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Digital cameras
by Peter Alcibiades 14 Aug '07

14 Aug '07

This is the advice a friend of mine gives. His cameras cost thousands and he is a prize winning photographer. I am not a photographer, so have no idea of the merits of his advice, but take an interest in it because of a general interest in technology and because I have someone else to buy for. Here is a summary. 1) OS does not matter unless you are using RAW. Otherwise you are using a card reader, and any OS will manage jpeg. If you are shooting in RAW the program to read it in is very important, and not all programmes come for all OSs. There is something about Macs and Canons - the best RAW software seems to come only for windows. 2) More megapixels are not better, in fact they are probably worse in compact cameras, because noise rises as the pixel size gets smaller. You will see this particularly in low light conditions. 3) There are two reasons why SLRs are better, and a lot better, than anything else, if quality is what matters. One is size of sensor. They have big sensors, less noise. The other is that they do not use power to deliver the view through the viewfinder. This means more rapid operation, less power consumption. The difference between the alleged semi-pro small sensor cameras and true SLRs is huge, and way out of proportion to the difference either in cost or size. I think his view is, though he doesn't say this explicitly, that the 'semi pro' ones which look like SLRs but are not, is like lipstick on a pig. The only thing to use, if you are serious about picture quality, is an SLR. The difference, he says, is huge. 4) When considering SLRs, worry about dust. Every time you do a lens change, dust will be attracted to the sensor. Cleaning up the dust in photoshop or equivalent will be inredibly time consuming. He uses these special brushes,very expensive, to get the dust off the sensor. There are different ways of getting the dust off automatically now with different makes. Worry about dust. Worry about how you are going to manage, how much its going to cost, whether you have to return for maintenance to get it done. Think hard about whether you actually need to change lenses, and if not, get the kind of lens that is flexible enough to leave in place forever. If you're a pro you can't avoid changing lenses. As an amateur, plan so you don't have to. 5) More optical zoom is not better. It is impossible to make 12 x optical zoom lenses that are as good at any given zoom as a non-zooming lens. So anything more than 4 or 5 x zoom means compromising quality at all zoom levels. 5) Image stabilisation is fine, but beware of processing that increases sharpness. What you want is a stabilised image, with as little processing as possible. If any sharpening is going to be done, do it yourself on the PC. Otherwise you risk ending up with a pre-processed image where further processing will just degrade quality. 6) He has cameras that cost 5k plus. Nevertheless, the ones that he is surprised to find give him excellent shots and surprisingly good quality are the 200 pound or so compacts with moderate MP and Zoom count. He particularly mentions a Fuji whose model number I have forgotten. It had quite a high MP count. I can find out if you want. 7) Some of these, particularly the more expensive ones, have all kinds of manual controls. He has been surprised to find that they don't appeal to him at all, though in SLRs he is very manual control oriented. He actually prefers simple point and click in compacts, and doesn't quite know why the ones which allow him the freedom he has with his expensive SLRs always seem to get left at home. I found these conversations interesting because they are so different from anything you read in reviews. As a consequence I bought for my nearest and dearest a then high end 3 x zoom 4MP camera, a couple of large compact flash cards, and a reader. It has worked brilliantly. Its easy to use, the quality is excellent, the zoom is about right, its purse or jacket pocket size, and it goes everywhere. Its certainly not what I had in mind before I asked him. Peter

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Respawning a script
by Richard Lewis 14 Aug '07

14 Aug '07

Hi ALUG, I have a Python script which seg faults occasionally. Its running on a server so I don't pay it much attention and the seg faults don't matter particularly. But I would like it to be running most of the time. Does anyone know of a way of making it automatically start again after it has crashed? I guess its kind of like respawning but I don't think I want init to be in control of it. I guess I could write another script which keeps an eye on the first script's pid and restarts the script when the pid disappears. But before I do, I was wondering if there's a more automatic or more elegant way of doing it? Cheers, Richard -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis http://www.richard-lewis.me.uk/ JID: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

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Are there any Python and/or mail experts here?
by Chris G 14 Aug '07

