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Kindles - Was Android Readers
by mark fernandes (IFR) 13 Oct '10

13 Oct '10

I can confirm that Kindles are good bit of kit. I've got cheaper version (without 3G) for work. Wifi and browser works well with limitations of e-paper (no flash - not necessarily a bad thing :-)) I go to lots of meetings for my sins and get issued with lots of docs (=76 pages of dead tree) and our group travel a lot (so baggage limits)- so am trying out Kindle as a solution to these probs. So far, so good - screen is really good, readable in bright sunlight (sadly less of a problem at the moment...). Used also to read my OU Maths course books (formulae etc quite clear). Only time so far I've had to charge battery was when it arrived - it's seems to get by with my USB transfers of books to feed itself. Also, can back it up that way as it is a 'standard' USB storage device on PC. Since you invited it Mick - You're a luddite :-) Seriously, I've always loved books but e-readers enable me to cart my library about when travelling, are searchable and so are v. useful. Both have their place. I've got problems browsing local HTML files and need a program to reformat 3 column scientific paper PDFs into e-reader friendly single column form but despite that am content with the device. See http://codingscience.blogspot.com/2010/10/kindle.html for the ups and downs so far Like so many things, e-readers are horses for courses - if it does what you need then that's the sweet spot. Been quite interested in the debate so far (Will especially try out the debug mode...) All the best, Mark Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton: Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.

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Audio input for laptops?
by ted.harding＠wlandres.net 13 Oct '10

13 Oct '10

Hi Folks, Unlike desktop sound cards, which usually have a "Line In" socket for headphone/speaker output (aka "Line Out") from audio devices, most laptops seem to have only microphone input (though they do have "Line Out"). Now one can of course simply plug a mike into the laptop, play the audio device through speakers with the mike near the speakers, and record to the laptop that way. But it's not fully satisfactory, and one may need to experiment a bit before it's acceptable. (And you will need to move around silently, avoid slurping coffee or saying "b****r" when you spill it, and above all don't flush the loo ... ). So it would be nice to have a means of putting a cable between the "Line Out" and the mike input on the laptop, but I've not managed to work out a way of doing this! Does anyone have a good solution? With thanks, Ted. PS: I have just heard that the Good Lord has finally finished marking your exam papers (He has been having a lot of intray crashes, which tend to happen at times of high prayer input -- He shouldn't leave His admin to Archangel Gabriel, who seems to spend a lot of time just flapping around). Anyway, the result is that you have all got 10/10/10, on this date. Congratulations! -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)wlandres.net> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 10-Oct-10 Time: 19:02:51 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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[ALUG Announce] Alug Norwich 2nd Thursday Pub Meet 14th October @ The Coach & Horses
by Srdjan Todorovic 12 Oct '10

12 Oct '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 ----- Dear ALUG, This months second Thursday social meeting of ALUG will take place on 14th October 2010 at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA http://www.thecoachthorperoad.co.uk/ ). The Coach and Horses offers food (really great burgers!), a good selection of real beer (including takeouts!) and reasonably good connections for travel and parking. There should be people there from 8pm (I'm hoping to be there from 6:30pm), hopefully I'll remember to bring my small foam Tux to aid people in recognising us. We are usually at the back of the pub. I look forward to seeing you on Thursday. Regards, Srdjan ----- 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

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IRC channel configuration change
by MJ Ray 12 Oct '10

12 Oct '10

I've had a request to give quinophex on #alug more admin power. I've not been there much, so I don't know the context/motive, so I'm emailing the list. Is everyone OK with that? On- or off-list replies OK. Thanks, -- MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op. Webmaster, Debian Developer, Past Koha RM, statistician, former lecturer. In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html Available for hire for various work http://www.software.coop/products/

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Just a quick shout out...
by Brett Parker 11 Oct '10

11 Oct '10

Has anyone heard from/seen Ruth Bygrave recently... I was recently hitting the archives and noted that we don't appear to have seen anything on list from her since Feb 2009. She was never a very active poster, but we did usually see a message from here at least once every 4 months, just want to check that she's doing alright. Thanks, -- Brett Parker http://www.sommitrealweird.co.uk/ PGP Fingerprint 1A9E C066 EDEE 6746 36CB BD7F 479E C24F 95C7 1D61

