jthompson

Orgs using a diversity of systems to avoid having all of their eggs in one basket is a fine ambition, but ultimately there will still be some things higher up in the supply chain that represent a common point of failure. The trouble is that some of that stuff will be way outside of an organisation's ability to choose, or to even know about. Some kind of CDN or DNS or certification authority failure. Am I right in thinking that flight control systems onboard aircraft are run with multiple systems in parallel, each written using a different language? Extending that level of resiliency to an airport is obviously not feasible, but at least having management systems using different cloud computing providers, operating systems and AV, etc. seems like something achievable.

Wicked, thank you. PaperCut Admin -> Options -> Admin Rights: Add the group which contains the required staff members (e.g. Art Deprtment). Edit that group in the list of administrators. Hold/Release queue manager -> Allow job releases for: Change from "All printers" to "Printers from the following groups", selecting e.g. "Art Department Printers" device group (device groups being configured in each printers' settings).

I'm not planning on using a release station, rather the staff would access the release queue by signing into the PaperCut web app on their laptop.

PaperCut NG

Hi all I'm in the process of setting up PaperCut NG. I'd like to configure it to do the following, but it's looking like it's not possible. PaperCut seems quite labyrinthine though, so can anyone confirm whether this is going to be possible? I'd like all users to be able to print to classroom printers, but for those submitted jobs to be held in a hold/release queue. I'd like only select staff to be able to release jobs for each printer, without those staff necessarily having print release privileges on all printers. For instance, I want Art department staff to be able to release any held jobs on Art department printers, but not on any other departments' printers. The nearest I can seem to get is to specify that a user can release jobs for certain other user groups, but that's not what I want, since that would allow staff to release students' jobs on printers outside of their department.

If you use Gmail, that has a built-in mail merge feature now. https://support.google.com/mail/answer/12921167?hl=en-GB In the recipients field, press the little "People" icon next to Cc and Bcc to switch it to mail merge mode. EDIT: Note that there are Google Admin controls relating to this, which allow you to control whether users can use it, and also whether they are restricted to internal contacts only.

We encrypt our desktop PCs just the same as we do laptops. Part of our post-imaging workflow is to check that BitLocker is enabled. In fact, it's pretty much the only part of our post-imaging workflow. Realtively easy for us as everything has a TPM.

Wow. With all of that boot space, roof space and towing power, that's a gateway to all manner of other equipment-based mid-life crises: wild-water canoeing, wind-surfing, road cycling, jet-skiing, quad biking...

You can govern this for Google Workspace accounts using the Admin console. Admin > Apps > Google Workspace > Drive and Docs > Google Drive for desktop > Syncing options. Leaving the unticked will mean that users just get the streaming option: they won't be able to opt for mirroring, etc. within the Drive for Desktop app unless you've enabled that option in Google Admin. We just deploy the Windows app without any special config, and our users only get to stream files (with the option to make individual items available offline). The "Mirror files" option is greyed out.

It's worth also having some means to report on which devices have BitLocker protection actually in place. Some of our models will begin encrypting automatically according to GPO settings, but some models won't, even though it can be started manually just fine (for some obscure hardware spec reason). If there's any scope for encryption not beginning automatically, then you need to have that showing up in a report somehow. We use GLPI, so I have a saved search which checks for any non-encrypted system volumes on clients.

You've maybe created shortcuts to them rather than moving them?

That reads like an update of the "vinyl just sounds warmer than CDs" thing EDIT: by that I'm not suggesting your post has no merit.

Don't do #1 I would create a generic account designed for the purpose, and manage the sharing from that account. A Shared Drive seems like neater option to me, but IIRC you'll have to create a folder within the shared drive and share that folder, rather than trying to adjust the membership of the shared drive itself. Having a specific OU for your shared drive to reside in is a good idea, so that you can tailor the sharing settings for it without impacting the rest of your org's existing shared drives.

I had a Psion Series 5. A thing of beauty. My dad had a Series 3a and I actually think that that was a nicer design in terms of the opening/closing action. When I last visited the National Museum of Computing, I spotted some Psions on display and it brought back a flood of memories.

I'm willing to bet that "ergonomic" got a runout on the branding for that one. Big, two-tone curves? Check! Silver-coloured plastic oval buttons? Check! Probably about a decade too early for a braided USB cable, though.

"Ergonomic" is a word I very much associate with the late beige period.

Oh wow. That word alone places us right into the period.

This picture of the Creative Jukebox sums a lot up for me for the late 90's, early 2000's. This was around the time of the early iPods, when they were ferociously expensive and still used FireWire rather than USB. 'Silver' [plastic] slender oval buttons. Blue LED light. Plastic fascias accented with bold curves (CAD processes really got into their stride in the product design sphere around that time). Tech that was not quite ready for mainstream adoption - still a nerdy niche, but getting closer to something normal people might actually end up wanting.

Sometimes a design style is so influential that there is a huge wave of tat that seeks to ape it. No early-2000s workplace was complete without a load of this kind of stuff:

I used to have a white one but I think I swapped it out for something else because the jazzy red translucent styling of the base would light up my bedroom in the middle of the night. That was back in the day when jazzy translucent plastic was all the rage, either to showcase optical vs mechanical mouse tracking, or to make a stapler look like it goes with an iMac.

Take care. These are no longer officially supported by Microsoft!! \s

Good spot. Yes, that's per year (April-April). Down from 10k in previous years.

Slightly glibly, it's worth considering this: https://xkcd.com/1205/ Perhaps after first plotting things in a quadrant diagram. That might naturally give you something akin to an Eisenhower matrix, and you can then refer to the XKCD chart to get a sense of how much time should be spent in atempting to automate or improve a task.

I think under a 1:1 scheme we'd probably offer a security key as an alternative to just using an existing personal mobile. That way you're able to support those families that can't or prefer not to involve mobiles at all. My expectation would be that the majoirty would just opt for using an existing personal mobile for their MFA.

Google Workspace here, but we're not able to enforce MFA for student accounts. Context-aware access doesn't allow us to make MFA exceptions for on-premises sign-ins, and we have a policy of no mobiles in classrooms. We restrict student sign-ins to the UK, as that's about as good as we can do. If we manage to get to 1:1 Chromebooks, then I think we could enforce MFA for students, on the assumption that the vast majority of student sign-ins on the premises will be on an already trusted device.