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Asterisk on a large site
by Ian McDonald 14 Sep '06

14 Sep '06

Replaces Cisco VoIP and PABX Interesting read: http://www.linuxworld.com/news/2006/091206-von-sam-houston.html?page=1 -- Ian McDonald Web: http://wand.net.nz/~iam4 Blog: http://imcdnzl.blogspot.com WAND Network Research Group Department of Computer Science University of Waikato New Zealand

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What is democracy player?
by Ian McDonald 14 Sep '06

14 Sep '06

Saw this today at lwn.net and thought it is timely given SFD. Democracy player 0.9 Last February, the Participatory Culture Foundation announced its existence with the launch of the "Democracy" player, billed as "the world's first comprehensive open source Internet TV system." Many Linux users may be excused for not trying out the program at that time; despite being a GPL-licensed program, Democracy had not been ported to the Linux platform. That situation has now changed; on September 11, Democracy 0.9 was announced. It runs on Linux, and packages for Debian, Fedora Core, Gentoo, and Ubuntu are provided; the source is available for everybody else. Beyond the Linux port, this version promises a polished user interface, a new playlist capability, Flash video support, and more. Your editor clearly had no choice; a tool like this simply must be tried out. Unfortunately, the Democracy experience is still rather spotty at best. It requires the installation of a number of proprietary codecs (which is not particularly surprising, once one thinks about it - the Democracy developers will have no magic solutions there). The system can be sluggish to respond, and your editor never was able to get it to display a video in its own window. It also would not explain why it failed to display anything, so there was little to be done about it. But your editor was able to get far enough to realize one important thing: video display is not really what Democracy is about in the first place. This tool is really a sort of video feed aggregator for free video content; it has all the required features around sorting feeds into categories, collecting votes for interesting videos, using BitTorrent to download videos in a provider-friendly way, and more. There is also significant support for people who want to create their own video feeds. What Democracy and its supporting foundation are trying to do is to get as many people as possible into the business of creating and distributing interesting content. The term "Internet TV" is somewhat off the mark - Democracy will suit couch potatoes just fine, but its real purpose is to get them off their couches and participating in the process. It is trying to create a world where video content is free, universal, and compelling - so it has tools for finding and distributing videos but a distinct lack of DRM support. This is an important goal - television is too important to leave to the TV companies. If the Democracy system can help to bring more free content into existence, it will have done good thing. Some progress in that direction has been made: there are, it is said, some 600 channels of free content available now, and, doubtless, more to come. The current code has real promise; it looks like a capable system for discovering, distributing, and managing interesting video content. If they can get past the remaining troublesome issues, the Democracy hackers will have created a valuable tool indeed.

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Problem Installing Democracy Player
by Leslie Katz 14 Sep '06

14 Sep '06

I read about Democracy Player on the Web and thought I'd like to try it. My distribution is Fedora Core, but I'm still using v 3 and there was no RPM for that version. I therefore downloaded the tarball and got to the stage at which I was told to run run.sh to see whether I had the necessary dependencies installed. This is what happened when I did that: [root(a)localhost gtk-x11]# ./run.sh Traceback (most recent call last): File "setup.py", line 46, in ? from Pyrex.Distutils import build_ext ImportError: No module named Pyrex.Distutils [root(a)localhost gtk-x11]# I don't understand how to overcome the problem disclosed. I thought that it might be possible for me to get an RPM which was or included Pyrex.Distutils, but I couldn't find such an RPM. I then Googled on Pyrex.Distutils, but, to be blunt, what I read was beyond me. If anyone can explain to me what I should be doing to overcome the problem, I'd be grateful. Leslie

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Command line internet
by Ian McDonald 13 Sep '06

13 Sep '06

Quite an interesting article here: http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/au-speakingunix3.html?ca=… -- Ian McDonald Web: http://wand.net.nz/~iam4 Blog: http://imcdnzl.blogspot.com WAND Network Research Group Department of Computer Science University of Waikato New Zealand

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Ubuntu wireless tutorial
by Ian McDonald 13 Sep '06

13 Sep '06

For those interested: http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/09/05/2055232 -- Ian McDonald Web: http://wand.net.nz/~iam4 Blog: http://imcdnzl.blogspot.com WAND Network Research Group Department of Computer Science University of Waikato New Zealand

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Linux permissions
by Matthias Dallmeier 13 Sep '06

13 Sep '06

http://forums.wlug.org.nz/viewtopic.php?t=50 Is anyone able to help with this? -- Matthias

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Setting console font size
by Ian McDonald 11 Sep '06

11 Sep '06

Folks, Is there a recommended way to alter this easily without going into great pain in the config file. I'm using debian-unstable and just added a kernel boot parameter vga=ask and hacked /etc/init.d/console-screen.sh by putting an exit in. Is there a nice easy way or is this hack just as good? Ian -- Ian McDonald Web: http://wand.net.nz/~iam4 Blog: http://imcdnzl.blogspot.com WAND Network Research Group Department of Computer Science University of Waikato New Zealand

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Software Freedom Day
by Craig Box 11 Sep '06