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Intel 2200B/G wireless
by Richard McLellan 11 Oct '10

11 Oct '10

Hi folks, I have a Dell Inspiron with the Intel 2200B/G wireless card. After reading the destructions that came with the linux drivers, it goes on about building it with the kernel or something close to that. I have no idea what/how to do this. Would this have to be done regardless of linux version or might there be a linux version with these drivers already in the distro? ThanksRich

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Can one get rid of Desktop?
by Chris G 07 Oct '10

07 Oct '10

Is it possible to get rid of the (IMHO) stupid Desktop directory and the concept that goes with it? If my screen is anywhere I want it to be my home directory, not ~/Desktop. I can delete ~/Desktop but it just gets recreated whenever I do anything like open a terminal 'here'. Why can't I just get a terminal to open at /home/chris when I right click on my screen? (Not to mention the silliness of all those directories like Pictures, Videos, etc. starting with an uppercase letter) -- Chris Green

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Co-lo and VM hosting
by Laurie Brown 06 Oct '10

06 Oct '10

We find ourselves in need to some tertiary DNS and other services, and am looking at either using a VM, or some co-lo. In the case of the former, can anyone on-list recommend a Linux-supporting VM company, either Ubuntu or Gentoo (the latter fairly important)? In the case of the latter, does anyone know and can recommend a local (to Ipswich) co-lo company with reasonable rates? Bandwidth is an issue in each case, as we need to keep the servers current, and there's a fair amount of traffic flowing through. Cheers, Laurie. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Laurie Brown laurie(a)brownowl.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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'ssh -X' doesn't seem to work, any alternative ways to do the same?
by Chris G 06 Oct '10

06 Oct '10

I'm currently away from home and I'm trying to get a GUI application running on a machine at home with the display here in N. Wales. Normally I would connect from the remote location using 'ssh -X' so that the DISPLAY environment variable would be set up to work through the ssh 'pipe' and a GUI app run on the remote machine (at my house) would use the display on the machine where I'm sitting currently (in North Wales). For some reason (possibly security on intermediate machines, this isn't a single hop ssh connection) the -X parameter in ssh isn't working for me in this case so I'm looking for alternatives. Can anyone suggest alternative ways of achieving my goal? The *real* aim is to allow me to get at my router configuration from here in Wales so I can change it to allow direct ssh access from this IP address. The router's web configuration uses so much bad/arcane javascript that you can't access it using lynx/links/w3m and the telnet access to its configuration is far too difficult to attempt to use remotely, the chances of screwing it up so that access is completely denied are very high. I have full root access to the server machine at home if necessary so can install/configure stuff as necessary, similarly at this end I'm running Linux on the laptop I'm using and can do whatever's needed. Thanks for any help and suggestions. -- Chris Green

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fetchmail and MS Exchange 2010
by Mark Rogers 05 Oct '10

05 Oct '10

I can't persuade fetchmail to collect mail from an Exchange server on our LAN (fetchmail and Exchange are both on the LAN). The errors I am getting are: fetchmail: Server CommonName mismatch: myoffice.mydomain.co.uk != 192.168.11.10 fetchmail: Server certificate verification error: unable to get local issuer certificate fetchmail: Server certificate verification error: certificate not trusted fetchmail: Server certificate verification error: unable to verify the first certificate fetchmail: Error exchanging credentials fetchmail: Authorisation failure on user(a)192.168.11.10 fetchmail: Query status=3 (AUTHFAIL) myoffice.mydomain.co.uk resolves to the office's external IP address, although I think (from Googling) that the first line is a warning not the reason for the failure. My fetchmailrc is fairly simple: set daemon 60 set invisible set no bouncemail set no syslog set logfile /var/log/fetchmail.log poll 192.168.11.10 protocol pop3 username "user" password "password" mda "/usr/bin/rt-mailgate --queue general --action correspond --url http://localhost/rt/" no keep You'll see from the last line that I'm trying to set up Request Tracker (RT), and it needs to be able to collect mail from our office mailserver. This guy seems to have the fix: http://berqnet.blogspot.com/2009/11/exchange-2007-fetchmail.html .. but I don't know what he means by "the fingerprint of the Exchange 2007". [We've had nothing but problems like this since moving to Exchange, but it does a reasonable job of keeping Windows users in check so we're stuck with it.] -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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