jmak

I'm sure that's tongue in cheek, but obviously the details belong to a company not an individual (unless you have their home phone number on speed dial), so GDPR doesn't apply.

I listened to "A Life Scientific" interviewing Sir Patrick Vallance https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p09yckyr Personally prepared to give him quite a lot of leeway the circumstances he had to work in. His view, which I largely share, is that the biggest reason for poor decision making was a complete lack of understanding of exponential growth. Far to few people - politicians, policy advisors, general public - have sufficient grasp of it to make timely decisions. I think maths education needs completely revisiting. Currently it mostly covers the groundwork for further scientific study (and from personal experience is only partly successful at that) and has far too little emphasis on maths that affects day to day life. Interpretation of statistics (so you've got some hope of spotting when politicians of all varieties and the media are lying) and personal finances would seem more useful to most people.

I watched this at the weekend. Sounds like the main issue is that the guy with the security equipment is a complete ar$e. It's not just the Ring doorbell, he's got a parking area behind (outside the boundaries of) his property under surveillance of a pile of cameras and security devices. When his neighbour complained to him, he sent copies of the videos of the complainant to all his neighbours and told her he'd sent them to the police. The privacy ruling is mostly about the audio recording and that private conversations have a reasonable likelihood of being captured incidentally, so therefore aren't covered by legislate use. From what I can see, the Ring doorbell only records audio when the video is recording. If you set the trigger area of the video recording, you shouldn't get long recordings of your neighbours and you can justify what is recorded as being for legitimate purposes. This guy seems to deserve what he got!

Which is demonstrated by Japan. They were having a disaster, then hosted the Olympics and were in an officially declared state of emergency. Their vaccine programme had started to bite, but importantly, they are almost universally wearing masks, bars are open but hours are restricted and their cases have plummeted. Restrictions are being gradually lifted, but because they are still doing some carefully targeted things, they're getting freedom and declining infection/death rates. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/13/back-from-the-brink-how-japan-became-a-surprise-covid-success-story Edit: I think "the public" has decided that what we currently have is an acceptable compromise between restrictions and deaths. I'm not sure if they've really thought it through as 35,000 to 50,000 deaths per year indefinitely.

Agreed. The problem is that they're clogging up our healthcare system. And, despite them often being the same people complaining about restrictions on freedom, are delaying return to normality.

Bohemian

At my last school the PSTN lines were connected to the PBX which meant there were no phones connected to lines that wouldn't work without power. There was a line connected to the alarm system but you had to go into a cupboard and unplug the alarm and swap it for a phone. I'd definitely be leaving the building first.

One difference with VoIP (VDSL or FTTP) is that you need separate mains power at the property whereas PSTN has it's own power supply down the phone line. That's why when you buy a cordless phone there's a warning in the instructions that it may not work in an emergency. I think it's a very rare problem and I bet loads of households already have a phone system that needs a separate phone supply. I don't keep a traditional wired phone plugged in any more.

I was "told off" for the state of my desk, so I printed this out

Couple of suggestions: I used an Android app with built in barcode reader that output direct to a spreadsheet. You could add notes and photos to each record of needed: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.assetmgr I also used the free Spiceworks one for a while. It collects data from network devices including OS and patch status but stopped using it because for some reason it ground to a halt on my network. Pretty sure it was a network issue but that was the only symptom, so never came to the top of my list. https://www.spiceworks.com/free-asset-management-software/

When we were going through similar I had a very fruitful chat with John Levis @ Very PC covering what was included and the options for per device vs site license.

I'm not on the charity's board, so I'm currently not getting involved in discussions about whether or not they should get charitable status. I have made them aware that free stuff is available from Microsoft if they do choose to go that way.

Thanks for all the replies. My preference for my own use and what I've recommended for schools is Workspace, but I presented both and we're only talking about around 10 users who're all Microsoft users and this is something they do in their spare time so the learning curve isn't worth it for them. The main aims of this work are to improve resilience (risk of data loss) and to improve data accessibility for better collaboration. It might be worth migrating their email onto O365, but that's not urgent and while I'm happy to help them, I don't want to take on more than necessary. The organisation has about 15 people who do some work for them (all unpaid) and about 350 members. MS and Google are now fussier than they used to be about non-profits and you have to be registered with the charities commission to be eligible nowadays - pretty sure being registered with HMRC as a non-profit used to be enough. They're currently discussing whether it's worth registering with the charities commission, as it's quite a significant amount of work. They also want to redevelop their website, but fortunately there's another volunteer who does that for a living! I just want to make sure that the data is stored properly so that they can make some of it available through the new website. The other project they want to do is set up a membership database, but there's a database expert available - personally I don't think building something in Access is worth it for around 350 members, but I'm keeping that debate separate.