11 Sep '06

Software Freedom Day is this coming Saturday. Everything is coming together nicely, and I'd like to thank everyone who has helped so far. Again, it's been mostly carried by the committee; we put up a forum and requested comment on it, as well as announcing it at meetings and on the mailing list, but other than a couple of people signing up on the wiki page, not much traction from the general membership. I hope you all make up for this by coming down to see us on the day! On the day ========== We have a stand in Centreplace, which we'll have some computers running demos of OSS. Everyone is encouraged to come down and say hello, and if you don't have an Ubuntu 6.06 CD, we might be able to flick one your way. Extra help ========== We'll need people to assist at set-up and tear-down time, and help with general things during the day. If you're interested, please drop me a line by e-mail. Regards Craig

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linux.conf.au 2007 Call For Participation - Five days to go!
by Craig Box 10 Sep '06

10 Sep '06

linux.conf.au 2007 Call For Participation - Five days to go! ============================================================ There are only FIVE DAYS LEFT to submit your proposal for linux.conf.au 2007. Heed our words, procrastinators -- your time has come! Remember to check the 'travel assistance' box if you can't get to Australia under your own steam... If your submission rocks, we'll sort that out for you. :-) http://lca2007.linux.org.au/cfp Important dates =============== * Extended proposal deadline: September 15, 2006 * Notifications by review committee: October 15, 2006 * Conference begins: January 15, 2007 Call for Participation ====================== Presentations are the main part of the conference and consist of a 40 minute talk followed by 10 minutes for questions. Presentations provide an an ideal opportunity to present a new technology or idea to the community. Papers related to their presentation can be submitted by academics who are accepted to give a presentation in the conference. These papers are peer-reviewed by an international papers committee. Papers will be included in the conference proceedings. The papers track allows students, researchers and academics to have their work formally recognised. Tutorials are half-day presentations which provide an opportunity to provide an in-depth and hands on look at a specific technology. These tutorials should be interactive, and the level of expertise required by participants should be clear so people can choose tutorials appropriate to their level. Mini-confs form an important part of linux.conf.au by providing an opportunity for various groups within the community to come together to share ideas and experiences. Mini-confs can be 1 or 2 day events, and an appropriate room will be provided by the linux.conf.au team. There will be other opportunities to participate in linux.conf.au 2007, such as poster sessions, lighting talks and BOFs however organisation of these events will happen immediately before, or at the conference. Topics ====== Most presentations will be of a technical nature, however we encourage presentations covering educational, organisational, community or similar aspects of Open Source software. Promotional presentations, commercial advertisements, sales pitches and their like are not appropriate for this conference. Proposals on the following topics are encouraged: * System administration: - Monitoring - Deployment - Best practices - Linux deployments, practical experiences and war stories * Deep hacking: - Low level design and implementation of large and complex pieces of software such as kernels, database engines, or compilers. * The Craft of Programming - Programming languages - Tools - Project management * Free culture - Open Source in education - Important legal - Advocacy - Community - Government * The user experience - Open media, multi-media - Desktop environment - End-user applications, productivity apps * Cool hacks - Anything which doesn't fall under one of the other topics Review Committee ================ * Angus Lees * Andre Pang * Conrad Parker * Erik de Castro Lopo * Glynn Foster * Mary Gardiner * Martin Pool * Michael Davies * Peter Chubb * Robert Collins * Rusty Russell * Silvia Pfeiffer Proposal Guidelines =================== Proposals for presentations and tutorials should be around 400 words and should detail the subject you want to talk about and include links to any other relevant details, such as a project home page. Remember this proposal needs to convince our programme committee that you should be talking at linux.conf.au 2007. Proposals for miniconfs can be up to 2000 words, and should detail the community involved, the expected number of attendees, proposed activities and detail any support you would like from the organising committee. This proposal needs to convince us that you can organise an interesting, successful miniconf that people are going to want to go to! Papers should be no longer than 14 pages and are reliant upon the related presentation being accepted for linux.conf.au. Papers and proposals should be submitted in an appropriate open format, such as 7-bit ASCII text, HTML, DocBook or LaTeX. Proposal requires pre-registration, providing the following information: * Full name (and preferred handle, if any) * Complete email address * Short biography, in around 1 - 3 paragraphs. The biography should include any previous speaking or organising experience. Proposals and papers and should be submitted through our web form: http://lca2007.linux.org.au/cfp Any featured software in papers must be available under a licence compatible with the Open Source Definition. Any papers that are accompanied by non-disclosure agreement forms will be rejected. All successful papers must be eligible for republication on-line and on distribution media given to conference attendees. linux.conf.au requires publication rights to accepted papers, including the publication of the audio proceedings as well as publication and reproduction rights to any video filmed during the presentations. These rights are non-exclusive. Copyright ownership is retained by the author. Submitting an abstract indicates understanding of and consent to these conditions. In the event that you miss one of the deadlines we reserve the right to revoke any offer to present your paper. We take having the paper for the conference proceedings very seriously and late proposals place an undue burden on our formatting team. All proposals must be complete by the closing date -- that is, the 15th of September is not merely a closing date for abstracts.

