jamesb

Just looking for wishes of good luck, and any advice that people may have. Got two exams tomorrow to (hopefully) update my qualifications and the nerves are just starting to set in.

Might be worth looking at these people: StartSSL? Certificates & Public Key Infrastructure As far as I'm aware they're not yet trusted, but are undergoing audits by Microsoft and Mozilla to be included by default.

Turning on trusted logins in the connect.ini and adding the credentials basically implements single sign on. When the users log into Windows, they are then automatically logged into SIMS .net when they go to open it.

If you look in System Manager then you should find a magnifying glass next to user names. Putting the AD account details in there will allow the account to use trusted logon. You then need to edit the connect.ini file.There's full details about it around the internet in various places. Note though that trusted logon won't get users to enter their AD username and password to log in to SIMS, it'll simply allow them to log straight in once they're logged on to windows.

Just wanted to see what other people's thoughts were on this game, and recommend it to anyone who might be curious. One of the first games I've ever played where your main objective isn't simply to slaughter every single enemy in your path. Also suspect that it helps train problem solving under pressure. The storyline is fantastic, scaling up nicely as you go through the game and gradually discover what's going on. The art, and the way the city's presented is absolutely beautiful. When you really get into the game and can spot the routes well you'll be leaping from rooftop to rooftop, running along walls and swinging off bars with barely a pause, all the while with the warm glowing colours of the city whipping past above, below and around you. The combat system's a little primitive, but then that helps the game work. You can hold a single gun at a time, and even the lighter ones affect your movement to a degree. I found the best way is to disarm someone, fire a few shots with the gun to take down the biggest nearby threats then dump it and keep running. Never stop running.

For those taking the exams, a couple of pieces of advice. Firstly read the questions very carefully, even if you don't know the answer you'll often find you can narrow it down to half the possibles simply by looking at the question.Secondly there's a strategy for simulations. To a certain degree they will only let you do things the right way. If you get stuck, simply look at all the options in the simulation and see if it jogs your memory. Once you have the correct route worked out, and the right settings, note those down and reload the simulation. That way you won't accidentally leave any settings which shouldn't have been set.Hope this comes in helpful to someone.

I'd say if nothing else the fact that its sent to 'others' could be a problem. According to the BECTA advice: Data protection legislation states that all those who hold personal data, whether on paper or electronically, must keep that data secure. This also applies to schools. Personal data is defined as any combination of data items that identifies an individual and provides specific information about them, their families or circumstances. This includes names, contact details, gender, dates of birth, unique pupil number (UPN) and so on, as well as other sensitive information such as academic achievements, other skills and abilities, and progress in school. It may also include behaviour and attendance records. Suggests to me that the names, and some of the other information, being sent out to so many people might violate this, though I can't see any problem with the calendar.You can see the latest BECTA advice here: Becta Schools - Leadership and Management - Data protection - Data handling security guidance for schools

Ah, I see.For that we had a starter's pack, contained a form with the details we needed and a few quick-reference helpsheets, as well as their username. Their password would be set when came to collect the pack and never written down.It seems you know the details you're after though, so you could use either a paper form or electronic. I tend to favour paper for that sort of thing since it can then be locked in a filing cabinet and forgotten about rather than having to come up with some sort of workflow for storing it on the network.

What sort of process do you mean? Creating and removing network accounts, getting information from the students, setting them up in your MIS system, all of the above, or something else?For creating and removing accounts I always used to get a CSV export from the admin people with all the new entries, use Excel to drop in a couple of columns to generate usernames and passwords, then use a VBScript to create the users, assign group memberships and so on.Removing accounts was then just a case of disabling the network account when they left and deleting it a few months later. (In case they needed work or something similar)

Apparently someone's discovered how to replicate it: Google Says, 'Sorry, You Search Like A Bot' | Compiler from Wired.com

I've had it come up before. Lasted a few hours then stopped.

The Christmas card idea isn't actually a bad one if you normally send out a Christmas letter, or have anyone in school who does. Just slap the letter on them with some pictures and save yourself a fortune in printing.

If you really want to see it at its best, get one of the original EEE PCs with the seven inch screen, load it onto an SD card and boot. Get it set up however you want, then make the boot partition read-only. Absolutely beautiful to play with.Fifteen second boot, decent speeds, and all in a package that can fit in your coat pocket (mine anyway, you may have smaller coats).

Play around. See if you can use them as smartcards by dropping a certificate onto them then trying to use them as such. Might actually be useful eventually as well if you want to tighten up security on teachers remotely logging in.

I'm just wondering, since it says that it also applies to roaming profiles. The home directory redirect, if I remember correctly, is part of the AD schema and so would carry across anywhere the object goes. I've just had a look at the schema and can't find anything similar for logon script.It may be there of course, I just took a glance at it so might've missed it. Edit: I take it back, just found it in the schema. scriptPath attribute. Edit v1.1: On the other hand I did just find this KB from Microsoft which might help: When you try to log on interactively to a Windows XP-based client computer, the user object logon script does not run

Just to check, have you got Administrative Templates\System\Group Policy\Allow Cross-Forest User Policy and Roaming User Profiles enabled?

Yep, you want all references to that server gone from the domain. Microsoft best practice then states that the server that's been removed would make a good paperweight, but should never be brought back onto the domain. If you are going to then make sure all traces are gone before doing so, a complete reformat and rebuild's your best bet.

Is there anything particularly odd about your machine? Is it in a seperate OU, set to ignore inheritance of group policies or anything similar?

Can you manually set up the drives on machines other than your own using those commands?

Can you manually assign the network drives once you've logged on, while you're on the other domain? When you manually run the script is it actually assigning the drives, or just running?

Have you got any automated tasks which send data to the LA around that time of day, or anything similarly which might be making heavy use of the switch?

I don't know if this'll necessarily help, but it looks like it could be related: "DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (0xD1)" Stop error occurs in Windows Server 2003 when you remove a USB device

You mean you did do all of that, up until them all being added as local admins.

I'll almost guarantee that the university has a helpdesk, getting people to actually use it is another matter. I once did an experiment back when I was working in schools where I put a (crudely) handwritten notice on a computer in one of the IT labs, saying that it wasn't working. I then waited to see how long it'd be before someone would log it on the helpdesk system, or even just report it to me in person. After two months I took the notice down. The problem had never been reported.

Its all about the intent, otherwise they'd no longer be able to run CEH courses in this country and penetration testing would be illegal itself.