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Why is it so hard? (Making Ubuntu Work)
by Mephi 23 Jan '09

23 Jan '09

Ok, I've been using Debian on my server for years and Knoppmyth (Debian based) on my media centre for slightly longer. But I've not really done much on the desktop. Since I do a fair amount of gaming, I've stuck with windows for my desktop. Recently though I've only been playing one game a lot (Guildwars) which is supposed to work fine under wine. Also I play GW with friends and we use skype. Which has a linux client, so I thought I'd give it a go... I downloaded and installed the 64-bit version of ubuntu, setup the ATI graphics card, setup the medibuntu repository and apt-getted skype and wine. So now I have 3 problems. 1. Now they're using something new in Ubuntu called Pulse Audio, which puts another layer between your devices and your applications, and apparently it's why I can't get my microphone working in skype. So, I've been working through everything on the Ubuntu forums (it appears I'm not the only one) documented by someone else here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1006163 But nope, none of that works... 2. I'm trying to setup my screens to work at their native resolution. I've got one that runs at 1680x1050 and another at 1280x1024. I managed to get them to run correctly, but the settings don't stick. It boots with both screens set at 1280x1024. To get them to work I do the following steps through the ATi Catalyst Control Centre: 1. Disable the second screen (1280x1024) 2. Reboot 3. Set the first screen to its correct resolution (1680x1050) which wasn't available before the reboot. 4. add the second screen in. Then it works, until I reboot. The third problem is that Guildwars doesn't want to run under Wine. I've not yet looked into this in great detail yet, as I've usually given up by this point and booted back into windows. Matt

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Can anyone explain why this HTML table displays as it does?
by Chris G 21 Jan '09

21 Jan '09

I'm trying to create a fairly simple table to lay out an itinerary. Currently I'm using OpenOffice as it makes it easy to generate the table with row spans and column spans etc. It actually seems to produce quite straightforward HTML. However neither Firefox 3 nor IE 7 seem to display the table borders correctly. Firefox 3 does really wierd things to some of the borders and IE 7 just shows them with differing thicknesses. All I want is the same cell/table borders everywhere. The url is:- http://www.isbd.net/images/itinerary.html There's very little CSS and not much HTML so why are the borders so wonky? -- Chris Green

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Re: [ALUG] [ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting: McGintys, Northgate Street (samwise)
by Adam Reid 20 Jan '09

20 Jan '09

So... I'm currently sat in McGinty's, have been for well over an hour now; a couple of members have appeared and left due to a distinct lack of anyone other than me being here, and issues with bus times. The barman doesn't know anything about a Linux group having either been here or moved on to pastures greener, and unless you're hiding down the well you certainly don't appear to be anywhere in the vicinity. The IRC channel hasn't a clue, not that anyone there is Ipswich-based but if it were cancelled/relocated it'd be handy to stick a note there or on the wiki and/or mailing list. Suffice to say I'm slightly cheesed off, I took time off of a rather tight project deadline to make the meet this month, and now have a half-hour walk back home again toting a laptop. So I have to ask, what the blazes happened? Did the regulars just not turn up, and the whole thing just fizzle out, or...? O_o

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Unbootable 2.6.28 kernel
by Dan Hatton 20 Jan '09

20 Jan '09

Dear All, When I try to boot into kernel 2.6.28, I get a kernel panic with message `VFS: Cannot open root device "hda1" or unknown block (0,0)', followed by a list of available partitions which suggests that, between kernels 2.6.27.10 and 2.6.28, the drive on which I keep my root filesystem has changed its name from /dev/hda to /dev/sda. Is this expectable behavior? Should I edit my "root" boot option and fstab accordingly? Or does it indicate something wrong? -- Thanks, Dan

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Killing all programs on a virtual terminal
by Steve Fosdick 20 Jan '09

20 Jan '09

Apart from the SAK Magic SysRq sequence does anyone know of a way to kill all the processes that have a particular virtual console open? TiA, Steve.

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Magic SysRq and odd scan codes
by Steve Fosdick 20 Jan '09

20 Jan '09

Related to my other message I found that, with my current keyboard, Magic SysRq is not working. It is definitely compiled into the kernel. Documentation/sysrq.txt in the kernel tree suggested that the SysRq sending a strange scan code may be the reason. Running showkey -s gives me the following codes for SysRq: 0xe0 0x2a 0xe0 0x37 - on key down 0xe0 0xaa 0xe0 0xb7 - on key up. This does not match the description in setkeycodes which says that keys generate one or two byte sequences whereas this is clearly a four byte sequence. Has anyone seen anything similar or have any ideas if the necessary mapping can be established? Regards, Steve.

