However the final straw that drove me to Linux over Windows 7 was a very, very nasty Java virus that managed to disable my antivirus program outright, disable my administrator account's admin privs, and even manage to corrupt some core DLLs required to boot Windows.
Key phrase here is "Java Virus". Admittedly Windows maybe should have a better sandbox to contain evil like Java and its amazingly huge and numerous security holes but it really was Java and not Windows. Java is a stinking pile of (insert your favorite word here) or at least the current Java SE from Oracle is. Java is the current low hanging fruit, it was Windows, then Office, then Flash and now Java. Uninstall it or at least make it so it doesn't run automatically when you go to some web site serving up hacked ads with virus embedded.
Windows Server 2012 is ok. It is finally catching up and is finally VM ready.
While I agree with you pretty much totally I just had to chime in on this. Server 2012 aside from its interface oddities due to relation to Windows 8 is awesome I think. In every way better than 2008 R2, which was pretty good itself. I especially love the new Hyper-V and storage stuff. Live migration at any time with any hardware / storage is amazing and it is FREE in the box!
I run a 3 node cluster with about 30 production VM and 40 TB of disk all on Hyper-V R2. This supports 1000 users with almost perfect uptime. Just wanted to get that out of the way so you can't just shout me down as running a small setup.
Even HyperV has live migration. The difference is, VMWare does it VERY well.
In the current version VMWare wins with virtual disk live migration, something Hyper-V doesn't do yet. However with Windows Server 8 and its Hyper-V feature set I think parity between the two offerings will be much closer. Also I will guarantee Microsoft wins on pricing for features, since they are all inbox rather than add-ons.
We tried Hyper-V for 6 months, and it was the most god awful unstable piece of crap I've ever worked with. A brand new IBM x3650 m3 running 12 cores crashed on a weekly basis and corrupted its main RAID running Windows Server 2008 R2. I think we can all agree that Microsoft virtualization, be it VirtualPC or HyperV is just absolute shit.
I question what you were doing wrong? My first guess is you didn't bother to look up hotfixes for newer Intel / AMD CPU's. The most common cause of crashes with Hyper-V, maybe VMWare is immune to new hardware issues because it doesn't fully utilize the feature set? As for RAID corruption, I am not quite sure how Hyper-V could have caused this. Maybe driver issues or firmware on the RAID box?
I am not saying Hyper-V is going to instantly replace VMWare in all enterprises. However I think you paint a questionable picture of its ability to run in a production Enterprise environment.
In college they will be using Macs, and people of their generation overwhelmingly use Macs, the skills will be more beneficial than learning Windows.
I would love to see something to support this. I was on a university campus this weekend and I was curious about this myself. I actually counted PC vs Mac as I walked around and at best Mac was 20%? While I won't argue that Mac is gaining ground I would say a blanket statement like this is not quite correct. I think learning and being comfortable with technology is more important than learning either the Windows / Mac / Linux way to do things.
Also many of the implied exclusive features are built into windows as well? Lastly, um Steam I shall quote from https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?p_faqid=98 "The Mac version of the Steam client will be released in April, until that time we will be unable to provide support for Mac issues. For more information, please read the following news post: Valve to Deliver Steam & Source on the Mac Please note that not all Steam games will be available on the Mac client. Availability will be determined on a game-togame basis." Right now Steam runs 0 of the games and who knows what the future holds there.
I work at a school as a network admin where all the students have tablets in 7-12 grade. I get a few similar questions from parents every year, some even implying that the school caused the problems they are having at home and should fix them. The best course of action as others have mentioned is interacting with the kids. Over the shoulder parenting / net-admin works the best, if that fails taking away the computer works well too. However there are some technical solutions that I have helped some parents implement that are fairly non-techie friendly. I will say up front this will sound like a Microsoft commercial which is because it is what I have experience implementing. I am sure there are other solutions I just know this one can work. In Windows 7 it has some pretty good parental controls (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/features/parental-controls.aspx) and then you can further supplement it with the Windows Live Family Safety (http://download.live.com/familysafety). These two together do a really good job of time based controls and logging, there content based controls aren't as good but are functional. As far as backup you can use a Windows Home Server (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/windowshomeserver/default.mspx) to handle that and it will also do some nice shared storage. The cost of this setup is really just the hardware / os and potentially the WHS box. The features are just built in and are intended to be non-techie friendly. I know they are since I have had parents implement them on their own and tell me they work.
