I.T. FASCISTS

John Knight · Post by **John Knight** » Thu May 10, 2007 5:43 pm

Our system administrator has just banned us from using youtube, fair enough. Up to 85% of the office internet traffic was taken up by people watching youtube videos.

What really annoys me is they have also banned Hotmail and the very same afternoon they banned it we got an email telling us how we can all access our work email from home. So its ok to get work email at home but not home email at work?

Nice eh?

Post by **Mike** » Thu May 10, 2007 6:32 pm

85% is pretty high to be fair. I am sure the office will save a fortune and also the internet will run faster for work related stuff too. I was amazed our work network managed to download about 50mb of information in 2 minutes the other day. It is a new record.

Agree about your emails, you should say that to them and then follow it up by saying 'My system administrator at home has banned ISA email webservers' there is nothing I can do about it!

Claire · Post by **Claire** » Thu May 10, 2007 7:53 pm

Loads of people at my work have switched to Yahoo addresses because hotmail is banned. they're even fussy about which search engine you're allowed to use. plus any (and i mean ANY) website with even the word "game" in it is banned so that the kids can't play on it. what's funny though is when you catch them on a website they shouldn't be on and they think you know nothing about computers so they just minimise it. then you tell them you know which website they're on. and if you're me you promptly write it down, give it to the school IT guy and get him to block it. AH! HA!

BarcelonAl · Post by **BarcelonAl** » Thu May 10, 2007 8:31 pm

I used to work for a company that wouldn't allow .zip files to be downloaded or sent via email. Not very useful for web developers/designers who need to access large files to upload or download for our jobs...thanks Mr It Guy...gimps!

mr_e · Post by **mr_e** » Fri May 11, 2007 12:06 am

We aren't allowed any web-based email at all. The reason we were given ages ago is that they bypassed the firewalls we had in place, but I'm not too convinced that some non IT person didn't just make that up or liberally paraphrase.

Access to work email from home doesn't bode well...that means your boss can email you work at the weekend or some crazy stuff like that. I can see it being useful in some situations, but I'd be a bit wary of a move like that, cynic that I am.

BarcelonAl · Post by **BarcelonAl** » Fri May 11, 2007 10:18 am

I can see what they mean about the web email mr_e. Normal emails will go through virus filters before they actually hit the network meaning that any potential problems should be stopped dead in no-mans land. With web email you wouldn't get that first line of defence and people could quite easily download virus ridden applications and files onto the network where they would easily spread.

However, most web mail systems now are linked to well known anti-virus systems that are probably more up-to-date than your IT systems anyway, so the excuse may be on shaky ground!

Fez · Post by **Fez** » Fri May 11, 2007 11:38 am

being left to my own devices quite often in the office, i'm pretty free to abuse the internerd to my heart's content [within reason - somethings can only be done at home...in the dark...when my parents are out], though i am in serious trouble if i get caught redhanded when more important things are being neglected because i'm too busy buying CDs from amazon. i shouldn't even be typing this now [*looks over both shoulders*] but i'm all alone and there's nothing better to do - at least as far as i'm concerned.

John Knight · Post by **John Knight** » Fri May 11, 2007 7:10 pm

"Ben! can I have permission to do some work please?"

My request to our systems administraitor has has now entered float team legend. When they first rolled out the permissions across the network and I only got very basic permissions. Right in the middle of a big compettion submission. Nice timing.

Post by **johnriley1uk** » Fri May 11, 2007 11:35 pm

so the excuse may be on shaky ground!

Quite a lot of the restrictions people put on other people are on very shaky ground.

The latest one in dentistry is that all root canal instruments should be single use - autoclaving them is no longer good enough. The reason for this as given is all about a theoretical possibility of a potential risk, but there is no evidence whatsoever to back it up. However, it will cost dentists a small fortune, with no extra funding being given.

This is just the one I know about - in other fields how many other things that are done actually totally pointless?

Fez · Post by **Fez** » Sat May 12, 2007 11:00 am

it's a constraint from the board of governors that every new policy from wigan council must be printed in triplicate for school files; for the governors' policy file, the public access file and the governors' committee file which isn't the same as the first because it includes non-members of the board's central heirarchy. we also have to keep old versions of the same policies for five years to justify any changes made to the school's day to day running, and naturally every policy from the council is long-winded and uses the kind of language that is contradictory and on occasion incomprehensible because of the legal jargon. thousands of pages of policy guidelines on everything from health and safety to the optimum lighting arrangements for classrooms - and who reads this stuff? no one except the board of governors who look at it once to approve its use and then write a few hundred pages of why they have approved it for the meetings minutes. farming isn't destroying the brazilian rainforests, english primary schools are!

Post by **Mike** » Sat May 12, 2007 4:14 pm

Bureaucracy does take a huge amount of my time and also a big part of a rainforest. Some records are very useful. Others are totally pointless except in the minority of times when you actually get sued!

It is daft when IT administrators get a hard on with the power and prevent people from doing their job!

mr_e · Post by **mr_e** » Sat May 12, 2007 8:43 pm

To be fair to the government, we've got pretty good IT support people. Just don't get me started on whoever designed the software in the first place.

Andy · Post by **Andy** » Sun May 13, 2007 7:24 pm

I agree with you Fez. The paperwork in schools is ridiculous. I have to do about five filing jobs every month regarding kids' progress that must be the equivalent of a large oak tree every year! Then it is paperwork to identify the ''under-achieving boys'' or ''middle-ability girls'' or 'truants / Vicky Pollards / just not clever kids'. The amount of paperwork required for a detention takes the biscuit so this year I haven't officially done one - it takes two minutes to fill out the form! - I make them stay at break for 10 minutes.

The amount of crap that I have to hand out every morning to my Y11 form is crazy - they are of average ability, with a couple of numpts and a couple with brains - and I was given 26 copies of 6 sheets each for each kid advertising a career in law. This was done for each of the 9 forms - 245 kids overall - that's 1400+ pieces of paper. How many kids read it? 3 were 'slightly' interested. 100 created about 600 paper aeroplanes.

Anyway back to topic

At my school you can't access yahoo or images on google because of SAFETYNET. However, if you go at type 'google image search' on google you get it. There's a hell of a lot of other stuff that you can get as well but I've not tried that. Really I haven't. It annoys me that you can get a picture of suzie pinder in a supergirl costume - I admit that was a slight mistake whilst searching for an image for a powerpoint presentation on creative writing for the superhero story - but I can't get my sodding e-mail on!!!!

Post by **Mike** » Mon May 14, 2007 1:18 pm

Andy wrote:'truants / Vicky Pollards / just not clever kids'.

I like this category, little did we know that our lives were being so closely observed by Teachers when we were at school. I think you sound add others to this list such as - 'Salmon Life Kids', 'Dumb Asses' and 'Oh My God, Who (or what) mated to create you?'

Andy wrote:I admit that was a slight mistake whilst searching for an image for a powerpoint presentation on creative writing for the superhero story - but I can't get my sodding e-mail on!!!!

Did you get pulled up or noted that you were searching for super woman images?

Andy · Post by **Andy** » Mon May 14, 2007 4:18 pm

Well actually I wasn't searching for Suzie Pinder in a superwoman costume. It honestly did appear and it still does, not on the first page, about the third or fourth. And I didn't observe it for long. But then again, how long is a piece of string?

I won't bother doing the categorising of kids because that would go off topic.