I have the sneeking suspicion that there will be a resident worm on the network rigged to deny access or even destroy any and all systems running any sort of non-Micro$oft kernel (read: Linux, unix, BSD, etc etc etc).
the network will be slow and bloated with 5 users
the sysadmins will not be versed in proper best practices
(the sysadmin at my school comes from a long mac background (read: no concept of file permissions, user security, etc), has a 6 character, word-based superuser password for all servers, NAS devices, etc, and doesn't know how to logout/lock a workstation ESPECIALLY the Domain Controller's console which, BTW is left in the open in a room where any number of people can get to, all teacher's user acct passwords are their last name... and they call the stuff 'secure'.), worse, the 'other' techy, who supposidly knows M$ does the same damn thing.
If M$ teaches these kids anything, it's that there is no such thing as security (i have yet to see any sysadmin/techy aside from myself teach users to LOCK YOUR WORKSTATION when they go AFK)
bad, very bad, just another generation of users who, after being asked their login password (only when i'm sitting at their console, needing to login) they reply "I THINK my password is... (insert last name here)" oy.
agreed, drivers and average cmputer users both...
people can be quite dumb when it comes to the simplest computer function, as any tech support guy, helpdesk, IT pro, etc can tell you, myself included. Strangely enough, the ones who think double clicking is hard are the crappy drivers too...
According to science mags 40 years ago, we should be on the moon by now in colonies, i dunno about you, but i haven't made a videophone call to my pals on the moon lately...
no article link? strange.
is no longer a part of my system, though all my workstations are Windows 2000 (no XP for me, thank you M$), backed up by a RedHat 8 server setup running s/w RAID5 and samba. OpenOffice has taken over, though I haven't had much opportunity to use it yet (school hasn't been demanding papers...yet), I find it far superior tyo M$ Office, yes it has bugs, fortunatly there's an entire team of Devs with RAID cans in hand squashing more every day. PDF integration beats the hell out of distributing raw.DOC and.XLS files (which my BusTech classes 2 years ago insisted on doing for distribution (running M$ Office 2k under 98 or 2k), now the same department is considering going to a redHat powered L.T.S.P setup running open office (w00t).
Inter-organzation distibution via DOC, and XLS et. al. is the worst idea ever, since not everyone runs OXP, O2k or O2k3, usually a combination thereof within the same office just becase they got new boxe with OXP and their old ones came with O2k, I still get the occasional call about interoptibility failures... oy.
Back in the day (read: 1995), the game I played was RISK, on my Windows 95 box (in a dos window in CGA mode no less), multiplayer (at the same console) action, fast paced (as the computer handled all the time consuming board management, cards, dice, etc), i actually still play it with a pal of mine occasionally.
Now Scorched Earth, very simple gameplay:
select weapon, set angle and power, fire, hit target, win. with the array of weapons that did varying amounts of destruction, it was fun gameplay.
I'm also a HUGE fan of the SIM games, the Sims is playable, but they can get stupid at times, Sims 2 is gonna fix that (i'm awaiting Sims 2 as eagerly as i am awaiting Half-Life 2:drool:).
SIMcity was my favorite game of the early 90's (til i met Simcity 2000 and later C&C: Red Alert, also a gem in it's own right.
BF1942: teamplay = essential, DC mod rules, classic rules. Done Before, sure, but it's easy to play, hard to win and fun as hell.
my, so far one and only (ex) girlfriend is in to games, when we met she was as avid diablo II player, i got her into The Sims and UT and she hasn't looked bak yet, even though we broke up several months back. Too high maintenance (read: nuts, crazy, unstable, etc.)
now at the local game stores, half the clerks are female and are quite knowledgable about games, most of whom have admitted to being adicts themselves.
the worms have taken their toll on systems at the schools where i learn and work. As a student aide to the 'Instructional technology facilitator' (read: the guy in charge of all the software of the PC's and Macs on campus, but has to put in work orders to fix anything), i've patched a half dozen 2k and/or xp systems by hand this last week alone. 80% of the school is MAC based, the boss hasn't a clue about M$ O/S'es, leaving me to keep the administrators and teacher's boxes in line, but it's a MAJOR PITA...
