foofighterjim

Hi All Head of ICT has been asking me about using Packet Tracer to help deliver their GCSE curriculum (talk about using a sledgehammer to crack a nut). I have initially said no as I recall that you need to sign up to Netacad to download it and then you also need to use these credentials to sign into the software for it to work. I believe installing the software and then using these credentials on all of the computers would be in violation of the Netacad T&Cs, at least that is my interpretation of it. It is one of those scenarios where the head of ICT has simply said "this is how other schools are doing it" my standard reply "that doesn't mean its right or legal". I don't seem to be able to find any contact details for Netacad anywhere on their site so I am unable to ask them directly. Netacad seem to have an educators section where you can sign up to be a Cisco Academy but having read this; it would also mean we would have to allow other Netacad users to enrol with us. Obviously this is not what we want to do, as we aren't providing any Cisco courses or even teaching their curriculum. I have suggested using role play to help teach this particular aspect but apparently this doesn't cut it when trying to push the higher ability students. So to summarise is anyone else using Packet Tracer on their network and how did you achieve it? As always any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks both. @Mako I'll be giving this a try on my test account later, thanks a lot for the link!

Hi All, really hoping someone can help me on this one as I am stuck. The Headteacher here has decided that they want to standardise all staff email signatures. From what has been discussed they want the signature to look something like: School Name School Address Telephone Number School Website URL School Twitter Handle I am currently reading From my reading given that signatures are treated as personal objects the only way to achieve this in O365 as standard is to add the information as a disclaimer. The issue being that users don't see the disclaimer when composing their email and would therefore be unable to add their own book title to the I am currently reading section, I also believe the disclaimer wouldn't be added if the message is sent through the mobile apps (can't remember where I read that though). Unfortunately after describing that the information will be added to the bottom of the email rather than each message like a standard signature and we would be unable to add the I am currently reading part they said no to this option. I have suggested creating a template of the signature and sending it to all staff with instructions on how to add it in OWA but this could prove difficult to maintain in the long run. Is there a way of doing this via Powershell and referencing a csv? Obviously there would be nothing stopping users from turning the signature off and again maintaining the information in he long run could be difficult. I believe there are 3rd party add ins that would do this but I am officially in unknown territory at that point, anyone else using these?

The something big is most likely their announcement that it is coming to the PS4 next month (cross play??).

Any ideas if it is just free to download and play for a limited time (like the free play weekends) or if it is more like limited time to grab the game (like games with gold)? It reads like the former to me.

I'm sure you can tell that given the nature of the questions I have been asking; this is beyond my current mental capacity (it has been a long summer / autumn for me). At least though you kind people have broken it down enough even for me to understand the situation, thanks!

I was looking at the download page yesterday and thought from the wording that I would need the OpenJDK version. I downloaded the OpenJDK and I have not a clue what to do with it as it is just a zip file with no installer. Looks like we will be saying no to anything Java from now on.

Thanks @Arthur the 2nd article was really helpful for me. So Java SE 11 for now any try to move away from it anyway! Funnily enough it wasn't software pre se that has brought this topic up for us, it was a Science teacher trying to use resources from phet.colorado.edu

Sorry for dragging this up again but I have read the release note a few times and my brain just seems to be unable to process what it actually means. Here is what I think this means for us please correct me where I am wrong: Java 8 will no longer be patched after this coming January unless you have a commercial licence which has to be paid for? Java 9 was the start of their increased release schedule as pointed out by @GiggleKitteh and support has already ended. Java 10 is similar to 9 as that reached “End of Public Updates" in September. Java 11 doesn't appear to have a EOL date on the roadmap, instead it links to a blog which is a clear as mud to me (https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/oracle-jdk-releases-for-java-11-and-later). So there is no point installing Java 9 or 10 as they are already EOL. Java 8 will be EOL in Jan not so much point in installing that but when searching for JRE I only get given to option for version 8 installers from the Java site. Am I missing something here? I can see Java SE 11 on the Oracle site, is SE the new JRE? Or should we just be saying no to anything requiring Java as we aren't going to pay for a commercial licence, does this even apply to JRE? Is it just people developing in Java that even need to be concerned by this? My head hurts

Not much help but thank you for bringing this up, I was literally about to start working on GeoGebra but had half an eye on getting the maths staff to use the web version. This may be the line I now push to them if the newer versions aren't deploying properly.

