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RE: Laptops, was RE: [Alug]animation software and C++ training
by Adam Bower 04 Jun '03

04 Jun '03

> The downside is that the batteries are now dead, after only 2 years > usage. According to Dell that is good going, about 500 recharges I > estimate, but Dell reckon 300 is average. I was expecting > closer to 1000 > based on ordinary rechargeable batteries! That doesn't work out cheap > at 77ukp +P&P +VAT. Did you have the batteries plugged in while you ran the laptop on mains power? that tends to kill them fairly quickly. Of course that is not as bad as the original sony laptop battery on my Vaio I had, which died after about 35 charge cycles. Adam

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[Alug]animation software and C++ training
by Simon Jude 04 Jun '03

04 Jun '03

Hi, Does anybody know of any good animation software for linux which can take a sequence of images and create animations from them? I have used Quicktime in the past but as I'm hoping to get my hands on an old PC in our lab to run linux on in the near future I was wondering whether there was an alternative! Also, slightly off topic, we are about to buy a number of software packages that come with APIs and SDKs so that we can customise them if we wish (and require a training course in Arizona!). Can anybody suggest any good books or training courses for learning C/C++? Thanks Simon

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[Alug]how to mount a removable SCSI disk?
by Keith Watson 04 Jun '03

04 Jun '03

Yes, OK, I know the answer is "very carefully" :o) By a fortuitous chain of events I have become the owner of a Castlewood ORB2 2.2Gb removable SCSI drive (plus a couple of removable disks to go with it). Which is nice because now I've got something to hang of that old SCSI adapter card I had lying around (Diamond Multimedia Fireport40). I've tried it out with Windows 2K and it works a treat (media is currently formatted as FAT2). GNU/Linux (Debian) picks up the SCSI card and the device OK (i.e. everything shows up in /proc/scsi as it should) with the adapter being scsi0 and the drive is on LUN 5. I've installed the scsitools package <http://packages.debian.org/stable/utils/scsitools.html> and run scsidev. And now I'm stuck, I presume I need to mount the drive with something like; mount -t vfat /dev/??? /mnt/orb2 but what device name should use (or how do I find out)? Regards, Keith ____________ Say nothing and saw wood. Vermont Saying

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[Alug]Re: Redhat, Mandrake, and Gentoo Disks
by Dan Beimborn 04 Jun '03

04 Jun '03

Thanks so much for the huge response to my query. I've been well looked after by Graham, but thanks to everyone who responded. Very nice group of people you have here! The hitch I seem to run into is that Gentoo is a small kick-off disk followed by downloading source off the net. Does anyone have a trick to do that with a local mirror to make it bearable for a modem guy to set it up? I've got a couple machines, some crossover cables, and plan to install it to a VMWare image on a windows box to start with (the missus gets the faster CPU for her photoshop!). DB

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RE: [Alug]animation software and C++ training
by Adam Bower 04 Jun '03

04 Jun '03

> Martyn Drake writes: > > > CinePaint? I'm trying to persuade the texture artists at > work to try and > > move over to it rather than use Photoshop under Windows - > we're seeing more > > Windows boxen creep in because of ruddy Photoshop. > > You could take a look at the Mac under MacOS X. Not Linux but a rock > solid Unix with: Oh don't worry, people working in the effects industry are already looking at Mac OS X, (not necessarily through choice) most of the high end effects software is in some way owned by apple....

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[Alug]GPL, freedom and bread
by Ben Francis 04 Jun '03

