Rydra

Is it possible to put Lion OSX Server onto a Macbook Pro? I'm looking to get a machine for managing my Ipads, but I'd prefer to have the mobility of the MBP than the Mac Mini, though I'm not sure I'll wrangle the double cost past budgeting.

I have had quiet days before, but today is especially so. I'm down to 5 jobs on the helpdesk, and 4 off it for major upgrades to plan for 3 weeks time. -1 group of netbooks that need AV installing; need to arrange half a day to take them away to do the installs. -1 Bit of software needs ordering; they bought the wrong license -One laptop that needs 30gb of data transferring from my portable hard drive. -Printer driver needs installing on a win 7 laptop -install Italc in one of the ICT suites; master PC is done, just need to configure the client ones. Plus 4 Projectors needing work; 1 reinstall with a new mount, 1 replacement/upgrade, 1 new install, 1 warranty fix. The first part is about a days work, the 2nd is waiting for other input/to place orders, which will be done this week. This is the first time in 2 years that I've effectively run out of things to do; if I hit things hard I could finish all of it today, but I'm hoping to grab 5 minutes with the HT today to find out what work I don't know about that needs doing, and hoping there's enough to take me through till xmas.

I'm looking to replace the stock cooling unit on my CPU (i7-950) with something that might allow it to run a bit quieter, and I'm considering doing the same for the graphics card (Sapphire Radeon 5870). I'd prefer something quiet with equivalent or better cooling than my stock stuff. Case is massive, it's a Thermaltake Armor, so plenty of space and slots. Currently running 2x 120mm (1 front one rear), 1x 250mm Side fan, 1x 90mm fan top rear for hard drive cooling. (I removed the top fan it normally comes with, PSU was too large) Thermaltakeusa*»*Chassis*»*Full Tower*»*Armor Series*»*Armor : Armor VA8003BWS Any suggestions? I'm considering a Corsair H80 Corsair H80 Hydro Series High Performance CPU Cooler - CWCH80 - Scan.co.uk For the CPU. Not sure on the graphics card. Could go for a custom water cooling option, but not seen anything to suggest it'd actually be any quieter.

I can give you a few really damned good reasons why we shouldn't give up eating meat. -Think of all the ipad app developers who make primary school apps. No more "Sheep goes BAAAAA!" We'll just have a whole board of varied fart noises with tags to which plant made that particular variant. -We wouldn't have the genius that is Terry Pratchett's "Where's My Cow!" -No more McDonalds.... This puts the cretins who work there back into circulation for the rest of the world to deal with them. -You'd kill the food industry overnight. No more late night kebabs, no more greasy spoons, no more family restaurants with names like "Beefeater". I'm less inclined to pay someone to steam a plate of carrots and a bowl of tomato soup, removing this important social aspect of the world. Lastly, if you try and take away my meat I will have to start eating people, and according to many an old children's book, children taste the best, so I guess I'm in the best possible place to keep up my source of protein...

I've had 2 boards go like this in the last 2 months, started getting a weird jump in the exact middle of the board. This can be partially fixed by increasing to the 20 point calibration, but it's likely a temporary fix. I found it drifted back over time, so you end up recalibrating every 30-60 minutes. To test what the problem is: Recalibrate the board on 20 point, then get a long ruler, and draw grid lines across the board. I will bet, that you will find a point on the bottom right corner that's completely fubar. This is what causes that jump in the middle. This can either be a result of wear on the IWB surface itself, or a fault with the control board on the back (the little grey box with the USB lead and the reset button.) If in warranty just call SMART and they'll deal with it. If it's not, then first try swapping the control board with an identical model of IWB, and see if that fixes the issue. If it does, you can buy a new control board for about £100 ish. If the problem persists after replacing that control board, then chances are the surface of your IWB has gone, and your looking at a new whiteboard.

