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[Alug]Gentoo/MacOSX Announced
by Craig 06 Jun '03

06 Jun '03

Check out gentoo.org small news on this. Looks like fink may have some competition? ;) -- (o_ - Craig Butcher //\ - IT Technician / Unix Support MTH/ENV @ UEA V_/_ - http://www.wizball.co.uk

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[Alug]MSNBC Article
by Wayne Stallwood 05 Jun '03

05 Jun '03

http://www.msnbc.com/news/922215.asp?cp1=1 Just been reading this, short version is that MS are facing a bit of a Technology gap in the event that .NET, XBOX and Smartphone don't take off in the near future (and lets face it based on current adoption that is a reality) Some interesting gems from Balmer here in a supposed memo to the staff (mind you this is msnbc so who knows ? ) "Some way off in the future lies a generation of technology that Microsoft promises will change the lives of every computer user. Codenamed Longhorn, it involves a complete revamp of the company's two core product lines - the Windows operating system and Office productivity suite " Ahhh So now I see what Longhorn might be about. Office is the driving force behind the sales of Windows Desktop (and arguably server if you think about it) A lot of people don't buy Office because they bought Windows, They bought Windows because you need it to run Office So what if they did an "IE" with Office, What if Office plugged into Windows in such a way that the interoperability could not be easily rivalled by a third party Office suite application (like the link ups with the fancy new database filesystem) What if you bought the two as one package ? What if then MS claim in the following anti-trust suit that the two are so intertwined that they cannot be separated ? "Add in the weak economy, and "there is less passion and enthusiasm for technology, and greater focus on doing more for less." " The focus always was on doing more for less, you could argue that was the driving force behind computing in the first place. Why would you want to do less with more ? The only time that culture existed was during the DotCom boom when skills were at a shortage and everyone was in a high adrelanin race. Then you went for the solution that required the shortest time and the least skill to get up and running. It's funny how quickly we have forgotten the DotCom days and state that the IT trade is in some sort of depression. It's not, it has just turned back to normality after a massive peak. Was anybody really riding up that peak expecting it to just carry on forever or even to flatten out at the top ? "In that environment, companies have turned to Linux and other open-source software programs, seeing them as cheap but adequate alternatives." So MS do view Open-Source as a cheap but truly inferior product STILL. Do they feel that the only reason Open-Source projects like say Apache are anywhere in the marketplace is because they are free ? If so what happened to all of the TCO fud they were spouting last year. Answer me this ? If I approached a say large hosting provider, running lets say 100 machines serving websites for third party customers. I go to them with an Apache replacement that can do the same job and handle the same traffic on half the machines, and it is somehow more secure and requires less constant administration, yet at the same time is more scaleable. If I took them this product and said but the bad news is that unlike Apache which is free this is going to cost you £1000 per machine. Do you not think they would do the sums and go for it ? "Around half of the 1 million corporate computers in the United States that run the Unix operating system are candidates for migration to Linux, according to Ballmer - a significant challenge to Microsoft" and it always will be. Linux is a Unix work alike, Windows is a Proprietary Operating system adhering to non uniform standards. Which one is going to be the easiest for all of those migrating Unix companies to move to ? Notwithstanding the fact that one of the things MS is always claiming in the "Linux is more expensive than MS" FUD is that it's a major cost to retrain your MS staff. Well the same is true for Unix staff to be trained for MS (actually they will just probably leave) "the company's overhaul of its software licensing terms antagonized many of its customers. " Exactly. How about also looking at upgrades, if I install Microsoft Small Business Server and then my company grows beyond the limit of clients on that product (I can't remember the limit but there is one) I have no easy upgrade path, no single upgrade I can buy and I will have to throw my investment of SBS CAL's and Server software away. and start again with several different products. "It must also get better at segmenting the markets its serves and turning out the products that different customers want." How about segmenting Servers and Workstations. Servers do not need Web Browsers, Media Players, Mail Clients or Games yet these are installed by default by every MS server platform I can think of. There are even Server platforms that have DirectX (stand up Windows 2000 Advanced Server). Wayne

