srochford

Flowers, please! I don't think there's enough colourful stuff in your posts :-)

BASIC used to be a nasty language - everything was GOTO statements and line numbers. It's not really been like that for a long time. As you've made a start with VB.Net then I'd stick with that - make sure you're using procedures and subroutines. Find out about objects, properties and methods and you'll be making a good start. Pick a small project that you can understand (eg "delete all .log files from the windows directory which are older than 1 month") and write it. Doesn't matter that it may never be used - it's just something to get you going. Have fun but be warned - it can be addictive :-)

from http://www.usb.org/wusb/docs/wirelessUSB.pdf - dated Feb 2004; can't find out where wireless USB is at the moment but it would certainly possible to do HDTV wirelessly (after all, that's it's transmitted wirelessly to your home!)

Is this because banks say "you're not borrowing any money so we have no info about how you would repay money if we lent it to you so we don't want to take the risk" This, of course, contrasts with the "you borrow money from us every month and pay it back every month. This means we make no money from you in interest so we don't want to do business with you" Keep your money under the mattress - you know it makes sense :-) (Actually, I think this is why bankers get such big bonuses. It's not because they're greedy *&^%S, it's because they're taking it all home to keep safely under their mattresses so that when the revolution comes we can have it all back ...)

Actually, that's just the railway company taking care of its customers in ever better ways. No-one in their right mind ever wants to go to Rochdale and Blackpool in winter will be much nicer :-) On a serious note, @tech_guy - have you tried talking to a real person at your nearest station? Sometimes the online system just seems to get stuck and the person might be able to get a better route. I'd guess it's only 100 miles (less?) and it just seems weird that you can't get a better train journey (particularly as you're going to London!)

I know it really shouldn't bother me but I just find it irritating when people make up fairy stories like this. I'm sure there are many things the EU gets wrong but it's simply not true to say that they control the shape of bananas, cucumbers carrots or anything else. All they do is specify that if you're selling a particular grade of vegetable or fruit then it should meet a particular spec - just like if you buy network cable labelled "Cat 5" you know something about what sort of wire you're buying. It may seem pointless but when you're going to machine process carrots and cucumbers etc then you need to have particular shapes - you can't get them through the machines otherwise. If you're Mr Birds Eye or whatever then you want some kind of standard governing the stuff you buy and you want the same standard where ever you buy your stuff.

I'm probably being really stupid, but why would you do this rather than just run Chrome??

You can run across the M6 with traffic flowing but I wouldn't recommend it :-) it's one of the many things which you can do on a small network but which will bring a bigger one grinding to a miserable halt - believe me, I've seen it :-( It's possible that MS have completely rewritten the PST code (the problem was something to with the way Outlook wrote to PST files so it's possible to fix it but the problem's been around a long time so I would have thought they would have fixed it before now if it was trivial) I'll have to stick Outlook 2010 on a machine with redirected my docs and see what it does - I do hope they've got clever code which recognises "network my docs" and puts the PST somewhere local.

You can't do it with a startup script (because the user can't log on until that's finished) but you could do it with a logon script. Googling for a complete idea like this can be tricky - split it up into the bits you want "find computer name in vbscript" "log off user vbscript" and you'll probably find the stuff you need. In the code below, I get the username and computername - they're converted to upper case because it then makes checking easier. all this will do is stop user "STEVE" from logging on to computer "COMPUTER02" - you probably want something more sophisticated. For example, @browolf has posted a batch file to deal with computers where the first 4 letters are "DT-T" - you can do something like: if left(sComputer,4)="DT-T" then or you might have: if left(sComputer,5)="MA215" or left(sComputer,2)="IT" then to pick particular groups of users. Hint - while you're debugging, don't log the user off - it will drive you mad :-) Instead, comment out the "logoff" line and put msgbox "logging off" You'll then just get a message if you would be logged off. set oNet=createobject("wscript.network") sComputer=ucase(oNet.computername) sUser=ucase(oNet.username) if sUser="STEVE" then if sComputer="COMPUTER02" then logoff end if end if sub Logoff Set oWMI = GetObject("winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate,(Shutdown)}!\\.\root\cimv2") For Each obj in oWMI.ExecQuery("Select * from Win32_OperatingSystem") Set oOS = obj Exit For Next Const EWX_FORCE = 4 Const EWX_LOGOFF = 0 oOS.Win32shutdown EWX_FORCE +EWX_LOGOFF end sub