I found this particularly useful: https://www.adobe.com/devnet-docs/acrobatetk/tools/AdminGuide/pdfviewer.html I ended up using the sample association file for our version provided in solution 2 and merged it into our DefaultAppAssociations file via GPO.

Just a final update about this one and what we have done and plan to do if anyone else cares to know. The increased wait time of 120 from the default of 30 does seem to have resolved the issue despite my initial issues. As others have mentioned though with hybrid shutdown the software GPOs do not process after a shutdown only after a restart. As we and our staff are quite enjoying the benefits of decreased boot times that hybrid shutdown provides we have decided to leave this in place for now. We have the knowledge that a restart will install the software so we plan to deploy the software GPO and either schedule restarts or deploy a separate GPO to turn off hybrid shutdown via the reg key and then set it back once the deployment is complete. I have considered doing this but haven't had time to look at it properly or test it yet: https://www.experts-exchange.com/articles/25279/Overcoming-software-deployment-pitfalls-on-modern-Windows.html

It is a strange one and I'm still not sure we have got to the bottom of it. The machines I was working on all installed the software with an increased wait time of 120 seconds this morning. What I didn't know at the time was that another member of my team had assigned another software GPO install this morning. So I don't know if the wait time fixed them or if it was the change in the GPO "list". Conversely we have another slightly slower computer that was a fresh build on Friday, it is still refusing to process the GPOs for the installs (says installing but skips straight past them) but has installed the new software from this morning! We have checked the registry of this computer and it has taken the GPO setting for the increased wait time could this indicate the Group Policy caching issue @rosslaing mentioned? @Oaktech We tried changing the registry to disable the fast boot (admittedly before changing the wait time) and it didn't make a difference. Windows 10

Thanks for the replies both, I think we tried the reg key manually on a couple of computers. I have done a test GPO for 120 and will see if it does the trick.

Afternoon All Hopefully someone has an easy answer that me and my team haven't been able to find. We are having issues deploying software via GPO on our newer hardware, it is like it is booting too quickly. We have been reading up about how shutdown in Windows 8 & 10 hibernates the kernel and that a restart should fully shut it down. We have also run gpupdate /force and it acknowledges their are GPOs to be applied on startup, but then skips straight past them on restart. The strange thing is if we are persistent the computer will eventually process them but some computers are on upwards of 40 restarts with all the different things we have tried on them. In the Group Policy event log there is a 4016 entry with "Starting Software Installation Extension Processing. List of applicable Group Policy objects: (Changes were detected.)" Then there are a series of winlogon events where it is creating and closing sessions. Finally it ends with a 7016 error "Completed Software Installation Extension Processing in 10156 milliseconds." On our older (slower) hardware the majority took the software immediately with the remaining ones needing a few restarts. So that shows that there is nothing wrong with the setup of the GPOs themselves. We just really need to know how to get this newer hardware to play ball. Edit: we are running 1803 Education if that helps.

facebook.com blocked for us on Leeds-6, no changes made.

As others have mentioned you need to decide what the most important part of that spec is. You can't have an i and have all day battery life. We were looking for a similar device to you a few years ago and went with a model similar to these: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Acer-R3-131T-Touchscreen-Notebook-Celeron/dp/B016B902OM We swapped the hard drive for SSDs and the only thing we were lacking in was the processor department, unfortunately this is what also gave us the all day battery life. We got some lapcabby trolleys to charge them at set time intervals and all was good. They are entering year 3 of their lifecycle and are still lasting a whole school day on a single evening charge! Regarding the actual scenario with the room, that is ridiculous.

Well done @DeGrimmy keep at it, just take it one run at a time. You won't believe how far and for how long you will be running in just a few more weeks.

