AngryTechnician

True enough, but given that the Windows 8 interface is much more geared for tablets than Windows 7, I think that's when Windows tablets will really start to shine.

Supposedly available next week, looks very nice. Hopefully they will have some to play with on the Dell stand at BETT, though I think we'd all be more interested to see the Windows 8 Developer Preview on it than just Windows 7. Particularly noteworthy is the dock and what looks like a DisplayPort video out (possibly HDMI, video doesn't give a 100% clear view). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kpHL5O1JcY

It is free, and it is easier than ILM. It's not perfect though. ILM pretty much requires a dedicated server (certainly it is strongly recommended if not actually required). GADS requires a tiny amount of resources and has a very light install footprint. You can run it on pretty much any server you have without it interfering with the existing operation. The only real caveat with GADS is that if you want to sync passwords, you have to install a third-party component on each of your DCs to capture the passwords and store a hash of them ready to send to the Google Apps system. Why Google don't provide this themselves is beyond me, and the one that works most reliably (sha1hexfltr) doesn't keep the password hash very secure, so I implemented a workaround to move them to a confidential attribute in AD to be on the safe side. I still regard this as less demanding than setting up and running ILM. In both cases (ILM and GADS), users will need to change their password before it starts syncing to Google Apps/Live@Edu. Neither can sync passwords that were set before they were installed.

What, no Jarrrr-Jarrrr?

I never got AD auth to work reliably on our Smartcache - in particular, it wouldn't respond properly to auth responses from PowerPoint when using trying to embed YouTube videos, even when it worked fine in IE. We switched back to IDENT and everything was OK until 3 weeks ago, when we finally conceded that the filtering is just not up to it any more. Our Smoothwall SWG-700 is going through final acceptance testing this week, then its bye-bye Smartcache.

That's a new one to me.

Up to you whether you consider this a tablet or not; it's from my Dell Streak 5, which Dell marketed as a tablet, albeit a pretty small one. Certainly the screen is big enough to use the non-mobile version of websites (which causes me no end of annoyance since some sites, such as the BBC, always serve up their rubbish mobile site by default and don't let me specify a preference). Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.2.2; en-gb; Dell Streak Build/FRG83G) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1

That's where it should be, so it sounds like it's not installed. EDIT: Go to Server Manager > Roles, scroll down to Web Server (IIS) then click > Add Role Services and browse the tree to Management Tools > IIS Management Console Tick, Install, job done.

I would guess from your post that you have something running on your RM server that is accessed externally, and that's what the certificate for?

It is available. My CA server is a Server Core machine. The console for it is only on a full install, but the actual service itself does run on Server Core. Here's the TechNet article I used to set it up: How to Set Up a Certification Authority on a Server Core Installation Do pay attention to the community notes at the bottom of the article (and on the appendices) as some of the scripts they've published have minor syntax errors you'll need to correct (good old Microsoft).

A compromise would be to enable the separate setting "Allow Automatic Updates immediate installation". This (in theory) only applies to "certain updates that neither interrupt Windows services nor restart Windows." That way, the ones that don't need a restart will go on right away.

BE VERY CAREFUL WITH THIS SETTING. If you enable it, it has the largely undocumented side-effect that it will reboot the machine immediately once all users have logged out. This means that if you RDP into a server that has a pending restart with this option set, the moment you log out, your server reboots. I personally do not recommend this setting at all on servers. To answer the original question, I tend not to have automatic updates scheduled on servers. I keep an eye on new updates synced to WSUS via email alerts, and install the updates manually and schedule an overnight reboot using Task Scheduler if needed. The ones I do have updates scheduled for do it once a week in the small hours of Sunday morning, and are set to reboot immediately if required. Staff are warned that this is an at-risk period, so anyone stupid enough to be working at 2am on a Sunday deserves what's coming to them if the servers restart.

When the problem is happening, what does the network icon near the system tray say? Does it perhaps look something like this: The yellow triangle and the "(Unauthenticated)" bit is what I'm referring to. If it does look like this when broken, what does it look like on a machine that is working fine?

They actually come with some (usually too short) wires in the box, which have a screw-terminal plug you can swap onto your existing wires, which is what I've done each time.

I wish they were that damned quick at responding to bullying/abuse on Facebook. Good luck though!

I've been replacing ours with these: VISION|TC2-AMP2|AMPLIFER MODULE, 2X 20W | CPC They aren't dirt cheap but they are damn good value when you consider how much desk space you get back.

I learned how to code by teaching myself. I learned how to code correctly through my Computing A-Level. (Then I learned that none of the above mattered in the first year of my degree because they never did code reviews, and I learned that I hate coding in my first coding job.)

I think we do need to look at the wider context here and take all these 'schools fail children' stories with a pinch of salt. If all you listen to is industry spokesmen, you'd be hard pushed to find any industry that kids are being prepared for by schools. The CBI has an annual rant about school leavers not even being able to write or add up. I'm sure it can't be long before McDonalds says schools aren't teaching children the right skills to put lettuce on a bun.

What version number of Numbershark do you have? Is it the network edition or the standalone one?

It is a Dell PERC S100.

You don't need to modify the WIM yourself, WDS will inject any drivers you add to it's driver catalog at install time. The only thing you need to modify is the boot.wim to add NIC drivers (if necessary).

I'm currently investigating a storage upgrade to help add a bit of fizz to our SQL server. The server only has a SATA interface, so SCSI or SAS is out as an option. I have 4 drive bays. The server is also a Hyper-V host (not clustered) for other servers that are not disk IO intensive, but I need to maintain a reasonable amount of disk space for those (more than I can afford using just SSDs). These are the two scenarios I'm considering: 2x SSDs in RAID1 for the SQL guest (probably the Intel 320s) + 2x 10,000RPM hard disks in RAID1 (for the other guests) 4x 10,000RPM hard disks in RAID10 for all guests. My thinking is that in RAID10 the 4x HDs should reach a sustained transfer rate approaching or even exceeding the RAID1 SSDs, due to being able to read off of 4 spindles at once. Writing will be slower, but that's the same for SSDs too. However, I suspect that the reduction in seek times will give the SSDs the advantage. Your thoughts?

Just been listening to Video debate: e-safety | BCS - The Chartered Institute for IT and when they touched upon gaming for young children the two sites they mentioned were Moshi Monsters (which I know about already) and Bin Weevils, which I hadn't heard of until now. Has this cropped up on anyone else's radar already?

Absolutely agree, but don't forget that they can make the same screwups when accessing it at home in the evening, and the only real difference in terms of consequences is that you won't have a log of it from the proxy server. We allow access to social media for staff (with SMT approval) but provide specific training for how staff must act in order to protect themselves, the students, and the reputation of the school. We have clear binding guidance in our AUP of what is expected in line with other guidance on professional conduct.

So true of so many fields. I remember when we were having our office refitted and the benches were proving a nightmare for the fitters to get in. The pair of them spent a few minutes despairing at the job they'd been left with before one of them declared "Well, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it."