So in general I have a very strong dislike of the people the run the computer labs at my school. There's a variety of reasons really.

First off, the IT Building is five floors. The Lab is on the third floor. Now, when a class is not in session, or an instructor is not in the room, students are not to use the classrooms. They are to use the Lab. I haven't got a problem with this. Here's what I do have a problem with. The Lab people only have control over THEIR lab. NOTHING else. Yet consistently, they will patrol the rest of the building, shooing people out of the classrooms. This is NOT their job. That's the job of security. Now I'm not breaking a rule here either. I'll ocassionally lag behind after class is over, closing down whatever was running and logging off, as well as packing my stuff up. Usually takes no more than 5 minutes. THREE TIMES now I've had one of the Lab Nazis walk into the classroom and very rudely tell me to get out. There's a schedual in the window of the rooms, THEY KNOW when the classes end, what I'm doing is obvious, and I haven't been there that long after class. The facts sit there RIGHT in front of them, yet they're rude little *******s. The last time it happened I was already frustrated with the rest of my day, so I told them all of that, and then told them that if they'd like to make a point of removing me from a classroom a mere FIVE MINUTES after my class ends again, that they should call security. Maybe I'm slightly in the wrong here too, but there's still very little excuse on their part for a large majority of this.

You think that's fun? I've been told in to remove my headphones from computers in the lab before and leave. So have some of my friends. There is NO rule ANYWHERE prohibiting the use of headphones. There IS a rule asking users to please keep the volume of any personal music players to a minimum so as not to disturb others. I wasn't even NEAR approaching a volume that'd fall under that rule. It can't even be called un unstated rule, because they don't enforce it regularly. They just enforce it at random on random people. And it's never the same person asking you to do it. I've started ignoring them if they tell me to do that now. It's not written anywhere that it's against the rules to use headphones with the computers, nor is it written that I CAN use headphones with the computers. It's a grey zone. And if they're not going to enforce it globally one way or the other, I think I'm within my right to ignore them.

Lastly, and you should really love the logic here... Every student has a network drive. The basic idea behind it is that a student can log on anywhere on campus, and have anything they've saved to the drive immediately accessible. The size of this drive (for reasons I could never figure out) is 319 gig. Yes. 319 GIG. Way, way, WAY more than an average person is going to use. But hell, I have the space, it's mine, why not use it? So I have. Students are prohibited from installing software directly to the harddrive of any computer. I'm not complaining about that, it makes sense. So I install things to my network drive. I always have it then, and it's not on their computers. And it's not like I'm installing games or unneeded software either... We're talking Trillian, Firefox, iTunes, and few other measly programs just so I feel more comfortable and have things to do while I'm here. I've also used it as storage point for files I download. Movies, demos, program installers, you get the idea. Anything I download that's large, that I plan to move off onto CD or my iPod and take home later. There's no rule forbidding that. So over the last two semesters, I've really filled up a nice portion of my drive. Most of it just being files I've downloaded and not moved off. So of my 319 gig, we're looking at maybe a gig and a half used.

Yesterday, at 5 30, OUT OF THE BLUE, I get an email from the IT department, telling me I have until noon today to clean off my drive because I'm (no joke) "far in excess of the 30 meg allocation for every student."

... Excuse me?

Last night... 5 30.... I've been off campus since 1 15, the labs are closed, and just NOW I'm getting an email telling me there's a 30 meg allocation?! Why wasn't I informed I was over a limit MONTHS ago? Why wasn't this ever posted somewhere publicly? I swear to you, it was NOT. Why, in the name of GOD, does every student have a 319 gig network drive, if all they can use is THIRTY MEG!? I ask you, does any of that make sense?

