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Re: [ALUG] Linux friendly external modem, and ISPs
by adam＠thebowery.co.uk 09 Dec '03

09 Dec '03

On Mon, Dec 08, 2003 at 10:10:00PM +0000, Chris Walker wrote: > > I've just retrieved mine from the cupboard and it's not exactly rocket > science is it? ;-) > > One in socket and one out flying lead. Remind me not to let you loose on one > of my machines again :-) If you saw the rats nest that was lurking under my desk at the time I am sure you would have been more forgiving :p -- jabberid = quinophex(a)jabber.earth.li AFFS || http://www.affs.org.uk/ || Not a filesystem

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Re: [ALUG] Domain name (was Linux friendly external modem, and ISPs)
by Dave Briggs 09 Dec '03

09 Dec '03

Thanks for all your comments. I have another quick question, though it is more a matter of taste than anything... Since I am leaving my job at the University shortly, I want to get myself sorted with a new permanent email addy, and want to register a domain name. The one I wanted was to be ww.tyndale.net, or some other acceptable suffix. I like the name as it's firstly the name of the street where I live, I like the historical connection, and it's also a nice short word. dave(a)tyndale.net - sounds lovely, doesn't it? Trouble is, the only suffixes free are .info or (ugh) .biz. The latter is deffo out, but I am totally undecided as to whether tyndale.info is any good or not. If I decide not, then it's straight back to the drawing board... Does anyone have opinions on this? I could do with some ideas.... Dave On Dec 8 2003, Graham Trott wrote: > On Monday 08 December 2003 10:21, Rob Kendrick wrote: > > > Thanks. Had a quick search on Dabs, just to get a gauge on prices, > > > and the US Robotics one is £75 - rather more than I thought I would > > > have to spend. Are the £35 odd quid ones not worth bothering with? > > > > Not IME. The USR ones will give you better performance, and will last > > you forever. Also, I've had bad experiences with cheap external modems > > - some of them really are Windows-only. Boggle. So be careful what you > > buy if you're going for a cheap one. > > Yes. Most USB ones are basically external WinModems (I didn't know that > till recently). > > Though I agree external is better - nice flashing lights to look at, too > - if your WinModem is Intel or Conexant you shouldn't have too much > trouble. The latter have drivers at http://www.linuxant.com/drivers/ and > I was able to get an Intel WinModem to work pretty easily using > downloaded drivers. BT is unpredictable in its provision of broadband so > if there's the remotest chance of getting it soon you might be better > getting the internal to work. > >

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Linux friendly external modem, and ISPs
by Dave Briggs 09 Dec '03

09 Dec '03

I am getting fed up with having to use Windows whenever I want to read my mail, browse the web etc - it's becoming a real pain in the backside. Having totally failed to find anything of any use on getting my winmodem to work with Linux, I have decided to give in and buy myself a nice proper external modem for christmas. Any recommendations? Also, I need to sign up with a decent ISP, and would like to use one that offers a flat rate monthly fee, though I can't have broadband. Does anyone have a personal favourite here? Thanks Dave

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Hello there
by Roberto Puricelli 09 Dec '03

