School computers (A Rant)

Well, the computers themselves have about anywhere from 20GB to 40GB, but each student has a storage profile on the network that is only 30MB's, not 128 like I thought.

The web blocker is a joke. It's BESS, so it doesn't have to be installed on a machine to work. I bring my iPod Touch to school, but I can only read my e-mail and the news because the blocker is operated over the network.

Whats stupid is I went to play Lemonade Stand during study hall. It needed shockwave. I tried to install it, but the restriction came up saying I couldn't. the stupid thing is that I can install Java without a problem.

I remember that game lemonade stand. It's the best out of all those "educational" easy. The annoying thing is the tell us to go on maths sites meant for kids in grade 5. I'm in year 9!! and it is incredibly easy!!
 
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We get 100MB storage at my school I think and the filter we have there sometimes goes on a rampage and goes so far as blocking sites such as Network Q (Vauxhall) and some other websites that we use for help in lessons. Apparantly they're proxy sites, since when was Vauxhall's used car website a proxy?!
 
We get 100MB storage at my school I think and the filter we have there sometimes goes on a rampage and goes so far as blocking sites such as Network Q (Vauxhall) and some other websites that we use for help in lessons. Apparantly they're proxy sites, since when was Vauxhall's used car website a proxy?!

Web filters are content based since you can't rely on metadata of the site. If there is a lot of encryption going on like it is trying to hide something, then it suspects a proxy or something like it. Then it shuts it down. It is a huge pain and unfortunately it has to be done.

Did you know that all public school systems that qualify for efunding form the government must meet government standards to get that money to purchase technology? One of those standards is heavy internet filtering. If you don't like it, petition your federal government, it is not really the school's fault.

Here is a place to start your protesting.

http://www.fcc.gov/learnnet/
 
Unfortunately though I'm in the UK and they never read any petition. The whole set-up is a mess here, some machines are thin clients, some are older beige boxes, some are newer black boxes (which break down a lot) and some are RM One's. One interesting thing about the proxy was that it blocked a website with literally one sentance, even the source code proved it!
 
I don't see why you can't take it... at my school as long as you don't use it in class when your not allowed it is ok...
Our school the rules are not allowed. We cant even bring in phones
Well, the computers themselves have about anywhere from 20GB to 40GB, but each student has a storage profile on the network that is only 30MB's, not 128 like I thought.

The web blocker is a joke. It's BESS, so it doesn't have to be installed on a machine to work. I bring my iPod Touch to school, but I can only read my e-mail and the news because the blocker is operated over the network.

Whats stupid is I went to play Lemonade Stand during study hall. It needed shockwave. I tried to install it, but the restriction came up saying I couldn't. the stupid thing is that I can install Java without a problem.

No Like in computer room we the HDD itself was 3gb on each pc. We had no accounts on them and there was no networking on it like connecting them to each pc/meshing them (rather than the net which is a network) We didnt have anything.
 
the computers at my school arent too bad, Compaqs with Pentium dual core and windows vista. It is getting pathetic what sites they block though, some research needed sites get blocked -__-

this sucks even more since in photo class we have a sub till the end of the year, so theres nothing to do, and the only thing i do is go to this site, newegg, and my email. and the iMac's internet brower SUCK.. those things are slower than my comp..
 
My middleschool blocks the following from memory

1. Youtube
2. facebook
3. most gaming sites
4. most forums (not this one :D)
5. googel.com :P (says it's spam site)
6. ANY PROXY SITES :(
7. cannot right click anything to bring up settings
8. I have probably 40+megs on my school account.

Also, which I find odd, the school does not protect or block links for their website files, or school movies. I just put my flash drive in, and watched a Bill Nye movie :)


O yea forgot the specs.. My old 5/6 grade school has compaqs with windows 95... and my current school has desktops with pentium 4 processors, I THINK 1gb ram, xp, and sweet monitors you can bring up and down with a push.
 
I kinda hate looking at the computers at school. Almost none of the teachers know jack squat about computer care and whatnot, or how to do some pretty basic stuff. We mostly have Dell desktops (And the occasional Gateway (same as the Dell's pretty much) here and there, but the writing lab has all old Compaq's that are lousy POS') with P4's and anywhere from 256MB - 512MB of RAM. Most of the teachers keep the towers on the floor. I look down at the vents and fans and just see clumps of dust. it makes me want to gag. I swear if I collected all the dust out of every friggin computer in the school, I'd have like 20 lbs. of dust and dirt.

All the computers are networked using Windows 2000. I admit, it's a very stable OS for servers and networks, but I just don't care for it. It's so old these days. Another thing that annoys me is that every student has a profile - it's only got about 128 MB of storage space. Granted there are 1200 kids in the school, but still. I use my U3 drive so i can use Firefox. It eats up all my profile space. I have to be sure to eject my U3 drive and allow it to slowly empty by itself so I have profile space, otherwise I can't log off.

