limbo

We had problems with the eye-fi cards we purchased for wireless transfer of photo's from cameras but the BGfL have been really pro-active in sorting this out for us and now they work really well and we appreciate that we should probably have looked into them before we purchased them - their dislike of proxies is well documented. Link2ICT even updated their change request form to make it easier to make the request. I suspect a new firewall is not what is needed, just a better mechanism for managing the requests (and probably a bigger team to process them) that is less reactive and a bit more proactive - which is where this co-ordinated list of known issues will be really valuable - but it should not be about "here is the list make it happen" rather more looking at the type of issues on the list and what the global solution could be to suit every school (there will likely be things on the list I would not want made available here!) That is my two cents for what it is worth (which is probably less than two cents)

Hey Ranj, Firstly I do not think there was a huge improvement in maximum speed from LTO-4 to LTO-5 (around 15% iirc) - the new technology was mainy around additional capacity. Secondly, if the time taken / rate of transfer is totally unchanged then it is more likely that the bottleneck is something to do with the server processing, and compression would be the most likely culprit. You chould have enough capacity on the tape without compression so why not give it a go?

Yes - still here.

Yeah, I know - been very busy. Email me if you want any help or advice with this.

There is one on the Perry Beeches website at the mo:- Vacancy

We achieved this a few years ago. A script runs on a schedule (we have found overnight is frequently enough) and goes through the MIS data on the SQL server cross referencing each student against an MSAccess table. Any students / staff who do not have an entry in the MSAccess table have a new AD account, home drive, email address, canteen card number, library card reference etc. generated. It works just as well with a single new student mid term as it does with our 300 strong new intake in September. The interim MSAccess DB saves having to record information in the MIS and seems more efficient that having to check AD - it also gave us the opportunity to do a snap shot when we first started so that it didn't generate everyone a new account.

We were told by audit not to take backups off site as this puts the data at risk from theft, loss etc (?!?) This was mainly talking about MIS and Financial data, they did not really care about students files. I have also previously been told not to rely on fire proof safes because in a serious fire, the tapes may well survive, but the chances of being allowed anywhere near it to retrieve them by the fire officers is slim. This did not leave us many options but we do have a large site so we send key data to an offsite backup via the internet (MIS data etc.) and everything else is copied to a backup SAN in the furthest building from the building the servers are in. We do a full backup once a week and incrementals every evening so in theory we just need the full and the latest incremental to get everything back. The Backup SAN has enough disk space to keep the full backup for at least a month, but we also make sure that the MIS backups go back further than this. We also take advantage of volume shadow copy to try and keep replace / deleted student files for as long as possible.

Well this is such a good platform for it.

And it left him feeling a little tender

I went - my 8yo son is a train-aholic (he was over the moon to meet Pete Waterman) I have been going with my Dad since I was about the same age (back when it used to be at the Harry Mitchell centre in Oldbury) Plus my daughter wanted a lift to the memorabilia show with her friend so it all worked out nicely.

We have been using barcodes scanners with custom written MSAccess, VB and Web based applications for a while. The type of barcode scanner we use just sends the string it reads as a keyboard input (used to be called "wedges" and had to be connected between the ps2 cable of the keyboard and the PC, but USB has done away with the need for this), so all you need in your appilcation is a text field that the information can be read into. You just then need to substitute the string for whatever unique reference you have for that item in your query and job done. Same process for MSAccess, VB and Web based items then. The same theory can be applied to USB swipe card readers - in fact the application has no idea where the input is coming from because it all just looks like a keyboard entry (and can be a keyboard entry if the scanner fails to read / is not present) We have managed to use this technique with bluetooth connected barcode scanners and ones with wireless connections to base stations without any problems. Unless I am missing something?

