October 2001 - Social

Re: [Alug] Locked directories - Sympathy
by Ricardo Campos 26 Oct '01

26 Oct '01

> The lart stick itself (sometimes referred to as >clue by four) is a large stick sometimes with nails >stuck in it. You wouldn't believe just how appropriate this thread has been! Yesterday I was told to "go for a walk" by the river (Wensum) to calm down, as I had turned into the BOFH (Bastard Operator from Hell) due to levels of extreme stupidity & incompetence. Never being one to respect authority, I managed to castigate a senior manager (so senior I am merely an ant in her view) in the most unbelievably sarcastic manner and still get an apology. (heh heh) Usually I never use a lart stick, I tend to use the "Tough Shit, then." or 'Baffle with BS' approach; similar to car mechanics... "tsk... no, tsk tsk... I think it's a case of SNAFU. hmm... I think your MTU is set too high causing fragmentation in the PMRC... Possibly some EMG corruption of the attenuated signal- do you wear a watch?.. no, that's not it.. that'll never work again, nothing I can do..." hee hee! >;-) Another favourite is to make the w*nking sign with my hand whilst speaking to them, or that classic- for the user who not only does not listen, but also doesn't stop talking - of putting the phone on your mouse mat and going to make a cup of tea! Luckily, my boss is an even greater BOFH! Good points- a network admin armed with a lart stick can knock £800 off a Dell server -over the phone!(still £5k's worth, though). It's a REALLY good time to buy servers, btw, they're absoloutely desparate to sell 'em. Ricardo (moved thread to soc cos it's a bit OT) PS. It doesn't happen often, I'm really quite patient with people who have no clue how to use M$ Word, or NT, politeness, or their minds. ;-D -- Get your free email from www.linuxmail.org Powered by Outblaze

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Re: The Penguin danced this evening-
by Alexis 24 Oct '01

24 Oct '01

On 21 Oct 2001, MJ Ray wrote: > Paul <paul.corner(a)tesco.net> writes: > > Thought a few of you might enjoy the fruits of some correspondance I've > > been indulging in. Just wish I could think of a suitable reply. > > Why? He's right. Debian is the only simple avoidance tactic ;-) Excuse me? I've heard several people recommend against trying to install Debian without an expert on hand, whereas the ambition at least of Mandrake et al is to allow a novice to click 'next' the whole time and get something working at the end. Alexis -- "Imagine a world without hypothetical situations" - Bram Moolenaar The more you know, the more you know you don't know. Corollary: Those who know nothing think they know everything. Try: ViM, Zsh, expect, at, rpm-get, checkinstall, sudo and find.

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Re: [Alug] ISP's
by MJ Ray 23 Oct '01

23 Oct '01

John wrote: > Does anyone on the list know of a reliable ISP providing unmetered access > still using an 0800 dial in number? Not 0800, but in addition to 2 08089933xxxx and an 08089916xxxx number, Freeserve Anytime have a 162 number which BT are compelled to provide access to, as it leaves Energis at the first exchange. Of course, you probably know all of the good and bad of Freeserve -- or you can find out on Google groups. MJR

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Re: [alug social] Re: The Penguin danced this evening-
by MJ Ray 23 Oct '01

23 Oct '01

Adam wrote: > There is a very high chance that this talk will be the meeting after at > the UEA now as It looks as though I am not going to have time to get > everything together. /me mutters about "Constant Time To Completion" /me tries to conceal his talk about debian hybrids MJR

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ISP's
by John Seago 23 Oct '01

23 Oct '01

Does anyone on the list know of a reliable ISP providing unmetered access still using an 0800 dial in number? I ask as BT have changed me over from 08005879089 to 08089933004, despite knowing since May that the exchange I connect through will not connect the 08089933XXX number sets as it has not been modernised to do so. The 0800 ISP I had used since the number change, Nutshell, went belly up and ceased operating, I am therefore limited to pay-as-you-go through the mutual.net. Thanks in advance for any and all suggestions. John seago

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Re: The Penguin danced this evening-
by MJ Ray 23 Oct '01

23 Oct '01

> I've heard several people recommend against trying to install Debian without > an expert on hand, whereas the ambition at least of Mandrake et al is to > allow a novice to click 'next' the whole time and get something working at > the end. Sorry, I took it as a comment on the way most modern Linuxes expect you to use new installation media and fry the entire installation for every upgrade. I think Debian is unique in its solution to that. Debian's *ambition* is to make the installation simpler. It's just a bit further away from that than the others, I think. It can be added, as Corel did, though. MJR

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Moving help.
by Jonathan McDowell 22 Oct '01

