March 2011 - Blind-sysadmins - lists.hodgsonfamily.org

Telephony systems
by Andrew Hodgson 14 Nov '12

14 Nov '12

Hi all, Our current Call Manager 4.x servers are creaking under their age, and we are looking at replacing this either with a new Cisco telephony system or a completely new system altogether. The system has to use IP as the connection to the handsets, as we don't want to add in more cables. Has anyone any experience in deploying a new Call manager setup, or a similar telephony system, and how was the accessibility? Thanks. Andrew.

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let's talk Backup Exec
by Ryan Shugart 21 Dec '11

21 Dec '11

Hey everyone: I just got a promotion at work, and with the goodness of a promotion comes more responsibilities. I'm now in charge of our backup infrastructure. We run Backup Exec 12.5, and have 16 or so media servers in various branch offices around the world. While Backup Exec used to be very accessible, over the last two versions accessibility seems to have gone into something of a decline, I already use scripts just to read the main table of jobs, and might need more just to get around the scheduling window so I can actually schedule a job. I'd consider the rest of the program accessible but clunky, tabbing doesn't always bring you where you think it will, on some screens tab order seems to be dynamic. Backup Exec also has an odd way of bringing up alert windows and grabbing your focus, even when you tell it specifically not to. While clunkyness is OK on one server, when you have fifteen individual servers to manage and no way to do it in a centralized fashion clunkyness is less acceptable. This is also less than a quarter of my new responsibilities as well. The current admin has the remote desktop console setup with all the Backup Exec servers in his favorites, stays logged into each server with a Backup Exec window open, and flicks from screen to screen and can easily glance at the output from each job. For us screen reader users, that doesn't work well. I've already got e-mail alerts set up and am using some Outlook rules to sort failure jobs out from successes, but was wondering if there's anything else I can be doing? I'd think people in really large environments with hundreds of media servers aren't logging into each server on a daily basis, so there has to be better ways to handle this. Any ideas? Thanks. Ryan

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Mac Users?
by David Mehler 26 Apr '11

26 Apr '11

Hello, If there are any Mac users on this list can you please write me offlist? I'd like to know your level of Mac experience. I've got the opportunity to get a used Mac and am wondering if it's a good deal or not, wanting to expand my knowledge in to Macs. Thanks. Dave.

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MySQL
by Greg B. 30 Mar '11

30 Mar '11

Is anyone using MySQL and can give me a little bit of information of how it does with Jaws? Thanks, Greg B.

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MMS 2011
by Ryan Shugart 29 Mar '11

29 Mar '11

So, for those who are interested, I was at the Microsoft Manage Summet in Las Vegas last week. I won't go into details, but the big new announcements are as follows. The biggest was Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2012 beta 2. I've not played with the new beta, but beta 1 was not very accessible at all. Microsoft has also announced their System Center Advisor product, which is free for all software assurance customers. Unfortunately, this is also inaccessible, it's a silver light app. Beyond that, Microsoft is really pushing their hibred cloud stratigy, where some of your apps are on your own servers and some are hosted by Microsoft, using their Assure platform or some other cloud platforms they provide. VDI, or Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, is becoming a very big thing that MS believes will take off in the next few years. This is already being implemented where I work so I can buy this one. They're introducing a new product code named Concero that supposedly allows non system administrators to provision cloud resources according to set IT policies, think Microsoft's equivalent to VMWare's VCloud Director. All in all, there's a lot of new cool stuff coming out, I just hope accessibility improves, as it stands now we won't be using any of it. Ryan

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MMS 2011
by Ryan Shugart 29 Mar '11

29 Mar '11

So, for those who are interested, I was at the Microsoft Manage Summet in Las Vegas last week. I won't go into details, but the big new announcements are as follows. The biggest was Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2012 beta 2. I've not played with the new beta, but beta 1 was not very accessible at all. Microsoft has also announced their System Center Advisor product, which is free for all software assurance customers. Unfortunately, this is also inaccessible, it's a silver light app. Beyond that, Microsoft is really pushing their hibred cloud stratigy, where some of your apps are on your own servers and some are hosted by Microsoft, using their Assure platform or some other cloud platforms they provide. VDI, or Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, is becoming a very big thing that MS believes will take off in the next few years. This is already being implemented where I work so I can buy this one. They're introducing a new product code named Concero that supposedly allows non system administrators to provision cloud resources according to set IT policies, think Microsoft's equivalent to VMWare's VCloud Director. All in all, there's a lot of new cool stuff coming out, I just hope accessibility improves, as it stands now we won't be using any of it. Ryan

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team viewer
by David Mehler 28 Mar '11

28 Mar '11

Hello, Team viewer was mentioned on another list as a remote control method. My information on it however was inaccurate and I was wondering if anyone has used it to take control of another's computer remote in basically, with a screen reader on their local machine? Thanks. Dave.

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Blind Sys Admins website is taking shape.
by Darragh OHeiligh 23 Mar '11

23 Mar '11

Greetings, I just wanted to briefly let you know before I run out the door to go home that the www.blindsysadmins.com website is really starting to take shape. There are three documents relating to system administration tasks. There's an accessible applications page there that's a working progress. You can write your own documents when you log in. They are unpublished until their reviewed and I'll shortly ask one or two people to come on board as reviewers. If your interested in that let me know. The forum is there as well and it's ready to be used. We have thirteen users. Not all of these are administrators so I really need more administrators to register. As I say, the entire thing is a work in progress. Some parts such as painstakingly creating categories and writing the accessible applications page take time but I'm fitting it in between everything else. The next step will be to tidy up the main page and make it much more appealing and interesting. Regards Darragh Ó Héiligh Fujitsu Offices of the Houses of the Oireachtas, Fredrick Building, South Fredrick Street, Dublin2 Telephone: +353 (1) 618 3559 Email: darragh.oheiligh(a)oireachtas.ie Internet: http://www.oireachtas.ie

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Blind Sys Admins website is taking shape.
by Darragh OHeiligh 23 Mar '11

23 Mar '11

Greetings, I just wanted to briefly let you know before I run out the door to go home that the www.blindsysadmins.com website is really starting to take shape. There are three documents relating to system administration tasks. There's an accessible applications page there that's a working progress. You can write your own documents when you log in. They are unpublished until their reviewed and I'll shortly ask one or two people to come on board as reviewers. If your interested in that let me know. The forum is there as well and it's ready to be used. We have thirteen users. Not all of these are administrators so I really need more administrators to register. As I say, the entire thing is a work in progress. Some parts such as painstakingly creating categories and writing the accessible applications page take time but I'm fitting it in between everything else. The next step will be to tidy up the main page and make it much more appealing and interesting. Regards Darragh Ó Héiligh Fujitsu Offices of the Houses of the Oireachtas, Fredrick Building, South Fredrick Street, Dublin2 Telephone: +353 (1) 618 3559 Email: darragh.oheiligh(a)oireachtas.ie Internet: http://www.oireachtas.ie

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best antimalware
by David Mehler 23 Mar '11

23 Mar '11

Hello, I've got a machine that has best antimalware on it. That is a fake security tool, it's actually a trojan and virus a lot of nasty things. I'm wondering i've googled and have seen a lot of sites with removal instructions, but nothing from reputable AV companies AVG, avast, etc. I'm wondering does anyone have a utility or instructions that will kill this? I'd prefer a free standalone utility. Thanks. Dave.

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