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Xmodmap Help
by Krishna Birth 24 Sep '10

24 Sep '10

Firstly please note that all k / K letters on this posting are altered to क / क (spiritual reasons.) I am sorry to thrust this project to you (mailing list). I am looकing for advice or if you have the time to construct a कeyboard mapping. There seems to be some problem regarding "if you assign Mode_switch and ISO_Level3_Shift to different keys, you can assign up to six characters to one key!" see http://tr.opensuse.org/SDB:Using_the_Extra_Keys_on_the_Keyboard The diacritics are usually typed with non-diacritic letter. It would be nice to have facility to use both in convenient way e.g. toggling with a Fonts / Scripts कey by permanently turning the Caps Locक to a Fonts / Scripts कey. Could this be done - When this Fonts / Scripts कey is pressed with a letter कey it toggles to diacritic letter 1 or 2 or 3 (depending on how many diacritics are there connected with a 'target' letter) - this toggling will need to factor in a 'remain at same spot' and toggle these diacritics feature. When the Fonts / Scripts कey is released then the cursor would move to the next base. Here are the target letters, the diacritics connected with them and the URL with more info about them: A Ā = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/0100/index.htm a ā = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/101/index.htm D Ḍ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e0c/index.htm d ḍ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e0d/index.htm H Ḥ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e24/index.htm h ḥ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e25/index.htm I Ī = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/12a/index.htm i ī = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/12b/index.htm L Ḷ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e36/index.htm l ḷ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e37/index.htm L L̐ = http://pastehtml.com/view/1az9crq.html - http://bit.ly/doq30H l l̐ = http://pastehtml.com/view/1az92sb.html - http://bit.ly/chipOw M Ṁ ̇= http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e40/index.htm m ṁ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e41/index.htm N Ñ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/d1/index.htm n ñ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/f1/index.htm N Ṇ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e46/index.htm n ṇ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e47/index.htm N Ṅ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e44/index.htm n ṅ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e45/index.htm R Ṛ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e5a/index.htm r ṛ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e5b/index.htm R Ṝ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e5c/index.htm r ṝ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e5d/index.htm S Ṣ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e62/index.htm s ṣ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e63/index.htm S Ś = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/15a/index.htm s ś = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/15b/index.htm T Ṭ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e6c/index.htm t ṭ = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1e6d/index.htm U Ū = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/016a/index.htm u ū = http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/16b/index.htm Referring to the above 32 diacritics, in theory a diacritic letter could have up to 7 diacritics 'sign' variations per letter: 1. Macron 2. Dot Below 3. Candrabindu 4. Dot Above 5. Tilde 6. Dot Below & Macron 7. Acute and 2 diacritics 'case' (lower/upper sizes) variations per letter - in 'total' up to 14 diacritics variations altogether per letter In actuality, the maximum letter n/N has 6 diacritics sign/case variations and a/A only has 2 diacritics sign/case variations. Thus if you can turn the Caps Locक into a Fonts / Scripts कey that can allow up to 7 diacritics variations using this toggle approach: Fonts / Scripts कey press + letter कey tap once = diacritic letter 1st variation (sign/case) Fonts / Scripts कey press + letter कey tap twice = diacritic letter 2nd variation (sign/case) Fonts / Scripts कey press + letter कey tap thrice = diacritic letter 3rd variation (sign/case) Fonts / Scripts कey press + letter कey tap four times = diacritic letter 4th variation (sign/case) Fonts / Scripts कey press + letter कey tap five times = diacritic letter 5th variation (sign/case) Fonts / Scripts कey press + letter कey tap six times = diacritic letter 6th variation (sign/case) Fonts / Scripts कey press + letter कey tap seven times = diacritic letter 7th variation (sign/case) The above does not require the case कey (arrow upwards) to be used because the above has both lower and upper letters. If you feel that 'case कey' producing upper case letters should be used just as it is with non-diacritic letters, then fine. Thus this would mean: - 50 percent variations of the above toggle with Fonts / Scripts कey press + letter कey tap for lower case letters, and - other 50 percent variation of the above toggle Fonts / Scripts कey press + letter कey tap + caps कey for upper case letters. "if you assign Mode_switch and ISO_Level3_Shift to different keys, you can assign up to six characters to one key!" see http://tr.opensuse.org/SDB:Using_the_Extra_Keys_on_the_Keyboard Does this mean it is possible? Could 7 characters to one कey be possible? Features to consider for the Fonts / Scripts कey development: 1. Toggle other कeyboard mapped layouts for example, languages and diacritics. 2. Access other fonts through toggling (Fonts / Scripts कey + another कey) without needing going every time to the particular application's micro layer. 3. Design more styles per letter and/or partner with other fonts and thus more styles on a font and accessing them through toggling (Fonts / Scripts कey + another कey) without needing to go to application's micro layer. It would be nice to have some person/s on board and get these things done. Best, Meeकu

