector", with different pressures and different attitudes. One of those pressures is "why should I pay for another technician when I can get (half) a teacher?". Another is "I need this application for xyz".
> Then he would have said "We can't provide for 1500 profiles", instead of "1 mandatory profile is far easier than 1500 roaming profiles".
We could provide 1500 profiles. At the same time we could provide a computer system that is not available, takes an age to login. Even Microsoft are not "convinced" of the value of roaming profiles where a user could logon to any number of stations. Why do you think a cached copy is kept on stations when you logon? It's so the next time it logs on faster. Or did you not know that?
> Having 1500 roaming profiles should allow you to justify more admins
No, what it would mean is longer login times, more things that can (and do) go wrong. Extra technicians is not an option.
> the only text editor available on my school machines is MS Word; useless for compatibility
Ahh, why is that? It saves and imports as Text and as RTF? Whats not compatible with that? Compatibility with what?
> Riiight. We're too stupid to understand it, but you're the school IT guy, so we'll trust you.
You may not be stupid, but you don't understand about running a computer system. And I don't trust you or any of your peers.
> Of course it does, because the whole point of school is for you to make your job easier, right?
My job is to keep the computing systems in the school up and running. This means making best possible use of resources I have to do so, yes if setting something up will take less of those resources then I will take that option.
I work as a computer admin in a school, and we use mandatory profiles, we also lock everything down - no changing screen savers or backgrounds.
The reason we do this is cost - the more option people have to play with, the more they play.
You may do everything okay, but some plonker will change the screen settings so that they can't see any text, which will then stay with thier roaming profile.
Looking after 1 mandatory profile is far easier than 1500 roaming profiles full of internet explorer crap, previous seraches and whatever else. Our student "test" mandatory profile now consists of 8 meg of settings, the mandatory which does the same is now 2.5 meg.
You may not understand it, but it makes pefect sense to me.
The whole idea is to fool people. But now it's to pretend to fool people.
Putting LOL!!!!! and OMG!!!!! in the story automaticcalyy says "This is an April fool, but we're telling you so you are not fooled. Because you all complain when you are, and we don't want to casue you offence"
Re:Interesting how this hasn't worked for hardware
on
Why Windows is Slow
·
· Score: 1
Certainly a good comment, infact if I remember correctly Intel tried to "replace" 8086 arcitecture around the 286 period - no one was interested so they ended up cobling together the '386.
> There is NO way to do a stripe'n'PIN transaction.
Yes there is - although not in a shop that uses a chip.
ATMs fall back to the "strip" if the chip doesn't work for any reason.
And of course, the PIN will work with the strip.
So the nice criminal may not be able to go into Tesco and buy his weekly shopping, but he could go to a Tesco ATM (or Link, High Street etc) and withdraw you're daily limit, then use cash to buy his shopping (or more likely drugs)
Does it not all depend on what the fundementals are?
For example, I would say first fundementals are
varibles, Sequence, Selection, Iteration.
Then moving on to encapsulation.
And finally the object based principles.
Would C be best for these? I would say that University students should start off with an academic language or strongly typed language - one that will teach and force them to use these these fundementals, maybe one that wouldn't be used in a business environment, and one that doesn't have a fully featured IDE that auto generates lines and lines of code.
"Remember that Betamax failed, despite slightly better technology, because Sony kept it proprietary."
Or maybe, because Betamax didn't offer somthing that VHS did at the beginning - Betamax only had one hour tapes to (home) record on. By the time it had longer, VHS had too big a market to be stopped.
I've not been involved with a scheme like you are suggesting, but laptops are a nighmare to support. In my last job (in a school) we had about 50 teachers with laptops and there were about 25 shared laptops for students.
There were arounf 400 workstations, and I would say 80% of my time was taken up with "non working" laptops, from teachers installing dodgy programs to students breaking screens.
So, good luck and I hope you are adequetly resourced.
A project manager should naturally know more than his staff as he needs to make decisions that require technical knowledge of the issues involved.