I have to agree for me at least. It gave me 33 down and 38 up which is pretty close to my FIOS 35/35. Even with the problems outlined in the linked review I think the collected data placed against a given providers claims would be useful on a large scale. I wonder if the collect the ISP based on ARIN data?
My prediction is that the RC will be officially released at 9 AM PST on May 11 when it is announced during the first keynote at TechEd 09 in LA. It well leak earlier, but I think it will officially go live then.
I would love to have students using something like the Kindle right now. Or even just digital texts on a tablet. The problem is the publishers are scared to death of E-publishing since they make a huge chunk of their money on the actual printing / binding not the content. We have had a really hard time moving to e-books because of this. Also it requires the teachers to shift to new texts which can sometimes be hard.
My fault for using terms interchangbly that shouldn't be. When I said Proxy I should have said caching. I was actually curious if your device does caching to shrink internet bandwidth for redundant hits based?
You don't mention it being a proxy server to limit redundant downloading, is it? If it isn't why not? One of my biggest problems was total bandwidth, a proxy server solves that quite well in a school environment due to serving the same content to 20 students internally rather than direct from site.
You are correct a backbone is very neccessary, also making it upgradeable helps a lot. However wireless can support sufficient speeds unless you are having every student in class stream high-bandwidth video. Which if you are well don't know what to tell you. Wired solutions are great for fixed desktops, but totally unrealistic in a mobile kid filled environement.
If you use a wireless solution designed for the environment you have it can work quite well. I have 300-400 active wireless clients daily. I just didn't use wi-fi equipment made for someone's house. I have one access point per 3-4 rooms but they also overlap coverage and load balancing. Putting 5-6 access points in one room would actually makes things far worse most likely since the clients would be constantly roaming and channel overlap would ruin speed.
This will be a little long but I hope it helps. First a little background just so someone might listen to me. I have been working at an independent (private non-religious) K-12 all girls school for 9 years as a network admin. 11 years ago the school began a 1-1 laptop program for 7-12 starting with teachers. All 7-12 students have had their own personal laptops for the last 8 years. 5 years ago we switched to the tablet platform and use it exclusively now. Our students own their own machines and purchase them on our recommendation. We do all repairs on site as an authorized repair shop. Some thoughts on issues brought up by others already.
Heterogeneous environment - Unless you want to punish your teachers specifically and possibly yourself this is insane. Asking the teachers to be able to do mild troubleshooting and technical instruction in class on one platform is hard on multiple it is damn near impossible. Also supporting even a broad range of hardware is hard let alone Win/Mac/FOSS.
Tablets - Will every student love the tablet features? No. Will a large percentage get a huge benefit in disciplines like math/science/art? Yes. Tablets cost more but it allows students and teachers to work whatever way they are most comfortable. Also a convertible tablet can do EVERYTHING a standard laptop can do so you aren't losing anything.
Weight - Try carrying around any model you consider strapped to your back or in your arms for 8 hours a day for a week and then remember that you are 11 and have to carry books and other supplies as well. Then go get a model that at most weighs 4 pounds and hopefully less.
Physical design - Most laptops are still designed for business / home which means they expect the lid to be opened and closed 4-6 times a day and to be carried for limited amount of time. In a classroom environment a laptop will be opened and closed 4-6 a class period and carried for potentially hours a day. The hinges often break due to this. Also corners and screen back strength matter for being a backpack squished between books and dropped from shoulder height onto tile / concrete floors.
Warranty - Make sure the laptops are covered under accidental breakage warranties, because they WILL be broken. Further investigate what that warranty covers and how often. If you break the screen more than once in 365 days or a calendar year is it covered? Is there a maximum warranty pay out on parts? What plastics are covered and who decides when they are replaceable? What is turnaround time on repairs?
Loaners - If you expect the laptops to be a part of education you can't tell the student to deal without one for days or weeks while it is being repaired. You will need a loaner pool to lend out so the student can continue to operate.
Training - This is simply too important to overstate. You need to help your faculty have as much of a leg up as possible. The students will catch up and surpass them it is almost guaranteed. If you are lucky the students will help each other and the teacher when needed.