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Internet issue, exchange server - Ipswich
by Dalibor Zeman 22 Sep '10

22 Sep '10

Hi guys, I hope you will be able to help me, at least to explain what's going on. A few months ago I lost land line connection (currently in investigation whether it's internal/external problem with Orange as my provider - cannot make/receive calls). Probably in the same time my internet speed for download dropped from 6 MBits to 1MBits I have now. When I check other providers, all of them show the same speed for my location during testing procedure. Do you have any knowledge, info what's happening? Does anybody from my location have the same experience? I haven't used Google to search for this problem yet :-) My post code - IP4 2JL. Thanks in advance for your input. Dali.

3 4

Duplicity vs rdiff-backup
by Jon Dye 21 Sep '10

21 Sep '10

Hi all, I've used rdiff-backup in the past for backing up my home directories to a friend's server over ADSL. This works pretty well because rdiff-backup only ever sends the changes. I can delete all but the last 30 (or whatever) days of backups and it still always only sends increments. I've recently started trying to use duplicity as I wanted my backups to be encrypted so that users on the remote server can't see my data. I thought duplicity "builds on rdiff-backup and adds encryption" but I don't think it works the same. As far as I can see, if I want to delete backups older than say 30 days in duplicity I need to have a full backup newer than 30 days. This means at least once every 30 days I need to transmit all the data to the remote end. This takes me over 24 hours on ADSL. Does anyone know if I've got this wrong? Any other suggestions for backups that are *always* bandwidth efficient after the first full and are encrypted? JD P.S. I'm also going to ask on the duplicity list but I thought someone here might know.

1 1

Cli Case Management
by Richard Parsons 20 Sep '10

20 Sep '10

Hi, I'm a solicitor <ducks>, and would like to organise my work at the linux commandline, rather than using MS Office. I like cli apps; I like python; I like bash; I like concise; I like the unix philosophy; I like vim; I like Mutt. However, I don't get chance to use the software that I love at work. Instead, I'm expected to use Word, Outlook and some horrible case management software to manage my documents, and create them from templates. All day long I write letters and other documents on each of my legal cases. I would be exceedingly happy if I could replace this functionality with some nice scripts, so that I could spend my days in front of a nice bash shell. To do that I'd need a script that: 1. Stores data about a case: I need to be able to store some data (could be a simple key/value store for each case). 2. Store documents for each case: I'd like to store each document I produce along with some information on that document (such as how long it took to prepare). If I use a wordprocessor (such as openoffice) is it possible to quickly extract some 'properties' via a script? Would a better solution be to keep the documents in a text format, such as latex code...? 2. Enable templating: I could have a template document (e.g. a letter) and some of the information could be pulled out from the case data to populate it. I would then amend it for the particular circumstances of my case to then print, save etc. 3. Produce reports: I'd like to be able to scan all my cases to produce reports, such as: which case hasn't received any attention for the longest time, or how much work have I done on all my active cases this week etc. I recognise that these are probably separate problems that should be solved separately. However, I'd be grateful for any suggestions on how I might solve some of these parts. Thank you for any thoughts. Thanks in advance, Richard