If you don't mind your cat sleeping on the bed, then I at least suggest getting an old wooly blanket, and putting it at the foot of the bed; cats can't resist this it seems. Worn clothes, dressing gowns or freshly ironed clothing works too. If you'd prefer them to sleep elsewhere, find a warm quiet corner of the house, and invest in a cat bed/basket. As soon as you locate the spot for it, find cat and put cat in the bed/basket. They'll almost certainly jump out again, but any item you want the cats to know the location of, drop then on/in/in front of it as soon as you place it, and they will remember it for later. Another nice one, which has saved me from kicking the cats in the middle of the night, was to invest in a radiator hanging cat-bed. They are pretty cheap, you can pick them up from pet stores or places like wilkinsons/aldi/netto's/poundland/argos. Laser Pointers are fun with any age of cat, requires minimal effort from yourself and will keep them running around like a loony for hours. Take down any net curtains you've got. Seriously, take them down now. They have pulled 4 of them off the windows, snapping the pole on one of them and putting holes in 2 of the others. Anywhere you've got furniture/items that they test their claws on and you don't want them to, invest in a scratching post to put next to it. This technique means that I have absolutely no damage to any of my furniture anywhere in the house, as they learn that the scratching post is far better and doesn't involve ballistic pillows or other misc items I have to hand. Especially with long haired cats, get yourself a grooming brush or two. This is an excellent way of getting a slightly skitty/scaredy cat to sit with you, and over time they come to the conclusion that sitting next to you/on your lap aint bad. Feeding routine: I normally leave out dry food in the morning and a fresh bowl of water, and feed them a packet of Wet food in the evening. 1 sachet of wet food + the dry mix, and they very rarely eat everything between the 2 cats. Remember to store your cat food in a cupboard, preferably a high one; mine know where the food is, and i've seen them trying to open the cupboard before, and there's cats out there that have worked out how to open a fridge even. Lastly, DON'T have workmen around your house untill they are a bit older.... I had electricians in to rewire my house when they were under a year old, it's taken them 2 years to get over it, and they still haven't fully; when the doorbell rings, or they hear someone outside the door they bolt for the stairs and hide in our bedroom.

My two cats are about 3 years old now, and are as crazy as they were 3 years ago, but 1000 times more affectionate. When I got them they hid under a table permanently for 3 months except for toilet breaks and food, and even then only when noone else was watching. They never meowed, never purred, and only played from a distance. This morning my cat woke me up by jumping on me and whining in my ear, chased my wife down the stairs to race her for food, then came back up and played silly buggers with me in her cat bed while I poked her through the bed and she pretended to chase it while exposing a belly that desperately wanted a tickle! The other cat waits for me to get home, follows me upstairs, and within minutes of me sitting in my desk chair, climbs up the back of it already purring, nudges my head till I get out of the way, and stands in front of me demanding my full attention. If I don't give it, she headbutts me and neads my shoulder while meowing.

The key behind it all is information. 50-100 years ago, only a chemist knew how to make those drugs, only a carpenter knew how to work wood in that way, only the plumbers knew the intricacies of plumbing, pipework, pressures etc. Over time we've standardised these things, making the information on how they are standardised. Then we've improved availability of the tools required to do these jobs. As a result, now, if you want to know the standard thickness of a radiator pipe for a medium sized house, you can go on the internet, or walk up to the (underpaid) bloke in the DIY shop and he'll tell you. You can buy a lathe to do your woodwork, and then go buy a DVD about how to get the results you want out of it. In short, we're all smarter and more versatile and adept than we used to be. Once, it was X person's job to do X thing. Those lines are much more blurred now, and obscured in places by the improvement of technology that replaces some aspects of these roles, but the process of making this technology doesn't remove a job, just shifts and obscures it. With increased knowledge also comes increased expectations, and usually expect it for less, be that less time, money or effort. Services by professionals used to be a necessity; only they knew how to do what they do. Now these things are more of a luxury, it has shifted the balance of society. 10-15 years ago barely anyone knew how to operate the internet properly, now we have people in their 60's/70's/80's and beyond texting their great grandchildren the funny pic of a cat with an amusing caption. I can fit my own doors, repair my own leaking taps and decorate my own house. I don't have the money to pay a professional to do these things, and invariably the quality of work I expect from these individuals exceeds their abilities more often than not. The sooner people realise that noone is incapable of "working" and that there is a job out there for everyone, the sooner our economy and our society will correct itself. Put the lazy to work. And use those who want to work but can't in a position to help those who they can.