14 Aug '07

I'm considering writing a python script to do some mailbox manipulation but I'm finding the documentation a little confusing, or at least a little lacking. I'm looking at:- http://docs.python.org/lib/mailbox-maildir.html http://docs.python.org/lib/mailbox-mbox.html What I can't quite get my mind round is why the Maildir sub-class of Mailbox has list_folders(), get_folder() etc. whereas the Mbox sub-class doesn't have these methods. >From the user's point of view maildir and mbox mail work the same, you can have a list of mbox folders in exactly the same way as you can have a list of maildir folders. In fact the Maildir sub-class documentation is not at all clear about what you get when you call list_folders(), a list of folders at what level in the hierarchy? -- Chris Green

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Digital Camera recommendations
by samwise 14 Aug '07

14 Aug '07

Anyone got any recommendations or hints / tips for buying a digital camera. Looking at a budget of £100 - £150, for general all-round use - preferably fairly compact. What should I look for when buying a camera for use with Linux? What are the main open source apps and what do they need the camera to support? Is one that connects as a USB mass storage good enough? or should I expect more integration than that with the right camera? Any recommended manufacturers which work best with open source software? Amazon link recommendations welcome! TIA, Peter. P.S. I'm running Debian Testing, if that makes a difference.

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Re: Are there any Python and/or mail experts, here?
by Matthew 14 Aug '07

14 Aug '07

MJ Ray said: > Think what you like, but at least Dovecot seems to share the > requirement. As you note, basic maildir seems not to allow folders at > all. The Python class seems to be using Courier maildir. It wouldn't > be the first time mutt coped with stuff that doesn't follow specs. There's a common restriction on IMAP servers that a folder can contain subfolders or messages, but not both. Is that related? Certainly Dovecot doesn't use true subfolders: it fakes them by prefixing the folder name you asked for with its ancestors, dot-separated. Matthew

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RE: [ALUG] Digital Camera recommendations
by Richard Bensley 13 Aug '07

13 Aug '07

The Casio Exilim is very nice; 7 MP, SD cards, slim, USB etc The Sony Cybershot's always get good reviews too. I also recommend grabbing a copy of What Camera to have a look at their buyers guide, and their roundup reviews. Richard -----Original Message----- From: main-bounces(a)lists.alug.org.uk [mailto:main-bounces@lists.alug.org.uk] On Behalf Of samwise Sent: Monday, August 13, 2007 3:21 PM To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk Subject: [ALUG] Digital Camera recommendations Anyone got any recommendations or hints / tips for buying a digital camera. Looking at a budget of £100 - £150, for general all-round use - preferably fairly compact. What should I look for when buying a camera for use with Linux? What are the main open source apps and what do they need the camera to support? Is one that connects as a USB mass storage good enough? or should I expect more integration than that with the right camera? Any recommended manufacturers which work best with open source software? Amazon link recommendations welcome! TIA, Peter. P.S. I'm running Debian Testing, if that makes a difference. _______________________________________________ main(a)lists.alug.org.uk http://www.alug.org.uk/ http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above!

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sshd messages in log, should I be worried?
by Chris G 11 Aug '07

11 Aug '07

I have suddenly started getting lots of messages like the following in my /var/log/messages:- Aug 5 06:59:01 home sshd[7886]: Connection from 193.128.168.195 port 63433 Aug 5 07:14:02 home sshd[7890]: Connection from 193.128.168.195 port 63995 Aug 5 07:29:01 home sshd[7893]: Connection from 193.128.168.195 port 64515 Aug 5 07:44:01 home sshd[2451]: Generating new 768 bit RSA key. Aug 5 07:44:01 home sshd[2451]: RSA key generation complete. Aug 5 07:44:02 home sshd[7897]: Connection from 193.128.168.195 port 65110 I can't see any other activity as a result, no attempted logins or odd processes running. Should I be worried? The IP address 193.128.168.195 seems to be unidentified. I get the occasional login attempt from other places but these are fairly obvious and my passwords are close to unguessable so they don't worry me too much. -- Chris Green

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Public WiFi Hotspots
by Matthew Holland 06 Aug '07

06 Aug '07

This is a little off topic, but since there are plenty of wireless users here and maybe some people with some regulatory/legislative sense, I thought I'd ask. (Out of interest, rather than current necessity, although a decent answer might give me a clue of whose counsel to seek should I ever need to know). What record-keeping responsibilities does a business running a WiFi hotspot for its customers have? They're effectively acting as an ISP, but if they're not keeping proper logs then 'customers' could perpetrate computer crime and be traceable only as far as the business's internet connection (for which they are responsible, of course). Matthew