At home, on a LAN of 7 boxes, 3 of then W2KP, with a very secure RedHat/shorewall based paranoid firewall between the boxes and the 'net, i have had ZERO problems (as it turns out, the schoo board's net filters, proxies, servers and firewalls are all Windows NT, 2k or 2k3 based save for a set of AS400 racks that run accounting and district wide student databases, and as such disable at every level, SSH), but the servers were still not patched UNTIL LAST WEEK!!!!!!!!
my 2k box at home is locked down, i grab my e-mail on my linux desktop, and do anything save gaming on the nix box as well. the firewall does a bangup job of keeping the nasties off my LAN, i have updated scanners on all 3 boxes and have had no trouble, i'm lucky i guess.
the cable modem's activity lights go nuts 24/7 even when the 2k boxes and the nix desktop are off (read: lots of shit hiting the firewall), glad their not on the wrong side of it.
well... off to patch more boxes.
*yawn* microsoft cries foul every time their monopoly is threatened, and it takes the Open Source community to do anything about it.
I haven't given M$ any money since i bought Win2kPro 2 years ago, i run 2kPro SP4, and OpenOffice. The only reason I use windows is for gaming compatibility. I haven't used MSN messenger in years (they only reason was for the abhorable GameVoice), now i use TeamSpeak (light years beyond ANY M$ voice tech.)
No one I use uses Messenger, I've been a stalwart AIM user since 1996, using the AIM client, and now, Trillian (Win) and GAIM (on my linux box), tho i've been so impressed with GAIM i think i'll get the win32 version and dump trillian. The MSN messenger protocol IMO sucks anyways, as much as I hate AOL, at least AIM allows 3rd party clients (no pesky ads).
AIM is ubiquitous, much like AOL was/is, though it's used by people like me who don't touch AOL with a 39 1/2 foot pole. MSN on the other hand, isn't ubiquitous, so M$ wants it that way... long live Open Source i say, just another nail in the coffin for M$.
i just patched my main win32 box yesterday, there are two others in here that have shown no ill effects, but then again i am behind a shorewall firewall under RedHat 8 that only opens a smattering of ports and route em to specific IP addresses (80, 21, 22, 8767, 6112, and 68xx (BT)
i think i'll turn on logging for 135, see how many iris hits i get.
As a high school student, i live and die by the chronometer, save for the summer w/o a job. My circadian cycle was FUBAR, up at 1200-1300 down at 0400-0500. My lab has no windows (natural sunlight and gaming, coding, and tweaking don't mix), but the same basic 16/8 hr cycle applies when caffeine free, and no scattered brain.
I think i'm gonna lay off the caffeine, save for a 1/4 cup of coffee in the morning ocasionally (read: monday morning).
I took a weight training vlass last year, foir the first 4 weeks I HATED EVERY MINUTE!! then I started getting more energy and started loosing weight and i couldn't get enough of it. must get to the gym now...
Drink juices, the natural kind (orange juice for one). Was at a LAN party a few months ago, the soda ran out (the other 40 or so in attendence threatened to riot), but a pal and I, desperate for something non-caffeinated found a gallon of OJ in the cooler and BAM!! a caffeine-like buzz without the brain fraggage (result: better frag rate, higher kill/death ratio, etc).
in short: NO CAFFEINE, exercise and wake up at the same time (during the school year i automagically wake up at 6:00, usually too late tho:( )
my laptop, such as it is is a wreck, so i NEVER use it. a provision for me as an ESE student at my high school, however has given me unrestricted access to "word processing software for note-taking where needed upon student request" i.e. i ask and the teacher has no choice but to hand over a box for my use.
my chemistry teacher was more than compliant by digging up a really old box, a Pentium-120MHz sucker running windows 95. one burned CD and cat5 cable later, i was taking notes, writing up lab reports and surfing/. at the same time.
though for the more complex stuff a paper pad and pencil stood at the ready, a computer is little use in math classes, partial use in Science classes, makes better use in English, literature and other classes due to the sheer amount of writing involved.
interesting stuff, there's enough sand around here (SE FLA), they could start mining the stuff here, make chips literally dirt cheap (or would it be sand cheap ?:(...
they take away everything (i remember when you could find lyrics on the CD sleeves of some artists, those whose music you canactualy understand...
i'm not paing $20 for 12 songs and getting no more than those songs, add the frelling lyrics to the sleeves and make money off the lyrics of those who buy em, it's expensive enough as is.
it's difficult to find lyrics to a lot of songs, and frankly this thing has me even more annoyed, it's hard enough nw, let alone than they late it down.
they've screwed themselves over, as well as us.
they use music piracy as means to jack up prices (saying that it hurts sales, but artists continue to get Gold and Platinum records (i.e. sell insanely well), so it's just pure BS.
next piracy takes hold because the price is too much, i sure as heck am not gonna pay $15-$20 for a CD with two or 3 songs i actually like (if that, out of the ten or so). bring back the single (i.e. mini-CD) and sell em dirt cheap...
then the RIAA jack up the price again...