You wouldn't specifically need a project manager to know how to lay bricks, or to plumb in a radiator etc. He employs people to know that for him, so why should it be any different for a "software" project manager?
Of course, if the project manager doesn't listen to his brickie, then he only has himself to blame when the house falls down.
I think you are doing very well to even "slightly" get it - You have to know who Peter Kay is, who the charaters are he plays in his television program, who British small screen stars are and what comic relief is all about.
".. are brats that think school is a punishment. But that just reflects about the parents. "
So children should be punished for their parents attitude?
"If the kid is that arrogant to think they have nothing to learn as a child"
Or they may just not be interested in learning to use a computer to make webpages. Maybe they are interested in History and spend the time doing that? Or maybe their thing is Mechanics?
"tired of that "we gotta entertain the children" bullshit"
I am not an educator but I think people learn best when motivated and enthusiastic.
"we can't afford a computer" bullshit.
Good for you, knowing exactly what everyone's personal circumstances are.
You made your choices, and were given the opportunity, not everyone is as lucky as you, or dedicated from an early age knowing exactly what they wanted to do.
But let me ask you, were you as dedicated to every subject, or was it just computers? In geography, did you put in extra hours in understanding plate tectonics, in history did you do outside reading around the subjects you were taught? In english were you taught to argue without swearing? There are model students that will do all of this, and maybe you were one of them, I would think you were the exception rather that the rule?
There are classes that do just that, but they also teach a broad basis as well - things like "flowol" teach flow diagrams and basic programming structures (sequence, selection, iteration).
Then you have GCSE exams that teach far more than "just word processing".
In my day, at GCSE it was just Word Processing, spread sheets and simple databases - which then couldn't be used in other subjects. I remember in english writing a story in Edword, printing it out and then having to write it out because of the "word processing is not acceptable for coursework" rule.
If computers were only used for Browsing the web and word processing, we would be fine.
But when teachers use Frontpage (regardless of the best tool for the job) to teach the basics of web design, then it stops being just an issue of what's on the desktop, and now a job of retraining to use whatever would replace it, and also a relacement of 30 x "front page and the web" books.
There are numerous educational programs that do not run on anything other than Windows, there may be alternatives - but re-training, resources and purchasing of new sftware will quite easily eat that 24% saving.
For example, a TLA should be registered and if there are two TLA that are the same, then they should have a.x after them, where x is a number.
For example
OSI stands for Open Systems Interconnect, and OSI.1 stands for Open Source Inititive PSP stands for "Paint Shop Pro" and PSP.1 stands for Play Station Portable.
Okay, it defeats the purpose of TLAs by making them FLA.2* (Five letter abbrieviations) but hey it's all too confusing!
* FLA stands for Finance and Leasing Association, and FLA.1 is Fair Labor Association.
Slashdot Mirror
Surely, as a libertarian you should be a big supporter of "welfare" then, as this then gives people the freedom to choose to work.
The freedom to be free to work, or starve is not, and never will be freedom, or free choice or free anything.
Just as being free to work for someone who allows smoking or starving is not a freedom.
wow, I seem to have opened a can of works to this. I notice that most of the people who are "having a go" are the students who are being locked out.
I'm sorry to say, nothing that has been replied has at all made me change my views. Unless the course requires it you won't get it.
Banning executables? Why do you think thats done? It's to stop people coming in and running whatever they want. Web proxy bypass? Password crackers? Screensaver junk?
And I'm sorry, giving any student extended access for unsupervisied use means that they will abuse it. "Hey lads look what I can do!"
> locking down the computer makes the computers really expensive pieces of crap.
No, it means that people like you can't mess about with the settings making sure the PC doesn't work for the next student. A locked down PC will still run applications, it will still allow you to program, it will still allow you to browse the web.
> how about unlocking the PCs and just restoring them to their original state during the night?
Because people like you will mess with the settings during the day. Your profile setting will stay with your profile, 600 pcs reinstalling at night means there *will* be problems in the morning.
> Your job is not like in an industrial setting, but is something much more important.
