Norphy

If you think that's how things work then I've got a lovely bridge I can sell you.

While I don't disagree with you as such, I (along with probably most of the people on here) found that a lot of users were downright offended if "their" computer wasn't instantly available to them when they wiggled the mouse. The dreaded "Teaching and learning" catchphrase was often employed, along with murmurings that their precious charges couldn't possibly wait the two minutes it takes for the machine to boot or wake up from hibernation as it takes too much time out of the lesson. Therefore, it makes everybody's life easier if they don't go to sleep or hibernate during the day. It's dumb, I know, but sometimes you need to pick your battles.

Turning computers off at night is a no brainer, tbh. They're used for eight hours a day, tops. That's 16 hours they're sitting there doing nothing. Even if they're in power saving mode, they're still consuming. I've used EMCO Remote Shutdown at two different employers and it's very good. It can do WOL as well, if you want to automate startup. It's cheap as well.

The Aruba InstantOn stuff is nice. However, depending on how much you need to buy it may be worth contacting an Aruba reseller and seeing if you can get a deal registration and getting prices on their higher end stuff. The discounts that you can get are huge. If central management is your thing, it's hard to beat Meraki but the subscription costs are a major downer for those.

Because… it’s not as simple as that. An operating system is literally millions of lines code by itself. ANY operating system. And that’s just what comes with the operating system. Throw in the code for the application, the framework it’s running on, it’s dependencies and so forth. More and more lines of code that can and often will interact with one another in unexpected ways. In all those millions of lines of code, there are inevitably going to be bugs and security flaws. Even if you could get your code perfect, there’s then everything underneath that code: the compiler or interpreter for the code; that could be buggy. Hell, there could well be bugs at an even lower level than that, at the CPU microcode level or even a bug on the CPU itself. See Spectre and Meltdown, for instance. The more complex anything is, the more likely it’s going to have a flaw. And that’s just at a code and interpreter level. Even if all of that was perfect (and it never will be), it’s still missing the human side of things. Ultimately, a computer isn’t going to really know what’s authorised an authorised programme and what isn’t. It’s just going to follow the rules it’s been programmed with and/or follow the instructions of its operator. If someone isn’t paying attention and accidentally runs a malicious piece of software then that’s all it takes to get entry. It doesn’t need to be installed in the traditional manner, it just needs to get onto the computer then executed.

It might be like using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut, but ADManager Plus from ManageEngine is good: https://www.manageengine.com/products/ad-manager/

The M2 chip can only drive one external display. The 13" M2 MBP is going to be the same in that regard. The M1 and M2 both only have one graphics module and therefore only two DisplayPort channels. One is used exclusively for the internal display. The higher end M1 chips (M1 Pro, Max, Ultra) used in the bigger MBPs and the Mac Studio have multiple display modules (2, 4 and 8 respectively) and therefore have more DisplayPort channels and can drive more displays. I would imagine the M2 Pro/Max/Ultra will be the same. A workaround for that is to use a DisplayLink adapter, which is essentially a USB graphics card. It'd work and probably be OK for office work and watching videos but they're not brilliant.

Out of curiosity, how far did they get into the story?

Apparently the Google Assistant can do it? https://support.google.com/assistant/answer/7382429?hl=en-GB&co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid&oco=0 https://www.xda-developers.com/google-assistant-automatic-parking-location/#:~:text=You%20could%20ask%20Google%20Assistant,stopped%20driving%20and%20started%20walking. I've not got an Android phone so I can't vouch for this.

I like ergonomic keyboards, personally, and I've recently bought a new Microsoft one because it was on sale during Prime Day. I used to have the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 and I thought it was brilliant. The thing wore out, however, so a couple of years down the line I've just got the catchily named LXM-00004. I did look at similar options from Logitech and in the MS Surface line but they were far too expensive and use laptop style chiclet keys. The offbrand ones from Amazon didn't look brilliant either so I avoided those. It's... OK. I don't think it's as good as the old one. They've made some weird changes to the layout that I don't like and it doesn't feel anywhere near as robust as the old one. However, for a membrane keyboard it feels pretty good, certainly better than the ones you get with computers and it still has the nice soft feel wrist rest built into it. I've also got a Logitech MX Master that I got in the Black Friday sale a few years back. It's a good mouse but battery life is awful. It's pretty much permanently plugged in these days.

There are various methods. The ‘simplest’ I can think of is to attach a picture to the user’s profile in AD, synchronise that to Azure and make sure that the PCs are Azure AD joined. When the PCs are logged on, they’ll automatically get the user profile picture. There are other methods too, like resource hacking

I don’t think Disney so much bought it as they did inherit it. It used to be a Fox property and was streamed on Hulu. Disney bought Fox along with a majority stake in Hulu. A large amount of Fox stuff then went into Star in Disney+ outside of the US, including the Orville.

Refurbed iPhone SE 2020 at Amazon for £185? https://www.amazon.co.uk/Apple-iPhone-Generation-White-Renewed/dp/B08D33VS6H/

I don't have a copy of it any more but when I had to do that, I did the following: Found one of the background pictures built into Windows and loaded it into Photoshop. It had flowers I think Converted it to mono Put a massive gaussian blur on it Changed the colour of it to match the school colours, there was one for each school in the MAT. Put the school crest in the top left corner I then applied the results as the computer's wallpaper When the user logged on, the computer information was put on the top right corner of the screen with a BGINFO-like PowerShell script.

Since I moved up here, I've been struck by the sheer number of songbirds that you see on a daily basis. There are swallows flying about outside at the moment. The buggers are far too quick to get a photo of but it's wonderful to watch them. There are all sorts of finches here as well, along with wagtails and the usual sparrows, starlings, tits etc. It's not unusual to see large birds of prey hovering above the fields either.

Edwina

Chamois

I don't know about you but when I make mash, I usually put milk and butter into it. I guess they've substituted those for non-animal based products.

Can you not get a simple Bluetooth dongle with a 3.5mm jack on it and plug it into a mixer? Something like this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/UGREEN-Bluetooth-Receiver-and-Transmitter/dp/B08TQSH636/ or this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B081GGB53R/ The range isn't going to be great but that's Bluetooth for you.

I know what you mean. Renee Zellweger for instance put on a pretty awful English in the Bridget Jones films and I don't know how anyone took Hugh Laurie even remotely seriously in House. That said, Damian Lewis's American accent in Band of Brothers and Homeland was pretty good and Scarlett Johansen's English accent in Under the Skin was pretty convincing too so it's not always bad

David Jason as Rincewind in the Sky adaptation of The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic was pretty bad. I thought that was odd casting as a) he was too old b) he’d already played Albert in Hogfather. In any case, it just didn’t work for me. Also, Carl Urban in the JJverse Star Trek films. Something about the accent was wrong, it felt to me he was concentrating too much on doing a bad southern American accent to the detriment of the rest of his performances. He didn’t sound anything like Deforest Kelly either.

(Fabric) Conditioner

What are you using to manage your computers with?

Jamie (Lee Curtis)

In a similar vein, a good one if you're a brummie: What is the difference between a buffalo and a bison? You wash your hands in a bison...