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HTML table editor - any recommendations?
by Chris G 17 Jan '09

17 Jan '09

I'm looking for a simple way to create HTML tables. In particular I want to be able to create tables with various (and fairly random) row spans and column spans. I don't really mind how it works, it can be a Web based application, a word-processor look-alike, or something that converts a text 'source' file into tables. I just want it to be simple to use. Currently I'm using reStructuredText which does most of what I want but its "Grid Table" syntax for tables is laborious to use and its "Simple Tables" don't give me all the row and column spans I need. I might take a look at Open Office, I assume that can generate HTML, what's its tables like? -- Chris Green

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Wireless keyboard with trackball for Linux - any experience?
by Chris G 17 Jan '09

17 Jan '09

Does anyone here have any experience of using a wireless keyboard with trackball built in with Linux? E.g. something like:- http://www.kenable.co.uk/product_info.php?referer=froogle&products_id=1789 I guess it will probably "just work" but I'd like to be sure there aren't any odd issues before I buy one. It's for a multimedia (well more of a photo display) box to go with the big new TV. -- Chris Green

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Wierd DHCP problem - help!
by Chris G 16 Jan '09

16 Jan '09

I have just built (well, re-installed the OS on) a new system and have connected it to my LAN. It's running xubuntu 8.10 and uses the TV as its display device (probably irrelevant). It all installed fairly smoothly and appeared to work OK except that the networking was a bit 'jerky'. I then found that I couldn't ssh from the new machine to my desktop machine whereas other machines on the LAN could connect OK. It turned out that this was because the machine had the *same* IP address as my desktop machine. This of course explains the 'jerky' networking too! However I really can't understand *why* it has decided its IP address is 192.168.1.4. OK, some details, the router IP is 192.168.1.1 and it's the router that provides DHCP to the network. Most machines have static addresses, in particular my desktop machine (as noted above) is 192.168.1.4. The router is set up to start handing out DHCP addresses starting at 192.168.1.64 and this does work as there is a device (a VOIP server) which gets the address 192.168.1.64. The 'new' xubuntu system has default network setup, I have given it the name 'lounge' (which is different from all others) and it acquires its IP address and networking setup automatically on startup. So *how* is it getting 192.168.1.4 as its IP address? OK, I can fix the problem fairly easily by giving it a fixed IP but I'd love to know what's gone wrong. -- Chris Green

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Prescott - how many CPUs???
by Ian Thompson-Bell 16 Jan '09

16 Jan '09

My Nephew, who is a bit of a computer whiz, recently gave me an 'old' 2.6GHz Prescott CPU to replace the Celeron in my desktop PC. This I have done and it is certainly faster. However, I use gkrellm to monitor resource usage and whereas with the Celeron just a single window occurred for the CPU usage, now with the Prescott gkrellm shows two windows labelled CPU0 and CPU1 respectively. Googling Prescott I can find no mention of more than one core but it does have hyperthreading. So my question is, how many (effective) CPUs do I have and is gkrellm accurately reflecting them?? Cheers ian

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street
by samwise 16 Jan '09

16 Jan '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 next week (Monday 19th January) 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. Hopefully, it shouldn't be too hard to find the pack, look for those huddled around a laptop! Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. This week we'll probably have a chinwag and maybe a demo of the iPlayer / ITV Player stuff and what's required to capture the High Quality flash videos from the beeb site, instead of just the simpler iPhone quality ones. I'll probably rant a bit about my desire for an Android phone, but how the shocking battery life of the T-Mobile G1 is putting me off ... :) 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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Enjoy
by Ian Thompson-Bell 10 Jan '09

10 Jan '09

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=yX8yrOAjfKM&feature=related Cheers ian

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Printing problem - not printing
by Chris G 09 Jan '09

09 Jan '09

I'm trying to print some images from Digikam and having no luck at all. I have two printers both of which have been working quite happily over the past few months, one is an HP7310, the other is an HP1320. The HP7310 is connected by ethernet, the HP1320 is connected via my router (USB printer -> router). When I print from Digikam everything appears to work perfectly but nothing actually comes out of the printers. Digikam finishes, the print jobs appear in CUPS and that's where they stay for ever as far as I can see. They stay in state 'processing' for a while and then end up 'pending'. Any ideas how to get something actually printed? -- Chris Green

