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Open Source Action Plan in Government
by mick 19 May '09

19 May '09

I have worked in central government my entire career (some 35+ years). I even once worked for the organisation quoted below. I confess to being completely baffled how a new agreement with Microsoft meets the Government's committment to Open Source. See http://online.ogcbuyingsolutions.gov.uk/aboutus/pressreleases/MicrosoftnewP… In particular the quote attributed to Angela Eagle: "It [the new agreement] also reinforces the Government's commitment to its Open Source Action Plan by setting up a facility to reuse and share licences across the public sector." Mick --------------------------------------------------------------------- The text file for RFC 854 contains exactly 854 lines. Do you think there is any cosmic significance in this? Douglas E Comer - Internetworking with TCP/IP Volume 1 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc854.txt ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street
by samwise 18 May '09

18 May '09

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- The monthly "Third Monday" ALUG Ipswich Social Meeting is back tonight (Monday 18th May) at 20:00: P J McGinty & Sons 15 Northgate Street Ipswich Suffolk IP1 3BY Tel: 01473 251 515 Map/Directions URI: http://maps.google.co.uk/?q=IP1+3BY WWW: http://pjmcginty.moonfruit.com/ McGintys pub is in the centre of Ipswich, not far from our old haunt - The Milestone. It's directly opposite the town's central library and has a reputation for good Irish beer. All are welcome, novices and experienced users. Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. Topics up for discussion tonight include a showing off of the latest Android handset running Cupcake (Android 1.5), a rant about why Google Contacts has no field to store birthdays, and the question of whether the iPod run it's course ... plus anything else we want to yak about. Remember to call or email me, if you're arriving later and want to ensure I don't wander off, which I have a tendency to do if the turn-out hits rock-bottom ... Hope to see you there, Peter. ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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Feasability of unvirtualising guest OS for speed and profit?
by Srdjan Todorovic 11 May '09

11 May '09

Hi everyone, I've got a VMware image of a Linux distro used for development tasks. I use VMPlayer to boot this distro and then I work in it. This distro is virtualised as the guest and host libc/toolchain/etc are of different versions (and also incompatible). But it's a pain to keep all the windows confined to the VMPlayer window. So, I was thinking of: - copying out the files from the vmplayer distro image to a specific directory on the host filesystem - chrooting to this directory - maybe setting up LD_LIBRARY_PATH or something similar (though if I'm chrooting, I doubt this step will be needed) so as to: - take advantage of SMP when running make - split out windows from 'pseudo-guest' distro across two screens - not have to faff about with vmplayer and the slight performance penalty - not have to worry about removable devices and vmware's handling of them. At some point, I will try this out. But has anyone ever tried this, and did you run into any particular problems? Anything nasty/tricky to be careful of? I don't specifically need the guest OSs kernel to be booting, which is why this is possibly a nice plan. Thank you Srdjan

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Netbook question(s)
by Chris G 07 May '09

07 May '09

I'm thinking of getting a cheap netbook to take on a (motorbike) holiday next month. It'll be Linux based of course and my requirements are pretty simple. All the basic, cheap netbooks will fulfil my basic requirements I think - i.e. they have a browser, can connect to the internet by WiFi, etc. However I have a couple of specific things which aren't always addresses in the advertising blurb:- How easy is it to add software? I really have to have ssh as that is how I access my E-Mail and that's one of the major reasons for getting the netbook. Are the "as supplied" Linux distributions sort of cast in stone or can one add things? I don't want to have to do a complete installation of a new distribution just to get ssh. Do any of the netbooks have a trackball rather than a pad? I really don't know why trackballs aren't more popular, I use one on my desktop and we now have a wireless keyboard with a trackball and it's magic, no separate mouse to lose/drop and the trackball is much nicer than a pad. -- Chris Green

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"Hacked to Pieces"
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 06 May '09