I'm helping out a small charity who have identified that they want to take advantage of cloud computing (they need a secure way of sharing and storing data and are nowhere near big enough to have a server or pay someone to manage it). I'm planning to advise them that they should have a separate account for the Global Admin. Does that mean they need to pay for an additional O365 subscription, or can they have a separate account/login for a single user (subscriber)? For the size of the organisation, it's a potentially significant protein of the cost. Also, as I have my own O365 tenancy, can I be an admin on their tenancy or is that only a thing for Microsoft partners?

I have and I sympathise. If you've tried explaining, I'd just move on to ignoring. You have more important issues to deal with and so do they.

Special interests? Maybe a carpenter thing?

My honest thought: You'll do better encouraging the teachers to orient the board. It takes seconds and if they don't do it, there a risk it won't be properly oriented and then you'll get complaints about it not working properly.

I don't usually use football managers as lifestyle guides, but Jurgen Klopp says it pretty well for me: “If I say I am vaccinated, other people say: ‘How can you tell me I should be vaccinated?’ It is a little bit like drink-driving. We all probably were in a situation where we had a beer or two and thought we still could drive but, [because of] the law, we are not allowed to drive so we don’t drive. But this law is not there for protecting me when I drink two beers and want to drive, it’s for protecting all the other people because I’m drunk and we accept that as a law." https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/oct/02/liverpool-jurgen-klopp-says-anti-vaxxers-endanger-others? I'm still amazed at the fuss there's been about mandating vaccines for healthcare workers; you can't get on a nursing course without proving immunity to a ready of diseases (most of which is only realistically attainable by vaccine in this country), never mind a job. Why should covid be any different?

Check your spirit level regularly...

But that supports Gillian McKeith. It is a pro-vaccination campaign. "Get vaccinated. If not, see you soon." Admittedly, Americans have a reputation for missing irony - but I'm this case that's just the Darwin theory in action... Edit: Or have I missed that she is an anti-vaxxer? Edit 2: Yep, that's what I missed [emoji2357]

Shared calendar in either Microsoft or Google flavour has the facility to reserve resources (rooms, equipment etc). Easy to set up, easy to use. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/admin/manage/room-and-equipment-mailboxes?view=o365-worldwide https://support.google.com/a/answer/1034381?hl=en I didn't get anywhere until head teacher told teachers to act like grown ups, tell me what system they wanted and then use it without moaning to me! IIRC they went for a book hanging of the side of the trolley, despite the fact that nearly half of them only worked part time, so weren't in school every day but could have had remote access to the booking system.

If they're just over a year old, I'd try contacting Acer UK. I had a similar issue with some HP laptops a few years ago and got stroppy with them and they sent new batteries. I quoted the Consumer Rights act (which I know doesn't apply to schools) which says that irrespective of warranty, goods must last a "reasonable" length of time and I didn't consider 13 months to be reasonable for a laptop. If you bought them from an educational supplier it might be worth going through them as they'll be a bigger customer than you. Nothing to lose...

Has anyone looked at getting something along the lines of a Tesla Powerwall instead of a UPS? Given the limited predicted lifetime (APC quote 2 years for the battery) and the price per kWh of capacity, they look pretty cheap and would give much longer run times. Might even be worth looking at for school kitchens.

Oops. Apologies - I misremembered.

I was talking to my dad about this last week and apparently Martin Lewis' current advice is that if you're not currently on a fixed tariff, stick with variable. Having said that, with Octopus you don't get tied in to a fixed rate, so you could sign up now and if it goes down, come back out again. I'm already with them and looked at their deals just to get an idea. I found pretty much the same as you; current best fix is about 50% more than we're currently paying. The terms for our current "flexible" tariff is that they have to give you 30 days notice of a change in tariff and I haven't been notified yet, so I'm not changing. How much of your usage is car charging? The Octopus Go tariff still gives 5p/kWh between 00:30 and 04:30. Over half of our bill is car charging, but I still don't have a smart meter, so can't get on that tariff. Might also be worth considering their Agile tariff depending on when you use electricity. Edit: I've just had a look at Octopus Agile and you don't want that at the minute! It's capped at 35p/kWh which it usually only his for a couple of hours a day. It's hitting the cap pretty much all waking hours...