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Motherboard with unrealistic amount of RAM supported
by Srdjan Todorovic 09 Jan '09

09 Jan '09

Hi, My motherboard, Gigabyte GA-M57SLI-S4, supports 16GB DDR2 RAM. It has only 4 RAM slots. Crucial website says: "Each memory slot can hold DDR2 PC2-6400,DDR2 PC2-5300,DDR2 PC2-8500 with a maximum of 2GB per slot." So that's 8GB maximum... Why does the motherboard then support 16GB maximum? Or is it that currently (with the current BIOS), the firmware (BIOS) or northbridge(which is the CPU) can only support 8GB for the moment, but once 4GB RAM modules are more common, they can be used one a firmware upgrade is completed? Or maybe one has to use coreboot/LinuxBIOS to be able to use that much RAM (if it has to do some 'special' SPD stuff)? Anyone have any insight in to this? Srdjan

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Re: [ALUG] Motherboard with unrealistic amount of RAM supported
by Srdjan Todorovic 09 Jan '09

09 Jan '09

Ergh. Forgot to send to the list. Sorry! (/me slips into the lagoon of fail) 2009/1/9 Srdjan Todorovic <todorovic.s(a)googlemail.com>: > Hi > > 2009/1/9 Wayne Stallwood <ALUGlist(a)digimatic.co.uk>: >> Is it possible that both the supported modules list on the Gigabyte site >> and the Crucial scanner have both not been updated to reflect the more >> recently available 4GB modules ? > > Where can one get them? I usually look on Ebuyer and so far have never seen > RAM of that density before. > >> It is not unheard of for mainboard manufacturers to say they support a >> memory configuration that is not possible (at the time of writing) with >> current module densities, but that would be possible at a latter point >> when the larger modules become available. > > I suspected as such, and was wondering if someone knew if this was > definitely the case. > Perhaps I'll send an email to gigabyte to ask for more info about it. > > Thanks > Srdjan >

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media players for bbc downloads Was: finally BBC iplayer linux
by Albert Vilella 09 Jan '09

09 Jan '09

Just to check with people in the list: what is the video quality that you get when downloading with get_iplayer and playing it with you favourite media player? I've tested the stock mplayer and vlc that come with ubuntu, and my feeling is that vlc gives me a better quality image than mplayer. Here are the configure options for vlc: [00000001] main libvlc debug: libvlc was configured with ./configure '--build=i486-linux-gnu' '--enable-maintaner-mode' '--enable-release' '--prefix=/usr' '--enable-libtool' '--enable-fast-install' '--with-binary-version=1ubuntu3' '--disable-update-check' '--disable-gnome' '--disable-gtk' '--disable-familiar' '--disable-fb' '--enable-ggi' '--enable-sdl' '--enable-esd' '--enable-mad' '--enable-arts' '--enable-jack' '--enable-pulse' '--enable-lirc' '--enable-a52' '--enable-aa' '--enable-dvbpsi' '--enable-mozilla' '--with-mozilla-pkg=libxul-plugin' '--disable-kde' '--enable-mp4' '--enable-dvb' '--disable-satellite' '--enable-ogg' '--enable-vorbis' '--enable-shout' '--enable-qt4' '--disable-slp' '--enable-flac' '--disable-skins' '--disable-basic-skins' '--enable-skins2' '--enable-freetype' '--enable-mkv' '--enable-speex' '--enable-caca' '--enable-live555' '--enable-libmpeg2' '--enable-fribidi' '--enable-cdio' '--enable-mod' '--enable-theora' '--enable-modplug' '--enable-dvdnav' '--enable-gnutls' '--enable-ffmpeg' '--enable-ncurses' '--enable-smb' '--disable-gnomevfs' '--enable-bonjour' '--enable-mpc' '--enable-vcd' '--enable-vcdx' '--enable-notify' '--enable-twolame' '--enable-x264' '--enable-faad' '--disable-zvbi' '--enable-telx' '--enable-mediacontrol-bindings' '--disable-atmo' '--enable-taglib' '--enable-libass' '--enable-libdca' '--enable-alsa' '--enable-dv' '--enable-v4l' '--enable-v4l2' '--enable-pvr' '--enable-svgalib' '--enable-dvd' '--without-dvdcss' 'build_alias=i486-linux-gnu' 'CFLAGS=-g -O2' 'LDFLAGS=-Wl,--as-needed' 'CPPFLAGS=' 'CXXFLAGS=-g -O2' Cheers, Albert. On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 8:54 AM, Jon Dye <jon(a)pecorous.co.uk> wrote: > 2008/12/22 Albert Vilella <avilella(a)gmail.com> > > >> http://iplayerhelp.external.bbc.co.uk/help/download_programmes/desktop_linux >> >> >> On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 10:25 AM, Jon Dye <jon(a)pecorous.co.uk> wrote: >> >>> >>> >>> 2008/12/21 Albert Vilella <avilella(a)gmail.com> >>> >>>> Hi everybody, >>>> >>>> As you may all know by now, we finally have a BBC iPlayer for Linux! >>>> >>> >>> Where? >>> >> > Thanks. > > I just tried installing it on my eeepc and the interface is too big to fit > on the screen. I've ended up installing get_iplayer instead, it's interface > fits on one line :-) > > JD >