Movies arn't much better, though i still go to the cinema because watching a bad quality video sucks balls compared to going to see the thing on a 40-50ft screen.
DVD's are actually reasonably priced, no more than $20 and some as low as $15 (same as many CDs)
i buy em gladly, unlike music, where i download the few that i like rather than burning money, i'll spend $20 on a 2 hour movie that i like (the whole damn thing) not the same $20 on a 1 hour CD and paying the same for 15 minutes of music i want to hear...
pure BS this is.
...for the B&B problem:
fire them.
bring back Ira Behr, Robert Wolfe and Ron Moore
have Moore, wolfe and behr write the scripts
Moore == DS9's in the Pale Moonlight (aka Trek's best...episode...ever)
== Problem solved.
the V'ger CLOUD is 82 AU's in diameter, the ship generating it is around 100k long.
the CLOUD is HUGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
the ship isn't as big, but still HUGE.
must find this site, has been/.'ed
i have a similar setup, though i am a proponent of WIRED LAN's (speed and security).
I have a single (albeit overpowered for the task) boxen running RH8, shorewall and SMB (it is my network router/firewall and file server (i know, bad combo, ltd. HW i have). the box itself if an athlon XP 1800 off a MSI KT3-Ultra board (on-board ATA RAID) running 3 hd's (20GB boot drive) and two 80GB Western digitals in a RAID 1.
I don't NEED more giggage right now, but will soon.
that box provides connectivity to my other boxes in the house:
2 personal boxes (one gaming rig, one work/TV box)
2 accessory boxes (my parents run these, uber minimalist)
1 devbox (old PII running RH8, Apache and MySQL, for code development)
1 laptop (old P-120, no CDROM...)
2-5 addl boxes (LAN PARTY!)
NAS is a great thing, though it has it's downsides:
slower (100Mb/s, slower with wireless)
upsides:
independent of a workstation box, faster
secure from crashes on said boxen
no user intervention direct to server on regular basis (SSH only)
RAID! (optional, but essential in my case)
When i am sitting at my boxens coding, gaming or tweaking, i have at least one large cup (no glass for me, too breakable) of water within arm's reach, flanked by a few bottles of spring water. i'll go through 32-64 ounces in an afternoon (good thing, dieticians say 8-12 8oz glasses a day (64+ ounces) which is far above the average joe's daily H20 intake. Water helps a lot.
only at LAN parties do i partake of mass quantities of caffene infused soda drinks (2x month)
I have a trinitron CPD-e200 17" great monitor, unfortunatly it has developed screen defects (glass has several scratches in places, heck if i know what causes them) and has been retired from LAN parties due to the annoyance, it is on my workbox (one small one is center screen, others are upper left region:( ) so it runs my tuner card (great TV image). i am definatly getting another when i have the bones, along with a screen protector tote thingy, heh.
I am a student in high school, and like any good student, I doo my work, i will admit that homework and I do not, and have never gotten along well, i attended a school that gave 2+ hours of homework a night to 5TH GRADERS! (/me), only after spending 6.5 hrs at school and 2 hr round trip on the bus!, i had 30 mins of a life for the worst 180 days of my life (in school i was the scapegoat for every bully in the 5th grade).
Now that the school board has gotten out of the stone age and actualy started putting stuff online (teachers have done it individually for a few years now) the teachers are setting up a school-admined online database of grades secured by Lname + a unique student-generated password, one step in the right direction, but it is hardly centralized.
my parents don't check it, my mother can barely check her e-mail (re: a email returned: "who is this erver demon guy?") and my dad isn't interested (the guy believes "saving often" is a viable alternative to UPS's and RAID).
they may be techo. illiterate, but at least they care, teacher conferences have abounded right up until HS, now my teachers do not give much HW, everything is done in class (i'm motivated in class, at home i either code, tweak or game )
a centralized online attendence, gradesheet and conduct DB is a great idea if properly implements, unfortunatly my parents would never use it, but when I eventually have kids, you can bet that i would (i don't like my parents spying on me either).