Wireless - Make sure you get an enterprise class solution that supports load balancing and adding of AP to support density. Most infrastructures aren't designed for the density of schools. Imagine worst case scenario of every classroom filed and online at once, how many is and how close together are they.
Proxy server - You will NEVER have enough bandwidth period. However in a classroom environment often 20 students are going to the same website at once, why download it more than once. Also you can use it to block distractions such as IM, facebook, youtube as well as things like porn. You may think this is censorship and it is at some level, but sometimes teenagers need a little guidance in time management. Also you don't want an 11 year old at porn site on accident. This will also help cut down on malicious software entering school if you block the right sites.
Anti-Virus - Yes all the Mac/FOSS people can tell me this isn't needed on their platform
If the students didn't have enough self discipline to actually want to pay attention in class and pass I hardly think the technology is to blame. There is a little wi-fi switch on every laptop, can't deal with the distraction of the net during class turn off the switch. I hate when a laptop is blamed for a person dropping out of school, it is that person's fault not the laptop. Secondly but much less so, if the teacher is engaging maybe the students would actually want to pay attention.
3. Now this IS a concern for me - you can't just buy consumer level laptops, they'll take far too much abuse over the course of a year. This happened with a few of the ones that tried to issue laptops to the kids.
I'd be tempted to go with desktop units(cheaper, harder to steal), and roaming profiles. Maybe even thinnet clients. More expensive, but at least you keep the valuable pilferable equipment out of the classrooms.
You defiinitely have to look at physical reliability of the machines. When giving laptops to teenagers they are abused by accident / purpose. Most cheap consumer models are not that well built in corners, hinges and keyboards. A little extra cost upfront can greatly reduce repairs. Also the warranty is very important, does it cover plastics and how often and how much.
Roaming profiles on a wireless network is a nightmare, too bandwidth intensive.
This is solved with a proxy server with a subscription based list. You block the category of social, adult, etc. Not to be draconian but to limit distractions during the educational day as well as to limit accidental things like whitehouse.com vs. whitehouse.gov.
Actually it is surprisingly hard to get DSL / Cable connections in many places in DC. Further you get to pay dearly for T1's due to local loop fees. I know several people who run IT for schools there and they often complain of this issue.
After supporting 8 years of various 802.11? implementations we got Meru's abg solution last year. It works differently than any other switching solution out there by having all AP's on same channel and look like one giant AP. The clients are totally out of the picture as to which AP they are talking to. It is the first solution that has just worked for us. Highly recommended.
DX10 is going to be just like DX9 and DX8 before it. In reality we are mostly concerned with the Direct3D portion of DirectX since the rest is more stagnant. When DX9 libraries and later hardware came out developers simlpy turned on the options now supported or speed up the game. The game would interogate the card to see what features and how well they were supported and went on from there. The same will happen with DX10.
As for OpenGL getting a bump out of this, I doubt developers will suddenly add an OpenGL renderer. They will simply fall back to DX9. Other than a few MS first party games I doubt you will see any games requiring DX10 (Vista) in the next 18 months. Even the ones that do like Halo 2 were designed for a DX8 codepath and P3 733 originally so any machine with a DX9 card and P4 or better could support it. MS is simply restricting it to Vista.
I know the likelyhood of official drivers for Cable Card PC hardware on linux being released are about zero. Just curious if anyone has any thoughts on the possibility of reverse engineering drivers and hacking them in to MythTV? Hopefully once the hardware gets out there even in pre-built vista machines there will be some more interesting stuff to happen.
This week Microsoft announced they will begin doing push email for all Windows Mobile devices from Exchange. This was the last key differentiator for RIM. Without that, they are simply just another Cell Phone / PIM / Email device. Oh and Microsoft is giving this away for free, so no need to buy RIM's enterprise software.
The software just automatically changes IE (and I assume Firefox) to point to a.pac on port 9100 of localhost. This is fine and dandy for most home users. What about those on a corporate or educational network that either use explicit or transparent proxies already. How does this.pac interact with those existing settings? Any way to see the.pac file?
Slashdot Mirror
However the final straw that drove me to Linux over Windows 7 was a very, very nasty Java virus that managed to disable my antivirus program outright, disable my administrator account's admin privs, and even manage to corrupt some core DLLs required to boot Windows.
