AngryTechnician

Are you on the Scheduled or Rapid release track? We are on rapid and I'm prety sure we have the new version of Forms.

I don't always agree with Mark, but this article is spot on in my opinion. Thanks for sharing.

Also, today's xkcd is a parody of Adobe's update process (or is it?) xkcd: All Adobe Updates

We use a few games websites that use it I think. This is only the 2nd update it's had this year, while Flash is on its 6th by my count, so it's not nearly as much hassle to look after. Plus the Shockwave .msi installer is a proper .msi that actually works properly, unlike the dodgy .exe wrapper they publish for Flash.

Shockwave has an update too if you have that deployed: Adobe - Security Bulletins: APSB13-12 - Security update available for Adobe Shockwave Player

I think the policy FN-GM mentions will override it, but to actually remove the old settings from the GPO you would need to edit the GPO using a machine running an earlier version of Windows, i.e. Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 7 with the RSAT tools installed.

Mine's the other way around - I have 13 provisioned with 20 redeemed, with the extra 7 being the number of people who have where people have upgraded.

The FAQ specifically says employees qualify for one upgrade, so it's expected that they could purchase once and then purchase again when the new version comes out. I can't say I've been checking on the provision count on ours, but are you sure it went up when that user made their second purchase, and didn't just coincide with someone else buying for the first time?

Pretty much all any of the Fixit tools do is automate the commands listed in the "Let me fix it myself" section of the corresponding KB article.

We're on the 'new' Office 365 (so we have SkyDrive Pro) and it looks like this might not work after the upgrade - I get error messages saying that Windows could not create the shortcut. This happening for anyone else who has had the upgrade, or is it something specific to our workstations? We are on Office 2013.

I stand corrected. However, the first example (using event log triggers) doesn't allow you to specify an event for a particular USB device (at least not without some serious XPath-fu that isn't in the UI). The example they give will trigger when any USB mass storage device is connected, which is undesirable in most use cases. The second link looks more promising if the WMI query was expanded to check for a particular device ID, though in my book it's arguable whether something is 'native' to Windows if you have to write your own code...

This isn't supported natively, but if you could do it using USBDLM. Have a good read through the online help section on AutoRuns.

I think you might have the wrong idea about what Google Apps Directory Sync does. It doesn't sync file directories, it syncs data from Active Directory. Any file syncing with Google Apps would be done with Google Drive, but this would be done on each individual client, not on the file server.

Brilliant

A few airlines are trialling picocells with their own uplink (usually via satellite). Sounds like that Virgin plane was one of them. If I remember correctly, the real technical barrier to using phones on aircraft is not interference but the speed at which the phone will hop between ground-based cell towers. Also when I was visiting a hospital in-patient ward a few weeks ago, there were still signs on the door saying 'Turn of mobiles' but most of the patients had a mobile and when we actually asked the staff they said it was fine on that ward. I think they are a bit stricter in intensive care.

On the topic of addiction: you can become addicted to something even if there is no addictive substance directly involved, because like many activities, the brain releases dopamine when you eat, which can form an addiction-like cycle in the brain. This is the mechanism by which people become addicted to gambling, even though there is no substance ingested at all. Fortunately, the process is reversible, but it takes determination and time. Here's a slightly more detailed explanation in the context of porn addiction: tl;dr: you can be physiologically addicted to eating even if the food itself is not addictive.

It's not nice to tease! Seriously though, I realise you may not be authorised to talk about it, but I'm going to ask anyway: any estimate on when that might happen? Even a hint?

No, because directory sync does not copy passwords to Azure.

Yep, that sounds right to me.

Ours changed over on Friday evening/Saturday morning.

1. Yes. 2. Yes, we have frequent problems with it and rarely get any satisfaction from support. 3. Can't help you with that one, I'm afraid.

I've been quite hung up on the SSO side of Office 365 too, but after a conversation with another local school who are using it without SSO, I'm coming around to the idea. Points to consider are: Outlook users have their credentials saved so don't have to re-enter them for day-to-day email access. If you tick 'Keep me signed in' on the Office 365 portal, you don't have to re-enter credentials every session. Unless your current email system is already very good, the improvement brought by Office 365 may well offset the inconvenience of a separate sign-in. Users these days generally have at least a couple of other accounts that don't have synchronised passwords anyway (even our Year 5s have Edmodo accounts with separate passwords) There's nothing to stop users from setting their password to be the same as their on-premises one to help them remember it. I've just set up the AD Directory Sync part to at least get that part working (and it was relatively painless, even on Windows Server 2012 Core), and will be trying it out without SSO to see how we get on.

All Meraki kit uses the Meraki dashboard - though the wireless and firewall appliances reside in separate sections of it. It all works the same way though. As for VPN, all licences now include use of a client VPN connection directly to the appliance. No special VPN client software is required.

@jamesfed: how is the user logging? Can you get nice per-user logs of what sites have been accessed? I assume from the fact you are happy with it that it does indeed do some HTTPS filtering, otherwise you'd be seeing problems with Google search now that the default is to use HTTPS for all search.

Our core switch isn't a spring chicken, but its the uptime on yours that I'm most jealous of. Despite being in a major town we get 6+ hour power outages every few months and my UPS doesn't last that long!