It's to keep 600 PCs and 200 various applications running for the use of 1500 students to facilitate teaching and learning. It doesn't mean allowing students to fiddle with the background so they can have a picture of (insert latest celebrity here).
Its to make sure when a teacher walks into a classroom all PC's are working, it means being responsive to breakdowns. A school different to industry or "Private Sector", with different pressures and different attitudes. One of those pressures is "why should I pay for another technician when I can get (half) a teacher?". Another is "I need this application for xyz".
> Then he would have said "We can't provide for 1500 profiles", instead of "1 mandatory profile is far easier than 1500 roaming profiles".
We could provide 1500 profiles. At the same time we could provide a computer system that is not available, takes an age to login. Even Microsoft are not "convinced" of the value of roaming profiles where a user could logon to any number of stations. Why do you think a cached copy is kept on stations when you logon? It's so the next time it logs on faster. Or did you not know that?
> Having 1500 roaming profiles should allow you to justify more admins
No, what it would mean is longer login times, more things that can (and do) go wrong. Extra technicians is not an option.
> the only text editor available on my school machines is MS Word; useless for compatibility
Ahh, why is that? It saves and imports as Text and as RTF? Whats not compatible with that? Compatibility with what?
> Riiight. We're too stupid to understand it, but you're the school IT guy, so we'll trust you.
You may not be stupid, but you don't understand about running a computer system. And I don't trust you or any of your peers.
> Of course it does, because the whole point of school is for you to make your job easier, right?
My job is to keep the computing systems in the school up and running. This means making best possible use of resources I have to do so, yes if setting something up will take less of those resources then I will take that option.
I work as a computer admin in a school, and we use mandatory profiles, we also lock everything down - no changing screen savers or backgrounds.
The reason we do this is cost - the more option people have to play with, the more they play.
You may do everything okay, but some plonker will change the screen settings so that they can't see any text, which will then stay with thier roaming profile.
Looking after 1 mandatory profile is far easier than 1500 roaming profiles full of internet explorer crap, previous seraches and whatever else. Our student "test" mandatory profile now consists of 8 meg of settings, the mandatory which does the same is now 2.5 meg.
You may not understand it, but it makes pefect sense to me.
Isn't there are rule about "doesn't break the laws of physics", so no patent for you on you're perpetual motion thingymabob.
Hmmm, I wonder how they will do that in the EU? With the common market it's supposed to be illegal to not supply to another EU country.
The whole idea is to fool people. But now it's to pretend to fool people.
Putting LOL!!!!! and OMG!!!!! in the story automaticcalyy says "This is an April fool, but we're telling you so you are not fooled. Because you all complain when you are, and we don't want to casue you offence"
Certainly a good comment, infact if I remember correctly Intel tried to "replace" 8086 arcitecture around the 286 period - no one was interested so they ended up cobling together the '386.
> There is NO way to do a stripe'n'PIN transaction.
Yes there is - although not in a shop that uses a chip.
ATMs fall back to the "strip" if the chip doesn't work for any reason.
And of course, the PIN will work with the strip.
So the nice criminal may not be able to go into Tesco and buy his weekly shopping, but he could go to a Tesco ATM (or Link, High Street etc) and withdraw you're daily limit, then use cash to buy his shopping (or more likely drugs)
Persoanlly I've not used it for any project planning, but if MS Project is out of your reach why not try OpenWorkBench
http://www.openworkbench.org/
Does it not all depend on what the fundementals are?
For example, I would say first fundementals are
varibles, Sequence, Selection, Iteration.
Then moving on to encapsulation.
And finally the object based principles.
Would C be best for these? I would say that University students should start off with an academic language or strongly typed language - one that will teach and force them to use these these fundementals, maybe one that wouldn't be used in a business environment, and one that doesn't have a fully featured IDE that auto generates lines and lines of code.
Then they can move onto other languages.
"Remember that Betamax failed, despite slightly better technology, because Sony kept it proprietary."
Or maybe, because Betamax didn't offer somthing that VHS did at the beginning - Betamax only had one hour tapes to (home) record on. By the time it had longer, VHS had too big a market to be stopped.