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Site down
by Ben Bewick 08 Jan '09

08 Jan '09

Alugers! Looks like the site is down, although lists.alug.org.uk is still working?! Would those with access kindly fix? Thanks Ben

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[ALUG Announce] 2nd Thurs Pub Meet 8th January 2009
by Ben Bewick 08 Jan '09

08 Jan '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 ----- Dear ALUG, The monthly second Thursday social meeting of ALUG will take place on 8th January 2009 at The Reindeer (10 Dereham Road, Norwich, NR2 4AY; tel. 01603 762223). It's very near the junction of Dereham Road and the Norwich inner ring road (Grapes Hill) and serves a selection of real ales, nice pub food (if you fancy going early to eat) and coffee. There are generally people there from 20:00 onwards and we tend to sit to the left of the main entrance. We look forward to seeing you there. Cheers, Viperfang ----- 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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FREEBIES!
by Richard Bensley 07 Jan '09

07 Jan '09

FREEBIES FROM TEATIME! 1x PCI Nvidia Vanta 1x PCI Ati Rage XL 1x PCIE x16 512MB Geforce 6800 Ultra (unkown if working) 1x PCI WinTV PVR TV card. I don't think it's freeviewable! 1x AGP Radeon 9550 256MB DDR 1x AGP Geforce Quadro 580XGL *LOW PROFILE* (probably AGP PRO port required) 1x SCSI RAID chasis for 12 drives + PCIX LSI controller card + 4x73GB 10k SCSI drives 2x Hyundai Imagequest CRT monitors VGA, I will throw in 2x DVI adapters Books: Official Blender 2.3 Guide Learning Maya 5 Foundation Stop Staring (Facial Animation) Using Dreamweaver 3 Flash 3, Macperl Learning Perl Dreamweaver 1.2 Databse Publishing with FileMaker Pro Email me directly (not the list) for my address, No Reserve, first come first server, I will answer questions on the products somethings have been tested recently. I wont be testing the component cards. I wont be delivering I don't have a car! If you want to come and get them before or after the meeting this week that is fine as I live in Norwich. Photos are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/34099525@N06/ Cheers Richard (teatime)

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having a fie out...
by mbm 29 Dec '08

29 Dec '08

All My wife has chuntered at me to clear out some of what she likes to call "junk" from my study - so I have gathered together sundry bits and pieces which may (or may not) be of use to someone else. The list is below. I can't be bothered with umpteen ebay bids and I'd really like it all to go as one job lot. I'm offering the lot here first because I guess some of you may actually have a use it. Sixty quid for the lot seems reasonable to me. If someone takes it all and then decides to offload some bits elsewhere, that's fine by me. But I really don't want to get into bids for individual bits. The idea is to get shot of it all. Cheers - and a happy new year to all Mick ------------------- <list> 1. Compaq Armada 4160T laptop (80Mb RAM, 6 Gig hard disk) - this dates from around 96 or 97 but still works. I have used it as an IPCOP firewall (and it comes with two PCMCIA ethernet cards if anyone wants to do this again). It currently has a clean new install of Debian Lenny. Oh, and a "laptop bag" to go with it. 2. Two of 2Gig 2.5" laptop hard drives. 3. 5.1 PCI sound card 4. AGP Video card - I think it is a 128Mb Radeon Sapphire. 5. BT Voyager 200 ADSL router 6. Maxtor 60 Gig 3.5" ATA hard disk 7. Dell latitude external floppy drive 8. Freecom Classic 80 Gig external USB disk 9. Two port Newlink PS2 KVM switch 10. Two port Sitecom USB KVM switch 11. Four port Aten PS2 KVM switch 12. Zoom X5V VOIP ADSL router (this is actually quite a good router - particularly if you want to use VOIP) 13. Two (yes, 2) BT Home Hubs - both reflashed to run Thomson 7G images - because BT pissed me off and I didn't like what they had done to the routers. I have the original images though if you want to flash them back to the crippled version. 14. Belkin PCI wireless card - 802.11g 15. One Microsoft USB fingerprint reader (it was freebie from MS - honest!) ------------- </list> --------------------------------------------------------------------- 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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A good brand of USB stick?
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 29 Dec '08

