martyarf

I think you're vastly underestimating the impact that media has on people by framing it as a choice that we can all opt out of if we so choose. The public relations industry, before the word became negatively associated with the Nazi media system, was happy to call its work propaganda - there is a book by Bernais, one of the founders of the PR industry of that very title. We are vastly more susceptible to media than we care to admit or may even recognise. Given that my critique, as I'm now saying for the third time, is of the entire media establishment, I think you're not quite grasping that consumer activism isn't really the answer. Either that, or you're assuming that I'm only concerned about what information I personally receive, which is neither the point I'm making nor true. I'm concerned about my friends and family, my children and society as a whole.

That's not really the point. The point is that mass media cannot exist without the consent of power structures, and to remain profitable and viable they must fall in line with that hierarchy's expectations. To say that "no one forces you to" is naive, given that it is a critique of the entire media industry and not some niche section of it which you can avoid. It would be like trying to avoid advertising. It is too pervasive to simply opt-out, and it cannot be solved by consumer activism. Simply because people enjoy reading gossip newspapers doesn't imply that they deserve it. I don't think there has been a grassroots movement which has fostered the culture of invading privacy and spreading salacious details at any opportunity. To quote the obvious source of my criticisms, consent is manufactured. No man is an island, and our wants and desires societally do not spring up apropos of nothing. They are nurtured by our experiences, over which the media has vast and ever-increasing control.

Yesterday I put my hand into a projector while it was still plugged in and grabbed a big hunk of metal. You ever have those moments when you think "Why have I survived this long? Surely I should have been weeded out by nature by now".

I think rather the opposite; a society gets the press that the political and economic elite decide it should have.

Hi bertster, We've got a similar problem, was fixed for about 20 hours after replacing the lamp but now its happening again. I only just started working here and was told that it was out of warranty, but looking on Smart's website I still have 6 months! I know they'd told us before that it was definitely heat related and can only be fixed with a whole new arm, at which point you may as well buy a whole new rig... So now that I know it is in warranty I'll be able to really find out what the cause is and report back.

Thankfully they are running SR6. I've also noticed that a few newer machines that were installed separately in classrooms are running SP3. If you have any advice on slipstreaming SP3 that would be great, I'm resolved at this point to rebuilding everything, it's just too much of a risk to do anything else. Management really want me to wait till the end of term, which will at least take the pressure off. I used nLite a long time ago (I think to slipstream SP2 for my own use), how does it intersect with CC3? I haven't touched any of the building tools. The guys up top are more interested in OakNetMan, thanks for the offer! I've sent you a PM with my whereabouts, didn't want to say it publicly in case of prying eyes. This isn't in the right section but just a quickie: the setup here is Cisco 877 non-wireless router -> hub? (branded Excel but I haven't looked for a model number) -> Zyzel switch -> workstations and server. If I want to add a wireless AP to this that would have access to the server shares, would it be as simple as hooking it up to the switch and turning off its DHCP? Not something I've done before, and there's no kit around that I can test it with, and its not like anyone knows how this thing is set up lol. I dare not touch the rats nest of cables.

This morning I stood in a bathtub and emptied out three waste bottles by hand into a black bin liner. I suggest plugging every orifice you can. I just sneezed gray.

Thanks for the tip Kili, will bear that in mind. Waiting to hear back from management how they want to deal with the fact that we are teetering on the brink of disaster... One odd thing I've noticed is that after a workstation logs on, explorer.exe will hog the processor for about 20 seconds. It's not a huge deal but it makes the log on process about twice as long as it should be. I don't really have time right now to troubleshoot it (and I have been bugging RM non-stop about much larger problems), just wondered if anyone had experienced anything like that before. Seems to happen on all workstations with all levels of user.

And I'm back! I have learned one thing so far - never assume anything. Turns out that there have been no security updates applied to either the server or workstation since installation - in 2007. I'm kind of terrified. There are at least 60 hotfixes I need to apply, and figuring out how they intersect with SP3 is going to be... fun. Also, backups were not working. This is going to be "exciting".