I've had this little project sat on my plate for nearly 6-8 weeks now, and having finally, almost reached the point of completion, I wanted to get this experience down where others might benefit and learn from it. Background A little background, my Admin server (running SIMS, FMS, and SCO) was upgraded sometime last year or so to SQL2008, and though I didn't realise at the time, that this upgrade coincided with an increase in problems with our Symantec Backup Exec system. We have Symantec Backup Exec 12 since 2008 on the server, with nightly backups to magnetic tapes. The main trouble we were getting was constant crashes from the Backup Exec Job Engine Service, and occasionally some of the others too. They would hang, refuse to start, stop restart and all sorts of errors. An inspection earlier this year highlighted that our backup systems could do with upgrading. The tapes were barely large enough to hold the data, and they were reaching the end of their usable lifespan, and the tapes cost a lot to replace a whole set. The decision was made just before the summer to move to Portable hard drives as a backup media to replace the tapes with, being cheaper, easier and much larger storage capacities. The trouble starts About half way through September, one of our backup tapes dies, so we attempt to setup backing up to our portable drives. It didn't work well. The services kept bugging, and we couldn't modify the Job setup. Some calls to Symantec and to Capita, and I finally get the answer that "Backup Exec 12.0 does not support SQL 2008. You must upgrade to v12.5 or later to fix the issue." The incompatibility causes some of the service instabilities, as well as you being unable to modify existing jobs that you've created. The creation part will work fine, but once created Backup Exec will crash whenever you try to open the properties. The solution If you have bought into a symantec support package (not a clue which one, but apparently there is one or several that allow upgrades like this included in the price of the support), then you should be able to upgrade to version 12.5 for free. Chances are, if you are using software 3-4 years old, then you probably don't have this package (since anyone with it probably upgraded as and when prompted to do so each time!). I opted to upgrade fully to Version 2010 R3. Getting the licenses was relatively painless; you order the license from a reseller (you have to be very specific as to which license you require; there are multiple types, flavours and versions depending on OS type, 32/64bit, then standard/server/personal/enterprise/managed etc etc.) Then you get an email with your license details. This serial needs to be registered on the symantec licensing portal, which you should already have an account for if you have V12 or similar aged software. If you don't know it, then give them a call. I discovered my software was actually registered to the personal email of an engineer for the old external support company my school used! An email bounced a few times between myself and symantec (including purchase details and license details I had on those purchase details), and the licenses were transferred back to my account and the schools email address. Once entered, you then have the option to download your new shiny software, and I'm going to assume from this point you can work out how to operate a download page.... A few notes on the installation process: -As your messing with SQL, it's best to get a full backup done before you begin messing with software, installs or settings. Windows includes it's own Backup utility, under system tools that will work if you cannot get backup exec to play ball one last time. It's better than having no backup! -The download is supplied as a multi-part ISO and a CMD file that combines the 4 parts into a single DVD-sized ISO file. make sure you select the .CMD file too! I nearly forgot to include it in my download. -You have 2 options for the upgrade; remove the old one, and install the new one afresh, and setup all jobs, catalogs, media sets and devices from scratch. OR Install as an upgrade. I found this to be painless, completely. It carried over all my old jobs, catalogs, media sets, the lot, and I had it set to backup within 10-15 minutes of completing installation. This was by far the easiest option IMO. -Before beginning the upgrade, make sure all your users are off any managed databases (SIMS, SCO etc). Part of the process installs some SQL stuff that likely won't play well if there's people using databases at the same time. -You need to stop all Backup exec services (set to manual and stop them) AND THE SERVICE "SQL SERVER(BACKUPEXEC)." Dont miss this one! -Check your admin logins and details. I've had a problem with mine being unable to backup system state as access denied. There's a login for this that's not right somewhere, haven't figured out which it is yet. -There's a good chance, the first backup you run will popup a box at the end asking you to eject the media and press the OK button. There's a tickbox option at the bottom of this window, that allows you to have this box automatically OK itself. You will want to set this, otherwise your Job will continue to run despite finishing all other tasks happily. SHORT ANSWER TL;DR: Symantec Backup Exec 12.0 does NOT support SQL2008. It will crash, things won't work, it will cause you problems. Solution: Downgrade to SQL 2005 (NOT RECOMMENDED!), or pay for upgrade to newer version. At time of posting, all newer versions (12.5 or later) should solve the problem, but you'll most likely have to pay for it, so buy the latest version anyway, which should be 2010, though I believe 2012 is on the verge of being released, or released very recently.