The article talks about the emulation perhaps causing a 10% decrease in writing speed. I assume that's compared to non-emulated on the same drive. If so, I wonder how much "real" difference it will make? Generally, the increased data density means you can retrieve the data more quickly so compared to an older drive you could find that there's no real change in speed. I've no doubt we'll continue to get bigger drives for a while yet and people will fill them. I think the first hard drive I used (on an IBM XT) was 5MB and that was massive compared to 360k floppies! We're now nearly a million times that size and on it goes :-)

Not sure if ntbackup will let you run 2 instances - try it and see (just back up 2 small folders!) If it doesn't, the simplest way of doing it would be to have a batch file with ntbackup ntbackup With this, the first backup will run and finish at (say) midnight and then the second backup will start immediately afterwards

So basically, what you're saying is that the IT system in your school is so rubbish that users should never, ever rely on it and that all times you should just rely on paper??? I'd guess that's not really what you mean but it's certainly the way it comes across! Of course a teacher (and anyone else) needs to be prepared for disaster but they shouldn't have to expect it - they ought to expect to be able to go into a classroom and use the equipment and that expectation should be met on the vast majority of occasions (and an SLA ought to specify things like how quickly problems are going to be fixed and how often problems might occur which can't be fixed very quickly)

Some all in one makers use a standard motherboard inside the case - this means that if the PC bit fails then it's relatively easy to replace the MB. You could also upgrade it at some point in the future without throwing away the monitor (which will last longer then the computer bit) Are you looking at all-in-ones for space saving or "niceness"? If it's the former then, as has been said, several companies do a unit which can be fixed on the back of the monitor but watch out for ones which have a separate power brick. The Dells I looked at a while back had a nice compact unit on the monitor (so you got good looking, space saving) but the power brick really was a brick!!

Actually, they have never made laws concerning whether or not you can eat bendy bananas or carrots - as far as I know, the only rules in that kind of area specify things like "if you want to call your carrots class 1 then they have to meet this spec" but nothing much more than that. It might not be easy to make a computer that can be completely powered off and still be remotely managed (WoL, vPro etc) but it can't be impossible. Some kind of onboard battery is the obvious idea - I'd guess you could have a small rechargeable. It wouldn't have to do much - keep the LAN circuit just listening for particular data; if it gets it, then you trigger some kind of relay circuit to turn on the main power. There are other things to sort out - how do you make the monitor go to zero power use when the PC is switched off. I'd guess you could design it so that it completely powers off if there's no data but then how does it power back on when the computer restarts? Does it need to - would it be too hard to educate people to push the power button on the monitor as well as on the PC? There's the potential for saving a fair bit of money like this so it makes sense to at least try and do it.

Not sure that we need to get too worried about it - freedom of movement within a country is a "human right" but it's reasonable to deprive a citizen of that right when (eg) they break the law and go to jail. Article 17 says "Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others." This doesn't mean everyone WILL own a property, just that no-one should stop people from owning property. The same sort of thing could be true for internet access; a government should not stop people from getting it (as happens in some parts of the world now) - it doesn't mean it has to be provided, it certainly doesn't mean it has to be free of charge.

I don't think you can do this; the system has to be able to write to the temp location and it makes sense for transient documents to be opened like this (eg you're going to read something and then discard it) I think it's an education issue - whenever you click on a document, choose the option to "save", make sure you save it in your home directory (or whatever you want as a save location) and then open it from there.

Back in the olden days, I used to do just that with a paper encyclopedia. It's so much easier to do it on the internet (and you don't end up getting into trouble because you've dumped a stack of encyclopedias on the living room floor!) The word to describe it is serendipity - see how long you can spend researching that :-)

I think the "pigeon holing" thing is nothing to do with public/private - it's to do with the scale of the organisation. If you work in a school there's probably only 1-3 people in IT so you have to do everything. Work in a large public sector organisation and you get much greater specialisation because it's much more efficient. The way money is spent is interesting; I think it also depends on the scale of the organisation but also the quality of management. As an example, I know some small companies keep PCs until they fall to pieces; bigger companies tend to have a pretty rigid replacement cycle and nothing is older than (say) 4 years. Is this wasting money? Possibly but typically, you keep the old machines going by tinkering with them - upgrading RAM, replacing hard discs etc. If you've only got a dozen machines this is no big deal - it's just one of the incidental jobs you do. If you've got thousands of machines then this kind of tinkering probably means you have to employ people to do it - completely wiping out the hundred pounds you might save by keeping a PC for 5-6 years. I think similar spending patterns will be present in other areas - if you depend on the IT to make your business work then you buy stuff which you know is rock solid, even if it might cost more. Depending on where you are, you also might get better long term planning in the private sector (but I'm not sure that's always true) and that helps because you can engage in big projects knowing that the money's going to be there each year.