09 Dec '03

Hello everybody, My name is Rob and I live in Norwich. I work for a global financial institution as an e-support coach, which basically means I travel the length & breadth of the UK, training and coaching our staff and financial advisers on how to use our trading software. In the past I was mainly involved in retail although I spent some time with Gateway, the American PC manufacturer, in their business division. I found ALUG in Linux Format magazine and thought I'd sign up. I am a very green newbie to Linux! I've often pondered giving it a go and after talking to a former work colleague who is Linux crazy, I thought "What the hell, I have nothing to lose", and promptly went out and bought a couple of books that both came with Red Hat 9. I installed it onto my laptop and within about 20 minutes or so, I was up and running. Since then, I've just messed around with it and dipped in to the books occasionally. It takes a little getting used to after years of Windows usage, but it's like a pair of new shoes...familiar, if a little uncomfortable to start with. I have to admit that since then, I've trawled the net for information and stuff, and have ended up downloading many new distributions such as Slackware, Knoppix, Peanut, Morphix, DamnSmallLinux and LNX-BBC to name but a few. I've also gone a bit crazy and downloaded loads of apps and stuff. All I really want to do is get a real feel for the OS and the whole Open Source community and what it has to offer. Although I don't see myself abandoning Windows, I do see myself using Linux to do all the things that are too darn expensive to do on Windows, such as Web Design etc. You see, I have no programming ability whatsoever and I have yet to find a web design program that wasn't either difficult to use, severely lacking in features or didn't cost the same as the Gross National Product of a small European nation! With Open Source, it looks like I can be more creative and productive at significantly less cost than with Windows. Sadly, I have yet to discover a really good and stable music sequencing package (a la Cubase) as I am a part time musician. I have just downloaded Rosegarden 4 and will give that a go soon. Anyway, enough of my ramblings. I'd love to hear from fellow newbie's, and I might just be able to pop along to the meeting on the 11th if work commitments allow. Hope to see some of you soon, Rob.

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Re: [ALUG] Linux friendly external modem, and ISPs
by Wayne Stallwood 08 Dec '03

08 Dec '03

On Monday 08 December 2003 18:08, Chris Walker wrote: > There's a company local to Norwich called Grey Electronics that sell modem > protectors. I have one around here somewhere but I've been a bit lax in not > buying one to protect my ADSL router. Reject any type that doesn't filter mains as well. (or at least have a decent earth connection) Why ? Erm umpteen zillion volt lightening bolt (or just a transient induced voltage) will need to be going to ground. unless filter is the size of a house, or has a decent earth it won't work ! I've seen modem filters that are just a box that goes in the line, unlikely to do very much as your modem and computer will still be a far more attractive path to ground. Oh and also reject any line filter that doesn't say it can cope with ADSL (if that's what you have) Some of them are a bit of a bandpass filter as well and that will upset ADSL unless the filter has been designed to let it through. Most modem deaths are an induced voltage picked up by the line from a near strike, more often happens in the sticks where a higher percentage of lines are in the air. If you get a direct strike, you will be lucky to find your modem, let alone use it again. Never really understood why BT don't just put a smallish spark gap at the point the line enters the house, tie it to a convenient ground. Won't stop the transients, but would stop the "Ok so who replaced all my phones with charred lumps of plastic during the lightning storm last night" That I saw a few times when I used to fill out technical insurance reports at a previous job.

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Windows-to-Linux migration support articles from IBM.
by Syd Hancock 08 Dec '03

08 Dec '03

Windows-to-Linux migration support articles from IBM. Looks like a useful and detailed resource. http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-roadmap.html Syd

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Mandrake Community Twiki
by Syd Hancock 08 Dec '03

08 Dec '03

Heaps of Mandrake support and advice here http://mandrake.vmlinuz.ca/bin/view/Main/WebHome

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USB/SCSI fun in 2.6.0
by MJ Ray 08 Dec '03

08 Dec '03

I'm having the following problem with my scanner under 2.6.0 It connects through SCSI and a USB bridge. I do the following steps: 1. Power everything up; 2. modprobe usb-storage 3. modprobe sg 4. sane-find-scanner runs fine and can see the scanner; 5. scanimage locks the machine up hard -- sometimes magic SysRq gets me out, sometimes it doesn't. After a reboot, I see no errors in the syslog. Anyone know how to debug this, or a better configuration? I'd really appreciate it. Meanwhile, I'm going to try patching the kernel up to the latest. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. Please http://remember.to/edit_messages on lists to be sure I read http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ gopher://g.towers.org.uk/ slef(a)jabber.at Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/

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Re: [ALUG] Linux friendly external modem, and ISPs
by adam＠thebowery.co.uk 08 Dec '03

08 Dec '03

On Mon, Dec 08, 2003 at 06:08:22PM +0000, Chris Walker wrote: > > There's a company local to Norwich called Grey Electronics that sell modem > protectors. I have one around here somewhere but I've been a bit lax in not > buying one to protect my ADSL router. I think it says something that I had one of these and it didn't work very well, but that was down to me managing to plug the wrong cable in at the wrong point and bypassing the protector entirely :) -- jabberid = quinophex(a)jabber.earth.li AFFS || http://www.affs.org.uk/ || Not a filesystem

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Installing Gentoo
by Graham Trott 08 Dec '03

08 Dec '03

I'm installing Gentoo on a VIA 800MHz mini-ITX, following the excellent instructions on the website. However, at the crucial point of entering the new environment, the following command fails: cdimage gentoo # chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash Illegal instruction Everything seems to be in the right place; any ideas why this might be happening? Have I made an error in assuming the CPU (calls itself an Ezra) is a 686-class? -- GT

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UK NHS trials Sun Linux
by Craig 08 Dec '03

08 Dec '03

UK NHS trials Sun Linux, threatens 800k user defection from MS: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/34396.html It is a start... -- - Craig - http://www.wizball.co.uk "Simplicity, the best way to approach life"

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Re: [ALUG] Linux friendly external modem, and ISPs
by Dave Briggs 08 Dec '03

08 Dec '03

On Dec 8 2003, Rob Kendrick wrote: > US Robotics. (Or 3com, whoever makes them these days.) Although if you > can get a PCI one still these days, I'd get one of theses. They can be > slightly less latent. Thanks. Had a quick search on Dabs, just to get a gauge on prices, and the US Robotics one is £75 - rather more than I thought I would have to spend. Are the £35 odd quid ones not worth bothering with? > Eclipse. For a fixed fee, they'll give you dial-up with a static IP > (you can even chose rDNS for it). Although it does kick you off every > so often (2 or 4 hours, depending on package) you can just instantly > redial, and there are no limits. And because you've got a static IP, if > you redial quickly enough, it doesn't really matter. All for less than > 30 quid. Had a look at these - they look very reasonable. Thanks for the tip. Dave

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Neill Newman 08 Dec '03

08 Dec '03

This is the automated ALUG IRC meeting reminder sent to remind you that there is an IRC meeting tonight (Monday) at 8.00pm. The meeting takes place on the irc server irc.alug.org.uk in the #alug channel. Most IRC clients should allow you to get there with the commands "/server irc.alug.org.uk" and "/join #alug". Popular IRC clients include tkirc, bitchx, xchat and EPIC on Unix, and Mirc under windows. Here are some links to help you get started with irc. Unix http://www.xchat.org/ http://freshmeat.net/ http://www.epicsol.org/ Windows http://www.mirc.com (loads of help with irc for newbies!)

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ext3 in windows
by Ben Francis 07 Dec '03

07 Dec '03

Is there a way to view my ext3 Linux root partition in Windows? At the moment all my files are stored on a FAT partition so I can view it as a drive letter in Windows and mount it in Linux. I'd prefer to store my files in /home/tola/ and be able to view them from Windows when I need to. Any suggestions? -- Ben "tola" Francis 00101010 tola ^/. http://hippygeek.co.uk mailto:tola_at_imen.org.uk opinions expressed are of the voices in my head only

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cordless mouse
by Syd Hancock 07 Dec '03

07 Dec '03

I'm thinking of getting a cordless mouse for the laptop. Has anyone here used one? From pictures, they seem to have a receiver at the laptop end, plugged into a usb port. Does this need to be line of site from the mouse? Also, is a purely h/w device or does it need drivers? TIA Syd

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Re: [ALUG] Microsoft and schools
by Ben Francis 07 Dec '03