Slashdot Mirror
I have the sneeking suspicion that there will be a resident worm on the network rigged to deny access or even destroy any and all systems running any sort of non-Micro$oft kernel (read: Linux, unix, BSD, etc etc etc).
the network will be slow and bloated with 5 users
the sysadmins will not be versed in proper best practices
(the sysadmin at my school comes from a long mac background (read: no concept of file permissions, user security, etc), has a 6 character, word-based superuser password for all servers, NAS devices, etc, and doesn't know how to logout/lock a workstation ESPECIALLY the Domain Controller's console which, BTW is left in the open in a room where any number of people can get to, all teacher's user acct passwords are their last name... and they call the stuff 'secure'.), worse, the 'other' techy, who supposidly knows M$ does the same damn thing.
If M$ teaches these kids anything, it's that there is no such thing as security (i have yet to see any sysadmin/techy aside from myself teach users to LOCK YOUR WORKSTATION when they go AFK)
bad, very bad, just another generation of users who, after being asked their login password (only when i'm sitting at their console, needing to login) they reply "I THINK my password is... (insert last name here)" oy.
...damn comment post delay, didn't see it.
agreed, drivers and average cmputer users both... people can be quite dumb when it comes to the simplest computer function, as any tech support guy, helpdesk, IT pro, etc can tell you, myself included. Strangely enough, the ones who think double clicking is hard are the crappy drivers too...
According to science mags 40 years ago, we should be on the moon by now in colonies, i dunno about you, but i haven't made a videophone call to my pals on the moon lately... no article link? strange.
is no longer a part of my system, though all my workstations are Windows 2000 (no XP for me, thank you M$), backed up by a RedHat 8 server setup running s/w RAID5 and samba. OpenOffice has taken over, though I haven't had much opportunity to use it yet (school hasn't been demanding papers...yet), I find it far superior tyo M$ Office, yes it has bugs, fortunatly there's an entire team of Devs with RAID cans in hand squashing more every day. PDF integration beats the hell out of distributing raw .DOC and .XLS files (which my BusTech classes 2 years ago insisted on doing for distribution (running M$ Office 2k under 98 or 2k), now the same department is considering going to a redHat powered L.T.S.P setup running open office (w00t).
Inter-organzation distibution via DOC, and XLS et. al. is the worst idea ever, since not everyone runs OXP, O2k or O2k3, usually a combination thereof within the same office just becase they got new boxe with OXP and their old ones came with O2k, I still get the occasional call about interoptibility failures... oy.
Back in the day (read: 1995), the game I played was RISK, on my Windows 95 box (in a dos window in CGA mode no less), multiplayer (at the same console) action, fast paced (as the computer handled all the time consuming board management, cards, dice, etc), i actually still play it with a pal of mine occasionally. Now Scorched Earth, very simple gameplay: select weapon, set angle and power, fire, hit target, win. with the array of weapons that did varying amounts of destruction, it was fun gameplay. I'm also a HUGE fan of the SIM games, the Sims is playable, but they can get stupid at times, Sims 2 is gonna fix that (i'm awaiting Sims 2 as eagerly as i am awaiting Half-Life 2 :drool:).
SIMcity was my favorite game of the early 90's (til i met Simcity 2000 and later C&C: Red Alert, also a gem in it's own right.
BF1942: teamplay = essential, DC mod rules, classic rules. Done Before, sure, but it's easy to play, hard to win and fun as hell.
my, so far one and only (ex) girlfriend is in to games, when we met she was as avid diablo II player, i got her into The Sims and UT and she hasn't looked bak yet, even though we broke up several months back. Too high maintenance (read: nuts, crazy, unstable, etc.)
now at the local game stores, half the clerks are female and are quite knowledgable about games, most of whom have admitted to being adicts themselves.