So today, I've had to skip a class to clear things off, because I was only notifed of this at the LAST MINUTE. And if I didn't come to clear things off, they'd simply wipe everything clear, and enforce a quota of 30 meg. Not allowing me ANY excess. This has irritated me to no end. And what further baffles me, is how seemingly screwed over my network drive IS. Before I cleaned it off, the properties informed me that of my 319 gig of space, I'd used 314 gig. ... What? I checked that against the actual files I had on the drive (select them all, get properties for multiple files). That reading said I'd only used little more than a gig, like I said before. So what the hell happened there? Whatever. I dump everything I don't need and save what I want. All that is sitting on the drive right now, is an install of Firefox, and Trillian. A combined total of about 45 meg. I check the drive properties again, and it seriously claims I've only feed up a tiny fraction of space. ie: According to that, I'm still using 314 gig of my 319. Something, somewhere, is FUBAR. I've refreshed this thing multiple times and it still says the same thing. Whatever. I have backups of what I need, and if they wipe it, I'll just put back what I want.

Really... is all of that not just a little freaking stupid? Granted the last part is not so much due to lab nazis as it is to IT stupidity, but still... What are some of these people smoking? What drugs are they on? Who beat them violently with the stupid stick? Have they lost all common sense?

Gah... I might have made a few errors here and there resulting in warranted actions on their part, but some of this... there IS NO excuse.

we had a similar setup at my high school....

the 319gb is the space allocated for every student. They're not gonna give every student 319gb.

Anyway, other than that I think you're completly in the right here.

They were like that at my college. In the open computer lab they were real jerks. If you did anything that diddnt look like college work they would use Remote desktop, take control of your PC and shut the program down without asking whether it was actual work or not.

This one time I was on a shopping site doing research. (We had to construct a cost analysis for a hypothetical business.) So I was totaling up the cost of PCs and the guy logged me off the computer without asking any questions.

Anyway, a few of us complained to my tutor & he let the whole class have the door key-code for one of the computer classrooms :p

It's much better here at university. We're allowed to use any free classroom. We're not allowed to install programs on the drives but I have trillian & firefox on my network drive and they dont mind Much better. There are very few restrictions on the machines either.

Yes... I discovered that after I posted. It doesn't excuse the fact that no one was publicly informed that there was a 30 meg allocation though, or the fact that I had such short notice.

Ah. If one thing I can count on is that the IT department at my school does things right...mostly. See at my school, you can do almost every damned thing you please so long as your not damaging the computers. Of course there is the obligatory no porn, warez, illegal crap. But you can fiddle and **** around on the lab machines to your heart's content. I think the mentality is that you've all ready dished out the $1,530 to be able to use the machines. I used to work in the labs. It was pretty laid back.

I'll warrant that your lab guys are having power trips. You need to go to the staff member in charge of the lab guys. I'm assuming lab people are students. The lab guys here are students. Students are supposed to be just assistance not dictators. And show them EXACT copies of policy towards using computers.

i am one of the Lab guys at my school (dont ask how that happoned)

the only rule there is (and i only meadiokerly inforce) is no food or drinks. heck we'll even use the projector and other fun toys that in the lab when we think we can get away with it.

Yeah, that 319 gig is what everyone shares. the 314 is what is in use by everyone.

Heh, our lab guys are awesome. They don't care what you do with the PCs, as long as they are still in working order when you are finished.

Theres a "student drive" which you can encrypt and secure your own folder if you wish, but its open for any student. I have PuTTY and a bunch of other programs on there.

The Lab guys NEVER check up on you to see if something is screwy. They'll just check the user logs, see who was last logged into the PC before it broke, and track you down.

While the lab computers are decently locked down, with most ports blocked, and tons of anti-virus and anti-spyware crap installed (And Firefox on all machines, yay!), the wireless network is completely open, and doesn't even require a WEP key nor login. You could download 500GB of MP3s on the network and they'd have no idea who it was.

1. How could you have actually thought your school bought several thousand 320 GB drives, one for each student?

2. They should have informed you about the quota. Or, even better, setup a quota on the file system so you can't go past 30 MB.

The lab guys at my school usually only fix paper jams in the printer/copiers.

I've never really messed with the lab guys at our school. No need to. Though I will say, nobody cared when I restarted a machine with the Ubuntu live disk in and used Ubuntu during my time there. Also, our student accounts get 150mb of web space, "supposedly." There's a quota system in place, though I've noticed it's been strangely missing from my account.

Freshman year I didn't have a quota either. So I backed up my laptop (this was before I built my desktop) onto my student account (about 20 or so gigs), reformatted, and then got everything back all in one night. Nobody even noticed. Good times.