Key phrase here is "Java Virus". Admittedly Windows maybe should have a better sandbox to contain evil like Java and its amazingly huge and numerous security holes but it really was Java and not Windows. Java is a stinking pile of (insert your favorite word here) or at least the current Java SE from Oracle is. Java is the current low hanging fruit, it was Windows, then Office, then Flash and now Java. Uninstall it or at least make it so it doesn't run automatically when you go to some web site serving up hacked ads with virus embedded.
Windows Server 2012 is ok. It is finally catching up and is finally VM ready.
While I agree with you pretty much totally I just had to chime in on this. Server 2012 aside from its interface oddities due to relation to Windows 8 is awesome I think. In every way better than 2008 R2, which was pretty good itself. I especially love the new Hyper-V and storage stuff. Live migration at any time with any hardware / storage is amazing and it is FREE in the box!
I run a 3 node cluster with about 30 production VM and 40 TB of disk all on Hyper-V R2. This supports 1000 users with almost perfect uptime. Just wanted to get that out of the way so you can't just shout me down as running a small setup.
Even HyperV has live migration. The difference is, VMWare does it VERY well.
In the current version VMWare wins with virtual disk live migration, something Hyper-V doesn't do yet. However with Windows Server 8 and its Hyper-V feature set I think parity between the two offerings will be much closer. Also I will guarantee Microsoft wins on pricing for features, since they are all inbox rather than add-ons.
We tried Hyper-V for 6 months, and it was the most god awful unstable piece of crap I've ever worked with. A brand new IBM x3650 m3 running 12 cores crashed on a weekly basis and corrupted its main RAID running Windows Server 2008 R2. I think we can all agree that Microsoft virtualization, be it VirtualPC or HyperV is just absolute shit.
I question what you were doing wrong? My first guess is you didn't bother to look up hotfixes for newer Intel / AMD CPU's. The most common cause of crashes with Hyper-V, maybe VMWare is immune to new hardware issues because it doesn't fully utilize the feature set? As for RAID corruption, I am not quite sure how Hyper-V could have caused this. Maybe driver issues or firmware on the RAID box?
I am not saying Hyper-V is going to instantly replace VMWare in all enterprises. However I think you paint a questionable picture of its ability to run in a production Enterprise environment.
In college they will be using Macs, and people of their generation overwhelmingly use Macs, the skills will be more beneficial than learning Windows.
I would love to see something to support this. I was on a university campus this weekend and I was curious about this myself. I actually counted PC vs Mac as I walked around and at best Mac was 20%? While I won't argue that Mac is gaining ground I would say a blanket statement like this is not quite correct. I think learning and being comfortable with technology is more important than learning either the Windows / Mac / Linux way to do things.
Also many of the implied exclusive features are built into windows as well? Lastly, um Steam I shall quote from https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?p_faqid=98
"The Mac version of the Steam client will be released in April, until that time we will be unable to provide support for Mac issues.
For more information, please read the following news post:
Valve to Deliver Steam & Source on the Mac
Please note that not all Steam games will be available on the Mac client. Availability will be determined on a game-togame basis."
Right now Steam runs 0 of the games and who knows what the future holds there.
I work at a school as a network admin where all the students have tablets in 7-12 grade. I get a few similar questions from parents every year, some even implying that the school caused the problems they are having at home and should fix them. The best course of action as others have mentioned is interacting with the kids. Over the shoulder parenting / net-admin works the best, if that fails taking away the computer works well too. However there are some technical solutions that I have helped some parents implement that are fairly non-techie friendly. I will say up front this will sound like a Microsoft commercial which is because it is what I have experience implementing. I am sure there are other solutions I just know this one can work. In Windows 7 it has some pretty good parental controls (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/features/parental-controls.aspx) and then you can further supplement it with the Windows Live Family Safety (http://download.live.com/familysafety). These two together do a really good job of time based controls and logging, there content based controls aren't as good but are functional. As far as backup you can use a Windows Home Server (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/windowshomeserver/default.mspx) to handle that and it will also do some nice shared storage. The cost of this setup is really just the hardware / os and potentially the WHS box. The features are just built in and are intended to be non-techie friendly. I know they are since I have had parents implement them on their own and tell me they work.
