theeldergeek

It is worrying that some of you are supposedly responsible adults working with impressionable young people, and you have attitudes like that. I don't actually care if you kill yourself riding a bike like a maniac, but I do care if you kill or injure an otherwise innocent road user, in the EXACT same way I have sentiments about car drivers doing the same. Your answer about "getting a grip" is an all too an easy answer to give. Is it because you don't actually have anything to bring to the discussion that is of any value? The roads are not playgrounds for your personal lunacy.

Very mature; pitifully arrogant off the road too. For the record, I have nothing against bikers per se, in fact quite the opposite. I gave up riding a motor bike due to the carelessness of car drivers. Your 'style' of riding is commonplace, but I detest the arrogance of you thinking you can do what you want just because you can. I think you should grow up and be a little bit more responsible to not only other road users, but yourself. Other road users might not expect you to be overtaking on a zebra crossing, or the wrong side of a 'keep left' sign when they do something they shouldn't. A large powerful motorbike could easily kill someone in a small car, as could a motorcycle rider crashing through a windscreen. Of course, I suppose you've "never had an accident", which you will use as an attempt to somehow justify matters. Still, as you clearly aren't going to answer the question I posed, I can only surmise you know you are in the wrong, but being as you display an air of arrogance about the whole thing, it's hardly surprising your response is an attempt at mockery. It's the easiest option for you.

Such a reply has done nothing for your already ruined credibility, so, I'll ask again, what do you think gives you the right to 'overtake' where other road users are not permitted to do so?

Which includes overtaking on a zebra crossing or the wrong side of bollards? Irresponsible riding at best, downright reckless abuse of two wheels in any other case. Can I ask what you think gives you the right to 'overtake' where other road users are not permitted to do so? Clue: because you can fit through the gap is not the right answer.

Cost is a factor too, I should have mentioned it. I want free, non-cloud where possible, secure. No one can take me down the VPN route?

I currently have a photo library in excess of 85Gb, online services aren't practical for me. FlickR has upload limits, unless I pay. Not sure about the other one, presume there are also some limitations. No, I would prefer to share a folder on my machine, that way I have all the files locally and don't have to worry about uploading them.

This is a personal matter, not related to work at all. I am currently running an FTP server so that my Dad in Cyprus can log in and 'collect' photos and what have you that we put in the FTP folder on my machine. We found this to be better than email as some of the pictures are quite large in size, particularly recent wedding shots we posted for him and I don't have to resize files to get them under quotas. However, this morning I noticed someone had tried to log into the FTP server - I checked the logs, and they made 'hundreds' of attempts with different usernames and passwords, none of which worked as there is only one account, and that is my Dad's, and his password is of a secure combination anyway. Firstly, I'm wondering how they found the FTP server in the first place, but secondly, and more importantly, is this the best and most secure way for me to get large files to my Dad? I would prefer to not have to upload them to the 'cloud' for him to retrieve them, as that then puts some onus on me to upload them - our present system he can just log in and get them at his leisure. Is there a more secure yet just as direct way to share a folder with him so he can get to my 'stuff', and not too complicated for me to set up or him to understand? Someone mentioned a VPN to me, but I have no idea as to how I could set that up. Or do I need not worry about this drive-by attack? The fact that they couldn't get in hasn't left me entirely happy though. Would appreciate some thoughts.

Downloaded SeaTools for Seagate drives and that confirmed the drive was indeed faulty. Many thanks.

Yeah, why not? It works perfectly well enough for what I want, i.e. work.

Just built myself a new work PC, which is all fine and dandy - nice high spec etc, but I have this VERY irritating problem. The hard drive sounds like it is constantly being accessed. The HDD light only flicks on and off occasionally during idle, but the hard drive sounds like it's being defragged!! I have turned off indexing, I have unchecked "optimise drive" in TweakUI, I have uninstalled any software that I thought could be accessing the drive (AV for example) but the problem remained. I am at my wits end! It's one of those things that once you notice it, it does your head in! Only one other significant thing - a couple of times, the PC has stopped at POST, and a message, "a problem has been detected with your hard drive, press enter to continue" has flashed on the screen. I press enter, and WinXP loads fine. I ran CHKDSK /R and no problems were reported. I have disabled SMART in the BIOS, and the error message no longer appears, but the drive still has this 'access' noise all the time. Any ideas? A point to note is that it doesn't do it when sitting at the login screen, only when XP loads, and then for all users. Could I have a dodgy drive that is doing what it needs to, but is likely to be a candidate for early life failure?