4 5

Struggling to get my head around git
by Mark Rogers 20 Sep '10

20 Sep '10

I haven't quite got my head into the git mindset, and I've not really found a good overview which has "clicked". The situation I'm playing with is merging what are two seperate developments (branches?) of the same web application. One is a third party web application that progresses over time without my involvement, and the other is the version of the codebase which contains my own customisations. The application in this case is ZenCart (PHP based). Can someone guide me quickly through the points in the sequence below where I should brange, commit, merge, etc? 1. Install ZenCart-1.3.8a 2. Customise to create MyApp. (This customisation takes place over several months/years) 3. ZenCart 1.3.9f is released so I need to upgrade MyApp. 4. After merging, I have a 1.3.9f version of MyApp for testing. 5, Meanwhile, some development continues on the live 1.3.8a version of MyApp. 6. The 1.3.9f version of MySite passes testing, I now need to merge in the changes that took place in 5. 7. Test again, and if testing doesn't complete before more changes take place, go back to 5. 8. Testing complete, migrate to 1.3.9f version of my site as working copy. 9. Some time later, 1.3.10b is released and I want to upgrade again. 10. ... and so on.... I think where I am getting stuck is working out what should be the "master" branch and how to keep switching between branches as necessary. Indeed, I'm not even really sure how many branches I should have here? For anyone who saw my previous posts on this: I have successfully used git to achieve steps 1-4, which in itself is fantastic for me. However, I'm now in the situation that development on the live site has continued before the new version has been accepted, so now I have new changes to apply, and at the moment the only way I can work out to do it is to start from scratch which (a) I don't want to do as the merge was not straightforward, and (b) is clearly the wrong way to be doing it. When I started looking at it again, git status tells me that my test code is on branch "MyApp-1.3.8a", although it is the merged 1.3.9f version of the site code. Either I have done something wrong or I've chosen a bad name for the branch (it should probably just be "MyApp"?) but either way I'm in a muddle! -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

1 0

Flash part the second
by Bev Nicolson 19 Sep '10

19 Sep '10

It's that problem again. I now have Firefox 3.6.10 and flash still doesn't work but now it seems to be wobbling in Chrome too. I tried uninstalling it and installing again (using Synaptic) but now I suspect it must be broken. Anyone got any ideas? Bev.

1 0

[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street
by samwise 17 Sep '10

17 Sep '10

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- The monthly "Third Monday" ALUG Ipswich Social Meeting is back, Monday 20th September, at 20:00: P J McGinty & Sons 15 Northgate Street Ipswich Suffolk IP1 3BY Tel: 01473 251 515 Map/Directions URI: http://maps.google.co.uk/?q=IP1+3BY WWW: http://www.pjmcgintys.co.uk/ McGintys pub is in the centre of Ipswich. It's directly opposite the town's central library and has a reputation for good Irish beer. We're usually to be found in the lowest section of the bar, near the library entrance to the pub. All are welcome, novices and experienced users. Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. Hopefully, see some of you there! Peter. ----- 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

1 0

How to find characters in character map - or otherwise?
by Chris G 15 Sep '10

15 Sep '10

I recently wanted to put a degree symbol (as in ˚ hopefully) into some text and it took me ages (as in several minutes) to find the character in the Character Map application. Is there any quick/clever/easy way to find a character like this? In the Character Map you get swamped by Chinese/Cyrillic/Arabic script characters which you *know* are not what you want. Is there a way to see just 'roman' text characters plus special symbols etc.? Or can anyone suggest another way to find this sort of thing more easily? -- Chris Green

3 2

Bash script error; too many arguments
by James Bensley 15 Sep '10

15 Sep '10

Why does; if [ "$1" -ge 128 -a -lt 192 ] Error out with 'too many arguments', where have I gone wrong here? Also I have in the mean time settled with; if [ "$1" -ge 128 ] && [ $1 -lt 192 ] Is either one of these preferred over the other? -- Regards, James. http://www.jamesbensley.co.cc/ There are 10 kinds of people in the world; Those who understand Vigesimal, and J others...?