04 Jun '03

I've just been reading several documents at gnu.org explaining the benefits of free software over proprietary software (indexed here http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/philosophy.html) After reading these articles/essays I very much feel that following the guidelines of the GNU Public License is the single best way to develop software in most if not all cases and holds benefits both for developers, end users and society as a whole. However, I still feel that if I were asked to justify this view to someone I would have trouble doing so, because my understanding of the underlying concepts is still a little sketchy. In particular, I can quite readily accept that writing software under the GPL is the best way and I'm the kind of person that would still program even if I was not being paid to do it. However, the harsh reality is that programmers need money to put bread on the table and apparently some geeks even have families to support! Just say someone were to program full time and released all of their code under the GPL, where does their bread actually come from? Short of selling their body on the streets (which may be frowned upon by aforementioned family) or starting up a farm and becoming self sufficient, where does the doe come in? I believe that job satisfaction comes over money every time, but there are still sources of money in free (as in speech not beer) software and the documents make it quite clear that you can quite legitimately sell such software for whatever price the market will pay, providing you follow the guidelines so that the freedom of the software is maintained. If a baker buys his own flour, he owns the bread he bakes and can sell it. If I write software but I don't own it, I can still sell it, but people can get it for free from elsewhere and can get it from a friend, which as an alternative to paying 9.9 times out of 10 they will. At the moment this may not be such a problem as people may prefer to buy the software in a package with an instruction manual and bundled support for the program. However, I would argue that the ideal program would be intuitive to the point where it required no documentation or training and support is mainly for when things go wrong, which an ideal program wouldn't. In instances where a form of support or source of information IS required, which will always happen, the online community can often offer support that is equal to that of paid support for free, and this is actively encouraged within online forums and instant messaging. With the spread of broadband internet connections swapping information or programs between people is becoming even easier and cheaper than copying a CD to the point where the cost per byte is negligible, which is the way it should be. The only source of income that therefore remains is writing bespoke solutions for a particular customer where that customer would pay you to port your program to fit their own business practises rather than work on the features you would normally put as a high priority. However, if this is also released under the GPL will the number of cases not be very small and no basis for a decent sized income? I don't like the fact that my only concerns stem from the need for cash, but it is, unfortunately, a necessity. I'm posting this rather long message here because I know there are veterans on the subject lurking in the corner (or not) who may be able to enlighten me. I believe the answer to my questions lie on well trodden ground and hopefully those answers will help me in my active support for free software. If there is an easy answer, then forgive my ignorance but I make no apologies for asking silly questions, someone has to ask them :) Thanks for your time, Ben "tola" Francis --- there is no spoon... damn, now I have to eat my yoghurt with a fork.

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RE: [Alug]Redhat, Mandrake, and Gentoo Disks
by Jonathan Dye 04 Jun '03

04 Jun '03

MJ Ray wrote: > Jonathan Dye <jonathan.dye(a)automationpartnership.com> wrote: >> think) and call it something else (I think they've called it Pink >> Tie) because of copyright issues. > > I thought that was because of trademark law being used to deny the Red > Hat name to others, not copyright? That is probably correct, I should have checked the correct terminology/reason before just automatically typing 'copyright'. JD _____________________________________________________________________ This message has been checked for all known viruses by the MessageLabs Virus Scanning Service

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RE: [Alug]Redhat, Mandrake, and Gentoo Disks
by Jonathan Dye 04 Jun '03

04 Jun '03

Martyn Drake wrote: > On Tue, 3 Jun 2003 11:27:35 +0100 Jonathan Dye wrote: > > > www.linuxemporium.co.uk have several distribtions (both download and > > retail versions) as well of lots of other stuff and they'll > mail them > > to you. I'm not sure how nominal the fee is though. > > It should be noted that they won't sell the downloadable copies of Red > Hat, but everything else can be picked up there for reasonable cost. Yes they do. Thay have had to remove a couple of rpms (all pictures I think) and call it something else (I think they've called it Pink Tie) because of copyright issues. JD _____________________________________________________________________ This message has been checked for all known viruses by the MessageLabs Virus Scanning Service

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Re: [Alug]Wine
by jamie.french＠talk21.com 03 Jun '03

03 Jun '03

This is funny, I tried to get Wine working last night as I want to run KazaaLite. I dont have much time in the evenings and all I got to work was progman! Need to do some reading. Aside, does anyone know of any P2P clients like Kazaa which run under Linux? Take Care, Jamie Best Regards, Jamie French -------------------- talk21 your FREE portable and private address on the net at http://www.talk21.com

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RE: [Alug]Redhat, Mandrake, and Gentoo Disks
by Jonathan Dye 03 Jun '03

03 Jun '03

Dan Beimborn wrote: > Hello folks, > > I'm new to the area here (as I may have inadverently > announced twice!), > and I'm sitting on the end of a modem (you'd think I'd use a chair..). > > Anyway, I'm used to schlurping down godawfully huge ISO > images over my > lunch hour, so not sure exactly how one acquires sets of redhat, > mandrake, and Gentoo in modem land. Could anyone either recommend a > source that burns them for a nominal fee, or someone who'd > burn them for > me in the area? www.linuxemporium.co.uk have several distribtions (both download and retail versions) as well of lots of other stuff and they'll mail them to you. I'm not sure how nominal the fee is though. JD _____________________________________________________________________ This message has been checked for all known viruses by the MessageLabs Virus Scanning Service

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