22 Oct '01

Hi. Some of you already know that I'm moving to Norwich. I've been ringing around try to get removal quotes and they all seem to start at £600 (this is for a 2 bedroomed flat moving from Harpenden to Norwich). It's been suggested that ALUG will work for beer. I'd like to put this to the test. I'm planning on moving on Tuesday 30th October. I reckon if I can find 3 people to help then I can do it myself without too much hassle (could probably do it with just me and one other person, but that might end up being a lot of work). I'll need help at both ends, but I thought if I hired the van from Norwich then I can give everyone a lift there to help and back. I'm prepared to buy lots of beer and pizza (or whatever equivalent people want) for consumption after the move is complete. I reckon I can buy a considerable amount and pay for the van and still save lots over removal men. :) So, would anyone be prepared to help? Please? Pretty please? Ideally and drive the van too as I only have a little Polo and big vechiles scare me. :) Alternatively if anyone can suggest a reasonably priced removal company in Norwich that might work too... J. -- /-\ | The Bible was written by the same |@/ Debian GNU/Linux Developer | people who said the Earth was flat. \- |

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Re: [alug social] I can't believe how much of a muppet I can be sometimes :-)
by MJ Ray 17 Oct '01

17 Oct '01

Adam Bower <abower(a)thebowery.co.uk> writes: > Anyhow the lesson to be learned is that procmail is very powerful but when > given to someone who thinks that they know what they are doing it becomes > a very dangerous weapon! I'm tempted to write a stand-alone procmail alternative with a nicer configuration language, probably based on Gnus's "fancy mail splitting" feature. When I consider why I use Gnus, the mail filtering and the scoring are the top two reasons. Anyway, let's start with market research: - who would be interested in a friendlier procmail? - should it have both GUI and file-based configuration methods? - what alternatives are already out there? I can't seem to find a good one, but maybe one of you uses one already? -- MJR Do you need advice about the Internet or particular net services? Why not talk to my employers? See http://www.luminas.co.uk/ for details.

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Re: [alug social] I can't believe how much of a muppet I can be sometimes :-)
by MJ Ray 17 Oct '01

17 Oct '01

xsprite(a)bigfoot.com writes: > the majority of my procmail rules end up being for filtering out mailing > lists into various folders. there seem to be four basic mailing list > systems in wide spread use: ezml, majordomo, listserv (less now though) > and mailman. so a general way of filtering each could be easily worked out. Oh yes, they're quite easy to filter out in Gnus. The basic gist of it is:- ; once without ; RFC-compliant ("list-post" "mailto:\$[-_a-zA-Z0-9]+\$@\$[-_a-zA-Z0-9]+\$\\..*" "list.\\2.\\1") ; ezmlm ("delivered-to" "mailing list \$[-_a-zA-Z0-9]+\$@\$[-_a-zA-Z0-9]+\$\\..*" "list.\\2.\\1") ; mailman ("list-id" ".*<\$.+?\$\\.\$.+?\$\\..*" "list.\\2.\\1") ; listar ("x-list-id" ".*<\$.+?\$\\.\$.+?\$\\..*" "list.\\2.\\1") ; lyris ("x-mailing-list" "\\b\$[-_a-zA-Z0-9]+\$\\b.\$[-_a-zA-Z0-9]+\$\\..*" "list.\\2.\\1") ; majordomo ("sender" ".*owner-\$[-_a-zA-Z0-9]+\$.\$[-_a-zA-Z0-9]+\$.*" "list.\\2.\\1") Of course, this won't be the final form for mymailfilter (or whatever it ends up being called). I'm thinking of something a bit more versatile than just plain triples. -- MJR Do you need advice about the Internet or particular net services? Why not talk to my employers? See http://www.luminas.co.uk/ for details.

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I can't believe how much of a muppet I can be sometimes :-)
by Adam Bower 17 Oct '01

17 Oct '01

I just managed to screw up my mailspool for 24 hours after playing with my .procmailrc and getting the regular expression wrong and putting all my important mail in a hardly read folder... That is not the embarassing part though... after attempting to fix it I managed to send all of my mail to a folder I never read, I thought things had been quite today on the lists that I am on! Anyhow the lesson to be learned is that procmail is very powerful but when given to someone who thinks that they know what they are doing it becomes a very dangerous weapon! If you don't know what procmail is then I guess I should let you know as it is very useful (unless you think you know it all and break it!) anyhow procmail will filter you email into seperate folders so that you can (for example) read all of the alug posts at the same time while they don't get mixed in with your normal email! I currently have about 10 different folders for different mailing lists, as I am following so many topics ranging from beginners python programming all the way to info about my car. Take a look at http://www.procmail.org/ for the full package, it is a very useful tool even if you can be a complete muppet (like me) and get it *SO* wrong because you didn't read the warnings on the box. Adam -- Adam "a funny thing about regret is, that it's better to regret something you have done, than to regret something you haven't done"

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