3 3

Laptop pointing devices, only those horrible pads nowadays?
by Chris G 15 Sep '10

15 Sep '10

I'm considering a new laptop/netbook and, having a selection around belonging to other members of the family, I'm still convinced that the standard traackpad is a truly awful pointing device. Are there really *no* laptops/netbooks available with other pointing devices? I have a very nice little wireless keyboard that we use with one of our computers that has a trackball in the keyboard and that works beautifully, can't manufacturers put one in a laptop? I guess I'll have to buy a laptop and add a trackbll of some sort but even then there seem very few which are aimed at the portable market. This isn't *just* a rant, any pointers to useful devices would be very welcome. (Linux friendly of course) -- Chris Green

9 12

Monitoring network traffic
by Mark Rogers 15 Sep '10

15 Sep '10

Our office LAN is getting painfully slow. It's likely that something is hogging the bandwidth. If I were to put a network hub between the ADSL router and the main office switch, presumably I could run something on a PC also connected to that switch which would point me in the direction of the problem? I'm looking for something fairly simple, that would tell me (eg) which IP address was generating most of the traffic, and perhaps on which ports. Wireshark would probably do what I need but it's not (from what I remember) particularly simple to get simple results from. Or, is there a better option? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

4 5

ftp server recommendation?
by Peter Alcibiades 10 Sep '10

10 Sep '10

Quick question - we have just bought an all in one printer that does scan to ftp. What is the smallest and lightest ftp server I could install on one of our desktops for it to scan to? Its behind a router of course, so (maybe wrongly) I'm not expecting security to be a worry. But maybe this is too hopeful? Thanks for the feedback on proxy servers by the way. Its was not for anything that needs to withstand official investigation, just for privacy from the prying. Peter

4 4

git merge tools over SSH
by Mark Rogers 09 Sep '10

09 Sep '10

I'm slowly getting my head around git. I am trying it out on a large project, which is on a server (in my office) to which I have only SSH access, or access to the files via Samba. I ran a merge (which took quite while) and now need handle the conflicts. Looking for a decent tool to assist with the merge, I find that most are GUI based, and that suits me fine (and will help me get others in the office to buy-in to using it). However, if I access the files over the samba share and run "git status" it takes a while (10 mins?), presumably because my local git is having to deal with a lot of traffic over the network. Is there a better way to use a local merge tool on a remote repo? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

5 7

anonymous proxy servers
by Peter Alcibiades 08 Sep '10

08 Sep '10

What does anyone use and or reccommend for an anonymous proxy server? I have come on anonymizer.com and also anonymouse.com. Are these decent? Are there any others to think about? Any that are better? Peter

3 2

IMAP Mail Hosting
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 08 Sep '10

08 Sep '10

Hi Folks, Since it appears that Manchester University has taken a decision that its retired folk shall now be obsolete, email-wise, it is very likely that my current email account will be de-activated soon (I'm already using it on borrowed time). So I shall be looking for a new email address. I'm very happy (in terms of general quality of service) with my ISP (Zen) and would not want to change. However, Zen's email only offers POP3 download and does not offer IMAP access. The webmail interface is clunky and slow, so preliminary sampling and deletion of delivered emails would be very tedious. On the other hand, previewing using IMAP (when it works properly) is very fast. I'm therefore asking if poeple can recommend a provider of email hosting on which I could have an account with IMAP access. I would want this to be of high quality and reliability and capable of handling high levels of incoming traffic (for various reasons, I can get up to 500 emails a day -- most of which I delete on the basis of the Subject alone, some others after a quick look at content, leaving typically some 5-10% to download; so I need to be able to do this quickly). Recommendations? With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 04-Sep-10 Time: 18:41:52 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

