- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Slackware 11.0
by Denise Bates 06 Oct '06

06 Oct '06

Hello folks, At last, Slackware 11.0 has been released! Will anyone with a fast connection be downloading copies of the ISOs? I am currently in Hamilton and still on dial-up, and I would be very grateful for a copy - the usual exchange blank CDs and other inducements are offered.... regards, -- ********************************************* Dr Denise J. Bates, PO Box 50, Meremere New Zealand E-mail: dbates(a)iconz.co.nz Telephone 09-2336433 Mobile 021-2541330 *********************************************

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[Fwd: Signing up for an account on the new Genesis Energy website]
by Dominic Tennant 06 Oct '06

06 Oct '06

Hi everyone...just tried signing up for an account with Genesis today and discovered that I needed IE to do so. I sent them this email, and I figured in the spirit of open source I'd share it with you all, in the event that you wish to either support this by emailing Genesis yourselves, or if you just want to use it as a template (if you think it's worth it :)) Regards, Bnonn

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Spam and encrypted emails
by Chris O'Halloran 06 Oct '06

06 Oct '06

http://www.clear.net.nz/terms.html Clear have advised that spam from known spam addresses will be blocked and that other messages will be quaranteened for only 3 days after which the messages will be deleted. As I am not a systems administrator I was wondering what the usual policy for encrypted email (eg GPG) in regard to spam filtering. Is encrypting an email a guarenteed way for people to communicate and avoid messages being deleted by aggressive ISP spam policies. I assume spammers wouldn't bother encrypting email because receiver's couldn't decrypt the emails. Thoughts? Chris

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X and projectors Fwd: Ubuntu Weekly News #16
by Ian McDonald 05 Oct '06

