dayzd

I think really you've hit the nail on the head with the costs of support, software and training. Maintaining a mixed network can be a pain, and keeping everything uniform increases your resilience to change - if some wonderful new technology appears, it can be deployed a lot more easily if you've only one platform to manage. Not too sure about editing software - I'd imagine you have a few FCP die-hards in your midst... If you were to get rid of your Macs and related costs, you could easily invest into some Windows editing software. Both versions of Premiere (Pro and Essentials) are available for Windows machines, plus there's software like Sony Vegas available, too. Keynote vs Powerpoint is a bit he said/she said... The templates don't matter. They do the same job -presenting information- and that content should always be more important than the backdrop it sits on. (The best presentations I've seen have no backrounds at all, or at least something plain enough I didn't notice it!) Office 2007 comes with much better templates than the older versions ever did, anyway! Overall, I think you're gonna have a tough time getting rid of them. We have staff here who are desperate to have more Macs available, so I can see prising them away from staff who already have them is going to be close to impossible. (Especially if there's a bias in your establishment towards staff requirements over logistical and financial reasoning.)

I've run PHP scripts on a non-domain webserver that behave properly when pointed to our DC. They did include the dns name, as well as the domain name, so you may need to change the one line with the search parameters a little bit: objCommand.CommandText = "SELECT ADSPath, givenName, sn, homeDirectory FROM 'LDAP://dc=SERVERNAME,dc=DOMAIN,dc=SUFFIX' WHERE objectCategory='user' AND Name='" & strUserName & "*'" This (ldap:// servername.domain.internal) has worked for me from PHP, so I'd say there's a fair chance it'll work for you.

The following is something a colleague of mine left behind when he moved on to bigger and better things a couple of years ago. It's from a small web-app he built to change users' passwords, so you'll need to disassemble it a little bit, but it should get you moving in the right direction (hopefully). Function SelectUser(strUserName) 'This function takes no inputs. 'It returns the LDAP address of the user, their forename & surname & their home path in the form of a string ("LDAP|FNAME SNAME|HOMEPATH"). 'It returns false if the user cancels the function, or "Failed" if the user cannot be found. dim objUser, strLDAP, objConnection, objCommand, objRecordSet if strUserName = "" then strUserName = InputBox("Please enter the username to change the password on (e.g. 1234bloggs)." & vbCrLf & "It does not matter if you user upper or lower case." & vbCrLf & "Be warned that only the first result will be returned!","Enter User Name") end if if strUserName = "" then SelectUser = false: exit function 'Cancel pressed 'These next few lines connect to the AD and set up various query variables. Set objConnection = CreateObject("ADODB.Connection") Set objCommand = CreateObject("ADODB.Command") objConnection.Provider = "ADsDSOObject" objConnection.Open "Active Directory Provider" Set objCommand.ActiveConnection = objConnection objCommand.Properties("Searchscope") = 2 'full AD Search 'Find the user objCommand.CommandText = "SELECT ADSPath, givenName, sn, homeDirectory FROM 'LDAP://dc=DOMAIN,dc=internal' WHERE objectCategory='user' AND Name='" & strUserName & "*'" Set objRecordSet = objCommand.Execute if objRecordSet.BOF and objRecordSet.EOF then 'Checks for no results. SelectUser = "Failed" else SelectUser = objRecordSet.Fields("ADSPath") & "|" & objRecordSet.Fields("givenName") & " " & objRecordSet.Fields("sn") & "|" & objRecordSet.Fields("homeDirectory") end if end function (Mike, if you're reading this, hope you don't mind me passing this on!)

That's the one!

What doesn't work about it? We have the network version of Sibelius (5?) on Windows and part of the installation involved setting up a lisence server on one of our machines so that we don't load up and use more copies than we're lisenced for. We'd previously had difficulties with the standalone version (although I can't remember what) so maybe this is part of your problem? If you want to use a script method, I wrote an app with the Apple Script Tool, that I saved as an app. You can lift the logged in user name there, then just request the users' password (saving lovely pupils connecting to other pupils' accounts). I'll hunt around for how I did it. EDIT: Can't find how I got the logged in users' name (pretty sure Google will have told me, so it'll be easily rediscovered), but I do have a script that will mount shares based on provided information if you need a hand.

In terms of running an Atom machine with the .NET frameworks for Xibo, I'll assume you'll be fine. The atom platform is very capable and we have an Asus EeeBox PC running one of our home-grown displays. It runs Firefox for us fullscreen and displays a web app, which I believe is what Xibo does That TV looks fine. Bang your VGA into it and you're golden. Don't really know about the TV bracket. We've previously bought a smaller one than that but it didn't get used... Seemed really simple though, and I'm pretty sure it came with some (maybe not all) the required bolts etc. Probably worth checking with eBuyer, then making sure you won't annoy your site staff if it arrives without them! As for fitting the pc, both the EeeBox and the Revo are very thin machines (barely more than an inch or so thick) and could be hidden away in many places. We have our EeeBox mounted to the wall in the ceiling void with the bracket it came with. It's a natty little plastic thing designed to fix it to the back of a monitor, but it does the job!