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USB to serial converter, detected but not there - huh?
by Chris G 06 Aug '07

06 Aug '07

I am trying to get a USB to Serial converter working with my Slackware system. When I plug the converter into a USB port it works exactly as one would expect and hope, in /var/log/messages I see:- Aug 6 15:34:16 home kernel: usb 3-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 2 Aug 6 15:34:16 home kernel: usb 3-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice Aug 6 15:34:16 home kernel: usbcore: registered new driver usbserial Aug 6 15:34:16 home kernel: drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial support registered for generic Aug 6 15:34:16 home kernel: usbcore: registered new driver usbserial_generic Aug 6 15:34:16 home kernel: drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial Driver core Aug 6 15:34:16 home kernel: drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial support registered for pl2303 Aug 6 15:34:16 home kernel: pl2303 3-2:1.0: pl2303 converter detected Aug 6 15:34:16 home kernel: usb 3-2: pl2303 converter now attached to ttyUSB0 Aug 6 15:34:16 home kernel: usbcore: registered new driver pl2303 Aug 6 15:34:16 home kernel: drivers/usb/serial/pl2303.c: Prolific PL2303 USB to serial adaptor driver if I unplug it and plug it back in I see:- Aug 6 15:53:18 home kernel: usb 3-2: USB disconnect, address 2 Aug 6 15:53:18 home kernel: pl2303 ttyUSB0: pl2303 converter now disconnected from ttyUSB0 Aug 6 15:53:18 home kernel: pl2303 3-2:1.0: device disconnected Aug 6 15:53:41 home kernel: usb 3-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 3 Aug 6 15:53:41 home kernel: usb 3-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice Aug 6 15:53:41 home kernel: pl2303 3-2:1.0: pl2303 converter detected Aug 6 15:53:41 home kernel: usb 3-2: pl2303 converter now attached to ttyUSB0 The only (?!) problem is that I don't actually get a /dev/ttyUSB0, so what's wrong and/or how can I diagnose it? -- Chris Green

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Re: /etc/default files
by Matthew Holland 06 Aug '07

06 Aug '07

Sagr (>>) and Brett (>) said: >> ?????? Errrr... Does this mean that EVERY SINGLE PERSON who wants to use >> Apache will encounter the same problem as me???? > > No, just debian and ubuntu users. It's all a bit hit and miss. When I first started with Debian it tended to turn things on by default, and even now a lot of packages still seem to. While I can understand (and agree with) the logic of not dumping daemons onto a server and running them without configuring them, it's annoying how many packages seem to come without any configuration help. Even telling me which documentation to read first is better than nothing, but some don't even manage that. I should stop moaning and starting learning to maintain packages ;-) Matthew

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Re: Problem getting Apache/Firefox to display PHP webpages
by Matthew 06 Aug '07

06 Aug '07

Simon wrote: > It may be because you appear to be trying to run the script from your > server's document root directory. If it works, then probably it's as well to carry on the way it is now, but if memory serves the normal PHP handler shouldn't need any of that. CGI scripts need execute permission to invoke their interpreters, but the PHP interpreter is invoked by Apache so PHP scripts need only be readable. Although there are security advantages to segregating them like CGI scripts, PHP files were intended to live in the document space with the static content. That said, I really don't know what was causing your problem before. As for getting it to start automatically, are you sure it isn't already? Try `netstat -at` after a fresh boot to see if something is listening on 'www'. If not, look for directories called /etc/rc{n}.d, for various {n} being the runlevels your system will do. These contain symlinks to the scripts in /etc/init.d and determine which services are started/killed when entering/leaving different runlevels. Either the installer didn't put the links in, or it made them for the wrong runlevel. You can probably use `who -r` to check your current runlevel (or `runlevel` as root). Use update-rc.d to make the links in the proper formats: check its man-page for options you might want. Hope that helps, Matthew

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[ALUG Announce] 2nd Thursday Norwich Meet : Reindeer, Dereham Road
by Jonathan McDowell 06 Aug '07

