   School stupidness....
  1)  We make powerpoints on powerful P IV machines, and then get to show them to the class with some crappy laptop that can't run the simplest of animations at full speed...2)  The theme service is enabled, yet everything is set to the "classic" theme (well...  I would guess that their idea is to gain speed...  if not, scratch this one).3)  cmd.exe is disabled and command.com isn't...4)  cmd.exe is diabled ONLY if you get to it and start it...  you can still run batch files with it.  I made a little batch file to open it for me and it told me it was disabled by the school admin.  Then I reverted to using command.com.5)  Everything is disabled... even the "Run" command.  But why?  If I want to use it I'll use it no matter whether I'll use the command itself or something like command.com.6)  Background is "disabled"...  "Sure..."  Using some of the simplest programs (*cough* paint *cough*) you can set your background to anything.7)  C: drive and WINDOWS directory (whole C drive) is disabled...  I can still open anything in them with some simple (a) shortcuts (or) (b) batch files.8)  They disabled you from running notepad from the start-menu...  So I had to use wordpad (which, wasn't disabled) to make a batch file to open notepad and saw it as .txt (no *.* support).  Then I had to go clicking on menues (right-click menues disabled...) to rename from .txt to .bat so I can run a simple program....  Notepad...9)  Like I said, I have to go clicking on the FILE menues to get the right results because they disabled right-click menues AS WELL as shortcuts (keyboard shortcuts... atleast some of them).10)  I can't go to #gamedev from the school because it scanned "game"dev and told me I could not go there...Man...  I can't believe some of the stupid things schools disable.  Really...  But then again, most of the kids only know how to double-click "Microsoft Word".Anything stupid in your schools?   
  There are usually reasons for this. Granted, I don't think they are very good reasons, but they are reasons none the less.   ;Quote:Original post by SticksandStonesThere are usually reasons for this. Granted, I don't think they are very good reasons, but they are reasons none the less.Well, ofcourse there are reasons, but what are they?I mean, some of the things are EXTREMELY stupid...  Others...  well, I can see why they would disable cmd.exe or anything with "game" in it...  But forcing us to make powerpoints on powerful machines and showing them on crap is just... well, stupid (as well as other things).   ;Quote:Original post by agi_shiQuote:Original post by SticksandStonesThere are usually reasons for this. Granted, I don't think they are very good reasons, but they are reasons none the less.Well, ofcourse there are reasons, but what are they?  To make my life harder by forcing me to use a batch file to open Notepad instead of a nice clean menu???  Lol.They are probably unaware that you can circumvent these things.   ;  What do you need to make a batch file on a school computer for? it better be a damned good reason if you are going around the restrictions the school, who OWNS these computers and decides what you should use them for, has placed on them.   ;Quote:Well, ofcourse there are reasons, but what are they? To make my life harder by forcing me to use a batch file to open Notepad instead of a nice clean menu??? Lol.No, to prevent you, and other people who may know more/less than you, from doing what could be classified as "stupid things." While you may not regard these things as "stupid," and in fact may think its stupid that these things are disabled, they are usually there to keep the overall overhead of maintaining the school's (usually rather large) network lower.Allowing you full, unrestricted access to a system not only presents security issues, it presents maintainence issues because user could (unwittingly or not) alter the state of the machine so as to render it useless, or at the very least make it harder for a computer neophyte to do what he needs to do (which places even more stress on the IT department because they need to fix up the computer).Or would you rather your tuition increased?This is life. In the corporate world you are likely to find similar restrictions; get used to it. The majority of the reasons are valid and have been selected by people who either know more about the domain and the ramifications of enabling/disabling certain things, or who's decision you simply have to abide by because they're the guy calling the shots.   ;Quote:Original post by rip-off[...]They are probably unaware that you can circumvent these things.My favorite is the way my university locks down machines (not much, but some stupid things such as the 'safely remove USB' dialog) then makes a guest account auto-logon and gives it admin priveleges and has visual studio on every single machine. It's almost like they want to allow competent students to ignore the restrictions.Also, any competent admin should know that 'whitelists' beat 'blacklists', and windows' policies are implementd almost exclusively as blacklists (and are implemented inside the relevant application, such as regedit or explorer, rather than a lower level)   ;Quote:Original post by agi_shi1)  We make powerpoints on powerful P IV machines, and then get to show them to the class with some crappy laptop that can't run the simplest of animations at full speed...2)  The theme service is enabled, yet everything is set to the "classic" theme (well...  I would guess that their idea is to gain speed...  if not, scratch this one).3)  cmd.exe is disabled and command.com isn't...4)  cmd.exe is diabled ONLY if you get to it and start it...  you can still run batch files with it.  I made a little batch file to open it for me and it told me it was disabled by the school admin.  