I assume everyone's server cabs are the same mix of red, blue, green and orange LEDs as ours. S'like Blackpool illuminations on those early Winter mornings! I think the majority you can see are blue in our cabs, largely due to RMs recent server offerings, but on a count, green would probably win because of our EMC SAN!

Or if you want to go the DVD route on a Windows machine, you could use DVD Flick

You're not still using IE6 are you? Pretty sure they've dropped / are dropping support for it at YouTube soon. Edit: Won't be IE6 - they're dropping support on March 13th.

Could you not write a batch script or vbs that can be autorun that will startup your portable version of VLC (via a relative path) then determine the appropriate drive letter and pass the string of filenames to it in an absolute form? I've never done this, but it must be possible, surely?

You're right, it's from the Gene Wilder version of Charlie and the Cocolate Factory (the better version, imho), and I believe the song is simply called "Pure Imagination". I'd imagine there's a soundtrack available on Amazon if you were after it. EDIT: [ame=http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pure-Imagination/dp/B001KW6UJM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dmusic&qid=1267453992&sr=8-1]Pure Imagination: Ost: Amazon.co.uk: MP3 Downloads[/ame] [ame=http://www.amazon.co.uk/Willy-Chocolate-Factory-Leslie-Bricusse/dp/B000002PG2/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1267453992&sr=8-4]Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory: Leslie Bricusse, Anthony Newley: Amazon.co.uk: Music[/ame]

That's a cool trick - what TV do you have?! As that'll probably turn out to be about 16 hours of tv, I'd be surprised if you ever found out! I expect it'd chop files into 2/4GB chunks. If it's FAT32 you're referring to, the size limitation of 32GB is an XP restriction (apparently large FAT32 volumes can be slow) as FAT32 can theoretically be used on a 2TB volume! [ File Allocation Table - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ]

I would guess you can if all the servers' directory services (AD, OD) were turned off. This way it isn't trying to merge or replicate anything. AFAIK OS X Server with no services activated is give or take the same as OS X Client.

You're problem might be due to the age of your OS X client install DVD. If it came with a machine that is older than the 9400/9600 NVidia graphics versions, it might be that the disc doesn't recognise the hardware. (You mention 'Snow Leopard 10.5'. If it's a 10.5 disc more than about 18 months old, it might not be 'aware' of the newer chipsets.)

Yeah, a PCI Freeview card shouldn't set you back too much, and should record you a lovely MPEG file. You may need to do some quick changes to the file, depending upon the card you get and the software you want to play it back with -some Freeview tuners/software simply record the transport streams directly from the air, which not all software can play back MPEG-TS (I've had success playing MPEG-TS files with VLC). MPEG StreamClip is capable of converting MPEG-TS to a regular MPEG-PS (program stream) that regular MPEG2-capable software will play. All it does is 're-package' the file (it does not re-encode it), so it only takes as long to convert as it does to write out the video to a new file on disk. Hauppauge and Pinnacle make some decent PC cards. If you're a Mac person, check out the EyeTV range of tuners. Be aware, the datarate for a decent channel (BBC stations, ITV1, C4 etc) can be as much as 2GB/hr. Other channels (Dave and the like) use lower datarates/resolutions.

We have that enabled on our Securus system. I've not managed to fiddle with the settings so that it doesn't return many many false positives, but it's better to get too many possible violations rather than too few!

And (just to throw in my 2 pence - I'm late to this party, as usual) if you stick to the standards and validate as much as possible, you've got a better chance your site will continue to work properly in the future, as browsers update and more devices become web-enabled (like phones and other mobile devices). This saves you going back and reviewing your designs, and also keeps your client(s) happy, as their page won't suddenly 'break' overnight. Other arguments for standards and validation are accessibility and SEO. (In fact, they go hand in hand: High Accessibility Is Effective Search Engine Optimization.) Screen readers for visually impared users all 'read' pages in slightly different ways and by providing a standards-compliant page, you increase the probability that it'll read it the way you intended. SEO benefits from standards and semantic layout, as search engines read your page like a screen reader and will weight your document more accurately if it is easy to understand and laid out logically (main content is obvious, headings and subheadings properly arranged etc). That's just my 2 pence though. If you're working for a client who doesn't specify they want their pages to validate, and you feel you don't have the time/budget to make it do so, it's up to you whether you want to go to those lengths or not. IMHO, if you keep standards in mind as you code, there's often very little to do to make a page validate.