06 Aug '07

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 "Second Thursday" ALUG Norwich Pub Meet is this Thursday, 9th August. It's at the Reindeer pub on the Dereham Road, just opposite the City Gate. People will be there from 8pm-ish, though there may be a few people there earlier. Topics for discussion will no doubt be as varied as ever. The Reindeer has a reasonable selection of beer as well as decent coffee (with biscuits, if you're lucky). Directions to the Reindeer can be found at: http://www.alug.org.uk/venues/reindeer.html Pictures of some of the regulars, and irregulars, and, well, just some pictures of people that might or might not turn up are available from: http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2007-05-ALUG/ http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2006-02-ALUG/ http://the.earth.li/~noodles/stilvoid-alug/mp20050811/ http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2005-01-ALUG-Xmas/ http://www.earth.li/~noodles/Photos/2004-08-ALUG/ Which should hopefully aid those of you wondering who to look out for - the most recent images are from the meet a few months back. We now have an area reserved for us, so should be easier to find. As you enter through the main door you'll see a small set of steps ahead of you - the area just up those steps and to the left is where we'll be. J. -- It's deja-vu all over again. ----- 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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Weirdo gnome thing
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 04 Aug '07

04 Aug '07

Hi Folks, I just had a weird experience with Gnome. Context: I have 10 "workspaces" with, at present, respectively 3, 1, 0, 0, 5, 2, 1, 2, 5, 1 windows on them for various tasks. One of the 5 windows on workspace 5 is my mailer program, and the window on workspace 10 is my browser (firefox). In workspace 5, in the mailer, I middle-clicked on one of the mail messages in the list. The normal effect of this is to pop up a new window with the message in it. This it duly did -- but I was switched into workspace 10 with the message window on top of the browser window. After I'd dealt with that, I then found that every single window in every workspace had been shifted down by the same amount (about 15 pixels) and right by the same amount (about 2 pixels). This is weird! Anyone ever seen the like? Thanks, and best wishes, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 04-Aug-07 Time: 13:18:49 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Video Turtorial at next Ipswich meet
by Wayne Stallwood 04 Aug '07

04 Aug '07

Monday the 20th of August at The Milestone Beer House 8PM http://www.alug.org.uk/wiki/moin.cgi/Meetings As promised I will be hosting a beginners guide/introduction to video editing and production on Linux at the next Ipswich Meeting. The general lesson plan is to go through all the steps necessary to produce a DVD (with front menus) from some raw DV footage taken from a standard digital video camera. Most of the steps will also be relevant to creating video content for online services such as youtube. During the production of this DVD (using very short clips so that the lesson does not mostly comprise of watching progress bars) we will cover clipping and editing of footage, modification and dubbing of soundtracks, applying post-production effects, building DVD menus and producing the DVD itself. In addition to the film clip we will also be producing a slideshow from some digital photos. With additions to the DVD menu to allow the end user to select this from the front screen. If we get time I will also demonstrate a quicker way of making a DVD with just the slideshow, which is a useful way of distributing pictures to friends and family who do not have a computer but may have a DVD player. This as I said will be a beginners introduction, anybody that has spent any time with these tools will probably be at least as well informed as the instructor :) Hope to see some of you there Wayne

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Defrag
by Barrys linux mail 04 Aug '07

04 Aug '07

Hi. Just a quick thank you for your help on the defrag question Barry

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Problem getting Apache/Firefox to display PHP webpages
by sagr 01 Aug '07

01 Aug '07

Following the advice of some ALUGers in a previous thread I am in the process of upgrading our fileserver to Ubuntu 7.04. I have successfully installed Ubutu on it and then apt-get installed the modules "apache" and "php5-mysql". I have created a simple three line "hello world" PHP prog and saved it in /var/www as hello.php : root@wildebeest:/var/www# cat hello.php <?php echo "Hello World"; ?> If I type the URL http://localhost/ into firefox I see the default apache index.html holding page as expected (so I know apache is running). If however I type the URL http://localhost/hello.php a box pops up in Firefox saying: "You have chosen to open: hello.php Which is a: PHP script From: http://localhost What should Firefox do with this file? 1. Open with gedit (default) 2. Save to disc." Why doesn't Firefox simply display hello.php as a webpage? What am I doing wrong? Do I need to configure something in apache and/or Firefox to display php files as webpages? Any help welcome! Sagr.