29 Dec '08

Hi Folks, Sorry for possibly irritating cross-posting! Fairly recently, on one of the Linux lists I read, someone (or more than one) made suggestions about good brands of USB sticks, with particular reference to lifetime under repeated cycles of writing, and general reliability. Unfortunately, I can't now find that discussion in my archives, and I've forgotten where I read it! Hence my shouting from the rooftops. Any suggestions and comments welcome. With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 27-Dec-08 Time: 23:59:24 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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[FTAGH]Server Case
by Mephi 27 Dec '08

27 Dec '08

Free Server case, taker collects (its heavy) It has a redundant 300W PSU, fans and a caddy for SCSI drives. It was an impulse buy a while back but it never got used and now we need the space. I'm based near the middle of Ipswich. Anyone want it? Matt

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ubuntu and windows Master Boot Record
by Barry Chater 24 Dec '08

24 Dec '08

HI I wonder if you could give me some advice. I am adding a hard drive to my desktop, but since both master and slave connectors are used on the first ide socket on the motherboard. I intend to use the second socket on the motherboard for the new drive, to which i want to install Ubuntu 8.04. windows xp is installed on the hard drive on the other socket, with DVD writer on the slave. I take it that Ubuntu on the second socket will also be a master. I am wondering if Ubuntu will try and overwrite the XP master boot files when i install it. Has anybody had any problems like this. also will tha computer recognise the dualboot or do i have to alter the Bios settings. All the problems i have read about ubuntu overwriting the masterboot files seems to be when two operating systems are on the same hard drive. Am i correct in this? thanks in advance Barry Merry　Ｃｈｒｉｓｔｍａｓ　ｔｏ　ｙｏｕ　ａｌｌ

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"thumbnail"-type application
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 23 Dec '08

23 Dec '08

Hi Folks, I'm looking for an application (preferably light-weight) which sould do the following kind of thing. I have a good number of images (*.jpg) stored in sub-directories of sundry directories. The main directory names are rather generic (e.g. a regional location, or names of friends or family). The subdirectories are fairly specific and can descend to very spcific (e.g. a sub-sub-sub-directory with just a date, like "2007.03.05"). I'd like to be able to whistle up screenfuls of thumbnails, possible grouped thematically, with a property like being able to "hover" the mouse over a thumbnail and get a little pop-up with the date of the photo and a brief description. There's an implication, therefore, that there's a kind of basic database engine behind it, together with the "pop-up on hover" capacility. There's no shortage of applications capable of making a bunch of thumbnails (especially from a single directory), but I'm not aware of a light-weight application with the above capability. Gthumb does (clumsily) the sort of thing I'm after, so I could think of using it on machines with Gnome, but not, e.g. on KDE machines. Ideally, in a main directory I would do something like find . -name '*.jpg' -print > image.list edit the file image.list to remove uwanted stuff, and then submit this file to the thumbnail viewer. As an example of scale, one major directory has 4 principal subdirectories hanging off it, with sundry sub-dirs of these, and a total of 170 images. Another is similar, with 150 images. On could probably write something suitable in Tcl/Tk, butit would be nice to find one ready-made! Suggestions welcome. With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 09-Nov-08 Time: 09:07:15 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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finally BBC iplayer linux
by Albert Vilella 23 Dec '08

23 Dec '08

Hi everybody, As you may all know by now, we finally have a BBC iPlayer for Linux! I've tried it this afternoon, and started downloading stuff into my Ubuntu for my Christmas journey. Word of caution, the player will complain that you have reached the download limit very soon, unless you go to Settings and define a bigger "Hard disk space allocated". I haven't found any glitches or problems so far, apart from the fact that one cannot download stuff that is older than a given date. I wanted to get the full collection of "Stephen Fry in America" but I can only download the latest one. There is a "reporting participation" in the Settings that I am sure all the Linux users will leave ticked as to show how grateful are we of having a Linux version :-p Cheers, Albert.

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