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Re-launched Linux User
by Richard Lewis 13 Sep '09

13 Sep '09

Hi ALUG, Did anyone else notice that Linux User had disppeared from the newstands? No, neither had I. But they've recently published a re-launch issue, now under Imagine Publishing. Don't know if anyone else has read it and has any opinions? Just thought I'd voice some of mine. The features seem to be quite good, but some of the tutorials and reviews are dreadful. The hardware reviews go into no detail whatsoever. So they reviewed several netbooks in this issue, and all they did was to tell you the basic specs, tell you how they found OOo to work, and tell you what it's like to hold the thing. No objective benchmark testing or anything. But the software reviews were even worse. So bad, in fact, that I've quoted this passage from a view of Mono 2.4: "Mono 2.4 was released in March of this year. The Mono project and the DotGNU project are based on similar ideas. The fact that you can just download it and do anything with it makes it attractive to a lot of people out there who don't want to be tied down by an NDA or some other legal straitjacket which prevents them from realising their goal in writing a certain type of application. The General Public License, which is the most successful software license ever produced by any organisation anywhere, and the MIT X11 license make all of this possible." He manages to convey almost as little information in the remaining 500 words of the review. It's good for a laugh if you have a spare £6 (I still think they should drop the 'free' DVDs from these things). Though I should say again that the features (Shuttleworth interview, Jon 'Maddog' Hall on OpenMoko, Gerry Gavigan on grass-roots marketing of FLOSS) were worth reading. Best, Richard -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis ISMS, Computing Goldsmiths, University of London JID: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li http://www.richard-lewis.me.uk/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- +-------------------------------------------------------+ |Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.| |http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html | +-------------------------------------------------------+

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[ALUG Announce] Coach and Horses is now permanent venue for 2nd Thursday meetings.
by Adam Bower 11 Sep '09

11 Sep '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 ----- Hi all, Last night we had a decent turnout of 9 people, lots of regulars and a couple of new faces. The Coach & Horses turns out to be an excellent venue, serving decent food, free wifi, very good beer (including takeouts!), plenty of seating and a good atmosphere. So this will remain the venue for all future Alug 2nd Thursday pub meets until time we see fit for a change. http://www.thecoachthorperoad.co.uk/ thanks Adam -- jabberid = quinophex(a)jabber.earth.li ----- 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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Augmenting sound on DVD video-rip
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 09 Sep '09

09 Sep '09

Greetings all. I have copied an amateur VHS video onto a DVD (using a Tape/DVD machine with cross-copying capability). I have copied the DVD to a ".iso" file (ndf filesystem, I think) using cat /dev/dvd > titlename.iso, and I dare say I can store the various compoment files in a directory using dvdbackup. No problem in duplicating the DVD using growisofs from the ".iso" file. This works well. However, the sound-track is too quiet (it was filmed from the back of a lecture-theatre during a talk), and it would be good to augment the sound volume (the DVD has to be played at maximum sound level on the player, and even then is often too faint). I have little experience of manipulating video stuff, and would welcome guidance on how to proceed! With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 09-Sep-09 Time: 19:15:52 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Over-clever keyboard detection in Gentoo
by Dan Hatton 09 Sep '09

09 Sep '09

Dear All, I usually operate my Gentoo netbook with one of two USB keyboards plugged in - a Microsoft Comfort Curve keyboard or an Apple Pro Keyboard. Usually, the computer responds to either of these, and its built-in keyboard, as if they were PC-style keyboards, i.e. shift-2 gives ", shift-' gives @. I quite like it this way. Occasionally (usually while the Apple keyboard is plugged in, although I've seen it once while the Microsoft keyboard was plugged in), however, the computer switches to responding to both the USB keyboard and its built-in keyboard as if they were Apple-style keyboards, i.e. shift-2 is @, shift-' is ". There's nothing wrong with this in itself, but unfortunately it coincides with the computer becoming very to respond to keypresses, and frequently mistaking a single keypress for a large number of multiple presses of the same key. It also coincides with the second light from the left (of six) in xkbvleds coming on, which suggests that the behaviour is switchable. Any ideas how to switch it, please? -- Thanks, Dan