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Evolution downloads duplicate emails each time it connects to POP server
by sagr 01 Aug '07

01 Aug '07

Hi Folks, I have recently installed Ubuntu 7.04 and am using the Evolution mail client version 2.10.1 to access my POP server hosted by 1&1. I access my emails via two PC's (one running Windows, the other Linux) so have set Evolution (on my Linux PC) to "Leave Message On Server" so they are available to download on my Windows PC (I currently use Windows as my main PC but just want occasional access to email on my Linux PC). The problem is that when I tell Evolution to "Send & Receive" it downloads all the emails on the POP server even though it has already downloaded them earlier. I am therefore downloading a complete duplicate set of emails each time I do a "Send & Receive" filling my Evolution inbox with multiple copies of the same emails. Is this a problem with Evolution, Linux, my ISP's POP server, or just because I have incorrectly configured something? Any suggestions welcome! Sagr.

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Facebook Group Unavailable
by samwise 31 Jul '07

31 Jul '07

Group Unavailable We're sorry, this group isn't available right now. Please try again later. http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2352779871 Hmmm ... so what's happened to the ALUG Facebook group, I wonder?! Peter.

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Defragmenting Hard drive
by Barrys linux mail 31 Jul '07

31 Jul '07

Hi, Do you have to defragment and clean up a hard drive in Ubuntu Linux like you do with Windoze? As i can't find anything that looks like it at present. Barry

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Re: [ALUG] Real Player
by Bev Nicolson 28 Jul '07

28 Jul '07

I think I get it now (mostly) but do I save it on the desktop or open another tab in Firefox? And what does the realplayer command in terminal do? It didn't seem to recognise it... [puzzled look goes here] Bev. > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Brett Parker" <iDunno(a)sommitrealweird.co.uk> > To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > Subject: Re: [ALUG] Real Player > Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2007 09:44:27 +0100 > "Brett Parker" <iDunno(a)sommitrealweird.co.uk> > > On Fri, Jul 27, 2007 at 09:38:22AM +0100, Richard Lewis wrote: > > On Thursday 26 July 2007 23:18:46 Ted Harding wrote: > > <snippity class="boringDistinctionBetweenXTermAndTerminalEmulators"/> > > > > > > > As to "middle click" etc. Again, I'm not sure about how things > > > are arranged in Ubuntu, but in standard X-windows usage you > > > can use your three mouse-buttons[**] as follows: > > > > And, unless I'm missing something really clever, this seems like > > a very protracted discussion of copy-and-paste? Surely when you > > select "Copy link location" in Firefox it just puts the link into > > your desktop environment's clipboard? And then you can just paste > > it into your terminal emulator? Or does xterm not play nicely > > with DE clipboards? > > I was, a standard X11 version of copy and paste (the X11 clipboard only > handles text - err, by default ;) - Copy link location puts the text in > to the X11 clipboard *as well as* the desktop environment clipboard. > > With Gnome terminal you can right click and use "paste" to get stuff out > of the clipboard. Alternatively, Shift-Insert will also paste the > content of the X11 clipboard... > > For those without 3 button mice (no scroll wheel?! the wheel is a > button...) then (usually) 3 button emulation is turned on and so > clicking both the left and right buttons at the same time will do the > job. > > Hope that clears a few things up, > -- > Brett Parker > > _______________________________________________ > main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > http://www.alug.org.uk/ > http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main > Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above! > -- _______________________________________________ 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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Re: [ALUG] Real Player
by Bev Nicolson 28 Jul '07

28 Jul '07

I've tried it again and instead of using Terminal, opened Real Player from the drop down menu and pasted the URL into that while the original BBC window was open and it worked. Bev. > ----- Original Message ----- > From: ted.harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk > To: "Bev Nicolson" <bnicolson(a)operamail.com>, main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > Subject: Re: [ALUG] Real Player > Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2007 18:57:03 +0100 (BST) > > > On 28-Jul-07 14:47:29, Bev Nicolson wrote: > > I think I get it now (mostly) but do I save it on the desktop > > or open another tab in Firefox? And what does the realplayer > > command in terminal do? It didn't seem to recognise it... > > [puzzled look goes here] > > Bev. > > When you entered the command, did you enter "realplayer" or "realplay"? > > The commmand to start RealPlayer is 'realplay', as in my original > response: > > realplay http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/avdb/news/world/ > video/108000/bb/108931_16x9_bb.ram > > [all one line] where what follows "realplay " is the URL you get > when you save it from "Open in stand alone player". > > So, if you entered 'realplayer' nothing would happen (or. if it > did, it would be the wrong thing). > > On the other hand, if you really did enter 'realplay', then it > is likely that the command 'realplay' is not in your PATH. You > can check this by entering the ocmmand > > which realplay > > in the terminal. You should get a response like > > $ which realplay > /usr/bin/realplay > > (realplay is usually in /usr/bin/). if you get a blank, then > either RealPlayer is not installed, or your PATH when you open > the terminal is not properly set up. In which case, write back > and we'll try to help. > > By the way, thanks to Richard Lewis for pointing out what's > inside a ".ram" file. This has interesting consequences which > can be usefully exploited, and I'll expound that in a reply to > Richard. > > Good luck with all this, Bev! > Ted. > > -------------------------------------------------------------------- > E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> > Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 > Date: 28-Jul-07 Time: 18:56:59 > ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------ > -- _______________________________________________ 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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Email server and spam filtering
by mephi 28 Jul '07