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[Fwd: [Linux-aus] linux.conf.au 2007 Call For Participation - Five days to go!]
by Matt Brown 10 Sep '06

10 Sep '06

Jeff asked people to: If you're watching this list and love your LUG, please pass this message on to your fellow LUG members! Thanks, - Jeff So, don't say you weren't informed :P -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [Linux-aus] linux.conf.au 2007 Call For Participation - Five days to go! Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2006 09:26:03 +1000 From: Jeff Waugh <jdub(a)perkypants.org> To: Linux Australia <linux-aus(a)lists.linux.org.au> linux.conf.au 2007 Call For Participation - Five days to go! ============================================================ There are only FIVE DAYS LEFT to submit your proposal for linux.conf.au 2007. Heed our words, procrastinators -- your time has come! Remember to check the 'travel assistance' box if you can't get to Australia under your own steam... If your submission rocks, we'll sort that out for you. :-) http://lca2007.linux.org.au/cfp Important dates =============== * Extended proposal deadline: September 15, 2006 * Notifications by review committee: October 15, 2006 * Conference begins: January 15, 2007 Call for Participation ====================== Presentations are the main part of the conference and consist of a 40 minute talk followed by 10 minutes for questions. Presentations provide an an ideal opportunity to present a new technology or idea to the community. Papers related to their presentation can be submitted by academics who are accepted to give a presentation in the conference. These papers are peer-reviewed by an international papers committee. Papers will be included in the conference proceedings. The papers track allows students, researchers and academics to have their work formally recognised. Tutorials are half-day presentations which provide an opportunity to provide an in-depth and hands on look at a specific technology. These tutorials should be interactive, and the level of expertise required by participants should be clear so people can choose tutorials appropriate to their level. Mini-confs form an important part of linux.conf.au by providing an opportunity for various groups within the community to come together to share ideas and experiences. Mini-confs can be 1 or 2 day events, and an appropriate room will be provided by the linux.conf.au team. There will be other opportunities to participate in linux.conf.au 2007, such as poster sessions, lighting talks and BOFs however organisation of these events will happen immediately before, or at the conference. Topics ====== Most presentations will be of a technical nature, however we encourage presentations covering educational, organisational, community or similar aspects of Open Source software. Promotional presentations, commercial advertisements, sales pitches and their like are not appropriate for this conference. Proposals on the following topics are encouraged: * System administration: - Monitoring - Deployment - Best practices - Linux deployments, practical experiences and war stories * Deep hacking: - Low level design and implementation of large and complex pieces of software such as kernels, database engines, or compilers. * The Craft of Programming - Programming languages - Tools - Project management * Free culture - Open Source in education - Important legal - Advocacy - Community - Government * The user experience - Open media, multi-media - Desktop environment - End-user applications, productivity apps * Cool hacks - Anything which doesn't fall under one of the other topics Review Committee ================ * Angus Lees * Andre Pang * Conrad Parker * Erik de Castro Lopo * Glynn Foster * Mary Gardiner * Martin Pool * Michael Davies * Peter Chubb * Robert Collins * Rusty Russell * Silvia Pfeiffer Proposal Guidelines =================== Proposals for presentations and tutorials should be around 400 words and should detail the subject you want to talk about and include links to any other relevant details, such as a project home page. Remember this proposal needs to convince our programme committee that you should be talking at linux.conf.au 2007. Proposals for miniconfs can be up to 2000 words, and should detail the community involved, the expected number of attendees, proposed activities and detail any support you would like from the organising committee. This proposal needs to convince us that you can organise an interesting, successful miniconf that people are going to want to go to! Papers should be no longer than 14 pages and are reliant upon the related presentation being accepted for linux.conf.au. Papers and proposals should be submitted in an appropriate open format, such as 7-bit ASCII text, HTML, DocBook or LaTeX. Proposal requires pre-registration, providing the following information: * Full name (and preferred handle, if any) * Complete email address * Short biography, in around 1 - 3 paragraphs. The biography should include any previous speaking or organising experience. Proposals and papers and should be submitted through our web form: http://lca2007.linux.org.au/cfp Any featured software in papers must be available under a licence compatible with the Open Source Definition. Any papers that are accompanied by non-disclosure agreement forms will be rejected. All successful papers must be eligible for republication on-line and on distribution media given to conference attendees. linux.conf.au requires publication rights to accepted papers, including the publication of the audio proceedings as well as publication and reproduction rights to any video filmed during the presentations. These rights are non-exclusive. Copyright ownership is retained by the author. Submitting an abstract indicates understanding of and consent to these conditions. In the event that you miss one of the deadlines we reserve the right to revoke any offer to present your paper. We take having the paper for the conference proceedings very seriously and late proposals place an undue burden on our formatting team. All proposals must be complete by the closing date -- that is, the 15th of September is not merely a closing date for abstracts. _______________________________________________ linux-aus mailing list linux-aus(a)lists.linux.org.au http://lists.linux.org.au/listinfo/linux-aus -- Matt Brown matt(a)mattb.net.nz Mob +64 21 611 544 www.mattb.net.nz

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