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[Alug]Tim O'Reilly talks and O'Reilly books
by Adam Bower 05 Jun '03

05 Jun '03

Hi all, I was just speaking with Josette from O'Reilly (she is the O'Reilly UK PR manager who arranges review copies for lugs etc.) and she asked if I could forward the info on Tim O'Reilly giving talks in the UK on to the list. The other news is that she is arranging for the Alug Library to get some new/more books. I will let you know what we have when it arrives. I also am going to look at setting up some kind of review section on the website so that if you borrow books you others know what you think of them, and of course let Josette know also. Anyhow details of Tim O'Reillys talks are: Tim O'Reilly will visit the UK in June. He will be giving several talks - ****London Date: June 23rd Time: 6.30 pm for 7.00 pm Where: City University Pre-registration is mandatory see - http://www.ukuug.org/events/TimOReilly/ ****Birmingham, NEC Date: June 25th Key Note Speaker - LinuxUser & Developer Expo 2003 see - http://www.linuxuserexpo.com/ Thanks Adam -- jabberid = quinophex(a)jabber.earth.li AFFS || http://www.affs.org.uk/ || Not a filesystem

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[Alug]Automount problem with Nautilus
by Keith Watson 05 Jun '03

05 Jun '03

I'm running a Debian Woody (r3 stable) based system with Gnome 1.4 + Sawfish window manager + Nautilus. I use Nautilus to manage the desktop. Have just implemented autofs/automount which works great. Small problem is that when automount unmounts a cdrom (i.e. after then timeout period when I'm not accessing any files on the drive) Nautilus traps this and issues an eject command for the drive. Which is not always what I want. Anyone else come across this behaviour? Any ideas on how I could fix this or good places to look for a fix? Keith ____________ Mistakes are the portals of discovery. James Joyce

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RE: Laptops, was RE: [Alug]animation software and C++ training
by Adam Bower 04 Jun '03

04 Jun '03

> The downside is that the batteries are now dead, after only 2 years > usage. According to Dell that is good going, about 500 recharges I > estimate, but Dell reckon 300 is average. I was expecting > closer to 1000 > based on ordinary rechargeable batteries! That doesn't work out cheap > at 77ukp +P&P +VAT. Did you have the batteries plugged in while you ran the laptop on mains power? that tends to kill them fairly quickly. Of course that is not as bad as the original sony laptop battery on my Vaio I had, which died after about 35 charge cycles. Adam

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[Alug]animation software and C++ training
by Simon Jude 04 Jun '03

04 Jun '03

Hi, Does anybody know of any good animation software for linux which can take a sequence of images and create animations from them? I have used Quicktime in the past but as I'm hoping to get my hands on an old PC in our lab to run linux on in the near future I was wondering whether there was an alternative! Also, slightly off topic, we are about to buy a number of software packages that come with APIs and SDKs so that we can customise them if we wish (and require a training course in Arizona!). Can anybody suggest any good books or training courses for learning C/C++? Thanks Simon

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[Alug]how to mount a removable SCSI disk?
by Keith Watson 04 Jun '03

04 Jun '03

Yes, OK, I know the answer is "very carefully" :o) By a fortuitous chain of events I have become the owner of a Castlewood ORB2 2.2Gb removable SCSI drive (plus a couple of removable disks to go with it). Which is nice because now I've got something to hang of that old SCSI adapter card I had lying around (Diamond Multimedia Fireport40). I've tried it out with Windows 2K and it works a treat (media is currently formatted as FAT2). GNU/Linux (Debian) picks up the SCSI card and the device OK (i.e. everything shows up in /proc/scsi as it should) with the adapter being scsi0 and the drive is on LUN 5. I've installed the scsitools package <http://packages.debian.org/stable/utils/scsitools.html> and run scsidev. And now I'm stuck, I presume I need to mount the drive with something like; mount -t vfat /dev/??? /mnt/orb2 but what device name should use (or how do I find out)? Regards, Keith ____________ Say nothing and saw wood. Vermont Saying