06 May '09

Hi again, folks. This is a sort fo follow-up to the Syleham gathering, since as I started to drive home after the meeting a programme "Hacked to Pieces" had just started on Radio 4. It is about computer crime, and how vulnerable most people are because of naivety about security. The programme can be found at 17:00 on http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/programmes/schedules/fm for today Sunday 3 May (in case you're reading this later). If you click on the link "N days left to listen" you can hear it. The bit that raised my eyebrows starts at 5min 30sec into the programme, where the presenter (Jolyon Jenkins) takes his laptop to be hacked into by Peter Wood of First Base Technologies (who provide a "hack your computer, guv?" service to companies who want to check their security). It lasts to 7min 40sec into the programme. In particular, I transcribed the following short extract: JJ: I was genuinely suprised by, in fact, how vulnerable I turned out to be. PW: The first thing I'll do is an easy check to see whether I can get a nice little automated tool to cough up your password straight away so I can log on as you. JJ: I'm fairly confident you're not going the get my password, because it's not a natural language word. PW: This isn't dependent on any dictionary-based word, it's just trying every permutation of letters and numbers up to 14 characters long. JJ: Ah, I'm feeling less confident because ... PW: Ah! There's your password JJ: Oh! PW: That took two hundred and ninety seconds of computational time. Well, my jaw would drop if I believed it! Even if the password is case-insensitive, that's 36 letters+numbers to try every "permutation" of. There are 36^14 different 14-character strings where each character can independently be any letter or number. And that's just the full 14-character string -- there's also all the shorter strings as well. Now, 36^14 is about 10^22, or 10^13 billion, or 10,000 billion billion. A 1-GHz CPU would take 10,000 billion seconds to execute that number of CPU cycles, or about 300,000 years. So there's no way the guy's password hacker is going to do what he said it would do. It's not too plausible when it comes to searching for shorter passwords either. An 8-character password (case-insensitive) still potentially requires 36^8 or about 3*10^12 tries; so (based on the previous calculation) that's 3,000 seconds or 0.83hr to execute 3*10^12 CPU cycles. Then you have to multiply that by the number of CPU cycles needed to work through each try, which is presumably not a small number. And it's worse if passwords are case-insensitive, since then there are 46^8 approx = 2*10^13, or 20,000 billion tries for an 8-character password, and it's 5.6 hours to execute that number of CPU cycles on a 1 GHz CPU. So the "outcome" of that little experiment strikes me a implausible, and I susepct that it was "rigged" in order to sex up the story. (Maybe JJ used a shortish password -- 46^6 is only 9.5 billion). This sort of thing is supposed to take place in the context of people (e.g. attending meetings/conferences) leaving their laptops unattended for say half an hour, thus allowing the hacker physical access. (And, by the way, it seems they're thinking of Windows machines). I'd be interested to hear if any of you folks have comments on the above! Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 03-May-09 Time: 22:41:30 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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ALUG 10.0 kit meet Sunday 3rd
by John Woodard 04 May '09

04 May '09

Directions to the venue have been posted if you do have difficulty finding Syleham Village Hall, those who have been before can confirm it can be a little difficult to find, I will have my mobile turned on so you can call to be guided in. The signal for my network is flaky inside the hall but I will pop outside from time to time at the beginning to check for voice mail or text and will call you back. 07908 222428 Looking forward to seeing old friends and some new faces. Cheers, BJ

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Mountain Rescue
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 04 May '09

04 May '09

The majority of us fenny amphibians don't normally have to worry about such things, but people who venture out on the Cambridgeshire Alps do have to worry. These are a chain of mountains running North from Huntingdon/St Ives out to Warboys and thereabouts. The Pidley Mountain Rescue Team seems to have changed its website: http://www.pidleymountainrescue.org.uk/ I can no longer view what they've been up to, since I'm now told that "additionaql plugins are required to display all the media on this page". When I click to install the missing plugins, it announces "Java Runtime Environment", but when I try to comtinue it says "No plugins were installed. Java Runtime Environment Not Available." Then taking the option for "Manual Install" I get shown a choice of RPM (jre-6u13-linux-i586-rpm.bin) or self-extracting binary file (jre-6u13-linux-i586.bin). I'm running Debian Etch with Iceweasel browswer. I've looked into what synaptic comes up with when I search on "java" or "runtime" or "java runtime". Up comes a lot of stuff, of which one is Java runtime environment using GIJ java-gcj-compat is a collection of wrapper scripts, symlinks and jar files. It is meant to provide a Java-RTE-like interface to the GIJ/GCJ tool set. (and it says version 1.0.65-10, whereas the java runtime offered by the "Manual install" is "version 6, update 13"). I'm hesitating, because I don't want to do the wrong thing here, nor mess things up by installing incomplete or incompatible things. I'd be grateful for advice about installing java runtime in a proper way in my setup. Maybe I'm suffering the effects of altitude sickness, after the trek over the passes between here & Syleham yesterday! Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 04-May-09 Time: 13:28:52 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Syleham photos
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 03 May '09