Decided to bite the bullet and have a sports massage to help as the pain wasn't getting much better by resting. Spoke with them beforehand about how, what, where and when the pain started and they said it sounded like a classic case of ITB (Iliotibial Band), as I originally suspected. Can't say I enjoyed the massage as it was a means to an end and was obviously pretty uncomfortable when working the knotted part in my thigh. I have to say though that it had an almost immediate effect, I had the massage on Thursday and was fine walking and going up and down stairs, I did a 1.5 mile run on Saturday morning to test the waters and I could feel my knee at a few points but nothing that actually hurt. They mentioned about using a foam roller like @Patrick suggested and I have found that helpful but painful unless I take some of my weight off my leg when doing my ITB. I have also found doing stretches has helped now I know where and what I am supposed to feel pulling. Hoping to do the first run of the final week tonight

Yes, this crossed my desk last week. Rang them up to say that we are moving from RM to Vanilla this summer so there is absolutely no point in running the test yet. I did say to them that this type of setup seems quite archaic in this day and age and that I didn't know a single school that would allow students to run exe's as standard (which is what they infer in their letter).

Thanks for the advice @simdsy and @witch Sports massage was one of the recommendations but (this may sound silly) I really don't like being touched by people. Admittedly this may be something I'll have to just get over. I think the doctors would just tell me to do what I'm already doing TBH, just stay off it and see if it settles by itself. Reading up on issues on that side of the knee, unless I had an impact injury or done ligament damage there isn't much else it can be.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! Should have been starting my final C25K week this week Looks like I may have done something to my Iliotibial Band (aka runners knee) on my run on Friday night, a lot of pain down the outside of my knee. Have tried putting ice on it and generally staying off it over the weekend, which was just as well as I could hardy walk on it. Not too bad walking today although I can still feel it especially going up stairs, I have decided I had better give myself at least a week off from running. Anyone had this before? Got any tips for recovery? I have seen people mention using an tennis ball on the outside of the thigh, this just seemed to hurt when I tried but that may have been due to inflammation of the band.

I'm sure some of you will have already seen this but it looks like a 3rd party to Ticketmaster has lead to a security breach. Here is the wording: "On Saturday, June 23,2018, Ticketmaster UK identified malicious software on a customer support product hosted by Inbenta Technologies, an external third-party supplier to Ticketmaster. As soon as we discovered the malicious software, we disabled the Inbenta product across all Ticketmaster websites. As a result of Inbenta’s product running on the Ticketmaster UK website, some of our customers’ personal or payment information may have been accessed by an unknown third-party. We are contacting you because you purchased, or attempted to purchase, tickets between February and June 23,2018and therefore may have been affected by the Inbenta incident. Forensic teams and security experts are working around the clock to understand how the data was compromised. We are working with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), as well as credit card companies, banks and relevant authorities. What we are doing: Ticketmaster UK has established a dedicated websitesecurity.ticketmaster.co.ukto answer your questions about the Inbenta incident. You can also [email protected] As a precautionary measure, all notified customers will need to reset their passwords when they next log into their accounts We are offering impacted customers a free 12 month identity monitoring service with a leading provider. To request this service please visitthis page. We recommend that you monitor your account statements for evidence of fraud or identity theft. If you are concerned or notice any suspicious activity on your account, you should contact your bank(s) and any credit card companies. Ticketmaster understands the importance of your personal information. We take the protection of that information very seriously and we are sorry to have to write to you in these circumstances. Faithfully, The Ticketmaster Team" If you use Ticketmaster make sure to keep a eye on your accounts. Will be interesting to see the ICO take on this will be once the investigation is done.

It is a very different layout and is purely helpdesk focused. From our testing it is much better at handling attachments and you can embed images into replies. You can do things like share tickets or split tickets if it goes off topic or has multiple unrelated requests. As a helpdesk it is just much more than Spiceworks, you are limited to 5 technicians on the free version though. I am sticking with it until the holidays at least, possibly beyond depending on how it goes between now and then. Only negative so far is that we sometimes have to submit replies to tickets multiple times as they fail to send, not as bad as it sounds as you are told and you can just click submit until it goes through. Going to look into that today as it may just be a setting change somewhere, or something I may have done wrong during setup.

Thanks all for your suggestions, as a stop gap for now we did use @NB9457 suggestion and we are up and running. Quite impressed with it actually, bit of a culture shock compared to Spiceworks but for the better. Will investigate OS Ticket with a clearer head at a later date now that we have a working solution in place.