August 2009 - main

Face Recognition
by Mark Rogers 09 Nov '09

09 Nov '09

On the back of a bus I saw an advert for the Apple Mac talking about its ability to use face recognition when processing photos. Is there anything like this in Linux? It looks like Google had it planned for Picasa back in 2006: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/better-way-to-organize-photos.html .. but as far as I know it's not there yet? -- 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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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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Re: [ALUG] Google Phone (T-Mobile/HTC G1)
by Alex Scotton 06 Sep '09

06 Sep '09

Doh! Well trust T-Mobile, aye?.. it's pretty iritating, so there's no flash support in cupcake either?.. hmm I know (what I assume is version 2) the g2 has flash 10 support so it must be coming.. Just going to have either play the waiting game, or flash it with JesusFreke's copy, then begs the question do you trust a guy who calls himself jesusfreke haha On 17 Aug 2009, 1:43 PM, "samwise" <samwise(a)bagshot-row.org> wrote: Hi, Alex. I have a Vodafone HTC Magic Android phone. Fortunately, for me, it came with Cupcake (Android OS 1.5) by default, so I haven't had any of the problems you describe. Although I'm pretty sure I don't have Flash support - that's supposed to be on the way, but it's not in Cupcake out of the box. October was the last date, I remember reading ... I haven't hacked it much - I've installed some apps that weren't in the Android market but, so far, I haven't seen any real need to root it, tbh. Android is pretty flexible anyway, and does most things out of the box or with apps from the market place so I haven't felt a need to put Debian (or Ubuntu) on it. Peter. 2009/8/17 Alex Scotton <alex.scotton(a)gmail.com>: > Hi guys, > > I'm a relative new comer to the world of linux, I use Ubuntu when I > can, however ha... > _______________________________________________ > main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > http://www.alug.org.uk/ > http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main > Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above! > _______________________________________________ main(a)lists.alug.org.uk http://www.alug.org.uk/ http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above!

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Wireless card
by Chris & Barry 31 Aug '09

31 Aug '09

Hi Anyone want a pcmcia-11 wireless card dont need it any more it worked ok with Ubuntu 6.10 it is a Edimax turbo EW-7108Pcg No charge, With Windows and linux driver disks Barry

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iTunes alternatives?
by James Elsey 28 Aug '09

28 Aug '09

What are you guys using for media players? Since getting an iPod, I've become fond of how iTunes manages music collections, and I haven't been able to find a good Linux alternative. Exaile comes close, but I'm still missing the following iTunes had a lovely way of storing compilation albums separately, so your main "list" of artists wasn't cluttered up by those on compilation CDs. Exaile/Amarok seem to list everything by artist > album, and when you have several compilations, this list becomes difficult to manage Audio books, iTunes has a nice way of storing those "out of the way", can't see anything in amarok to do this.. There's some other features I can't find good implementations of, but these are my two pet-hates at the moment. I haven't heard of any iTunes Linux versions on the horizon, and I don't think running under WINE would be ideal Any suggestions? James Elsey

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Re: [ALUG] Any experience of the "Fit PC 2" here?
by Alex Scotton 28 Aug '09

28 Aug '09

*(Sorry if this reposted; I keep getting mails about postponed posting because of "suspicious headers")* Putting all your eggs in one basket, aye? I want to do this too, currently running a media server, wow server, ftp server on my windows box (hides head in shame ha ha) and with 4 other pcs in the house all from time to time using bittorrent (especially me hehe).. would love to set up a buntu box as a server providing dns, possibly a few domain services (i.e. possibly storing user info etc.. people in the house log onto the server not their local account...) and in so doing provide an intranet possible of handling the bittorrent web ui, enabling peeps to upload their torrent file to the server and then leaving that to download the file and place it on a public drive when it's finished downloading.. would love to have a service that detects network load and adjusts bittorrent's bandwith allocation as appropriate... Would also love an app to sense new computers on the network and ask my permission for it's access etc.. Let me know how your venture goes chris Alex Scotton

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Anybody had experience of this?
by Chris Walker 27 Aug '09