03 May '09

Greetings all! A very agreeable gathering at Syleham today, and it was good to meet up with people again. Thanks to BJ for making the arrangements, and for assiduous bar duties. (There's a sign on one of the doors which says "Push Bar to Open" and I thought of trying that, but BJ got there first). I took a couple of photos at the end. Not everyone is well portrayed (unless a couple of folks are keen on the backs of their heads), maybe not everyone still present was included (and certainly a nice pair of tiny persons got omitted), but I think they capture the atmosphere. They can be viewed at http://www.zen89632.zen.co.uk/ALUG/ This is just a directory, and contains sylehamALUG_2009.05.03A.jpg sylehamALUG_2009.05.03B.jpg which can be viewed directly by the usual right-click procedure, or downloaded (1.8MB each). Till next time! Ted. PS (taking up on a topic of conversation at the time) in case anyone hasn't come across it yet: Help-Desk sagas go back much longer than most people think. Have a look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHX-SjgQvQ -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 03-May-09 Time: 20:25:36 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Announce: ALUG 10.0
by John Woodard 02 May '09

02 May '09

It's our 10th birthday! On Sunday 2nd May 1999 we got together for the first time at a hotel in Woodbridge. To celebrate on Sunday 3rd May ALUG holds it 10th birthday bash at the Mid Suffolk Venue, Syleham and Wingfield Village Hall IP21 4LT http://www.alug.org.uk/wiki/moin.cgi/Meetings?highlight=(suffolk)#Syleham You are all welcome and the bar will of course be open for beer and soft drinks. If you are a member of the ALUG Facebook group you can let us know if you are coming http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=73983173855 especially if you are one of the firestarters who were there at the start. Kit is welcome if you need some advice on fixing something or require a demo of anything Linux, post to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk for requests. If you are coming and are driving please post to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk so those without transport can attend, the same goes for requests for a lift. If there is anyone out there in ALUG land who is competent to make a birthday cake.... Any questions post to the list and if you get lost traveling to the venue (this is not unusual) phone BJ 07908222428 and I'll try and talk you in. Cheers, BJ

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Re: [ALUG] [ALUG Announce] Announce: ALUG 10.0
by Kevin Ridgeon 02 May '09

02 May '09

Will be attending the meet on Sunday grandchild/dog emergencies permitting. Driving from Thetford and will have one seat available. Entertainment will probably be catching up on Linux Outlaws on my Zune.

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[ALUG Announce] ALUG 10.0
by Wayne Stallwood 02 May '09

02 May '09

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Just a little reminder that this Sunday (3rd of May) is our ALUG 10th anniversary meet. 2PM-6PM at Syleham and Wingfield Village Hall IP21 4LT http://www.alug.org.uk/wiki/moin.cgi/Meetings?highlight=(suffolk)#Syleham The Bar will be open and there is a strong rumour circulating about some cake. Kit is welcome, either broken kit or something you want to show off. If anybody wants help with something specific then I'd suggest posting to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk with a request for help. All being well there should also be a "period" Red Hat 6.0 machine to play with. If you are coming and are driving please post to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk so those without transport can attend, the same goes for requests for a lift. So far the facebook event page is a little quiet 4 confirmed and 6 "maybes" but we have also had word on IRC about some other confirmed guests so it should be a good afternoon. Hope to see you there Regards Wayne ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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Syleham Lift
by Ted.Hardinge＠manchester.ac.uk 02 May '09

02 May '09

Final call! As I indicated before, I shall be driving to Syleham from near Littleport (NE Cambs), and my route would be either: A: Feltwell, Brandon, Thetford or: B: Mildenhall, Thetford and then: Garboldisham, Diss, Scole, Syleham which can be bent a bit if needs be. So if anyone roughly along either of these would like to be picked up, please drop me a line during today. In any case, looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow! Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Hardinge(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 02-May-09 Time: 10:17:29 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Sunday Kit Meet
by Bellphegore 02 May '09