The other thing that annoys me is the fact that the IT (I wish I knew who it was so I could possibly get some higher admin privileges like the teachers do) guy/girl disabled the right click (for the Windows shell). So, it's not possible to right click an icon and choose delete. You must hover over the unwanted icon until it turns blue and then press the delete key. You also can't close applications with right click, or sort your start menu items.

The final thing I hate, but understand why, is the inability to access the task manager. Sometimes programs don't like to close and you have to wither log off or manually power off the computer. then it takes forever to start back up and log in. Grr!

Okay. My rant is concluded.


I feel you, my school's comps are the exact same way. They're P4 Dell's too with the frigin right click disabled!!

They recently changed most of the mice to USB interface and now I can't play Doom 2 on them! :( :D
 
Maybe i'm a minority since i'm a network admin at a small to midsize company and came from a school before coming here but from IT's standpoint can you put yourself into our shoes? Do you think we want to block all those sites? NO... Do you think we have to block all those sites... YES! You must remember these are not your personal pc's in most cases they are property of the state. What you do at home is one thing but screwing up a computer at school or work isnt right. Plus personally if you are in a school lab and should be doing school work why should a teacher have to fight for your attention your in school to learn not to play... I'm just from all of this becuase its the IT guys who have to come back and clean up the mess on the pc's you created.. Yes its our job to work on the pc's but why should we have to do more becuase some kid wanted to go on myspace or downloaded something they shouldnt have... Maybe one of the other network guys will agree with me on this one but dont get me wrong i'm not saying everything should be blocked but a lot of this should be that way..
 
our school has all XP dells with 1 gb ram im pretty sure... we got new ones last year preh slick and now we're getting all mac or some macs idk. we have macs in the photo editing part of the school.
 
our school has all XP dells with 1 gb ram im pretty sure... we got new ones last year preh slick and now we're getting all mac or some macs idk. we have macs in the photo editing part of the school.

The secondary school I might be going too have them aswell (is it the black vostro thats like desktop/thin pc like
 
My school (Private) has a mix of EMacs and the New iMacs, we are restricted to 1gb per student. This year they took the internet security off but give pretty rough punishments (2hours of detention and a letter home) for goofing off.
 
Our school the rules are not allowed. We cant even bring in phones.

:eek::eek::eek::eek: We can as long as they are not used in appropriately there has been a few fights and they have ended up on youtube!

We can have ipods in class as well... just as long as the teachers says it ok to listen to them and that no other classmate can hear the music.


My middleschool blocks the following from memory

1. Youtube
2. facebook
3. most gaming sites
4. most forums (not this one :D)
5. googel.com :P (says it's spam site)
6. ANY PROXY SITES :(
7. cannot right click anything to bring up settings
8. I have probably 40+megs on my school account.

Also, which I find odd, the school does not protect or block links for their website files, or school movies. I just put my flash drive in, and watched a Bill Nye movie :)

Yeah my school is the same. You can play games etc of your flash drive or i take everything on my external hard drive :D:D:D:D

our school has all XP dells with 1 gb ram im pretty sure... we got new ones last year preh slick and now we're getting all mac or some macs idk. we have macs in the photo editing part of the school.

Same we have a few macs for editting purposes...
 
:eek::eek::eek::eek: We can as long as they are not used in appropriately there has been a few fights and they have ended up on youtube!

We can have ipods in class as well... just as long as the teachers says it ok to listen to them and that no other classmate can hear the music.




Yeah my school is the same. You can play games etc of your flash drive or i take everything on my external hard drive :D:D:D:D



Same we have a few macs for editting purposes...

Were not allowed to bring in anything rather than me who can only bring in my vaio laptop < soon to be MBP. It says on statment : We wish that no child should bring in electrical stuff E.G Radio,MP3,Phone etc.
 
Were not allowed to bring in anything rather than me who can only bring in my vaio laptop < soon to be MBP. It says on statment : We wish that no child should bring in electrical stuff E.G Radio,MP3,Phone etc.

That is crap!!!!! in year 9 (i'm in now) we have to have phones because if a teacher needs up while we on city experience every friday... how else are they going to contact us.

But if the teacher says no and he or she sees it again they have the right to confiscate the item for the class.. till the end of the term or for the week....
 
That is crap!!!!! in year 9 (i'm in now) we have to have phones because if a teacher needs up while we on city experience every friday... how else are they going to contact us.

But if the teacher says no and he or she sees it again they have the right to confiscate the item for the class.. till the end of the term or for the week....

But we are in primary School 5th class < but its mature enough atleast be able to bring in iPods for the yard.
 
Is that supposed to be freshmen year in high school or somethin?? :confused:

No, I was just saying that doing grade 5 maths in year nine is a little over the top, and that it's too easy.

I started high school in year 7. If thats what you mean by freshman...
 
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