the worms have taken their toll on systems at the schools where i learn and work. As a student aide to the 'Instructional technology facilitator' (read: the guy in charge of all the software of the PC's and Macs on campus, but has to put in work orders to fix anything), i've patched a half dozen 2k and/or xp systems by hand this last week alone. 80% of the school is MAC based, the boss hasn't a clue about M$ O/S'es, leaving me to keep the administrators and teacher's boxes in line, but it's a MAJOR PITA... At home, on a LAN of 7 boxes, 3 of then W2KP, with a very secure RedHat/shorewall based paranoid firewall between the boxes and the 'net, i have had ZERO problems (as it turns out, the schoo board's net filters, proxies, servers and firewalls are all Windows NT, 2k or 2k3 based save for a set of AS400 racks that run accounting and district wide student databases, and as such disable at every level, SSH), but the servers were still not patched UNTIL LAST WEEK!!!!!!!! my 2k box at home is locked down, i grab my e-mail on my linux desktop, and do anything save gaming on the nix box as well. the firewall does a bangup job of keeping the nasties off my LAN, i have updated scanners on all 3 boxes and have had no trouble, i'm lucky i guess. the cable modem's activity lights go nuts 24/7 even when the 2k boxes and the nix desktop are off (read: lots of shit hiting the firewall), glad their not on the wrong side of it. well... off to patch more boxes.
*yawn*
microsoft cries foul every time their monopoly is threatened, and it takes the Open Source community to do anything about it.
I haven't given M$ any money since i bought Win2kPro 2 years ago, i run 2kPro SP4, and OpenOffice.
The only reason I use windows is for gaming compatibility. I haven't used MSN messenger in years (they only reason was for the abhorable GameVoice), now i use TeamSpeak (light years beyond ANY M$ voice tech.)
No one I use uses Messenger, I've been a stalwart AIM user since 1996, using the AIM client, and now, Trillian (Win) and GAIM (on my linux box), tho i've been so impressed with GAIM i think i'll get the win32 version and dump trillian. The MSN messenger protocol IMO sucks anyways, as much as I hate AOL, at least AIM allows 3rd party clients (no pesky ads).
AIM is ubiquitous, much like AOL was/is, though it's used by people like me who don't touch AOL with a 39 1/2 foot pole. MSN on the other hand, isn't ubiquitous, so M$ wants it that way... long live Open Source i say, just another nail in the coffin for M$.
i just patched my main win32 box yesterday, there are two others in here that have shown no ill effects, but then again i am behind a shorewall firewall under RedHat 8 that only opens a smattering of ports and route em to specific IP addresses (80, 21, 22, 8767, 6112, and 68xx (BT) i think i'll turn on logging for 135, see how many iris hits i get.
As a high school student, i live and die by the chronometer, save for the summer w/o a job.
:( )
My circadian cycle was FUBAR, up at 1200-1300 down at 0400-0500. My lab has no windows (natural sunlight and gaming, coding, and tweaking don't mix), but the same basic 16/8 hr cycle applies when caffeine free, and no scattered brain.
I think i'm gonna lay off the caffeine, save for a 1/4 cup of coffee in the morning ocasionally (read: monday morning).
I took a weight training vlass last year, foir the first 4 weeks I HATED EVERY MINUTE!! then I started getting more energy and started loosing weight and i couldn't get enough of it. must get to the gym now...
Drink juices, the natural kind (orange juice for one). Was at a LAN party a few months ago, the soda ran out (the other 40 or so in attendence threatened to riot), but a pal and I, desperate for something non-caffeinated found a gallon of OJ in the cooler and BAM!! a caffeine-like buzz without the brain fraggage (result: better frag rate, higher kill/death ratio, etc).
in short:
NO CAFFEINE, exercise and wake up at the same time
(during the school year i automagically wake up at 6:00, usually too late tho
my laptop, such as it is is a wreck, so i NEVER use it.
/. at the same time.
a provision for me as an ESE student at my high school, however has given me unrestricted access to "word processing software for note-taking where needed upon student request" i.e. i ask and the teacher has no choice but to hand over a box for my use.
my chemistry teacher was more than compliant by digging up a really old box, a Pentium-120MHz sucker running windows 95. one burned CD and cat5 cable later, i was taking notes, writing up lab reports and surfing
though for the more complex stuff a paper pad and pencil stood at the ready, a computer is little use in math classes, partial use in Science classes, makes better use in English, literature and other classes due to the sheer amount of writing involved.
interesting stuff, there's enough sand around here (SE FLA), they could start mining the stuff here, make chips literally dirt cheap (or would it be sand cheap ?:( ...
they take away everything (i remember when you could find lyrics on the CD sleeves of some artists, those whose music you canactualy understand... i'm not paing $20 for 12 songs and getting no more than those songs, add the frelling lyrics to the sleeves and make money off the lyrics of those who buy em, it's expensive enough as is. it's difficult to find lyrics to a lot of songs, and frankly this thing has me even more annoyed, it's hard enough nw, let alone than they late it down.