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[ALUG Announce] Changed Venue! Alug Norwich 2nd Thurs Pub Meet 10th September 2009
by Adam Bower 09 Sep '09

09 Sep '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, Note that we have a new venue for the pub meet this month! This months second Thursday social meeting of ALUG will take place on 10th September 2009 at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA http://www.thecoachthorperoad.co.uk/ ). This is a new venue for Alug but has been chosen as it offers food, a good selection of real beer and reasonably good connections for travel and parking. There should be people there from 8pm, I will try and bring a Tux to aid people in recognising us. Thanks Adam -- jabberid = quinophex(a)jabber.earth.li ----- 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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Re: [ALUG] Bittorrent / Sky / ThePirateBay
by mick 08 Sep '09

08 Sep '09

On Tue, 8 Sep 2009 09:44:24 +0100 Alex Scotton <alex.scotton(a)gmail.com> allegedly wrote: > >>and if so does anyone know of a good encrypted proxy?.. > > > > Try Tor, though some operators (myself included I may add) actually > > block torrents in their exit policies. Too bandwidth hungry. > > been checking out the website, looks very good.. however few > questions, I assume you have volunteered to be a "relay" so this just > sets up a few ssh tunnels between you and the target and bounces your > connection around a little etc... its routed through encrypted > "relays" to the target and then "encrypted" back through? does this > not create a tad of latency, especially on torrents if some relays are > allowing it and some aren't. See http://www.torproject.org/overview.html.en for details of how tor works. It is not really a set of ssh tunnels. Tor's great strength is that no-one can link your source address to the destination you are interested in (well, no-one without the capability of observing all possible tor nodes - which excludes even most nation states). Yes, tor is slow, but how fast do you need to be for file transfer? And of course, the more tor relays there are, the faster the network gets. See also http://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-doc-relay.html.en for how to configure your tor client as a relay. But beware, the impact on your own bandwidth can be huge. I choose to run a tor exit node (a relay which also permits exit) on a VPS. Despite some judicious throttling I still consume 3 to 3.5 Gig of traffic per day. My VPS contract allows 150 Gig per month so I kep an eye on usage. I found that running a relay on my ADSL line was totally impractical. You can, of course, just use tor as a client, but that way you are not giving anything back to the community. And as I said, the more tor relays there are, the faster and more "secure" the network becomes. When I want to use tor myself, I just set up an SSH tunnel to my relay and join the network from there. 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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Partition imaging and restoring
by Mark Rogers 08 Sep '09

08 Sep '09

Ah, Windows, Windows, Windows, how I love thee. There definitely seems to be a certain type of user who, given a few weeks with a Windows installation (no matter what AV software is installed) will end up with a compromised machine. So I'm looking for a way to roll-back to a clean install. What I'm thinking is to have two partitions on the disk - the Windows one and an EXT2/3 partition containing an image of the clean Windows install. All I need then is: (a) a way to create the image (Linux has several of these but recommendations welcome) (b) a way for a "normal user" (with some support) to restore the image I started by thinking simple; have a dual-boot config with a basic Linux install selectable from a Grub menu (labelled "System Restore" or similar), which when booted simply runs the restore command automatically (which might just be dd). To create/update the image I'd use a LiveCD. But then I thought that this has probably all been done before and there's probably a standard solution out there? The key point is that it needs to be end-user friendly when it comes to restoring the image. -- 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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Pub meet pub suggestion
by Montmorency 07 Sep '09

