jthompson

Yeah, Formula 1 really doesn't help itself sometimes. In-race decisions about sketchy overtakes are difficult to be consistent on, I'll accept that (especially with a different celebrity driving steward sitting in each week), since it's a subjective thing about driving styles. But how do you get safety cars wrong? The teams make split-second judgements, on the basis of the rules as written, and the race director fluffed his lines badly.

Fabulous season, although I somehow doubt we'll see it's like again for quite some time. The relative performance of the cars was the secret sauce, really, and it would be strange if that dynamic equilibrium between the teams were to continue next year. Hamilton's performance this year has somehow been even more godlike than normal.

Yahoo! I won't have to place myself in aeroplane mode on Sunday!

Is smoking still seen as being cool and rebellious by young people? As an uncool square, I've no idea. Vaping certainly doesn't look cool, I know that much.

Not encountering this problem here: that GPO setting blocks Control Panel and Settings app, without any need to AppLocker it. We're running 21H2 with the 2021-11 CU installed. ADMX templates are from 21H1, although it did also work with the 20H2 templates previously. Maybe older templates could be the issue?

Wow. I'd heard that these plug & play vaccines could be quickly tailored to be more specific in what they target, but I'd no idea they could be quite as specific as that.

Out of interest, for those using unique ids and then adding names as an email alias, are those unique ids still the primary address that your users' mailboxes will be using? i.e. the address that they sign in with and the address that messages are sent from by default?

It's been a tough year, but it was really really cool at the end of last term when the government gave away free motorbikes to all school IT workers.

I hadn't noticed that it existed either. I'm guessing that it's a new addition to the waffle menu. It looks like it's ultimately just a simpler/prettier way of working with SharePoint lists. I've always found SharePoint a bit of a nightmare to navigate, so I guess it's welcome even if it's not adding any substantial functionality.

That's useful, thanks. I guess that's what some parents will be doing, then.

Thank you. That's what I suspected, tbh, so I guess that some recipients are just going about sending replies in the wrong way. How easy would it be for a Mail app user to reply to the from address in such an instance? Does tapping on the sender's name offer up a quick way to compose a new message to that address?

I think there's a Google utility for migrating file shares which can also do users' My Drive data, but it appears to be in beta. https://support.google.com/workspacemigrate/answer/9222862?hl=en&ref_topic=9223062&fl=1 https://apps.google.com/supportwidget/articlehome?hl=en&article_url=https%3A%2F%2Fsupport.google.com%2Fa%2Fanswer%2F6251069%3Fhl%3Den&product_context=6251069&product_name=UnuFlow&trigger_context=a Never used it so can't speak as to whether it'll actually do what you need.

Hi all Don't own an iOS device here so asking for someone who does to check something for me. Does the iPhone Mail app observe reply-to headers when replying to an email? We use EduLink here, and teachers' emails to parents are sent 'from' a generic email address, with their own email address as the reply-to. I'm seeing a few replies from parents on iPhones that are coming back to the generic address, rather than to the reply-to. Are these just parents who don't know how to use the reply button, or does the Mail app behave in an odd way and ignore reply-to headers?

You could share it via Google Drive and disable the download option. Give the recipient Viewer privileges, but also click the cog on the share dialogue and untick the option "Viewers and commenters can see the option to download, print, and copy". You could also give them time-limited access this way, too, so that they've only got access until X date.

Yes, but it should be easily rectified by proper backups. Our SIMS mdf file is a little larger than yours (30GB) and the associated ldf file for it is about 2.5GB. The majority of that 30GB is due to InTouch, which we used to use for emailing parents. All of those InTouch messages are stored in a big fat table within the SIMS db (dreadful). As others have mentioned, the size of the ldf file will be kept in check with regular SQL-aware backups. When performing a backup, SQL Server will incorporate the end result of all of those logged transactions back into the database, thus keeping the log file from growing endlessly. I suspect your SQL Server isn't being backed up regularly, as it should. It'll probably only be doing it whenever there's a SIMS update being installed, as SOLUS will initiate a db backup, but you want to make sure that you're doing that on a daily basis, really. If you're expecting your current backup job(s) for that server to be doing SQL-aware backups, it'd be worth double-checking that. Veeam, for instance, can back up a server that happens to be running SQL, but will only execture proper SQL backups as a part of that if the job has the application-aware processing option turned on.

I forgot that my TV is smart. I never connected Ito the network. I dread to think how many of those features/apps will still work now that it's probably nearing 10 years old. I'm on my second Chromecast, however, which basically works far better than any on-tv streaming options. Pause from any household mobile device, browse the services without interrupting playback, etc. Just buy a TV for the AV aspect and never connect it to your network.

Name changes are generally quite important for end users, especially so for students who are transitioning. It's true that it's got more complicated in these days of complex data flows between systems, but arguably that makes it more important to document how it is to be done each time. Once a name change has been confirmed officially and applied to the MIS, we follow a documented set of steps to apply that to Active Directory/Azure, Google, and any other places where it'll be needed. If that's going to involve waiting for an overnight sync or something, then set a task for the following day make sure it gets completed.

I can't see a "Gopher Buddy" extension in the Chrome Web Store, but there's a "Gopher for Chrome" app in the Google Workspace Marketplace (https://workspace.google.com/marketplace/app/gopher_for_chrome/551947063268). Their privacy policy basically says "don't use this in Europe", so something of a dead end, but from the Marketplace description (my emphasis): That suggests complete logs of users against devices. However, the description also talks of scheduled reports and 'most recent user' as a field of the report, which does make me wonder whether this wouldn't just be an eloborate cludge based on reading the most recent user repeatedly through the day (not at all the same thing).

Would love to have complete, timestamped logs of sign-ins for our Chromebooks, but I'm not aware of whether it's actually possible. I did wonder about a Chrome extension, but that's probably not going to be able to grab the required device info, and it would also follow users around on non-school devices, too.

That's presumably what the automagic option that Google recommend should be doing anyway, albeit balancing the value of X against the available storage.

I've often found that the proportion of people wearing face coverings in my regular supermarket varies quite a lot, and that it also varies just as much at the other supermarkets in the area. My regular weekly shop is always at the same time on the same day of the week, and there have always been 'good' days and 'bad' days in this regard throughout the year.

IME any push to increase the range or extent of information presented on digital signage has invariably lead to said content going up, going out of date, and then staying there for months. YMMV, but I suppose of your school already has some established, active sources of information (e.g. social media feeds, term dates in online calendars, etc.) then integrating those into digital signage may go some way to automating your way out of that hole.

Well, if they're willing to risk a Paddington hard stare...

Rather than thinking of people as being selfish or obstinately opposed to mask wearing, I'm going to be generous and put it down to them being lazy or disorganised.

We get a fair amount of password requests for EduLink, when in the vast majority of cases they can self-serve a password reset. No idea how many parents are doing that for themselves and not involving us, though, so no real idea of percentages. To try to reduce it, I created a page on our website with signposting to the password reset link, and gave the page a friendly URL so that reception staff can just give that out over the phone when needed (i.e. no multi-step instructions or forwarding of enquiries needed). Hoping that that does the trick. Once they're signed in, we get very few support requests about how to use it. EduLink is now the only account that parents need for school stuff. Google Classroom guardian summaries, however, create a fair amount of confusion when we initially send out invitations. No matter how carefully you craft the comms around it, plenty of people still don't read it and assume that it's going to let them log into Google Classroom.