19 58

Merging the changes between directories
by Mark Rogers 07 Sep '10

07 Sep '10

Suppose I have: DirectoryA - contains a PHP web application, unchanged, exactly as downloaded DirectoryA2 - contains a customised version of DirectoryA DirectoryB - contains a new version of the PHP web application I want to merge the changes that represent DirectoryA -> DirectoryA2, into DirectoryB to create DirectoryB2. This seems to me the sort of thing that diff can do in its sleep but my past attempts have failed. It also probably points at some kind of version control solution, although there is no version control in place at the moment (if this is a good time to implement it then I'm all ears!) I don't expect this to be completely automated, but I believe and expect that using the right tools I can substantially improve the job from the starting point of comparing individual files manually. I have so far got as far as diff --brief -r DirectoryA DirectoryA2 [If specifics help, DirectoryA is version 1.3.8a of ZenCart, DirectoryB is version 1.3.9f of ZenCart, and DirectoryA1 is a site built on version 1.3.8a of ZenCart, but with obvious changes (changes to stylesheets, new images, new plugins, etc). From a practical point of view, DirectoryA2 is mostly a superset of DirectoryA (new product images, plugins, templates, etc) but there are customisations (usually fairly trivial ones) to core files, and there will be a number of files from DirectoryA that were deleted (installation files, docs, etc). There would also be some file and directory permission changes.] -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

2 4

Remote access challenge
by Mark Rogers 07 Sep '10

07 Sep '10

I have a file open on my desktop PC at home, which I want to read now I'm at work. It's just some notes I started writing in a new document in gedit, it's not been saved (I don't think, anyway). I have SSH and NX access to my home desktop. If I connect with NX I get access to my home desktop GUI but not to the session I have currently open with the document in it. Suggestions? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

5 6

Re: [ALUG] Remote access challenge
by Steve Engledow 07 Sep '10

07 Sep '10

On 7 September 2010 10:17, Ted Harding <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> wrote: > On 07-Sep-10 08:53:26, Simon Ransome wrote: >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >> Hash: SHA1 >> >> On 07/09/2010 09:22, Mark Rogers wrote: >>> I have a file open on my desktop PC at home, which I want to read >>> now I'm at work. >>> >>> It's just some notes I started writing in a new document in gedit, >>> it's not been saved (I don't think, anyway). >>> >>> I have SSH and NX access to my home desktop. If I connect with NX >>> I get access to my home desktop GUI but not to the session I have >>> currently open with the document in it. Possibly overkill but you could ssh in, install x11vnc (which is a vnc server that provides vnc access to a running X session), run it and then vnc into your machine - tunnelling through ssh for security of course :) Cheers, Steve

1 0

Malicious Javascript
by Dan 07 Sep '10

07 Sep '10

Dear All, Browsing with Namoroka 3.6.8 on Gentoo, I just stumbled across a webpage containing Javascript that was probably trying to install malicious code on my system. The script - claimed (implausibly) to be a malware scanner, and (even more implausibly, because the places it claimed to have looked were Windows-specific directory names that don't exist on my system) that it had found half a dozen items of malware on my system; - generally made a nuisance of itself by grabbing focus with dialogue boxes (this seemed odd - my browser settings forbid Javascript to raise or lower windows, yet my main browser window was, to all intents and purposes, irreversibly lowered by the presence of the dialogue boxes, and the only browser actions possible were to click on dialogue box buttons or do a window-manager close on the dialogue box) - did a passable impersonation of Windows Update (or at least, it would have been passable if the system I was looking at it with had been running Windows ;-)); and - finished up by offering me a download of an executable Windows binary, which I rejected. I took a look at the Javascript source code, but it was _very_ obfuscated. My question is - could the script have got any sort of access to my local filesystems or otherwise done any damage? -- Thanks, Dan

3 3

Copy files and change case - any ready made utliities around?
by Chris G 06 Sep '10

06 Sep '10

I want to keep two directories in sync but with a slight difference, I want the 'destination' directory to have lower case names only. I.e. any file in the source directory that has an upper case name (or any upper case characters in its name) I want copied to the destination directory with a lower case name. I guess I can come up with solutions that need me to write a wrapper script of some sort for rsync but I was wondering if anyone has any ideas for a ready made solution. This needs to be run as a cron job by the way. -- Chris Green

5 7

NAS Drive mounting help
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 05 Sep '10