07 Sep '09

>We need to have a bit of discussion over where the 2nd Thursday Norwich >pub meet is going to be held this month. The Coach and Horses on Thorpe Road! http://www.thecoachthorperoad.co.uk/ Points: a) Very good beer that they brew in the premises. b) They do food c) The location is very convenient for the railway station, for getting home. Busses and taxis are to be found there as well as trains. http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?oe=utf-8&client=firefox- a&ie=UTF8&q=Coach+Horses +Norwich&fb=1&split=1&gl=uk&cid=0,0,4671222259257925321&ei=djqkSpe9NdG6j Ae-wvi2Dg&ll=52.627098,1.311128&spn=0.008075,0.01929&z=16&iwloc=A d) There is some parking in front of the pub. And side-street parking in the area. e) It's not crowded on weekdays, it's a large place with lots of tables so getting one for Alug shouldn't be a problem. f) The pub has wireless. katmeat montmorency(a)ukfsn.org bellphegore(a)nerdshack.com

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Bittorrent / Sky / ThePirateBay
by Alex Scotton 07 Sep '09

07 Sep '09

Hello guys, I've been humming and harring for days now, over what's been going on with The Pirate Bay tracker.... Basically, I download from nowhere else other than thepiratebay, hastening to delete all other trackers from torrents before starting downloads; however over the last few days I've noticed a rapid decline in my download speeds, and noticed differences between the number of seeders published on thepiratebay site and what I actually get in bittorrent... So after about 30 seconds of investigation today realised that bittorrent was registering tracker.thepiratebay.org as "offline(timed out)"; assuming the worst I headed over to suprbay.org only to find out that the tracker was indeed up and running fine, so i decided to ping/traceroute tracker.thepiratebay.org and have found that it is possible for me to resolve the IP linked to the hostname but not in fact get there: traceroute to tracker.thepiratebay.org (192.121.86.7), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets 1 myrouter.home (192.168.0.1) 1.224 ms 1.632 ms 2.040 ms 2 cr0.eacos.uk.easynet.net (87.87.253.19) 62.079 ms 62.576 ms 63.556 ms 3 * * * 4 * * * 5 * * * ........ So assuming that Sky had done the dirty deed; I switched to OpenDNS and unfortunetly the same story there as I guessed there would be, because all they provide me with is resolutions and the direction for the IP linked to the hostname, right? they are as they say a Domain Name Server... so if Sky don't want me going somewhere, then I ain't getting there, even if I use OpenDNS. So would I be able to get around this using a proxy? and if so does anyone know of a good encrypted proxy?.. so i can say a big F**k you to Sky... (I am by the way calling them tomorrow to ask them why I can't connect to it) Gathering all the info possible would help for my lovely telephone call with a bright and bubbly Sky rep tomorrow; So if any of you other poor poor peeps use Sky, can you ping/traceroute tracker.thepiratebay.org for me, and in fact even if you aren't with sky give it a try for me, and let me know your findings.. ya never know maybe it isn't sky but instead a higher power up the line. Thanks in advance Alex Scotton

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Bittorrent / Sky / ThePirateBay
by Alex Scotton 07 Sep '09

07 Sep '09

---------- Forwarded message ---------- (didn't CC the list haha...again) From: Alex Scotton <alex.scotton(a)gmail.com> Date: Mon, Sep 7, 2009 at 12:51 AM Subject: Re: [ALUG] Bittorrent / Sky / ThePirateBay To: Srdjan Todorovic <todorovic.s(a)googlemail.com> > Others on IRC are reporting similar. Can resolve the host but can't get > to it. Wow.. had spaced on the Alug IRC, has been a few years since I've been on there.. and with IRC on my phone aswell no less, what a fool ha ha ha... Are these peeps on Sky also, or does it vary? there's a lot of people experiencing the same from all over the world according to the Suprbay forums.. bring on Blackout Europe and the end of our free speech, aye?.. Will let you know what Sky has to say on the matter, I shall be informing them that I wish to download "legitimate" un-copyrighted data from there and that i shall be canceling the direct debit etc.. and forfeiting the contract as a result of this action... as I am paying for the "Internet" (open and free as it is) not some corporate fool's idea of the Internet.

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