I've not been involved with a scheme like you are suggesting, but laptops are a nighmare to support. In my last job (in a school) we had about 50 teachers with laptops and there were about 25 shared laptops for students.
There were arounf 400 workstations, and I would say 80% of my time was taken up with "non working" laptops, from teachers installing dodgy programs to students breaking screens.
So, good luck and I hope you are adequetly resourced.
On and off since about 1998, if I remember rightly.
"or in Slashdotese, rediculusly"
I thought people just couldn't spell the word. Now you tell me it's a culture thing.
You wouldn't specifically need a project manager to know how to lay bricks, or to plumb in a radiator etc. He employs people to know that for him, so why should it be any different for a "software" project manager?
Of course, if the project manager doesn't listen to his brickie, then he only has himself to blame when the house falls down.
I think you are doing very well to even "slightly" get it - You have to know who Peter Kay is, who the charaters are he plays in his television program, who British small screen stars are and what comic relief is all about.
".. are brats that think school is a punishment. But that just reflects about the parents. "
So children should be punished for their parents attitude?
"If the kid is that arrogant to think they have nothing to learn as a child"
Or they may just not be interested in learning to use a computer to make webpages. Maybe they are interested in History and spend the time doing that? Or maybe their thing is Mechanics?
"tired of that "we gotta entertain the children" bullshit"
I am not an educator but I think people learn best when motivated and enthusiastic.
"we can't afford a computer" bullshit.
Good for you, knowing exactly what everyone's personal circumstances are.
You made your choices, and were given the opportunity, not everyone is as lucky as you, or dedicated from an early age knowing exactly what they wanted to do.
But let me ask you, were you as dedicated to every subject, or was it just computers? In geography, did you put in extra hours in understanding plate tectonics, in history did you do outside reading around the subjects you were taught? In english were you taught to argue without swearing? There are model students that will do all of this, and maybe you were one of them, I would think you were the exception rather that the rule?
So at age 12/13 you bought yourself a $500 computer and spent hours creating websites.
..." not every kid does.
Well done, we're all very proud of you.
And as you said, "If the kid really wants to learn how to make
Nah, I don't think for simple web pages you need html.
Just the same as you don't need to teach people the format a saves files in.
And in two hours (probably what is timetabled for this) it's juts not feasable to go through everything. Abstraction is good.
There are classes that do just that, but they also teach a broad basis as well - things like "flowol" teach flow diagrams and basic programming structures (sequence, selection, iteration).
Then you have GCSE exams that teach far more than "just word processing".
In my day, at GCSE it was just Word Processing, spread sheets and simple databases - which then couldn't be used in other subjects. I remember in english writing a story in Edword, printing it out and then having to write it out because of the "word processing is not acceptable for coursework" rule.
If computers were only used for Browsing the web and word processing, we would be fine.
But when teachers use Frontpage (regardless of the best tool for the job) to teach the basics of web design, then it stops being just an issue of what's on the desktop, and now a job of retraining to use whatever would replace it, and also a relacement of 30 x "front page and the web" books.
There are numerous educational programs that do not run on anything other than Windows, there may be alternatives - but re-training, resources and purchasing of new sftware will quite easily eat that 24% saving.
Yea, bring back the days when cars were made out of 100% steel. None of this nanby pamby plastic, and crumple zones? Who needs them.
In my new TLA 2 Tier System TLA will always mean "Three Letter Acronym", anything else with TLA will have a .x extension.
For example, a TLA should be registered and if there are two TLA that are the same, then they should have a .x after them, where x is a number.
For example
OSI stands for Open Systems Interconnect, and OSI.1 stands for Open Source Inititive
PSP stands for "Paint Shop Pro" and PSP.1 stands for Play Station Portable.
Okay, it defeats the purpose of TLAs by making them FLA.2* (Five letter abbrieviations) but hey it's all too confusing!
* FLA stands for Finance and Leasing Association, and FLA.1 is Fair Labor Association.
Oh, Oh, I want to add one in too
The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents