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We're not evil??
by Martin Collins 20 Mar '10

20 Mar '10

Anybody use magnatune for streaming through rhythmbox? See this link: http://blogs.magnatune.com/buckman/2010/03/new-business-model-for-magnatune… This would make magnatune more like spotify. Does this mean free listening is coming to an end? Personally I'm a bit cheesed off with it, as I don't listen enough to make a subscription worthwhile, nor do I have internet access 365 days a year so I wouldn't get what I was paying for. However, I did buy 3 or 4 albums from them a year. Forcing a business model on me, although not evil, certainly isn't angelic! Martin

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the problem with lp was the usb parallel converter
by Peter Alcibiades 20 Mar '10

20 Mar '10

Turns out that the problem with using lp must have been the adaptor. Its a parallel printer, and it was being connected through one of those parallel to usb adaptors. With a parallel cable, and redefined as /dev/lp0, it works. The original method of cat > /dev also works on this definition. No idea why, though. I have used those usb adaptors successfully in the past and if it were possible to hit it using cat >/dev, it seems puzzling that lp could not drive it. Should have thought of trying this earlier, but of course, SFF machines now often don't have parallel interfaces. I also now do lprm on starting up the program to clear the queue, just in case. Regards Peter

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Skype problem
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 19 Mar '10

19 Mar '10

Hi Folks, Maybe some of you can elucidate a Skype puzzle. I have Skype on Win XP (v. 4.0.0.216) and on Linux (v. 2.0). I usually use the Win XP version because it works better. As of yesterday, I had the same Skype name and password on both. I hadn't used Skype for a couple of months, but yesterday evening started it up in Win XP and entered the password. It hung for several minutes, then came up with a message that it had failed to connect. I repeated this several times (thinking maybe Skype was clogged, or something). Same result. And the same result with the Linux version ("P2P connection failed"). Repeatedly. So I wondered if their might be a password problem, therefore logged in to www.skype.com using it, and got in OK. Nevertheless I decided to reset the password anyway. I was sent a password token to log in to the secure site for doing this, and set about re-entering the old password. Got a message "Password too easy to guess" (also required numbers + letters, which it hadn't done before). So I chose a different password. After that, I had no problems using the Win XP Skype with the new password, but when I tried Linux Skype with the new password it still failed to connect. Re-tested again this morning: Win XP Skype works, Linux Skype does not. One remaining issue might be that the Linux Skype version (2.0) may now be too old to be acceptable to Skype, though that would be surprising. I'm aware that Skype can go real flaky at times (though not very often, in my experience), but the above strikes me as puzzling. Any comments and suggestions welcome. With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 18-Mar-10 Time: 10:45:14 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Another HTML question, again about unwanted space
by Chris G 18 Mar '10

18 Mar '10

I seem to suffer from this all the time, too much space between headers and the things underneath them. ... and I've simplified it down to the following:- I have the following HTML:- <p> Paragraph1 </p> <p> Paragraph2 </p> In the CSS I have:- p { background: blue; padding-bottom: 0; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0; padding-top: 0; } (The background: blue; is just to prove it's being acted on) ... and there's still a great wide white space between the two paragraphs. How can I get rid of it? -- Chris Green

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Ubuntu 9.10 graphics issue
by Mark Rogers 17 Mar '10

17 Mar '10

See screenshot: http://www.more-solutions.co.uk/files/12032010325.JPG I have tried two identical PCs in case the problem is system or video memory. Initially I had the monitor through a KVM, which gave me a lower resolution but usable screen, although with square blocks on the screen where it wasn't updating properly. (I tried to open a terminal window and just got a white box which I could move around but could see nothing in the box.) It was when I bypassed the KVM and rebooted that it identified the screen and gave me a decent resolution login screen followed by the linked screenshot after login. Chipset is Intel 82810E DC-133 (CGC) according to /var/log/messages Suggestions? I'm hoping the screenshot will tell someone exactly what is wrong, but I can't google a screenshot and can't work out how to describe it in words! -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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VCF - Bletchley Hotel / [Ips]: Peter Jennings walk
by samwise 16 Mar '10

16 Mar '10

Following up from last night's discussions, the Peter Jennings ghost walk (which they proudly proclaim has been featured on GMTV!) round Ipswich is on the first Thursday of each month from the Tourist Information Centre, St. Stephens Lane and costs about a fiver, I think. If enough ppl contact me off-list, I'll see if a date can be agreed upon. Also, for those who expressed interest in the Vintage Computer Festival at Bletchley Park, here's the link to the The Campanile Hotel which has a preferential rate for VCF attendees: http://www.tnmoc.org/vcf-gb/hotels.aspx And, who knows, maybe by next month Adam can convince the landlady of McGintys to give us a tour of the tunnels underneath the pub ... ;) Cheers, Peter.