they've screwed themselves over, as well as us. they use music piracy as means to jack up prices (saying that it hurts sales, but artists continue to get Gold and Platinum records (i.e. sell insanely well), so it's just pure BS. next piracy takes hold because the price is too much, i sure as heck am not gonna pay $15-$20 for a CD with two or 3 songs i actually like (if that, out of the ten or so). bring back the single (i.e. mini-CD) and sell em dirt cheap... then the RIAA jack up the price again... Movies arn't much better, though i still go to the cinema because watching a bad quality video sucks balls compared to going to see the thing on a 40-50ft screen. DVD's are actually reasonably priced, no more than $20 and some as low as $15 (same as many CDs) i buy em gladly, unlike music, where i download the few that i like rather than burning money, i'll spend $20 on a 2 hour movie that i like (the whole damn thing) not the same $20 on a 1 hour CD and paying the same for 15 minutes of music i want to hear... pure BS this is.
...for the B&B problem: fire them. bring back Ira Behr, Robert Wolfe and Ron Moore have Moore, wolfe and behr write the scripts Moore == DS9's in the Pale Moonlight (aka Trek's best...episode...ever) == Problem solved.
the V'ger CLOUD is 82 AU's in diameter, the ship generating it is around 100k long. the CLOUD is HUGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! the ship isn't as big, but still HUGE. must find this site, has been /.'ed
i have a similar setup, though i am a proponent of WIRED LAN's (speed and security). I have a single (albeit overpowered for the task) boxen running RH8, shorewall and SMB (it is my network router/firewall and file server (i know, bad combo, ltd. HW i have). the box itself if an athlon XP 1800 off a MSI KT3-Ultra board (on-board ATA RAID) running 3 hd's (20GB boot drive) and two 80GB Western digitals in a RAID 1. I don't NEED more giggage right now, but will soon. that box provides connectivity to my other boxes in the house: 2 personal boxes (one gaming rig, one work/TV box) 2 accessory boxes (my parents run these, uber minimalist) 1 devbox (old PII running RH8, Apache and MySQL, for code development) 1 laptop (old P-120, no CDROM...) 2-5 addl boxes (LAN PARTY!) NAS is a great thing, though it has it's downsides: slower (100Mb/s, slower with wireless) upsides: independent of a workstation box, faster secure from crashes on said boxen no user intervention direct to server on regular basis (SSH only) RAID! (optional, but essential in my case)
When i am sitting at my boxens coding, gaming or tweaking, i have at least one large cup (no glass for me, too breakable) of water within arm's reach, flanked by a few bottles of spring water. i'll go through 32-64 ounces in an afternoon (good thing, dieticians say 8-12 8oz glasses a day (64+ ounces) which is far above the average joe's daily H20 intake.
Water helps a lot.
only at LAN parties do i partake of mass quantities of caffene infused soda drinks (2x month)
anyone know of a way to accuratly measure the throughput of a broadband link?
I have a trinitron CPD-e200 17" great monitor, unfortunatly it has developed screen defects (glass has several scratches in places, heck if i know what causes them) and has been retired from LAN parties due to the annoyance, it is on my workbox (one small one is center screen, others are upper left region :( ) so it runs my tuner card (great TV image). i am definatly getting another when i have the bones, along with a screen protector tote thingy, heh.
I am a student in high school, and like any good student, I doo my work, i will admit that homework and I do not, and have never gotten along well, i attended a school that gave 2+ hours of homework a night to 5TH GRADERS! (/me), only after spending 6.5 hrs at school and 2 hr round trip on the bus!, i had 30 mins of a life for the worst 180 days of my life (in school i was the scapegoat for every bully in the 5th grade). Now that the school board has gotten out of the stone age and actualy started putting stuff online (teachers have done it individually for a few years now) the teachers are setting up a school-admined online database of grades secured by Lname + a unique student-generated password, one step in the right direction, but it is hardly centralized. my parents don't check it, my mother can barely check her e-mail (re: a email returned: "who is this erver demon guy?") and my dad isn't interested (the guy believes "saving often" is a viable alternative to UPS's and RAID). they may be techo. illiterate, but at least they care, teacher conferences have abounded right up until HS, now my teachers do not give much HW, everything is done in class (i'm motivated in class, at home i either code, tweak or game ) a centralized online attendence, gradesheet and conduct DB is a great idea if properly implements, unfortunatly my parents would never use it, but when I eventually have kids, you can bet that i would (i don't like my parents spying on me either).