Momentary lapse of thought. I'll atrribute it to the fact I had a fairly rough night...


About 3 are students, they rotate in and out. Two are staff. They ALL act the same.

Wow. I hate restrictive labs, just because I know so much about computers.


Well, at my school, there are 2 systems. One with everything controlled by the district, and one funded completely by one teacher (through tax credit) and maintained by him too. On the school computers, well, they just suck. you get unlimited use of the 300gb drive they have. I've never tested there. In room T4 (the independent lab), the computers drives are as follows...

C:\ - System drive. Cleared and restored from network on reboot.
H:\ - Student home drive, networked. 300gb total. No allocations. We're allowed to install any school-related programs we want (basically anything except games)
P:\ - Programs drive. This is controlled by the teacher and by his two aids. It has all the stuff for all of the tech classes, along with two other directories: Games and GamesBackup. Games is the games folder (:P) and contains demos of UT2004 and Soldat, along with registered Warcraft III. GamesBackup was created by the aids for the students when Games was disabled; it contains everything Games does except Soldat, and also has the Halo PC demo (no one knows if it was deleted from gamesbackup, as the directory is not accessible right now. we just know that its not in Games anymore). LAN party 6th hour, anyone?

I run the advanced lab for CS majors at my university. I have an open install policy and I couldn't care less what people do, as long as they are courteous towards others using the lab. Of course, I ghost the Windows machines every so often since they tend to get a bit mucked up. The FreeBSD boxes never need to be ghosted, so I do not worry about those. In the other labs in my building, there is an open install policy as well, but they ghost daily. Also, the labs are being constantly monitored, whereas my lab does not require a monitor (due to the instantiation of card swipes and cameras). In other buildings, the labs are locked down so tight that you cannot even run Firefox or Gaim remotely.

They pulled that s*** on me too, until I got smart and started using a knoppix Cd and my flash drive.

They found out I was using linux for WORD PROCESSING and INTERNET (two things that practicaly everyone does with winXP) and they told me to get out. I told them to F*** off. I pointed out that using linux is within my rights as there is no rule against it, and that I would talk to the dean if I had to. They backed down.

These putzes are just glorified nerds that get off on power and throwing their weight around. However, if you've done nothing wrong, get in their faces and they will back down.

I had a friend who had more computer rights then any teacher in the school. He could do ANYTHING he wanted. He had the rights of a school board official.

Congratulations alpha male wannabes, you showed up a bunch of nerds. Student nerds at that.


Now back to your regularly scheduled hating of The Man.

And about installing software - if you use any of the lab machines to install iTunes or Trillian or what-have-you, the information is still being stored in the registry. Meaning the computer will (inevitably) whine and complain about not being able to access the executable.

And the network drive for all of the students... they only started getting on your case because they were running out of room (2 GB free).

It strikes me that you don't really understand computers as well as you think you do.

The only way you can really 'use' programs on a network machine is to install it on your own machine, copy it to a CD or USB stick or somthing, and then either run it off the CD/USB stick or copy it then onto your network drive. Some programs need registry and simply won't work with this method, some will work but some functions will bork it, and a few will work quite happily as it is (like little stand-alone applets or something).
I have a DVD full of installed programs that run nicely off the DVD itself. If you do that, they can't complain. (Considering more and more machines are coming with SD and/or CF drives on them, I might start doing that instead.. I think they read faster than DVD?)

I've installed all kinds of crap on my network drive. Firefox, Editplus, you name it. It works just fine. I try to keep my network drive size low. Upon logging in, all profile data is set over the network.

Stored in the registry, but it works everywhere regardless of the machine it was installed on, without *****ing. And frankly, that's all I care about.

I already addressed the issue with the network drive. Read up.

Look, I understand computers better than most people, and in this case, I just don't know how their network is run. Nor do I really care to know. As long as it works, I don't have a problem. And when it doesn't work, it's not my concern anyway, because there wouldn't be anything I could do about it.

Other than the file thing, what is making you care if they ask you to leave?
I'd completely ignore them. WAIT For security to come if they really care about you leaving. If you are correct in saying they have no right to be bossy around there, don't let them be.