05 Sep '10

Hi Gurus! I've been given a Netgear SC101 which I'm intending to use for backups. I found a post somewhere about how to mount it, and I have mounted it, or at least I thought I had until I rebooted and it was no-longer mounted. The steps I have to take are: sudo modprobe nbd sudo ut listall sudo ut attach {DRIVE_ID_FROM_LISTALL} /dev/nbd0 sudo mount -t ext4 /mnt/sc101 /dev/nbd0 Line 1 adds a device driver to the kernel line 2 finds the drive's "id". You only need to run this once - the ID doesn't change line 3 "attaches" the drive to the system. line 4 mounts the block device at my chosen mount point. I've added a line to FSTab to take care of line 4, but the problem is, I seem to need to do line 1 and line 3 after a reboot before I can mount it. Q1: How can I make a modprobe "stick" to survive a reboot? Q2: Where should I execute line 3? Q3: Should I should manually mount there too, rather than using FSTab? I'm attempting to use BackupPC to backup my files. This runs as a service, and requires that drive to be running to start. Q4: Is there a way to conditionally start a service, dependant on whether the drive is present or not, or should I just let it attempt to auto-start and live with it failing if the drive's not there? Any help much appreciated! BTW, the reason I'm attempting to use BackupPC is because it "folds" identical files from multiple PCs into 1, i.e. it doesn't store multiple copies - i.e. it de-duplicates the backup, hopefully allowing me to backup multiple machines without buying loads of disks! Cheers Steve

4 14

What keeps creating files called '%1'?
by Chris G 04 Sep '10

04 Sep '10

Something keeps creating a file called %1 on my system, has anyone else had this happening and, if so, do they know what's doing it? -- Chris Green

2 3

BMJ and Firefox
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 03 Sep '10

03 Sep '10

Hi Folks, I've just had an interesting experience with the BMJ website: http://www.bmj.com With Firefox (Iceweasel) 2.0.0.19 all I see is the banner logo at the top of the page. The rest is pure blank, though this blank page is long. With an old IE, all is fine. I next tried Firefox (Iceweasel) 3.0.6 on another machine again all is fine. I've never had trouble with the BMJ before. On their front page they do state that "bmj.com has moved to a new technical platform" and that there are some problems; but that seems a bit unlikely as explanation for complete failure to display content on one browser version, yet display properly on another. Any comments? With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 03-Sep-10 Time: 14:13:02 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

1 0

program focus
by nev young 02 Sep '10

02 Sep '10

Hi all, One of the major annoyances I had with MS Windoze was the habit of programs to force themselves into the foreground. I would have some long running task running in the background, or will have started a "slow to fire up" program, meanwhile I continue working on "the task in hand" with the program in the foreground. When I looked at the screen I see the background task has popped up and forced itself into the foreground and the last half dozen sentences I had typed had been lost to it. I have noticed that this is also becoming more common with linux (unbutu 10.04) and was wondering if this behaviour is a part of the programs themselves or if there is a system wide setting that will stop it. That is, I want to be able to specify that the foreground task I am using does not lose focus unless I tell it to. Anybody out there have more in depth knowledge of this sort of thing? Nev

11 19

Wanted - workaround for broken date entry on a web site - any ideas?
by Chris G 02 Sep '10

02 Sep '10

I'm trying to register my Mobistar internet dongle. Their web programmers are obviously a bunch of total idiots, especially on the usability front. Not to mention that they make the site ridiculously secure for no good reason, the only way you could lose information or money there is if you, by mistake, charged someone else's SIM. However that's all by the by, it would be really good if I could actually get our dongle registered to allow us to view our usage and to recharge it. When we tried a few weeks ago it was impossible because the Mobistar website wanted to send an SMS message to our browser and couldn't because we're not running IE on Windows. So we gave up. I just retried and now it allows me to say "I can't receive SMS" at which point it allows entry of the PUK instead. Whoopee I thought, now I can register. No such luck, I get past the first few entries of phone number and PUK but then in the personal information bit it wants to know my date of birth and the pull down boxes for the day, month and year don't work. No problem I thought, I'll do it in IE in Windows, just the same (well slightly different symptoms), can't enter date of birth. I've also tried Konqueror, still no good. Can anyone suggest any workarounds that might allow me to get a date into the right place? The symptom in Firefox is that the drop-down box is the size for just one number and is blank, the symptom in IE (and Konqueror if I remember right) is that the drop-down is quite tall but is still completely blank. I have tried entering numbers even though they don't appear and tabbing through the entries but it still refuses to think I've entered a valid date. -- Chris Green

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