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ALUG Annual Nosh - RSVP
by sfr 03 Jan '07

03 Jan '07

Votes from those who replied were for 8 February, so we shall meet for a meal before/during the February monthly pubmeet at the Reindeer, Norwich. Please reply with yes (how many) or no. You can reply just to me if you don't want to clutter the list. Please reply even if it's no, because then there will be an audit trail; some people have said yes or no in person and I'm easily confused. I'll take numbers at the January pubmeet and book the table. -- sfr

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How to manage domain names on an ADSL connection?
by cl＠isbd.net 03 Jan '07

03 Jan '07

I have my Slackware Linux box connected to the outside world via a Speedtouch router. The router firewall is set up to allow incoming ssh and http connections to the Slackware box. Currently my ADSL is UKFSN/ENTANet and I have a static IP address, the domain name is 84-45-228-40.no-dns-yet.enta.net. I have a number of more useful/memorable/long-lived domains registered, some of which are hosted and some are not. Currently I have isbd.ltd.uk registered with justthename.co.uk and HTTP requests are redirected to 84-45-228-40.no-dns-yet.enta.net. This works sort of OK in the main but it's far from perfect because my Slackware box doesn't really know whether it's 84-45-228-40.no-dns-yet.enta.net or [www].isbd.ltd.uk. What's the easiest and/or neatest way of sorting this out? Obviously my basic requirement is to make my slackware box think it's isbd.ltd.uk and to hide 84-45-228-40.no-dns-yet.enta.net completely. I currently have www.isbd.ltd.uk in the following places on my slackware system:- /etc/HOSTNAME /etc/hosts at the appropriate private IP address /etc/apache/httpd.conf as the ServerName value However this causes various minor issues and infelicities, for example TWiki complains about a mismatch in the HTTP_HOST environment variable when run locally. I'd also prefer not to have to put 84-45-228-40.no-dns-yet.enta.net anywhere in HTML etc. So, what's the proper and/or best and/or easiest way to sort this out? It's really only the HTTP issues that I want/need to resolve, can Apache virtual hosting do anything for me - I suspect not as that is only if I have multiple IP addresses *actually* resolving to my machine. I don't really want to go to the extent of making my Slackware machine host isbd.ltd.uk completely as that involves DNS, MX records and all sorts of complicated things like that. I just want 'transparent' forwarding of HTTP requests. -- Chris Green (chris(a)halon.org.uk)

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This is the ultimate in "object oriented" programming????
by cl＠isbd.net 02 Jan '07

02 Jan '07

So I have been playing a little with Ruby on Rails. I have it up and running and it works in a way but I'm totally unconvinced that it's the answer to the ultimate question - or even the answer to writing database apps for the web. Here's one little bit of code from a *very simple* tutorial example:- <html> <head> <title>My todo list</title> </head> <body> Not done:<br /> <%= display_items(@not_done) %> <p> <hr size=3> <p> Done:<br /> <%= display_items(@done) %> <hr size=3> <form method="post" action="add_item"> New item: <%= text_field("new_item", "description") %> <input type="submit" value="Add item"> </form> </body> </html> If that's either structured or object oriented then I'm a purple hippopotamus! :-) I think the fundamental problem is that HTML is a mess, until such time as that can be hidden somehow then I think we're stuck with rubbish like the above. I was hoping that Ruby on Rails helped hide some of the above junk but apparently not. Sorry - just felt like a bit of a rant! :-) -- Chris Green (chris(a)halon.org.uk)

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I've just realised what I really want re: database/web design
by cl＠isbd.net 02 Jan '07

02 Jan '07

Just a thought really, I don't think any such thing exists. What I'd *really* like is a Wiki (or something like it) which also has database access facilities. By that I don't mean a Wiki which stores its data in a database but a Wiki which allows me to design forms for database access as well as writing 'ordinary' web pages. -- Chris Green (chris(a)halon.org.uk)

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weird slowdown....
by Peter Alcibiades 01 Jan '07