With the digital switchover it's getting easier to avoid TV licenses. I don't own an aerial on my house at all, and having tried a few times, cannot get a reliable digital signal from an indoor aerial. Meaning if I ever dumped my Virgin TV, I could easily dump my TV license.

I've always thought the simplest way of solving the issue, is to put benefits and unemployed to work for their money. Failing that a darwinian survival of the fittest style crystal maze challenge, where if you want your check, well you'd better brush up on your Indiana Jones moves because that crushing ball of rock stands between you and your benefits cheque.

Hmmm, that's something I hadn't really thought much about. For every character you add to a password it adds 100 times the number of combinations that a computer has to attempt. There are 3 levels of security, the first is to use a PW that isn't in a standard dictionary or regularly used word. Made up names are fantastic for passwords. This stops simple guesswork. The second one, is to have a password that you can type fluidly, to stop people from watching you type it. The third is to use a complexity that makes it hard for a computer to guess it. The simplest option is to make up a word of your choosing, ideally 4-8 characters long, and simply type it more than once. One option, is to pick a sign, poster, or product name/label that is always around where you use this PW, (For example, I have a timetable in front of my desk for classroom use, with the title "Draft Timetable - Based in ICT2" If I take the first two letters of each word, I get "drtibainic". This isn't a word anyone would guess, and it's relatively easy to type with no messy letters. Now type it twice.... "drtibainicdrtibainic". You now have a password that is a completely made up name, 20 characters long. No ordinary computer would be able to compute this password in a normal timeframe, yet you've got a perfect reminder right in front of you, that only you or a psychological genius could work out.

I think that breaks the laws of physics and causes the universe to end itself prematurely. OR am I mistaking this with the LHC. It's hard to remember sometimes...

A baptist church near me tried to convince my sister she was sinful for being a catholic when she attended a youth club with some of her friends. Thankfully my sister had an ounce of common sense and ignored these things, and in fact found many of their attempts amusing. Some of her not-so-bright friends and family however were taken in by this and officially converted. I find anyone who uses religion like a sales target to reach in a similar contempt to door2door salesmen, the computerised phonecalls offering whatever it is on miss-sold PPI ( I don't know what it is they are touting, as I hang up in the first few seconds), and possibly mouldy pineapple, but I'm thinking of upgrading the pineapple as it serves a purpose as compost if left in the right environment.

I don't really do twitter, or Google+. Mostly cos the people who actually read what I say aren't on either of them. I mostly have it for random celebrity gossip and the odd tech titbit.

Unless it's the late-teenage boy taking out the daughter on the first proper date, in which case feel free to go the full Bad-Boys-2-moment with the crazed dad+mad gun-toting friend routine.

I turned every light on the front of my house, then sat in my study with headphones on and listened to the occassional chirping of my doorbell downstairs while I blew peoples heads off in Battlefield 3 Can't find it now, but I came across a video a week or two ago for an epic prank. Dress up as a zombie guy fawkes, with a pumkin mask/head, and sit outside your door with a bowl of sweets in your lap. When the little darlings come to collect the sweets, it's time for the zombie to come alive! Need to be careful though, one parent beat up the guy for doing it out of shock

My old place had a big red button in the corner of the room that if pressed killed all power to the switches. I always did want to hit that button...

Just to note, I appear to have Google+ invites left. At least I've got a button to press on the side of my Google stream. Even been added to circles by a couple of celebrities, go me.

