Not a bad idea for elementary kids. A simple redirect using squid to a PHP form which would email someone a link to the site in question and another PHP form for approval which would then automatically append to a whitelist if approved and to a blacklist if denied so students can’t keep submitting the same site. There are a few sites around that have whitelists for education purposes opendns.com springs to mind. The problem is with so many sites being created daily it’s impossible to keep up with educational resources for middle school and high school kids and you are better off with just a blacklist which are more readily available.

When I was first starting out in IT I worked at a reasonably large high school and found the best way to filter was using squid and have a large blacklist automatically updated weekly and use a log analyser such as Sarg to generate reports on a daily basis and anything that seemed out of place or got a lot of traffic and wasn’t related to education would go on the blacklist. Of course none of this was available off the shelf back then, but it’s still probably the best way to go about it considering that it’s a non-profit school. As for facebook, it should be blocked in any school environment, there is nothing on there of any education value.

I don’t know the age range the OP is talking about, kind of seems contradictory. People not able to protect themselves but yet have shame.. doesn’t really make sense.

I'm going to have to agree. I have been using XBMC for a couple of years now and it is far and away the best media centre out there at the moment.

I'm running the Lars Op Den Kamp PVR build of Eden with tvheadend for the TV tuners on Oneiric and use a logitech rumblepad 2 for the controller. Set it up with zsnes and dolphin-emu and can access these without even leaving the couch. The addons repos are great, adding quite a lot of features you could only dream of in other media centres. I rarely have issues even with the latest un-stable builds and when I do there is already a patch out for it.

As for Boxee being for dummies, XBMC isn't hard at all anymore thanks to projects like OpenELEC. I built a system for a friend using OpenELEC and it could not be easier.

I can't back it up with figures but I would hazard a guess that most people would buy their phones/plans direct through their carrier, locked to that specific carrier. The major carriers have stores located everywhere. It is possible to buy an unlocked phone from a phone store like All Phones, Crazy John's, Telechoice, etc. and they don't seem as numerous. No one I know has bought a phone/plan from one of these places. In regards to the phones being carrier locked it's now easily possible to have your carrier unlock your phone and the carriers are required to do so. If you are on a contract you must keep paying though. Don't know if that made things clearer or more muddy.

This really annoyed me. Had the phone been released here in Australia at the same time as the States I would have bought one.

Vodaphone I believe is the only company to have it and they just released it at the start of the month.

Here is a strange idea, if you want a product to sell, allow people to buy it.

I'm also in the same situation as you are. Telstra port and Internode ADSL2+ although I get a 19mbit sync. Have to say I have been with Internode for years and haven't had a problem with them. Love all the "free" and fast content.

I think it's preaching to the choir here though. If you can get off Bigpond you should if not the rest of us will pray to the Flying Spagetti Monster for your souls.

Yes but if he "owns" it is it illegal to download it?

Serious question..

You are 100% wrong. No degree is needed to be a police officer or any other form of law enforcement officer.

Obviously you have never talked to a police officer, I'd guess that only half of them could tell their left from their right.

Well it doesn't take an extra power adapter.. I really don't mind what it is but something that actually has a bit of power would be nice. Also I run my HTPC on Linux so I'm not sure those fancy audio features are working yet on the ATI drivers, and what about hardware decoding?? I currently have a 8400GS ticking away in my system quite nicely, not really much good for anything but decoding..

Now can we have it in low profile please?

Because they have no idea perhaps?

Have you ever tried to read your old report cards written in cursive or doctor notes, or any cursive? They are undecipherable. Sometimes even to the people that wrote it..

I always thought the Windows flag was Microsoft laying claim to your computer, and everything on it...

I've said it before and I'll say it again we need a Bill of Rights in the country. Currently we have almost none. Freedom of religion and free opinion of the government. Nothing else... Free speech would be nice.

I actually tend to use something like this rather than change ACLs:

set oShell= Wscript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

objFSO.CopyFile "u:\scripts\test.vbs", "C:\temp\test.vbs"

oShell.Run "runas /noprofile /user:domain\administrator ""%windir%\system32\cmd.exe /C wscript c:\temp\test.vbs"""

WScript.Sleep 100

oShell.Sendkeys "password~"

Wscript.Quit ()

I thought they had to at least be power user.. may be mistaken, haven't looked at it in years.