28 Jul '07

I've started setting up an email server, and it's going quite well so far, but I want to add spam filtering. It's not a normal email server, it's more of a central storage for all of my external email accounts, so what I've got so far is: Setup one Linux user account per email account. Getmail receives the mail, and stores it in maildir format if each user's home directory. Dovecot acts as a local IMAP server to allow me to pick up the emails from each user. What I want is a server side spam filter in there, has anyone done anything like this? Matt

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RE: [ALUG] Real Player
by Bev Nicolson 27 Jul '07

27 Jul '07

Yes, that's exactly what happens Ted. But what's an xterm? And what's the alternative to a middle click? It's not an option on my mouse. (I am using Firefox btw.) Bev. > ----- Original Message ----- > From: ted.harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk > To: "Bev Nicolson" <bnicolson(a)operamail.com> > Subject: RE: [ALUG] Real Player > Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2007 17:42:50 +0100 (BST) > > > On 26-Jul-07 16:05:58, Bev Nicolson wrote: > > I use Ubuntu 6.06 in case that helps. Well, I have Real Player > > working fine for Listen Again and webcams but > > if I want to play any of the videos on the BBC news web site I can't. > > Any ideas why? I'm just curious to know what the reason might be. > > Bev. > > I often find that when I click on the BBC link for a video clip, > the BBC Player (with embedded Real Player) opens, but nothing > further happens. Is that what's happening for you? > > In that case, usually there is an option below the "screen": > > "Launch in stand alone player" > > If I place my mouse cursor over this, and right-click (Firefox), > I get the option to "Copy link location". I then left-click on > this, to save it into the X buffer. > > Then I go to another xterm, and enter > > realplay > > followed by a space, then middle-click to enter the URL saved > by "Copy link location". Thus I get a line like; > > realplay http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/avdb/news/world/ > video/108000/bb/108931_16x9_bb.ram > > [all one line, no break]. > > This comand then launches Real Player with the video clip > (it may be necessary to first kill the BBC Player since it > sometimes "locks onto" the sound). > > I don't know why this happens, and it's not entirely systematic. > But when it does happen, the above work-round solves it (provided > you get the "Launch in stand alone player2 option). > > Hoping this helps, > Ted. > > -------------------------------------------------------------------- > E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> > Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 > Date: 26-Jul-07 Time: 17:42:32 > ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------ > -- _______________________________________________ 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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Browsers segfault on "Lincolnshire"!
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 27 Jul '07

27 Jul '07

[Apologies if you get this twice -- initially sent from wrong email address] Hi Folks, I know the weather has been dire, especially for Lincolnshire in our region. But I didn't expect it to overwhelm a browser! When I try http://www.thisislincolnshire.co.uk/ (the "Lincolnshire Echo" website) I get a segfault almost as soon as the page opens. This is with both Firefox 1.04 (2005) on Red Hat 9, and also Mozilla 1.3 (2003) on a SuSE 7.2 installation (so it's not due to anything didgy on a particular machine). Anyone else can confirm/comment on this observation? Best wishes to all, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 25-Jun-07 Time: 19:42:31 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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My social isolation problems not _that_ cured yet...
by Ruth Bygrave 26 Jul '07

26 Jul '07

It appears when I was talking and thinking about depression, there was a major one about to hit WHAMMO! Have been in mental hospital and am nearly up to the end of my Section. I really intend to get myself sorted out, but it seems endless at present. I tell myself people eventually leave the ward and do not return, but it doesn't seem like that now. Ruth

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