I have to agree for me at least. It gave me 33 down and 38 up which is pretty close to my FIOS 35/35. Even with the problems outlined in the linked review I think the collected data placed against a given providers claims would be useful on a large scale. I wonder if the collect the ISP based on ARIN data?
Try DVDFab, it has Path Player to find hidden titles. Specifically to deal with this issue.
My prediction is that the RC will be officially released at 9 AM PST on May 11 when it is announced during the first keynote at TechEd 09 in LA. It well leak earlier, but I think it will officially go live then.
I would love to have students using something like the Kindle right now. Or even just digital texts on a tablet. The problem is the publishers are scared to death of E-publishing since they make a huge chunk of their money on the actual printing / binding not the content. We have had a really hard time moving to e-books because of this. Also it requires the teachers to shift to new texts which can sometimes be hard.
My fault for using terms interchangbly that shouldn't be. When I said Proxy I should have said caching. I was actually curious if your device does caching to shrink internet bandwidth for redundant hits based?
You don't mention it being a proxy server to limit redundant downloading, is it? If it isn't why not? One of my biggest problems was total bandwidth, a proxy server solves that quite well in a school environment due to serving the same content to 20 students internally rather than direct from site.
You are correct a backbone is very neccessary, also making it upgradeable helps a lot. However wireless can support sufficient speeds unless you are having every student in class stream high-bandwidth video. Which if you are well don't know what to tell you. Wired solutions are great for fixed desktops, but totally unrealistic in a mobile kid filled environement.
If you use a wireless solution designed for the environment you have it can work quite well. I have 300-400 active wireless clients daily. I just didn't use wi-fi equipment made for someone's house. I have one access point per 3-4 rooms but they also overlap coverage and load balancing. Putting 5-6 access points in one room would actually makes things far worse most likely since the clients would be constantly roaming and channel overlap would ruin speed.
This will be a little long but I hope it helps. First a little background just so someone might listen to me. I have been working at an independent (private non-religious) K-12 all girls school for 9 years as a network admin. 11 years ago the school began a 1-1 laptop program for 7-12 starting with teachers. All 7-12 students have had their own personal laptops for the last 8 years. 5 years ago we switched to the tablet platform and use it exclusively now. Our students own their own machines and purchase them on our recommendation. We do all repairs on site as an authorized repair shop. Some thoughts on issues brought up by others already.
Heterogeneous environment - Unless you want to punish your teachers specifically and possibly yourself this is insane. Asking the teachers to be able to do mild troubleshooting and technical instruction in class on one platform is hard on multiple it is damn near impossible. Also supporting even a broad range of hardware is hard let alone Win/Mac/FOSS.
Tablets - Will every student love the tablet features? No. Will a large percentage get a huge benefit in disciplines like math/science/art? Yes. Tablets cost more but it allows students and teachers to work whatever way they are most comfortable. Also a convertible tablet can do EVERYTHING a standard laptop can do so you aren't losing anything.
Weight - Try carrying around any model you consider strapped to your back or in your arms for 8 hours a day for a week and then remember that you are 11 and have to carry books and other supplies as well. Then go get a model that at most weighs 4 pounds and hopefully less.
Physical design - Most laptops are still designed for business / home which means they expect the lid to be opened and closed 4-6 times a day and to be carried for limited amount of time. In a classroom environment a laptop will be opened and closed 4-6 a class period and carried for potentially hours a day. The hinges often break due to this. Also corners and screen back strength matter for being a backpack squished between books and dropped from shoulder height onto tile / concrete floors.
Warranty - Make sure the laptops are covered under accidental breakage warranties, because they WILL be broken. Further investigate what that warranty covers and how often. If you break the screen more than once in 365 days or a calendar year is it covered? Is there a maximum warranty pay out on parts? What plastics are covered and who decides when they are replaceable? What is turnaround time on repairs?
Loaners - If you expect the laptops to be a part of education you can't tell the student to deal without one for days or weeks while it is being repaired. You will need a loaner pool to lend out so the student can continue to operate.
Training - This is simply too important to overstate. You need to help your faculty have as much of a leg up as possible. The students will catch up and surpass them it is almost guaranteed. If you are lucky the students will help each other and the teacher when needed.
Wireless - Make sure you get an enterprise class solution that supports load balancing and adding of AP to support density. Most infrastructures aren't designed for the density of schools. Imagine worst case scenario of every classroom filed and online at once, how many is and how close together are they.