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[Alug]Re: Redhat, Mandrake, and Gentoo Disks
by Dan Beimborn 04 Jun '03

04 Jun '03

Thanks so much for the huge response to my query. I've been well looked after by Graham, but thanks to everyone who responded. Very nice group of people you have here! The hitch I seem to run into is that Gentoo is a small kick-off disk followed by downloading source off the net. Does anyone have a trick to do that with a local mirror to make it bearable for a modem guy to set it up? I've got a couple machines, some crossover cables, and plan to install it to a VMWare image on a windows box to start with (the missus gets the faster CPU for her photoshop!). DB

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RE: [Alug]animation software and C++ training
by Adam Bower 04 Jun '03

04 Jun '03

> Martyn Drake writes: > > > CinePaint? I'm trying to persuade the texture artists at > work to try and > > move over to it rather than use Photoshop under Windows - > we're seeing more > > Windows boxen creep in because of ruddy Photoshop. > > You could take a look at the Mac under MacOS X. Not Linux but a rock > solid Unix with: Oh don't worry, people working in the effects industry are already looking at Mac OS X, (not necessarily through choice) most of the high end effects software is in some way owned by apple....

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[Alug]GPL, freedom and bread
by Ben Francis 04 Jun '03

04 Jun '03

I've just been reading several documents at gnu.org explaining the benefits of free software over proprietary software (indexed here http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/philosophy.html) After reading these articles/essays I very much feel that following the guidelines of the GNU Public License is the single best way to develop software in most if not all cases and holds benefits both for developers, end users and society as a whole. However, I still feel that if I were asked to justify this view to someone I would have trouble doing so, because my understanding of the underlying concepts is still a little sketchy. In particular, I can quite readily accept that writing software under the GPL is the best way and I'm the kind of person that would still program even if I was not being paid to do it. However, the harsh reality is that programmers need money to put bread on the table and apparently some geeks even have families to support! Just say someone were to program full time and released all of their code under the GPL, where does their bread actually come from? Short of selling their body on the streets (which may be frowned upon by aforementioned family) or starting up a farm and becoming self sufficient, where does the doe come in? I believe that job satisfaction comes over money every time, but there are still sources of money in free (as in speech not beer) software and the documents make it quite clear that you can quite legitimately sell such software for whatever price the market will pay, providing you follow the guidelines so that the freedom of the software is maintained. If a baker buys his own flour, he owns the bread he bakes and can sell it. If I write software but I don't own it, I can still sell it, but people can get it for free from elsewhere and can get it from a friend, which as an alternative to paying 9.9 times out of 10 they will. At the moment this may not be such a problem as people may prefer to buy the software in a package with an instruction manual and bundled support for the program. However, I would argue that the ideal program would be intuitive to the point where it required no documentation or training and support is mainly for when things go wrong, which an ideal program wouldn't. In instances where a form of support or source of information IS required, which will always happen, the online community can often offer support that is equal to that of paid support for free, and this is actively encouraged within online forums and instant messaging. With the spread of broadband internet connections swapping information or programs between people is becoming even easier and cheaper than copying a CD to the point where the cost per byte is negligible, which is the way it should be. The only source of income that therefore remains is writing bespoke solutions for a particular customer where that customer would pay you to port your program to fit their own business practises rather than work on the features you would normally put as a high priority. However, if this is also released under the GPL will the number of cases not be very small and no basis for a decent sized income? I don't like the fact that my only concerns stem from the need for cash, but it is, unfortunately, a necessity. I'm posting this rather long message here because I know there are veterans on the subject lurking in the corner (or not) who may be able to enlighten me. I believe the answer to my questions lie on well trodden ground and hopefully those answers will help me in my active support for free software. If there is an easy answer, then forgive my ignorance but I make no apologies for asking silly questions, someone has to ask them :) Thanks for your time, Ben "tola" Francis --- there is no spoon... damn, now I have to eat my yoghurt with a fork.

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