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Introduction
by Peter Hunter 28 Jan '05

28 Jan '05

Hi everyone, The name's Peter and I am a new'ish Linux user. I have 'tried' Linux a few times but never really seriously. My 'main' computer is an eMac running OS X 10.3.7 but I have some bits of software and hardware that won't run on a Mac, (amateur radio stuff (G0GSZ)) so I had to build a PC with Windows XP. When I was in Roys I picked up a copy of Linux Magazine which had a copy of Mandrake 10.1 on the cover DVD, so I installed this. I am very impressed. I have broadband via NTL through a cable modem and Belkin router. OS X and Linux detected this and set everything up almost automatically. Windows needed software installing!! At the moment I am only using Linux for email and internet browsing, but have tried other parts. I am experimenting as much as I can as time permits. I live in Bowthorpe and am a home user as I am carer to my disabled (MS) wife. I have been 'playing!' with computers since the late 70's, so have had a little practice / experiance. By the way, I am running the Gnome desktop that came with the installation. That's all, glad to meet you all. Regards Peter

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Any openGL / Matrox / SuSE / experts here ?
by Peter Onion 28 Jan '05

28 Jan '05

I've been playing with openGL for a few days and having lots of fun drawing 3d views. Currently I'm just using the mesa (software) openGL library but I would like to get hardware 3d acceleration working. I've got SuSE 9.2 running on a 2.6Ghz HP with a dual headed Matrox G550. Anyone got any experience with setting up the hardware acceleration ? Google searches have not turned up anything simple/useful. Peter

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Newsforge: Running Windows viruses with Wine
by Keith Watson 27 Jan '05

27 Jan '05

<QUOTE> It just isn't fair that Windows users get all the viruses. I mean really, shouldn't Linux users be in on the fun as well? Well... thanks to the folks running the Wine project, Linux users can "catch the virus bug" too -- sort of. Linux just isn't user-friendly when it comes to viruses. You have to work to find and run them. It doesn't happen automatically as it does with Windows. The GNU/Linux folks really should improve this glaring discrepancy. </QUOTE> He's right, it's so damm unfair!! see <http://os.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/01/25/1430222&from=rss> Regards, Keith

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Web viewer for encrypted data - any good ones?
by Chris Green 26 Jan '05

26 Jan '05

Does anyone know of any good web applications for viewing the contents of encrypted files? I.e. I want to have an encrypted file on my web site which I can view from anywhere using a web browser. Obviously I'd need to supply a password and it needs to be an https: connection. I probably want something a bit more flexible than a password manager as the sort of data I want to store is a bit more than just passwords, though some of it is passwords. Ideally one would provide a password and a key/name of some sort and data for just that key/name would be displayed. I don't need to be able to edit the data via the web page, just view it. Obviously I need to be able to edit the data somehow, ideally it would be a straight text file that I can edit with any old text editor and then encrypt and store in the right place for the web access. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Neill Newman 26 Jan '05

26 Jan '05

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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Next Open Office question
by Chris Green 25 Jan '05

25 Jan '05

Having got Open Office to run and the database connection working (which was non-trivial) I'm quite impressed. Setting up forms to enter data into a database is quite clever. Essentially you end up using the Open Office word processor as the forms designer which means that layout and so on is very easy and powerful. However I'm left with one question, you can specify actions for data entry fields as in 'Changed', 'Mouse Button Pressed', 'After Updating', etc. but I cant really see how to program these actions. When you click the '...' box beside an action an 'Assign Macro' window pops up with a whole load of what I assume are pre-defined actions which are called 'OpenOffice.org BASIC Macros' and there's also 'Untitled1 BASIC Macros' but I cant see how to actually use them. Firstly what do all the pre-defined macros do? Secondly how can I write something to do something useful to put in the Untitled1 position? Any ideas anyone? If I can get to understand this the OpenOffice database access looks very powerful indeed. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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More copyright issues - perhaps.
by Anthony Anson 25 Jan '05

25 Jan '05

Apologies for the Shedspeak. ============ Start of forwarded message ============ From: "Dr Ivan D. Reid" <expunged.address> Newsgroup: uk.rec.sheds Subject: Re: B.B.C. wibblefiles... On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 01:58:17 GMT, Jaques d'Alltrades <creaking.gate(a)foobar.zetnet.co.uk> wrote in <313030303230303841F5A7B903(a)foobar.zetnet.co.uk>: > Do any Sheddi xabj whether you can download pogroms (I wanna file of > Hitler in Therapy - or simla title - a play from the Whirled Swervice > wot were boredcast ver recently.) rather than hfr the 'listen again' > thingy wot (I bleeve) jbexeth in reeltime? Or RealAudio even. Saw this yesterday, Look for Streambox VCR: http://www.eff.org/endangered/ -- Ivan Reid, Electronic & Computer Engineering, (rest of sig expunged) ============ End of forwarded message ============ -- 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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Job in Wymondham
by Keith Watson 25 Jan '05

25 Jan '05

Casually browsing round jobserve.co.uk I came across this vacancy, http://www.jobserve.co.uk/W8418B30DC608043B.job , thought it might be of interest to one or more on the list. Regards, Keith ____________ 'I always use the word impossible with the greatest caution.' - - Wernher Von Braun

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Onspeed
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 23 Jan '05

23 Jan '05

Hi Folks, Luggers using dial-up in the Anglian sticks (and these are about as sticky as sticks get) may like to keep an eye on http://www.onspeed.com/ They claim to offer compression-based internet connections which are capable of increasing the throughput by a factor of about 10: 30kb/s->300kb/s. This is nudging broadband rates. And it's portable. At present, it is available for "PC" (= Windows) and Mac, for £24.96 a year. It involves installing some software on the machine that dials up and apparently routing the connection through onspeed. According to their website: http://www.onspeed.com/en/using.php#existing "Next year we expect to bring out software for Linux. Please email us here to let us know which platforms / browsers you are interested in and we will get in touch with you when available." and it looks as though that web page was written in 2004... Maybe if we follow their suggestion, and encourage them a bit, they might accelerate this a bit! If they've done it for Mac OSX they can't be a hundred miles from doing it for Linux. Any comments from people who are already familiar with Onspeed would be welcome. Best wishes to all, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 [NB: New number!] Date: 23-Jan-05 Time: 20:48:01 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Open Office, how to run it?
by Chris Green 23 Jan '05

23 Jan '05

I have just downloaded and installed Open Office 1.1.4, it all went quite smoothly. However there is just one little problem, there's no clue anywhere on how to actually run it now I have installed it! Is some part of the installed Open Office hierarchy supposed to be on my PATH? -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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