01 Jan '07

Have you had or heard of odd behaviour apparently, at least partly, from the combination of Firefox and Gnome? After visiting a site to find out who an apparently well known singer is, I found FF paging through previous pages of its own volition, and the system as a whole hanging and slowing down. The site (devoted to one Lily Allen if it helps) kept reappearing, but the same thing happened also with the Independent site, several pages of which suddenly reappeared in the middle of reading OSNews. I thought it must be something nefarious, but what? The Independent? It seemed to hang on OSN while waiting for bilbo.counted. System Monitor doesn't reveal anything very odd, though there are spikes on the graph of 30% cpu usage, when the process table shows nothing using more than a few percent, and that is mainly system monitor itself. Moving to Konqueror didn't help. Deleting all cookies and turning off Java and Javascript didn't help. Epiphany didn't help. It happened a bit with OO but not to anything like the same extent. I more or less fixed it finally by moving to KDE. But the runaway process indicator occasionally pops up and warns about Firefox, if the threshold is set to 20%. This is on Etch AMD64, a reasonably decent Sempron with 1G memory, which of course has FF 1.5, not 2.0. Fully up to date. This am in fact, it just updated a bunch of stuff, including CUPS. Any ideas what it could be or on what else to check? I am also getting slowdowns while typing this into Kmail, which is also generating one of those warnings.... Crazy. How can it take 20%+ of cpu just to handle a few text entries? Peter

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Re: Web/Sql development environments
by Christopher Dawkins 31 Dec '06

31 Dec '06

>> Are there any mature and easy to use software development environments >> for Web/Database programming? I reckon PHP/MySQL but that may be only because that's as far as I have gone. > If you've not touched rails, and you want something nice, I suggest > django, uses a postgres backend by default, though supports multiple > others IMHO the problem with any of these is "lock in", and when they change their system you have to change with it. All us PHP developers got a nasty shock a few years ago when the "register globals" policy was changed, and we (basically) had to declare our variables in order to keep our code running. Long-term code needs to be able to run on any server under any configuration, and while this is impossible it's a lot more likely if it uses common and basic resources. I looked into Django and Dojo, and they're just - well - "big" (and Dojo seems to need Flash on the client to preserve state, and Flash has now been de-licensed for all BSD platforms except the Mac). Most effects can be created using basic HTML/CSS/Javascript - look, for example, at AHAH instead of Ajax. Of course, for progress we need bleeding-edge programmers to try out all these new things. -- Christopher Dawkins Garnetts Corner, Braintree Road, Felsted, Dunmow, Essex CM6 3DS cchd(a)pjcd.org 07816 821659 01371 821076

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Defective By Design - Petitioning Number 10 on DRM.
by Ten 31 Dec '06

31 Dec '06

Hi all. Please consider the petition for the beloved persons in government to look at banning DRM. http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/bandrm/ I won't go on at great length about the evils of hardware, software and commercial media being "defective by design", of paying consumers being penalised (and presupposed to be dishonest) while the "pirate" suffers no ill effects, or of the threats to innovation and Free software that this technology carries along with it. This sort of nonsense is on the cusp of being an inescapable problem without much fuss, so those who have any issues with it might consider it important to make a noise at the earliest opportunity. I will leave this in the hands of the reader, although if you were apathetic or inclined to living happily with defective systems, you probably wouldn't be reading this here. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if everyone here's already signed it that wants to. Apologies for the sort of spam, but hey, it's important. Cheers. -- There are 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary, and those who don't.

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None
by None 30 Dec '06

30 Dec '06

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Web/Sql development environments
by cl＠isbd.net 30 Dec '06

30 Dec '06

Are there any mature and easy to use software development environments for Web/Database programming? I don't really mind what language mySql/PHP seems the obvious pair but it doesn't necessarily have to be those two. I'm after writing a Web enabled database application and would like to choose a good way to do it. -- Chris Green (chris(a)halon.org.uk)

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Removing Ubuntu
by Simon Royal 29 Dec '06

29 Dec '06

Hi I have a PowerBook G3 that dual boots between Mac OSX Tiger and Ubuntu 6. I want to remove the Ubuntu and have a single installation of Mac OSX. Well actually I don't but I cannot work out how to set Mac as the default os. I know it is to do with Yaboot but I cannot fathom it. So if anyone can help me switch Mac OSX as the default OS then it would be appreciated, otherwise any help on removing Ubuntu would also be much appreciated. Regards Simon --- www.simonroyal.co.uk - The box said requires Windows 2000 or better, so I bought an Apple Mac. There are only 10 kinds of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't

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