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Re: [ALUG] Linux Political Party
by John Seago 27 Feb '05

27 Feb '05

On Thursday 24 Feb 2005 06:26, Sid Dabster <sid_dabster(a)yahoo.ca> wrote: > *** Proposal for a FLOSS/Linux Political Party *** > > I suggest a Linux Party is formed to promote the idea > of free software (and possibly related ideas). The > last European Election with the patent issue showed > the relevance of politics to the free software > movement. Voting purely on patents lead to some > undesirable alliance partners. While as LUG Radio > noted, the patent issue did not brake through into the > mainstream media. If free software is to gain mass > use, we need decision makers and media to be more > aware. A Linux party with a free post drop and media > time will do this just as other single issue parties > have. During the Euro Elections I took it upon my self to see if we, the Free Software Community could unseat the sitting Liberal Democrat candidate. Not that I had any opposition to the Candidate Personally or Politically, but because they were expecting to gain a seat, and their stand on Software Patents were inimical to the Free Software Community. The actions I proposed were a) to lobby the Lib Dems, b) to encourage anyone that people came into contact with, to vote either UKIP or Green, in order to take AWAY votes from the Lib Dems. c) to actually vote for either UKIP or the Greens. The result was that some took the trouble to write to me, or post to newsgroups, to tell me why they either did not have the time or inclination to lobby the Lib Dems, (effort they could have used to write to the Lib Dems), others told me that UKIP or the Greens were not people they could vote FOR, missing the point that the vote was AGAINST the Lib Dems. Voting for Minority Party's hits the major Party's disproportionally, even when the sitting party wins, if its majority is reduced not by one of the other major party's but by one of the minor one's. It is my opinion in these days when democracy has not turned out to be what some imagined it should be, that apathy is our worst enemy, but that an opposition group can be more useful than a single issue pressure group. If a Party is to be organised then it may be more useful to organise a Political Organisation to vote against certain individuals or parties, rather than for a single issue pressure group. Perhaps someone will know if the various election regulations covers those who are campaigning AGAINST an individual or Party. -- John Seago GNU/Linux User #219566 (http://counter.li.org) AFFS (http://www.affs.org.uk/)

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Re: Re: [ALUG] A bit of introduction from me (again)
by John Seago 27 Feb '05

27 Feb '05

On Saturday 26 February 2005 23:41, beb <ben(a)psychoferret.co.uk> wrote: > Moot point. To most[0] East Anglians, London is as far away as Japan ;-) Yes and far more foreign as well! -- John GNU/Linux User #219566 (http://counter.li.org) AFFS (http://www.affs.org.uk/)

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Linux Political Party
by Sid Dabster 26 Feb '05

26 Feb '05

*** Proposal for a FLOSS/Linux Political Party *** I suggest a Linux Party is formed to promote the idea of free software (and possibly related ideas). The last European Election with the patent issue showed the relevance of politics to the free software movement. Voting purely on patents lead to some undesirable alliance partners. While as LUG Radio noted, the patent issue did not brake through into the mainstream media. If free software is to gain mass use, we need decision makers and media to be more aware. A Linux party with a free post drop and media time will do this just as other single issue parties have. Q. What would be involved A. For a resonable campaign i. 12 signatures and a 500 pound deposit ii. A leaflet designed on a personal computer iii.50,000 copies would be duplicated (these can contain adverts) about 250 pounds iv. Turning up to 2 husting (optional), just repeat the same answer to each question. v. 5 minutes radio interview. "Manifesto" Could include *Use of FLOSS, Linux* no to DRM no software and look & feel patents open hardware standards (end vendor lock-in) free books end of EULAs no coding obfuscation DeCSS, freedom to watch DVDs Write what code you want End security paranoia freedom to listen to CDs stop criminalising end users etc. etc. Remember IP and computers are more important than ever, several billion may be saved by using FLOSS. Want more hospitals, tax cuts etc. ______________________________________________________________________ Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca

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RE: [ALUG] Kit Meet - 20th March @ UEA
by Elisabeth 25 Feb '05

25 Feb '05

>===== Original Message From Brett Parker <iDunno(a)sommitrealweird.co.uk> ===== > >If people could post back to the list to give us a feeling what they're >bringing cookies. the edible kind. e/sunflowerinrain Elisabeth Fosbrooke-Brown School of Music University of East Anglia Norwich NR4 7TJ

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ALUG Library on line
by Wayne Stallwood 25 Feb '05