27 Aug '09

http://maemo.nokia.com/ I've been tempted to trade in my old Nokia phone for a Nokia N97 but have been put off by the reviews - and the £500 price tag. I've thought about an Android phone and an iPhone but today I read about the Nokia N900. It has a Linux OS but having downloaded an SDK for the N97 and installed it on my Windows machine, am I likely to have problems trying write something for a Linux OS on a phone? I have to confess that my programming experience is limited to BBC Basic on a model B back in the 80's and now that I'm about to retire I thought I'd buy myself a new phone and do something useful with it. So 2 questions really. One is about the thoughts of the people here around Maemo. It's been used before on other devices but is the fact that it's based on Linux that important and is it any good? Second question concerns programming. Has anybody done any programming for a Linux phone, other than tweaking? I wouldn't be pestering you for advice so don't be afraid to answer ;-) Just in case you're wondering what sort of thing I'd be programming (more accurately trying to program), it would be a beer database. Just the sort of thing to show off at one of the monthly meets in a pub :-)

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First report on WD MyBook II box - and a question
by Chris G 25 Aug '09

25 Aug '09

Well I have my WD MyBook World Edition II now and "it just works"! :-) To expand a little, I plugged in the power, connected the ethernet lead and turned on. Using 'arp' I discovered its IP address and then was able immediately to connect to its web configuration pages. I have enabled ssh and nfs and am now able to log in to the WD box's command line (seems a pretty standard Linux system) and can mount nfs shares from the box. What more could one want? (Well, a little, see below.... ) Now the question, I use dnsmasq on my desktop system (well that's where it is at present) to provide local DNS on our little network. It's set up so that DHCP clients can be accessed with just their host name or with the domain suffixes. E.g. I can access 'maxine' or 'maxine.isbd.net', or C475IP or C475IP.isbd.net. However the WD box registers with dnsmasq as 'garage.local' rather than just 'garage' (which is the host name I have given it). Can anyone suggest why this might be and/or how I can fix it? -- Chris Green

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Tonidoplug
by mark fernandes (IFR) 25 Aug '09

25 Aug '09

With respect to small low powered linux servers - I did come across this beastie courtesy of LXer Linux News: "TonidoPlug is a tiny, low power, low cost home server based on 1.2 GHz Sheeva processor that allows you to access your applications, files, photos, music and media from anywhere (Powered by Tonido). TonidoPlug comes pre-installed with powerful Tonido Applications - Photos, Jukebox, Webshare, Workspace, Thots, Explorer, Torrent and Search - all running on top of embedded Ubuntu Jaunty Linux OS. Additionally, TonidoPlug can be extended by installing new applications from Tonido App store." It has a 512 Mb flash drive, Ethernet port and a USB port for additional storage for a $100. Website says currently shipping only to US :-( but shipping to other countries will open shortly (whatever that means). http://www.tonidoplug.com/tonido_plug.html http://www.linuxpromagazine.com/Online/Blogs/Productivity-Sauce-Dmitri-s-op… Hope that this is helpful, Mark

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Re: [ALUG] A low powered backup solution probably/possibly.
by James Elsey 25 Aug '09

25 Aug '09

If it were me I would certainly take the price into consideration, as it all depends on what you are backing up. If you are running a small business from home, or have documents that you can't lose then this would be a viable option. If its just personal files/photos/media, would it not be best to buy a spindle of CDs and come up with some rotation system for backup? It would have its benefits. 1. cheaper 2. less can go wrong 3. probably less prone to weathering (does the garage get extremely hot during the summer? 4. less enticing to any thieves 5. doesn't cost anything to run! Maybe I'm too naïve, but I'd favour CD/DVD media as backup over a server! J -----Original Message----- From: main-bounces(a)lists.alug.org.uk [mailto:main-bounces@lists.alug.org.uk] On Behalf Of Chris G Sent: 24 August 2009 13:39 To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk Subject: Re: [ALUG] A low powered backup solution probably/possibly. On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 10:36:36AM +0100, Chris G wrote: > On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 10:34:17AM +0100, Chris G wrote: > > Synaptic, Qnap and IcyBox all offer NAS servers which handle NFS as > > Oops, that's Synology not Synaptic. > A little further research on Google (especially the reviews and comparisons found at www.smallnetbuilder.com) has led me to the Western Digital My Book World Edition II. Price for a 2Tb version of this is about £215, it has ssh access built in, no hacking needed, power consumption is 16 watts when active, 5 watts when idle. The performance is not quite as good as the top of the range Synology and Qnap ones but it's *way* cheaper. £215 for a low powered Linux box with 2Tb of storage seems excellent value to me. So I'm off to buy one and will report back when I've played with it a little (if anyone is interested). -- Chris Green _______________________________________________ main(a)lists.alug.org.uk http://www.alug.org.uk/ http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above! __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4362 (20090824) __________ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4362 (20090824) __________ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com

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