Thanks for your responses, guys. I've been looking at this Training and Certification page and confused myself about what course leads you to which qualification... (I can be surprisingly dumb sometimes!) To gain an ACTC qualification, I have to do both the Support Essentials and Server Essentials exams (101 is a pre-requisite of 201, yes?), and by only doing one or the other I'd get an ACSP, right? Pretty sure I'm going to go with the Server Essentials course, as that's the area I'm lacking knowledge in (I've used Macs at home for years, so I'm pretty familiar with them), just waiting to hear back from our bloke at Jigsaw what he recommends.

Greetings I've been given the opportunity to get some official training on Apple Macs and OS X Server (only a year after we bought them in) and wanted to ask what training other people have undertaken and found useful. I'd really like to complete the Apple Certified Technical Coordinator (ACTC) course, but wonder if the Apple Certified Support Professional (ACSP) course would be enough to push my skills forward. I'm leaning towards the former, as I've been managing OS X Server and 15 clients for about a year and have picked up quite a lot of the basics already. Are there any other courses you know of that I should consider? What are your thoughts on the ACSP and ACTC qualifications? Any input would be appreciated; as these courses are quite costly compared to our training budget, I wanna make sure I make the right choice!

Just had another quick look, and FF may not like the fact the image tag isn't closed with a slash like this: buttons/prospectus.jpg This is something you should be doing when using an XHTML doctype. Not sure that it's causing your problem (FF would tell you if it was), but it's good practise As for the centring business, I normally make the first element on my page a container div that has a set width and is centred. I then put everything else within it. I haven't looked at how you're centring your divs, but I commonly use: div#container { width:750px; margin:0 auto; } That sets the width of your container absolutely (you may want to add an overflow declaration, depending on how you want it to behave if it ever contains something wider than that) and the margin statement sets the top and bottom margin to 0px, and the left and right to 'auto' effectively splitting the difference and centring the element on the page. Once that is done, all elements within the container div will be in the middle of the page. From there, you can either use absolute or relative positioning to place your elements, or define widths and use float declarations to control your layout - nothing will go outside of the container.

Pretty sure the link is ok. I think the problem is due to the location of the menu div in the source. It's above the "main" div which I imagine is the dynamic part of the template. As it is above, it is rendered first and positioned, then the main div is rendered later, at full width, effectively on top of the menu div. Firefox is normally pretty good at overcoming odd placements like this (I've not seen a situation before where IE works and FF doesn't) but this is obviously not one of those occasions. Also, the source is pretty scrappy - there's HTML doctype declarations all over it from your SSIs, plus every include seems to have a 'centering' div, complicating the page. But then again, I only took a quick look at it... Pretty sure it's a rendering issue, though. Did you build each part separately then plug them together as indcludes? My approach has always been to create a complete page first, then cut it up into header/menu/footer includes - that way you know you're compiled parts will play nice together. Give me a shout if you want a hand with anything else.

@mattstevenson2005 You can add 'com.MCX.Bluetooth.plist' and 'com.apple.mcxMenuExtras' by importing the preferences found in /System/Library/CoreServices/ManagedClient.app (import the app to WGM like a regular plist). You'll get a load of other manifests installed too, which you may or may not find useful. Think that's where I got them from, anyway! Maybe Google it a bit first to check it's what you want! ;-)

Nope. And as the post above suggests, it's not going to improve. We're either going to put in a logging proxy in the chain between SM and the Macs (but this will lose us the ability to assign different access to different users, as SM will only see one user), or deploy Firefox. I suspect Firefox will be easier. As it's free and should allow us to maintain customisable access, it makes the most sense.

The best/easiest way I've found to set most preferences is to have a test account set up, make all the changes you need (dock size/items, application preferences, Finder views etc), then import the plist preference files into Workgroup Manager. With that as your starting block it's far easier to tweak some of the more minor bits -although I still ended up doing a lot of Googling (for example, setting default filetypes for Office Mac is a different key name for each app! ). There's a tickbox in WGM on the 'Dock Items' part of the user account section for merging controlled settings with the user's Dock. Untick it, and the dock will only include what you prescribe in WGM (assuming it's currently ticked - I think it is by default). Settings for this hide in com.apple.sidebarlists.plist but you may also want to change some of the Finder preferences regarding what to show in the sidebar, using com.apple.finder.plist. I can probably dig out examples for the sidebar if you like -we've locked it down to virtually nothing except the pupils' Home directory and their Desktops (No saved searches, no network [although it's still obtainable via a certain route I've not been able to block]).

Yeah. They at least need permission to 'list folder contents' from the root share to their own home folders.