The self-employed / employed thing is easy, you just need to let your local tax office know that you are going to be earning additonal money beyond PAYE (pay as you earn) - they will send you a tax return to fill in where you just need to include all the money you earnt, including your salary, and the total tax you have paid so far (which you can get from your P60). You need to budget for paying back about 40% of your additional income back to the tax man in a one of annual lump sum for income tax and national insurance (so put 50% of everything you bring in into a separate bank account and leave it be until you have your final tax bill). It is possible you can save a bit on your tax bill by setting up as a limited company, but this becomes a whole heap more complicated, so not really worth it until you start earning some serious money from it. If you have any expenses you can include those on your tax return and they are deducted from the total amount of money that will be taxed i.e. if you put in £100 expenses for stationary and you earnt £1000 then they will tax you at around 40% of £900 (£1000-£100). So worth doing, just keep the reciept (does not need to be a VAT reciept - just a normal one will do) or car park ticket, or train ticket or whatever. You can also claim mileage at 40p per mile, so keep a record of any business mileage you do (not include travelling to your normal place of work or personal mileage) - has to be in relation to the additional earning, not your normal salary. VAT is not a problem unless you start earning some bringing in some serious money from sales (here it is the sales figure that is important, not salary and from memory it needs to be something like £40k per year). In terms of the cost, I would go with the easiest solution for you to work out - number of teachers is difficult to find out, so if you want it to be cheaper for smaller schools and more expensive for larger ones then charge based on the number of pupils on roll. Then maybe divide it into brackets of 0 - 500 pupils at one cost, 500 - 1000 another etc. Hope that is of some help - going through a similar thing myself, but I have a retired accountant for a Dad!

Not sure about whether it is possible in Excel, but I would go about this in MSAccess - two tables, each containing one of each of the two columns of data, then a query taking the two tables in would combine them with every possible combination, this can then be exported back to Excel. Likely to take just a few minutes.

I am currently studying a level 1 course, and although not too taxing, it has taken some time to adjust to the way of working and get into the swing of it, and there is a lot of reading to be done. I thought about starting with two level 1 courses or a level 1 and a level 2 simultaneously, but glad I opted just for the one - I think it would have been too much to start with (and with a lot of other things on my plate at the mo too). I think it does depend heavily on the individual module and how your own existing knowledge fits in with it. With the module I am doing I have not found the assignments too taxing, although time consuming, but I know a couple of people who have struggled because there is a lot of Java coding in this particular module, and they were completely new to programming of any kind. It could be that there are some level 2 modules that hit the spot with your existing knowledge and are easier for it, whereas some of the level 1 modules may be all new content and therefore a challenge.

Link to Ebriefing One of the other headlines is that 10Mb lease cost is going up, but 100Mb is staying the same and they are investigating a 50Mb option for those that have outgrown 10Mb but cannot stretch to 100Mb.

Happy to help where I can, but it has been a while since I created a front end in Access.

You say you are looking to move it to SQL eventually - will this still be using an Access front end? I used to write a lot of systems in Access but eventually outgrew it and now do everything using VB / ASP for the front end. The Access skills are still invaluable in terms of database structure, but looking back I would have been much better not wasting time getting to grips with the quirks of Access forms and reports. Before you get started it might be worth thinking about learning a scripting language instead for the front end.

As teejay says, you pay per module (approx £400 each), so if you suddenly find things are tight you can easily put it on hold until the next time the course starts. There is no time limit, although some final qualifications phase out, but everything should be transferable to another end point. You can also mix and match, if you fancy throwing in a module on philosophy or French, and aim for one of their "Open Degrees". Many employers have started to recognise the skills needed to complete an OU degree rather than the traditional route - especailly if done while working too. Self discipline, motivation, hard work etc.

Currently doing just this with the Open University for similar reasons - not looking to learn a huge amount, but just get the piece of paper. In theory you can do it in three years, but it would take up a lot of your time. Only on the first module at the moment, a level one course, five assignments in total, two out of the way and taken about five hours each. Because you only need an average of 40% accross all the assignments (but including at least this in the final one) then I should have enough marks from the first two that I do not need to do the next two (although I probably will to get used to the process and way of working). Everything is done online, some tutors even do all their tutorials online too through conferencing software, although this is not very widespread at the moment.

Our whole website / learning platform / MLE works like this - lets us have single sign on for everything synch'ed in with the domain so a password change / new user is no drama at all.

This is possible in IIS, you can assign permissions to a particular folder in IIS as you would a shared folder on the server. You can then either ask for the user to enter a username and password or use the windows login information (neatest). How you do it depends on the version of IIS you are using. EDIT: This is a guide for IIS5.0 and IIS6.0 - step 8 is where you can choose the different authentication types, Integrated Windows Authenticated is the most seemless and secure on an intranet. http://www.hosting.com/support/dedicated/IIS/passwordprotect

I think it the margin between early morning and midday temperatures is probably greater in the summer, you can quite often see the vapour escaping in the air on a really hot day (looks a bit like heat haze). This, I guess, is when filling up early in the morning makes the biggest difference because you still have to pay for the vapour.

The warmer it is the more of the fuel turns to vapour and is lost into the air while being put into the tank, or something like that.

Is it a 2 sided sign that is different on both sides, so it is different depending on which way you drive past?

"how about global thermonuclear war?" comes up trumps