07 Dec '03

Chris Walker wrote: > Dennis also mentioned that he had used Acorn machines and so there may be a > link to Linux. There is a RISC OS desktop available for most distros of > Linux, SuSe and BSD at http://rox.sourceforge.net/phpwiki/ which might enable > a seemless link between those few Acorn machines that still reside in schools > and to any companies that might want to run it. Acorns? Well there are 200 Computers in my school and there is one Acorn computer left. It sits in the corner of my Linux Lab (8 Linux Boxen - I am trying!!) quietly (actually it's quite noisy) and nobody even knows it's there, apart from the head of Geography who doesn't use it any more. The Acorn runs 24/7 displaying readings from the remains of the weather reading equipment on the roof. There used to be a lot of Acorns running in the technology department about 4 or 5 years ago - they're all PCs running Windows these days. -- Ben "tola" Francis 00101010 tola ^/. http://hippygeek.co.uk mailto:tola_at_imen.org.uk opinions expressed are of the voices in my head only

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Re: [ALUG] Microsoft and schools
by Dennis Dryden 07 Dec '03

07 Dec '03

On Sun, 2003-12-07 at 12:22, Chris Walker wrote: > Dennis also mentioned that he had used Acorn machines and so there may be a > link to Linux. There is a RISC OS desktop available for most distros of > Linux, SuSe and BSD at http://rox.sourceforge.net/phpwiki/ which might enable > a seemless link between those few Acorn machines that still reside in schools > and to any companies that might want to run it. > > I'm about to try it on my Mandrake 9.0 install although I'm typing this on a > genuine RISC OS machine. Well the few Acorns that were left were only used for one application(some old math program), so i don't think they wanted to get rid of the OS(along with the program). Maybe an emulator on a Linux Machine would be good but i don't see a Acorn running Linux + X and then running an emulator of itself. Seems like it would kill the old box'en. - Dennis Dryden

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Re: [ALUG] Microsoft and schools
by Tarquin Mills 07 Dec '03

07 Dec '03

Chris Walker wrote: > On Sun 07 Dec, Tarquin Mills wrote: > > Ben Francis wrote: > > > It's also harder for schools to get cheap support for a Linux system. > > > Technicians who can just about cope with a Windows NT/2000 network and > > > keep the printers topped up with ink are easy to come by and > > > relatively cheap to employ. A Linux system adminstrator is not. > > I disagree, IT people are plentiful in Norwich, and as IT jobs become > > more and more scarce this going to more so. > > I'm with Ben on this one. Sorry Tarquin :-) > > My employer has thousands of Microsoft desktop machines and almost as many > problems seemingly. The 'midrange' team that support Sun boxes amongst > others are quite knowledgeable whereas I wouldn't describe the other > mob in the same way and as a service engineer for twenty years it's easy > for me to compare. That is not bit I disargeeing with, the bit I disargee with is that they cannot find a "cheap" Linux SysAdmin. -- Tarquin Mills RUNG (RISC OS Users, Norfolk Group) http://speccyverse.homedns.org/rung/ (running on RISC OS) New domain name coming soon http://***.***********.**.**/

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Re: [ALUG] Microsoft and schools
by Craig 06 Dec '03

06 Dec '03

On 6 Dec 2003, at 11:15, Chris Walker wrote: >> You are right there. I just felt that I need to watch the show just to >> see what the BBC put together. It just seems that TV still never get >> the point across about computers in general etc. > > Such short memories but then since I don't know your age, it's entirely > possible that you weren't watching tv when the BBC did their series on > computers in the very late 70's and early 80's. That's when they > sponsored > the build of a computer - remember the BBC A and B models that were > everywhere, including most schools? I'm 24 ;) Okay, you're older than me heh. Yeah I remember those BBC computers.. old sk00l ;) > Sinclair were most upset when they weren't awarded the contract. > Instead it > went to Acorn who were visited by a certain Mr. Gates who tried to > sell them > his version of BASIC. They pointed out to him that theirs was quicker > and > could run on a network, to which he is quoted as asking 'what's a > network?' > so not much changes does it? Acorn are no more and Gates has ripped > off even > more ideas in the meantime. Wow. Bill Gates actually said that? Well well well.. there is no end to this. Frankly, Bill Gates is in fact a sales person more than a computer buff anyway. And a particularly evil one at that ;) C -- - Craig - http://www.wizball.co.uk "Simplicity, the best way to approach life"

