Just over a week ago I read a post on my forum about a new series of Blake’s 7 audio adventures on the UK Sci-Fi channel’s website. Naturally, I was curious, so I had a listen to the first three chapters of a story named Rebel by former Doctor Who writer Ben Aaronovich.

The story, which stars Derek Riddell as Roj Blake and Colin Salmon as Kerr Avon, marks Blake’s capture and escape from captivity on a prison planet. The first six chapters of the story are currently up on the website. It’s well worth a listen if you’re into Sci-Fi.

Here be the Blake’s 7 mini-site.

One of the trickiest things to do when working with computes remotely is reboot them. We also have to make sure that the computers don’t have any bios issues that can cause them to not restart. Many times we can’t even get logged on if their Terminal Services access is shut off. With this trick you can reboot a server with ease, even one that doesn’t have PowerShell installed.

To do this first we get on a computer that does have PowerShell. At the PowerShell prompt, try:

PS C:\> $your_server = gwmi win32_operatingsystem -computer yourservername

If you follow best practices and do not run under a domain admin account, (or an account that is local admin on all your servers) Then you should see an error like this:

Now we want to be able to shutdown a computer, but we need to make sure we’re using an account with permissions to reboot the computer in question.

You can use the runas CMD command to launch a PowerShell with the necessary credential.

PS C:\>runas /env /user:administrator@domain.local “powershell.exe”

Then you will be able to link the other computer to your variable, and fire off the simple reboot method. 

PS C:\>$your_server = gwmi win32_operatingsystem -computer yourservername

…

Virtualization software provider VMware announced the release of Workstation 6, the first of the company’s product line to offer support for Windows Vista, Microsoft’s newest operating system.

In this sixth generation of its desktop virtualization software lineup, EMC subsidiary VMware is touting other new features as well, including support for multiple display monitors and USB 2.0 devices.

The Vista support will allow users to deploy the operating system as a guest or host system, facilitate hosting of legacy systems, and enable upgrade and migration projects with “minimal end-user disruption,” according to the company’s product announcement.

The new software is likely to appeal most to developers, who have to test applications on multiple systems such as Windows Vista and Windows XP.