Ah, you run WPKG alongside? That's something I'd be very interested in. I'm a little hesitant about really taking the reigns and making changes because of how bog standard everything has been left, and its like an archealogical site, who knows where I might tread on something and bring the whole cave down. Been doing some reading around about upgrading to XP SP3 (currently SP2, of course...). There seem to be a couple of approaches to this: standard download from RM and distribute as a package as normal or slipstream (with something like nLite) into the build and rebuild all the workstations. Given how long I saw a simple Flash install take today, I think I might be tempted to go down the latter route, which will set us in good stead for the future. Okay it's Friday night, I got to stop thinking about computers... Thanks everyone for your help, I'll be bugging you come Monday

Yeah, I use Foxit at home but assumed that it was only free for personal use. I'll look into that because it is so much quicker at loading.

Thanks Boredguy, those links were perfect. Cut my teeth and pushed a trial update on one of the computers along with flash, worked fine, although I gather I now need to update Reader too (they're back on 6... haha). RM set me up with a new login and password for support, found out the books, everything is coming together. To give you an idea of what kind of job this is, today I found enough pieces of computers to make one for myself (apparently the last IT technician didn't have one...???), went rooting through filing cabinets to find a wireless password, and the "office" I have for myself is a kitchen. Weirdest job ever.

Wow, thanks for the help (and offers of it). Today I will investigate the manuals - already came across the knowledge base, and yesterday I found out that we do have support (of course, I found this by stumbling across the IT budgets spreadsheet!). I think I might have actually seen the RM manuals in my travels. Sounds like they will be a great help. Looks like my first big job will be a rollout of IE7, will investigate it and prepare today and barring any issues deploy after school is out tonight. At least that gives me the weekend if I mess it up royally. The school is in Bournemouth. Like I said in the OP, we have a whole seperate network from RM which was maintained by a company that has now gone bust, it serves the admin side of things (and yet calendar and email are still served by RM...). Has a whole separate internet connection, server, backup routine. Nobody seems to know anything about that. This job makes me feel like Columbo.

Hi all, have been browsing the site today with great interest. A friend of mine is becoming headmaster at a small school for 3-11 year olds, and they were left in the lurch with the old IT technician/manager taking retirement a couple of months ago without much warning. They haven't had time to do a proper search and so I was asked to come and step in for 3-6 months. I've got a degree in Soft. Eng. and so don't worry, I'm not totally out of my depth, but this is a strange situation... First, the school has about 40 RM CC3 workstations (and a separate admin network that they pay support for with a different local company - why that is not the ICT technician's job no one seems to know). I have never used RM products before, but over the last two days have been frantically trying to get up to speed (and it doesn't help that I still don't have access to a systemadmin account, but that will be mine soon). The only person who knows a little something about the RM system is a full time teacher, and so finding time with him is difficult and he is not a technical person. There are problems all over the place and some of them I'll be able to tackle, and some I won't. I need to rollout a new Flash install (which I'll be able to tackle thanks to some posts I found here). They're still running IE6 (!!!) on essentially all workstations. The main ICT Suite gets incredibly hot during the day, and the scheduled shutdown and reboot doesn't always work. These are just a couple of issues that people have raised to me and that I will be able to fix once I get to grips with how CC3 handles network upgrades and scheduled tasks. Then there are problems that I don't know where to start with. The network is incredibly slow at times, which given the size of the network should not be happening at all (and at this point I can see two separate problems with internet speed and local network speed, which my gut tells me aren't correlated). I've seen a logon for a student take nearly 10 minutes, the machines are "ecoquiets" and are apparently 3 years old. Anyway, I just wanted to give you all a feel for the situation - messed up. What I'd like to ask to the knowledgeable people here is - when you were first introduced to CC3, was there anything - resources etc. - you found particularly useful? Is there anything that I'm going to blunder right into and ruin? Any tips for the immediate fixes (IE6 and network speed especially)? Am I going to spend most of my time on the phone to RM, or will there be things I can diagnose and resolve myself? Given how things seem to be out of date, is there any "must dos" that you can think of? My plan of attack is to spend the next few months while they find a permanent replacement making his/her entry a heck of a lot easier. Comprehensive stock check, licenses all recorded, a ticket management system (just for my own sanity), a proper network map, something like Spiceworks to keep track of network usage to make recommendations for the future, and the construction of a roadmap for the future (the new headmaster is very keen on looking 3-5 years in the future and how they can use the current mess of a situation as a springboard to a new start) - including the possible integration of the admin side and the current "RM" side into one network. Any recommendations about any of this would be much appreciated.