Telephones, over varying distances, but nothing significant.

Any recommendations for stand-alone POE injectors? Been looking at Zyxel but wonder if anyone has anything else to throw in the pot? Reliability is very important. TIA

Apologies, should have mentioned this is only happening on a stand-alone machine, no domain, roaming profiles etc involved. Will try logging in as another user though as hadn't thought local profile could be corrupt.

oooh, please email me the MP3/WAV of that!

Weird one. XP SP3, shortcuts created for folders are not working, regardless of where the shortcut is, i.e. desktop or in the folder where the target folder is. Other shortcuts to files or programs work fine. I have tried the various methods of creating a shortcut, right click > drag > create shortcut, the shortcut wizard etc. The shortcut icon is there, but when double clicked, nothing happens - that is, it works the very first time after the OS has started, but then stops working. It then works again if the OS is restarted. I have tried the Doug Knox registry fix for .lnk issues, but that hasn't cured the problem. Any ideas?

Then he'll plead not guilty, be found as such and have no case to answer. Won't he?

Not sure what i mean, as it happens. Will try the methods given above and see which result is the one i want! Where do I go to collect my numpty award... over there is it....

How do I look at the GPO's set up on the server? Dumb question of the week...

Thanks folks - both replies thus far are more or less in line with how I did it at my previous school (kids used external drives, then bought said drive to me to back up on external RAID drive that I had). We used to have some external firewire drives which the kids would be issued with to do their work on, then when finished, they'd return the drives and I would copy the files onto an external RAID I had, plus one other copy onto my Mac Pro office machine. The initial copy took a while as I had the captured footage to back up, but subsequent back ups took seconds as it was only the project files that had changed. The drives were numbered, so the kids just remembered which drive they had been issued with, and could ask for the same drive next time. If the drive had been used and/or their files removed/deleted/overwritten, then I just simply copied what I had on my RAID or Mac Pro back onto the drive for them. It was a system that worked well - never had one kid lose their work, and if they made a massive cock up, I always had a previous version to fall back on. We'll see how things progress here. I've sort of proposed my recommendation, just have to see what is going to be adopted.

We are soon to be investing in new hardware for video editing - somewhat regretfully, this will be an iMac and Final Cut Pro. Fortunately, it is but one machine Would have preferred a high end PC and Premiere CS, but it's not to be... However, editing footage across a LAN is not a good idea due to dropped frames, network bandwidth etc, so I was wondering how others coped with the demands of such a system and the large files they produce? We had a good system going at my previous school, but not sure that we are going to implement it here due to department structure and availability of technicians.

Can this be used at home? I have 100's of Word/Excel files which I'd love to 'index' in some way. I have Office 2010, what else do I need?

CS New Media - he's an Edugeeker too.

Still recovering from a period of poor health, I asked 'Witch' if she could review my CV for me, as it had spread to 3 pages long and was a bit of a waffle. The help that she gave me was even more welcome, because my ill health has left me feeling very fatigued all the time and generally very run down. I really have no energy or effort to do anything, nor could I get in the mood for a CV re-write! 'Witch' not only critiqued my CV, but went about re-writing it for me to help me even further, the result being I now have a 2 page, neat, nicely flowing CV which I am very pleased with. I am extremely grateful for not only her help, but the kindness she showed me by helping me out more than she needed to. So, to 'Witch' - thank you so much for helping me. A simple thank you doesn't seem enough, but you told me it is, so there you have it

BBC News - Tech Know: PC building race creates new record Blimey! And $10,000 better off too!

This was 'ordinary' Flu.