25 Feb '05

Despite several things working against me* I have now populated the On Line Library with the real ALUG library book list. The contents of the Library now represent all the books currently held by the library, Those who currently have books on loan will have accounts auto-generated as their books are added to the system within the next few days. Any reservations or bookings made during the testing phase have been removed, however any accounts generated still exist. Currently the library is resting in my ISP's hosting area http://cgi.digimatic.plus.com/opendb/ I hope to move it to the ALUG site very shortly (there are still a few minor changes I want to make, and where it is now I have shell access which makes things a bit easier) When I get a moment I will stick a link at the top of the old ALUG Library page pointing to the Library as the URL is hardly memorable. Potential borrowers can of course still use the old system of just waiting to the next meet and leafing through the box to see if something interests them (I should be at the kit meeting next month and am going to make an effort to be at the 2nd Thursday thing on the 10th of March, subject to some work commitments) It should be noted that in the interests of fair play, reservations only count up until the next meeting that I attend, if somebody is at the meeting and wants to borrow a book reserved by somebody that hasn't turned up then I think it only fair that the reservation is overruled, so all reservations do is get you first dibs at a book if you attend the next meeting that I do. * Firstly when populating the database I decided that rather than manually typing in the ISBN numbers I would use an old barcode reader I had lying around to get the ISBN from the barcode number, naturally in true geek fashion getting this to work actually took longer than typing in the ISBN numbers manually, a feat which I ended up doing anyway as curiously the barcode does not seem in include the last digit of the ISBN. If someone wants to write me some script that (given a barcode number) looks up the book on amazon and populates the database with the correct title,author,publisher etc then that would be very welcome. Then I discovered that for some reason the PHP mail function has stopped working (actually it looked more like it had been intentionally disabled) so membership email and other stuff wasn't working. I sent a mail to PlusNet support and it magically reappeared despite their claims that they hadn't switched it off.

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Tentative Kit Meet Arrangements - 20th March @ UEA
by Brett Parker 24 Feb '05

24 Feb '05

Helllllooooo List! Right, we (me, kirsten and elisabeth) have just been talking in IRC and noted that we have not had a kit meeting in *forever*, so, on that note we thought we should start planning one. How does Sunday March the 20th at the UEA sound to everyone? Cheers, -- Brett Parker web: http://www.sommitrealweird.co.uk/ email: iDunno(a)sommitrealweird.co.uk

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Yet more cheeky blagging
by Joe Button 24 Feb '05

24 Feb '05

Hi. Don't suppose anyone's got a copy of O'Reilly's Perl Cookbook they don't use, available for free or cheap? Any edition will do... Cheers, Joe x

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Slackware 10.1 and Kword
by John Seago 24 Feb '05

24 Feb '05

Has anyone else noticed an annoying little bug in the version of Kword that comes with 10.1? I print my A4 letterhead ranged, (lined up on), the right hand side of the paper, (it means that when the letter is filed in a ring binder the letter head is on the outside edge and thus more easily visible). The problem is that the last letter on each line is cut in half, this does not happen in the body of the letter, just with the heading. I've never had a bug which needed reporting to date so I'm asking if anyone else has seen it before I report it. (I've also got a spare set of 10.1 which has the same problem). -- John Seago GNU/Linux User #219566 (http://counter.li.org) AFFS (http://www.affs.org.uk/)

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Forgotten...
by Anthony Anson 22 Feb '05

22 Feb '05

Thought I'd try once more to get Wine flowing in Debian. Clicked the falling-over wineglass in the KDE menu. "You have started Wine, but we cannot find a Wine configuration file. This is normal if you have never run Wine before. If this is the case, select the 'Configure Wine' option, below, to create a configuration file." So I did. "Error: unable to find winesetup tool, please install the "winesetuptk" Debian package" I click 'okay'. "You have started Wine, but we cannot...... <mode="thinks"> Haven't we been here before? </mode> So, (please make a careful mental not of the next action...) I open the CD ROMdrawer by pressing its 'open/close' buttonand feed it the 'binary 1' CD, which fires-up nicely. Then I have have a look at what's on offer. There are two likely-looking wineglasses (toppling) in sight, both of which (but separately) I offer Debian, and both of which are declined. Any idea where I ought to look, pretty please? (And what I might have to type into a text terminal?) However, the above isn't the point of this emu: when I came to remove the CD, pressing the 'open/close' button on the drive resulted in a sullen refusal to do anything. So, I tried the CD icon in Gnome, to be told that Debian had lost the driver - and the drawer still would not open. (Kept telling me that the drive was 'busy' or similar when I clicketty-clicked its icon in the Desktop. [Do we call it 'desktop'?] ) I had to close Debian down before the CD drive would operate again. So, for a change, the 'Forgotten...' does not refer to my own dreadful memory, but to Debian's. Any thoughts, gang? -- Tony http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/ The only way to tell when a Finn is in love with you is that they look at your feet instead of their own.

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Website meeting updates.
by Jonathan McDowell 22 Feb '05

22 Feb '05

Can't remember who other than Mark can make these changes, so being lazy and sending them to the list 'cos I know he's always busy. Updates for http://www.alug.org.uk/meetings/2004/ and http://www.alug.org.uk/venues/norwich.html Though actually someone wants to move /2004/ to /2005/ and have the new meetings there. Not easy to represent in a diff without knowledge of the site though. J. -- Hello.. Incontinence Hotline.. | .''`. Debian GNU/Linux Developer Can you hold? | : :' : Happy to accept PGP signed | `. `' or encrypted mail - RSA + | `- DSA keys on the keyservers.

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