02 May '09

I want to know if a) Anybody can offer a lift to me. b) If anybody needs a life from me. As I'm unwilling burn the carbon driving down there alone and would prefer to share a ride, either in somebody else's car or in mine. Bellphegore bellphegore(a)nerdshack.com montmorency(a)ukfsn.org

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Novatech
by Peter Alcibiades 01 May '09

01 May '09

Any experiences? They are one of the few places with a pretty complete range with no OS bundled in, and the prices seem reasonable and the specs more than adequate. Buying for someone else, so I'd like to get it right. Peter

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System Recovery
by Steve Fosdick 01 May '09

01 May '09

I recently had a request from a friend to get his Windows PC working because it gets stuck at some point in the boot process. Assuming he wants to keep his data and the manufacturer have not had the foresight to create OS and data partitions it seems to me there are these options for this kind of task: 1. Obtain windows specific recovery tools to try to fix the boot problem without destroying the data. 2. Copy the data from the hard disk to somewhere else, re-install and then put the data back. For the second option again I can see two possibilities: 1. Take out the hard disk, mount it in a machine that works and copy the files onto the working machine's hard disk. 2. Boot a Live CD on the broken machine and copy the files over the network to a working machine. Of the above two I have done number one, moving the hard disk, before and it is usually pretty straightforward but in this case the broken machine is a laptop so I don't know what luck I'd have trying to mount the hard disk in a desktop machine. So, I'm contemplating the second option and I'd like to know, please, if anyone has any favourites or recommendations of live CDs that are good for this purpose or any other ideas or suggestions. Steve.

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Syleham Location Info
by Steve Fosdick 01 May '09

01 May '09

Does anyone have either house number or the co-ordinates (either national grid or long/lat) of the village hall at Syleham, please? Steve.

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Redhat 6.0 discs
by Adam Bower 01 May '09

01 May '09

Hi all, As part of the wanting to get a machine up and running with redhat 6.0 on it for Alug 10.0 I've come across a small problem... that being nowhere i can find on the Interwebbytubez seems to have a .iso of it. Can anybody help at all? Looking in the back of the bits cupboard etc. would be much appreciated if someone can find a (working) copy! I also find it a bit scary to see how much of this what I assume people think of as "boring legacy crap" is no longer available for download. I wonder if in the future it will be interesting for computing archaeology students? Thanks Adam -- jabberid = quinophex(a)jabber.earth.li

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Syleham lift
by Wayne Stallwood 29 Apr '09

29 Apr '09

I am travelling from Bury St Edmunds to the Syleham meet and intend to be there for the full duration. If you need a lift and are on route..or can be collected from somewhere that doesn't require a major deviation, then I currently have 3 spare seats (four if you all get on really well and don't bring too much kit) Send me a mail off list if you need picking up and I will see what I can do.

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Samsung phones and Linux
by Mark Rogers 29 Apr '09

29 Apr '09

I'm considering upgrading my mobile. Having been with Nokia for most of my mobile life, I'm getting frustrated with their phones firmware (great when you first use them, but like Windows they just get slower and slower with use; it now takes me several seconds to open the Messaging application on my N82). And I've never had any real joy connecting the Nokia to my Linux box. I'm considering Samsung phones (in particular the Pixon) but have never used Samsung before. Can anyone give me any advice as to how well I'll be able to connect my phone to my Linux box? Googling for "Linux Samsung Pixon" got me nowhere (nothing relevant, not even people trying, never mind succeeding or failing!) -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0845 45 89 555 Registered in England (0456 0902) at 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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OT: Are there any Bluetooth gurus here - bluetooth question
by Chris G 27 Apr '09

27 Apr '09

Are there any bluetooth gurus here? First:- Can anyone tell me where I might find a bluetooth FAQ of any sort which might tell me something useful about how bluetooth devices interconnect (or don't)? The 'official' http://www.bluetooth.com site is pretty useless - or at least I can't get any useful information out of it. Second:- Is there such a thing as a bluetooth 'pseudo phone' that will connect by bluetooth to a device (such as a headset) that is expecting a bluetooth phone to connect to it? I wan't to send and receive audio to/from a bluetooth headset but the headset will only pair with a bluetooth phone. The second question is the reason for the first really, I was trying to find out the answer for myself but without much luck. I *think* I have got as far as understanding that there are different types of bluetooth device and there are defined protocols for them to talk to each other but I can't find out what types there are and what will talk to what. -- Chris Green