Proxy server - You will NEVER have enough bandwidth period. However in a classroom environment often 20 students are going to the same website at once, why download it more than once. Also you can use it to block distractions such as IM, facebook, youtube as well as things like porn. You may think this is censorship and it is at some level, but sometimes teenagers need a little guidance in time management. Also you don't want an 11 year old at porn site on accident. This will also help cut down on malicious software entering school if you block the right sites.
Anti-Virus - Yes all the Mac/FOSS people can tell me this isn't needed on their platform
If the students didn't have enough self discipline to actually want to pay attention in class and pass I hardly think the technology is to blame. There is a little wi-fi switch on every laptop, can't deal with the distraction of the net during class turn off the switch. I hate when a laptop is blamed for a person dropping out of school, it is that person's fault not the laptop. Secondly but much less so, if the teacher is engaging maybe the students would actually want to pay attention.
3. Now this IS a concern for me - you can't just buy consumer level laptops, they'll take far too much abuse over the course of a year. This happened with a few of the ones that tried to issue laptops to the kids.
I'd be tempted to go with desktop units(cheaper, harder to steal), and roaming profiles. Maybe even thinnet clients. More expensive, but at least you keep the valuable pilferable equipment out of the classrooms.
You defiinitely have to look at physical reliability of the machines. When giving laptops to teenagers they are abused by accident / purpose. Most cheap consumer models are not that well built in corners, hinges and keyboards. A little extra cost upfront can greatly reduce repairs. Also the warranty is very important, does it cover plastics and how often and how much.
Roaming profiles on a wireless network is a nightmare, too bandwidth intensive.
This is solved with a proxy server with a subscription based list. You block the category of social, adult, etc. Not to be draconian but to limit distractions during the educational day as well as to limit accidental things like whitehouse.com vs. whitehouse.gov.
Actually it is surprisingly hard to get DSL / Cable connections in many places in DC. Further you get to pay dearly for T1's due to local loop fees. I know several people who run IT for schools there and they often complain of this issue.
K-12 School
125 Faculty with tablets
700 Students of which 450 Students with tablets
75 Staff with desktops
12 Servers
70 Classrooms with AV setup
5 IT staff
Running over 50% Windows Vista, remaining Windows XP
Servers mostly Server 2003 starting to go to 2008
After supporting 8 years of various 802.11? implementations we got Meru's abg solution last year. It works differently than any other switching solution out there by having all AP's on same channel and look like one giant AP. The clients are totally out of the picture as to which AP they are talking to. It is the first solution that has just worked for us. Highly recommended.
DX10 is going to be just like DX9 and DX8 before it. In reality we are mostly concerned with the Direct3D portion of DirectX since the rest is more stagnant. When DX9 libraries and later hardware came out developers simlpy turned on the options now supported or speed up the game. The game would interogate the card to see what features and how well they were supported and went on from there. The same will happen with DX10.
As for OpenGL getting a bump out of this, I doubt developers will suddenly add an OpenGL renderer. They will simply fall back to DX9. Other than a few MS first party games I doubt you will see any games requiring DX10 (Vista) in the next 18 months. Even the ones that do like Halo 2 were designed for a DX8 codepath and P3 733 originally so any machine with a DX9 card and P4 or better could support it. MS is simply restricting it to Vista.
It does show motion in screen shots, even will show a playing movie from media player.
I know the likelyhood of official drivers for Cable Card PC hardware on linux being released are about zero. Just curious if anyone has any thoughts on the possibility of reverse engineering drivers and hacking them in to MythTV? Hopefully once the hardware gets out there even in pre-built vista machines there will be some more interesting stuff to happen.
This week Microsoft announced they will begin doing push email for all Windows Mobile devices from Exchange. This was the last key differentiator for RIM. Without that, they are simply just another Cell Phone / PIM / Email device. Oh and Microsoft is giving this away for free, so no need to buy RIM's enterprise software.
The software just automatically changes IE (and I assume Firefox) to point to a .pac on port 9100 of localhost. This is fine and dandy for most home users. What about those on a corporate or educational network that either use explicit or transparent proxies already. How does this .pac interact with those existing settings? Any way to see the .pac file?