I shave about 6-10 times a year, often less, so I sport a full beard most of the time, though in recent times I've done my best to keep it manageable rather than the food-catching rats nest it usually ends up as. I found out a long time ago I'm allergic to Aloe Vera or some similar ingredient of just about every soap and face lotion that makes me look like I've been through a bush full of thorny ivy and nettles, so I shave it all off only for special occassions. I've sported some truly terrible beardy looks over the years, truly terrible.

Coming from the marketing background of EvE-Online, I've always liked the fact that for anyone who wants to, they can see or at least work out what the approximate build costs of an item or services are, and see what others are charging. It means you get open and fair competition, and it comes down to supply/demand and clever thinking. It's a shame this model doesn't work in the real world, where everyone does their best to hide what it cost, in case someone worked out that they were making a killing from it.

Just to note, those are 2 very different machines. One is a full size desktop with one of the cheapest (nearly 5 year old tech too) CPU's on the market, the other is a SFF PC with a low end but modern CPU. The desktop is also an endofline, being a Core2Duo platform that is now 3-4 years old in architechture. The i3 architechture is barely 2 years old. At this point, I would not now recommend anyone spends money on a Core2Duo platform. Buying kit that is essentially 3 years out of date before even taking out of the box is inadviseable.

Anyone else seen that photo and think that all captured violent dictators look the same when bloodied up and manhandled unceremoniously?

Unfortunately with Education we tend to only buy things we need when we need them (though on occasion we manage to catch the HT/SMT/Bursar offguard and get things we want). There's usually a stock of things that we all buy on a fairly regular basis, that I at least hate having to chase up when I want them. -Projectors. Ones with extended/long life warranties, free bulbs are often good, or free mounts/cabling kits etc. We all get those projectors from time to time that go boom/pop, and need to replace them ASAP, so knowing what's the good/best offer out there available this week is a bonus. -Laptops. When it's time to buy that next batch of laptops, I find we all buy roughly the same things each time; it's roughly the same spec of CPU, 2-4GB of memory, DVD drives and most other features are a bonus. Whatever is Best Value, maybe bundled with laptops bags can be good, Cashback is a pain to chase (Would be good if companies would stop doing this and just give us the £50 or whatever off in the first place. It must cost them half of that money just to manage the scheme effectively!) but again always a bonus. Beyond that, what I buy is rarely predictable from a school POV, so just what you normally do; random offers and good prices as they come in. Maybe advertising stuff that we ourselves might be interested in; Decent new monitor for home, good prices on SSD's/high capacity Hard drives, new Mice/keyboard options (I'm on the hunt for a wireless keyboard and mouse set for a Home entertainment PC atm, and I've been looking for a good offer on some new gaming monitors for a year now)

Hmmm. Firstly, Rugby is not allowed to be a contact sport below the age, I think it's something like 13? I know my Year 4-6 cannot play contact rugby at all, and play tag rugby instead. Secondly, I've seen Cage fighting and MMA stuff with children before, but they always wore protective gear on their heads (though this coming off would happen on a fairly frequent occasion I seem to recall). As to the setting, it probably could have been better, it's fair to say the landlord put the event on to make money (name a commercial venue that doesn't want to!), but as long as the kids and the crowd are properly controlled, I do not personally see an issue. It looked to me like those on the main floor were not allowed drinks, and the bar area was seperated. A few (ok, many!) years ago I went to the National Irish dancing championships, and it was held at a Pontins site; the participants ranged from 5/6 up to adult, and they were all held in the various stage and bar areas, and the bar was open from about 11am onwards till the early hours every night. Ok the event was different, but would you not also be upset about a predominantly girl-based event where they were dressed up to the nines, covered in makeup and made to dance for the purpose of entertainment and competition, while parents and onlookers sat about cheering and more often than not drinking.... The cage is there for the participants protection as much as anything else from what I saw. I personally would not be entirely happy about my children taking up this sport, but if it's a valid sport with full licensing, I cannot see the issue here. If you dont want to watch it or participate, then don't. It's not like your being forced to, and from what info we have, neither are the participants or the onlookers being forced to.