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Ubuntu & Xubuntu Questions.
by Simon Royal 27 Apr '09

27 Apr '09

Hi I am a Mac user with an interest in Linux. I have a PowerBook G4 867Mhz with 1GB of RAM, so am looking at the PowerPC ports of Ubuntu. I spoke to a couple of people that said the latest version - 9.04 - doesn't run too well on machines under 1Ghz, so was looking at Xubuntu which is better suited for older machines. It says it will run on G3 with 128MB of RAM comfortably - making it probably pretty quick on a machine with mid range G4 with 1GB. Has anyone used Xubuntu? Does it differ much to Ubuntu apart from using the XFE desktop environment? Does the latest 9.04 support Broadcom based Airport Extreme cards - I have a Buffalo card which OSX picks up as an AE card. Secondly, I'd like some booting advice. I am triple booting OS9, OSX Tiger and OSX Leopard at the moment and was looking to maybe quad boot - so I would need to resize some of the partitions. Or I might just install it where the Tiger partition is. Does the Xubuntu installer cater for multi booting with OSX? Is there an option to select which OS is the default to boot into. I had Ubuntu 6 and Tiger on a PowerBook G3 before and could never get Yaboot to select OSX by default. Any help would be grateful. Simon Royal --- Visit my Mac site at http://www.simonroyal.co.uk. Or Skype me on 'Simon-Royal'. (Apple PowerBook G4 867Mhz, 1GB RAM, 80GB HD, SuperDrive. Mac OSX 10.5, 10.4 & 9.2.2...)

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JOB: Permanent Statistical Programmer | LOCATION: London, England, UK
by jt＠camalyn.org 25 Apr '09

25 Apr '09

JOB: Permanent Stats Programmer LOCATION: London, England, UK Hi List, I'm working with a business in London that are looking to hire a permanent programmer with experience of working on developing either mathematical or numerical programs. You need to have experience of both scripting (R would be very applicable!) and also compiled languages. Experience of using MySQL or similar would be preferential too. Please email me using james(a)camalyn.org if you have any questions or if you would like to discuss this opportunity further. Thanks, JAMES >> to learn more about Camalyn please visit http://www.camalyn.org

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a wiki page for netbooks that are available in the uk
by Albert Vilella 21 Apr '09

21 Apr '09

Hi all, Does anybody know if there is a page somewhere with updated models and prices for all netbooks available in the UK? If not, where would people expect this page to be? Wikipedia? Albert.

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Re: [ALUG] Redhat 6.0 discs
by Bev Nicolson 21 Apr '09

21 Apr '09

<<If anyone starts up an archive, I've also got Mandrake 7.0 :) Tony>> And I've got SUSE 8.2. Not /that/ old but still. Bev. -- _______________________________________________ Surf the Web in a faster, safer and easier way: Download Opera 9 at http://www.opera.com Powered by Outblaze

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street
by samwise 20 Apr '09

20 Apr '09

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- The monthly "Third Monday" ALUG Ipswich Social Meeting is back tonight (Monday 20th April) at 20:00: P J McGinty & Sons 15 Northgate Street Ipswich Suffolk IP1 3BY Tel: 01473 251 515 Map/Directions URI: http://maps.google.co.uk/?q=IP1+3BY WWW: http://pjmcginty.moonfruit.com/ McGintys pub is in the centre of Ipswich, not far from our old haunt - The Milestone. It's directly opposite the town's central library and has a reputation for good Irish beer. All are welcome, novices and experienced users. Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. Topics up for discussion tonight include web application performance tuning, just how many versions of Elite were there, why is Richard Madeley so insufferably smug and was the Red Dwarf ressurection really as bad as the press reaction would have us believe ... plus anything else anyone wants to bring along. My #2 is away this week, so it'd be nice it we had somebody there from 20:00 other than me. Remember to call or email me, if you want to ensure I don't wander off, which I have a tendency to do ... Hope to see you there, Peter. ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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