Then I reverted to using command.com.5)  Everything is disabled... even the "Run" command.  But why?  If I want to use it I'll use it no matter whether I'll use the command itself or something like command.com.6)  Background is "disabled"...  "Sure..."  Using some of the simplest programs (*cough* paint *cough*) you can set your background to anything.7)  C: drive and WINDOWS directory (whole C drive) is disabled...  I can still open anything in them with some simple (a) shortcuts (or) (b) batch files.8)  They disabled you from running notepad from the start-menu...  So I had to use wordpad (which, wasn't disabled) to make a batch file to open notepad and saw it as .txt (no *.* support).  Then I had to go clicking on menues (right-click menues disabled...) to rename from .txt to .bat so I can run a simple program....  Notepad...9)  Like I said, I have to go clicking on the FILE menues to get the right results because they disabled right-click menues AS WELL as shortcuts (keyboard shortcuts... atleast some of them).10)  I can't go to #gamedev from the school because it scanned "game"dev and told me I could not go there...Man...  I can't believe some of the stupid things schools disable.  Really...  But then again, most of the kids only know how to double-click "Microsoft Word".Anything stupid in your schools?My school is also stupid. We spend super amounts of money that we don't even have on a new school every few years (newest one is the new high school) with rooms that have new P4's in every room (because cheaper things like celerons or something like that just won't do in school where you do nothing but type really--Yup those PIII's that ran just fine won't do, not for the processor intensive task that is typing). And we have to have new $2000 projectors in every room and crappy Apple laptops (wait, what's that? The crappy laptops need a new OS? The crappy laptops were slow before but now they want to put OS X Tiger on! Wow, Yes that's a great idea because spending all that money on a new OS that will not help our education at all will help our education greatly!!!). And another great idea! Lets give the classes that actually use the computers for something more than typing (though only scarcely more) the old sucki(er) computers. And let's buy lots of LCD screens som we can pay an extra $50 (probably $20 since it's a school)! And let's also have visual studio (even though it's 6) installed on every computer even though 99.999999(infinite nines)8% will never use it and don't even know what it is. And let's give all the teachers dreamweaver, flash, fireworks, etc. so they can make all these great websites and because it's totally worth it!!! (examples of stupid teacher websites - Scroll down and click on a teacher's name)Oh and the school can't be the right size, it has to be much bigger. Ahhh! I know, lets build a school that can hold 2400 students even though we only have 1700! The school isn't even growing that fast. By the time we have 2400 studens (if ever) we will have build a newer high school! In fact, we built so much new high school (with it's big, blue, and very expensive windows and olympic class pool sans the bubble making bad dive stopper (even though they don't let us dive)). And let's build 2 tracks with another elevated one in the main gym (yes, there are TWO gyms because one just isn't enough!) because we can't live with just one or 2. Let's also build a climbing wall for no real reason at all and we should also dig some ponds out front just because we can.Oh, and did we tell you that because of all this rediculous spending there will be no air conditioning in the summer and very little heating in the winter.Now we are 83 million dollars in debt and can't even afford to pave sidewalks at the school because of it.Don't get me wrong, I like the new school. Having projectors in every room is cool but we don't need all this stuff! They even went several million dollars over budget. In the end, we had nothing to do with the old high school so we gave it to the old people as a senior center and also as a middle school for very unlucky middle schoolers.Oh yeah then they spent another $100,000 on a camera system that is only inside and isn't turned on during the day. Why buy it if you can't even afford to use it?!Sorry, rant over.1) don't have that problem2)I would like to be able to use themes but classic is fine.3)same here4)Also same here but I wrote a program that lets me use cmd.exe with the system() call. Probably a stupid way of doing it but it works and I could add other functionality too! 5)yes...6)paint?! Internet Explorer > Right click > set as background -- of course it disappears when you log off.7)not disabled but I don't think I can put anything in there. I can copy files and all that8)That's stupid [smile]9)some right clicks are disabled but not all. I also hate that they disabled task manager but that's understandable10)I can. Yaay!   ;  You may think it is stupid because you know how you can override these security features. However, the school computer administrators may not know enough to fully secure the computers OR they believe that the security features they enable will be sufficient to deter most people.All those things you mentioned are exactly the things a lot of people wouldn't have any idea about. To tell you the truth, having written software for companies that fully secure any Windows boxes from people mucking around - Windows is incredibly tricky to secure.   ;  I went to a school that was supposed to be on the absolute cutting edge of technology.  Our network crashed at least once a day, and the rest of the time it was so slow our internet was slower than dial-up and file transfers were so worthless we just stopped using our home drives.   