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MySQL BETWEEN
by James Bensley 16 Mar '10

16 Mar '10

SELECT blah, blah, blah FROM tblBlah WHERE date_entered BETWEEN '01/01/2010' AND '20/01/2010' This will select records from my table who's date_entered field is from 01/01/2010 and 19/01/2010. This is because the BETWEEN command seems to go UP TO the day specified but not inclusive. So I thought I would just add +1 on to the data submitted from the PHP search page which works just great except for when you put 31 in as the day of the month, (so say we search from 01/01/2010 to 31/01/2010) it makes it into 32 and the querie returns 0 rows. However if I add an IF statement to not increment the day value by 1 if "31" is given as the last day in the query, we then only get results for 01/01/2010 to 30/01/2010. How can I combat this or is there a "proper" way of doing this as mine almost defiantly isn't going to be the best method? -- Regards, James ;) Jonathan Swift - "May you live every day of your life." - http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/jonathan_swift.html

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raw printing, yet again
by Peter Alcibiades 16 Mar '10

16 Mar '10

OK, following or trying to follow, Wayne's advice, I am attempting to use lp -d star temprint.txt. to print to a raw printer. It does not work. My user account is in the lp group, the printer is set up as raw in cups, and it is named star. When I do lpstat -P star all the jobs have piled up there one after the other, and can be cleared by lprm. There are no failure messages however. I have tried lp -P star -o raw But it seems to not recognize the raw option and to only expect page numbers. On the other hand, cat temprint > /dev/usb/lp0 works just fine. If you use cat as above, there is a real risk as Wayne pointed out. If the printer is offline, then its true, the application freezes. This is not desirable at all. Though, its a pretty robust printer, so maybe this is a chance I have to take. And maybe I could provide some kind of choice to just turn off the printing command and clear the queue and tell the user to call for assistance. But it is not good at all. Its a disaster waiting to happen. So it would be nice to be able to use lp. But how? And does anyone have any suggestion why it might not be working or what to check? I also cannot figure out, despite much googling, how to test for whether the raw printer is on line and functioning. Nothing I have tried gives any different result if it is powered on or off. Peter

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I was thinking about going tonight
by Ian Porter 15 Mar '10

15 Mar '10

Just wondering who else is going ?

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VNC problem
by Torben Stones 12 Mar '10

12 Mar '10

I'm having an interesting but very annoying problem. I have set up xtightvncserver (client) on one machine in listen mode, and then use x11vnc (server) on another machine. I connect the server to the viewer using the -connect argument. This works fine, as I can see the servers desktop on the client box as expected. Now I change my routers firewall rules to forward port 5500 to the client, and then try to connect the server to the client, again using the -connect argument, but this time using my external ip-address. This is where it gets odd. The vnc viewer on the client never seems to get a connection from the server. But if I look at the routers logs I can see that a message was received and matched against the correct firewall rule. I have used ngrep to find out if anything was appearing on port 5500 on the client, and I can see that there is indeed something coming in on port 5500. In ngrep it just appears as user@localhost:~$ sudo ngrep -d wlan1 port 5500 interface: wlan1 (192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0) filter: (ip or ip6) and ( port 5500 ) ### T 192.168.0.2:45401 -> 192.168.0.6:5500 [R] ...... ### T 192.168.0.2:45401 -> 192.168.0.6:5500 [R] ...... All this means to me is that something is appearing on port 5500, but as it isn't connecting then I can only assume that the wrong stuff is coming in. When I just use the internal address then I can see alot more on port 5500 for example the name of the display. Can anyone help me with the next step as I don't know what to do next. Thanks Torben -- You've got a lot of choices in your life. If getting out of bed in the morning is a chore and you're not smiling on a regular basis, try another choice.

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