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Re: [ALUG] Microsoft and schools
by Wayne Stallwood 06 Dec '03

06 Dec '03

On Saturday 06 December 2003 11:18, Chris Walker wrote: > There is a third and final show new week comparing Tiger Woods and Beckham > <yawn> so you'll be able to find out then unless it gives out that > information on the BBC web site. The website is- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/worlds_most_powerful/ But I can't find any reference to a production company, can't bear to watch the next eposide, Tiger Woods should win but you just know it's going to be Beckham. Why Tiger Woods ... a. Google says so, "Tiger Woods" catches 1,370,000 pages, "David Beckham" catches 528,000. b. There is no David Beckham's football computer game, but I recall a couple of Tiger Woods golf games. See with five minutes of very scientific work I have saved the BBC the bother of airing this program. The Question is already answered. :o)

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Microsoft and schools
by nick daniels 06 Dec '03

06 Dec '03

Microsoft boss Bill Gates has promoted laptops for pupils Schools across the UK could save up to £50m on Microsoft software over the next three years. The Education Secretary, Charles Clarke, said Microsoft had reached an agreement with the government's educational technology agency, Becta. "This kind of agreement shows the advantages in co-ordinated procurement for schools across the country." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/3291279.stm Regards Nick Daniels

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wi-fi in libraries plan
by Syd Hancock 06 Dec '03

06 Dec '03

Gov plans to make every library a wi-fi hotspot http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/69/34352.html Syd

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SMTP daemon popularity
by MJ Ray 05 Dec '03

05 Dec '03

Can anyone direct me to figures about number of installations for the different SMTP daemons? I'm quite interested in estimated % share of sendmail, but other servers are also interesting. I don't think netcraft collect the numbers any more.

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Re: [ALUG] Microsoft and schools
by Dave Briggs 05 Dec '03

05 Dec '03

On Friday 05 December 2003 09:16, Craig wrote: > Speaking about this.. anyone seen that show last night on BBC2? Bill > Gates 'won' ;) > > 'Bill Gates won because his software is everywhere' > > True however but I felt as always the BBC doesn't research far enough. I think these sort of programmes are a real waste of time, and don't actually teach us anything new. An obvious way to sort out who was more 'powerful' (however you define that) between Gates and Jobs would just to do a quick poll on who had heard of Gates, and who had heard of Jobs. Gates would be a clear winner, it would take 5 minutes and then we could get on with the rest of our lives. However, the whole exercise is fatuous in the extreme. On Dec 4 and 5 2003, nick daniels wrote: > Microsoft boss Bill Gates has promoted laptops for pupils > Schools across the UK could save up to £50m on Microsoft software over > the next three years. The Education Secretary, Charles Clarke, said > Microsoft had reached an agreement with the government's educational > technology agency, Becta. "This kind of agreement shows the advantages in > co-ordinated procurement for schools across the country." > http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/3291279.stm > > Sorry I meant to add on the bottom " how much would the > saving be if open source was adopted" Exactly. £50m saved must mean an awful lot more than that is being spent, which at the end of the day is our money, as taxpayers. They should ditch all propriatory software in schools, and switch to OSS. Part of the savings could be spent on providing hard up families with computers, again fully installed with OSS. The rest can be spent on (gasp) books. If kids at school are using the software, they will want to be able to use it at home. Sufficient numbers will then be clued up when they go into the workplace, and can help business save some money too. Dave

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JOB Opportunities for C/C++ on linux
by Vasko Tomanov 05 Dec '03

05 Dec '03

Hi, The company where I work now search for 2-3 experienced Linux C/C++ developers. ( for multiplatform development) Do anyone search for new job ? Cheers Vasko Tomanov

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