If he breaks the law, he goes to court and is dealt with for that offence. We don't know what he's alleged to have done but he should be tried on the basis of the evidence and not on the basis of what he did 17 years ago (appallingly bad though that was) I despise the lynch mob mentality that's being aroused about this. I've no intention of defending Venables but I want to defend our legal system which more or less works and will not be improved by people saying "person X did a bad thing a long time ago so therefore he's guilty of everything else alleged against him and we must never, ever move on from the past" If he has committed another offence against a child then perhaps we have to think again about the anonymity but for pretty much any other offence I think he should be treated in the same way as any other person committing an offence.

The school can say no to saving the money if it doesn't give a system that's as effective as the one they have now. Just because it's cheap doesn't make it better (see the other thread comparing electronics over the years!) and it could be far, far worse. It's really important that we should be aiming for "best value" which is not necessarily "lowest cost" I think an example of "worse" would be going for mono instead of a mix of mono and colour - people do need to use colour printing but you can encourage them to use it sparingly; a good charging system helps them to see the relative costs (and they need regular feedback so they can easily find what they've spent on a weekly basis, for example) The idea of making money may also not go down well - it obviously depends on what's happening to the money but if departments see that they're now paying more for printing, the printers are less accessible and on top of that the school is making a profit and keeping it then you will get huge resistance. It may not be relevant, but if you want some info on what other places charge there was a recent discussion on the JISC printing services mailing list about printing charges (archives are at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=PRINTING-SERVICES) I've attached a summary of what different places charge - I've removed the institution names because I don't know if it ought to be confidential (some places ought to be embarrassed at their charges!) university printing charges.xls

Those cost savings are typically passed on to consumers, though. Not sure how much the NES cost when it was launched compared to an XBox but I have a feeling that it was much more expensive (allowing for inflation in the past 20 odd years) The savings are definitely there in most areas of electronics - look at the price of a TV today compared to 25 years ago - and these are partly because we're using cheaper components etc and we're not going for quality. You only have to look at just about any advertising - much of it stresses the low price; little of it stresses the high quality and matching high price!

I feel your pain - I've been in exactly this situation, even got agreement from management that we would start phasing out small printers. Of course, when it came to the crunch, no senior manager could give up their own printer and the finance department had more printers than people!!! I don't know your boss but you probably do know if he genuinely wants this but thinks SMT will just reject it. If he thinks it's a good idea but is just tired of smashing his head against a brick wall then definitely make the proposal to SMT. I'd actually start doing serious calculations about what printers you could have and where you would put them and then work out how much you could save. Talk to the unions if necessary and get them on side. It won't be easy - printers are important and need to work. If each person has their own printer then they have a degree of confidence that they can rely on it; you need to make sure that they will still be able to rely on printing. Some kind of pull printing system (where you print to a server and the printout appears on any printer where you login or swipe our card) is essential - that way you can say "even if the printer in location x is out of order you can go to any other printer. I know you say you can save 10s of thousands by doing this and that has to be worthwhile. Unless you're closer to hundreds of thousands, however, it won't save many jobs but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it - this really is the kind of efficiency saving we should grab with both hands.

gpresult will tell you the group policies which are applied, including scripts (run with /v to get verbose results) use msconfig to see if something is running at startup Does the printer appear for all users or just one? If you delete it, does it come back at next logon? What if you logon as a local user? (If the printer's there even then it has to be something on the machine - startup program etc) Could anyone have configured group policy preferences? They are "the future" for printer mappings etc but not sure how many people use them yet.

Have a look at Viglen's mini-PC - Viglen - Product Range - XUBUMPCL It's smaller than a Mac mini but also less powerful so it may not do what you want. It's a nice box for when you do want something that can fit on the back of a monitor or in other small places.

because the pupil is just being stupid whereas that would probably open you to disciplinary action?