05 Oct '06

Great news in this - looks like X will finally get better automatic support for external VGA ports on notebooks.... ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Corey Burger <corey.burger(a)ubuntu.com> Date: Oct 5, 2006 8:19 PM Subject: Ubuntu Weekly News #16 To: ubuntu-news(a)lists.ubuntu.com Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue No. 16 for the week of September, 24 - 30, 2006. You can always find older Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter issues at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter == Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) Beta Release == The beta releases of Kubuntu 6.10 and Ubuntu 6.10 were made this week. Kubuntu features stylish new artwork, improved power management and better accessibility. See: https://wiki.kubuntu.org/EdgyEft/Beta/Kubuntu Ubuntu features Firefox 2 beta and adds Tomboy and F-spot. Artwork hasn't been neglected either. See: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EdgyEft/Beta == Akademy 2006 == Report by Jonathan Riddell. "Even though I was not able to attend the whole Akademy this year (due to the Kubuntu beta release) the conference, e.V. meeting and BoF sessions I did make it to were exciting and showed great promise for KDE 4. Firstly, thanks to Canonical for making Kubuntu a Gold sponsor of Akademy, it was lovely to have large Kubuntu banners all over the lecture theatres as well as a hacker lab full of Kubuntu machines. KDE 4 has been a long time coming, but with the presentations at the weekend we got to see the multimedia layer Phonon in action and the hardware layer Solid at work. In the KDE 4 build environment we saw a full KDE 4 session being run - a first for many people. There's still plenty of work to be done; the Plasma desktop still has no screenshots and the Telepathy project Decibel is behind schedule, but with the first developers' preview now out and packages available in Kubuntu Edgy, development should now accelarate. We were pleased to have a number of speakers from other communities including Gnome's John Palmieri, who convinced us that it's not just KDE who are happy to have competition, Keith Packard, who wrote some special code to ensure his laptop worked with the university's projector and showed other wonders of hotswap pluggyness that will be coming into X soon, and Jin Yoon, who showed us the open platform used on his Ricoh printers. Looking very promising is KHTML, where the decision on whether to keep the original KHTML or convert to a version of WebKit will likely be taken soon. We also got to see the Qt 4 C# bindings and using Javascript to manage any application's object tree just like a web page DOM. The Akademy Awards were given to the author of Krita, a painting application that now rivals the free and proprietary competition; the poor soul who converted all of KDE from autotools to the CMake build system and the Mandriva coder who has made more KDE 3 to KDE 4 commits than anyone else. Unfortunately, Mark Shuttleworth had to cancel his visit after Canonical One needed repairs, but I managed to hold a successful Kubuntu BoF on my own showing what we had done in Edgy and working out how to get those changes further upstream. The SuSE developers were especially interested in Ubuntu's thinkpad-keys daemon. KDE e.V. is KDE's legal body, and in a day long meeting we went over the usual administrative matters that projects the size of KDE have to. We also chose the location of Akademy 2007 of which I will be one of the organisers, details to be announced soon." == Ubuntu Poster Competition Yields Results == Ubuntuforums.org user HanZo has created a winning entry for a poster design competition that happened at the forums. You can look at the beta image at http://doc.ubuntu.com/~marketing/DIY%20Material/Batch%201,%20Posters/HanZo/… The image will yet be edited a bit (especially the white text), but is a sure winner now. HanZo will be getting 5 free prints. There will be a total of 500 prints, available by email order from Jenda Vancura approximately for production costs. To read more about the competition, please read http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=248546 == Universe Version Freeze == Daniel Holbach tells us that the Universe Freeze is now in effect. This means that no new upstream versions will be synced and no new packages will be admitted entrance to the Universe repository. All is not lost for those certain emergencies though, as you can always file a UVF exception; the process for this is explained [https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MOTU/Processes/UVF here]. For an exception, please make sure you attach all the necessary information and in cases of NEW packages have it reviewed and approved on REVU beforehand! Universe Freeze is in accordance with the Edgy release schedule which can be found [https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EdgyReleaseSchedule here]. == Changes in Edgy == As previously mentioned, universe is moving towards frozen, which will slow down the changes in Edgy somewhat. However, this week was a busy one, as people raced to beat the freeze. === Ubuntu === Sebastian and Daniel of the GNOME uploading team started in on GNOME 2.16.1 at the end of the week, with the bulk being uploaded after Sept 30th. 2.16.1 is the first of 3 bug fix releases on the stable branch of GNOME. Bits of the underlying libraries were also updated as well, with the uploading of gtk 2.10.4 and gtkmm1:2.10.2 by Sebastien and Daniel respectively. Other updated GNOME and GTK-based applications this week included glom 1.1.2, clamtk 2.24 (both uploaded by Daniel Holbach), lat 1.0.7, bluefish 1.0.6, and wifi-radar 1.9.7 (synced from Debian), the new Novell/SUSE menu, slab 0.0.cvs.20060915, synced by Sebastian Bacher, who also uploaded glade-3 3.0.2 and Sebastian Droege uploaded brasero 0.4.4. The world of Telepathy continued at is usual frantic pace this week, with the syncing of telepathy-stream-engine 0.3.6, farsight 0.1.8, gst-plugins-farsight 0.10.2and telepathy-gabble 0.3.7 from Debian and the new telepathy-butterfly 0.1.0 (a connector for MSN), its underlying library pymsn 0.2.1 and telepathy-blue 0.0.1.1~darcs20060926 (a bluetooth/sms connector). Daniel Holbach also uploaded libgalago 0.5.1+svn20060928, telepathy-feed 0.13 and cohoba 0.0.4. Also on the communications front, Daniel Holbach uploaded gossip 0.17 and loudmouth 1.1.4 while asterisk 1.2.12.1 was synced from Debian. A new Firefox plugin for interacting with Launchpad was uploaded this week, firefox-launchpad-plugin 0.1. If you fancy your web browsing slightly more basic, links 2.1pre23, the new version of the Links webbrowser might be more up your alley. === Kubuntu === A few pieces of Kubuntu were also updated, including a new SVN snapshot of kde-systemsettings, 0.0svn20060929, uploaded by Anthony Mercatante. He also uploaded the 0.1 release of knetworkmanager, the KDE frontend to the Network Manager tool. Not yet part of Kubuntu, strigi is a desktop search and indexing tool. This week saw version 0.3.8 of the program, strigi, and the applet, strigiapplet. === Xubuntu === The Xubuntu people, while not as insanely busy as the GNOME uploading team, still manage a respectable output. This weeks haul includes the new xfce4-dict-plugin 0.1.0, uploaded by Gauvain Pocentek and a number of new bits of xffm, the XFCE file manager. They include xffm-applications 4.5.0, xffm-book 4.5.0, xffm-locate 4.5.0 and an underlying library libxffm 4.5.0. === Ichthux === The Ichthux team keeps rolling along, with Raphael Pinson uploading bibletime 1.6 and bibletime-i18n 1.6. He also uploaded ichthux-konqueror-shortcuts 0.1, a new set of Ichthux specific bookmarks. Jordan Mantha also uploaded sword-text-dutsvv 1.3, sword-text-swahili 1.0, sword-text-tagalog 1.1, and sword-text-viet 1.4. === General === The multimedia side of Ubuntu got a great deal of action this week. Daniel Chen uploaded an SVN version of vlc, 0.8.6-svn20060918 as well as mutagen 1.7.1, Sebastien Droege uploaded the new last-exit, 3.0 as well as banshee-official-plugins 0.11.0, William Alexander Grant got working on the new soundcoverter, 0.9.1, and Anthony Mercatante uploaded the new kmplayer 0.9.3. In the MythTV universe, ivtv 0.7.0 and the new myththemes 0.20, the latter uploaded by William Grant, made their way into the archives. A number of new versions of various multimedia tools were also synced from Debian, including mpqc 2.3.1, cdtool 2.1.8, rosegarden 1.2.4, djplay 0.3.0. For those of you who use your Ubuntu machine for a bit of gaming, this week was not all work. bomberclone 0.11.7, lincity-ng 1.0.3, pioneers 0.10.2 and stellarium 0.8.1 were all synced from Debian. If you the scientific pays the bills or floats your fancy, this week brings the syncing of tulip 2.0.5, openbabel 2.0.2, and pcb 20060822 from Debian, William Alexander Grant uploading biosquid 1.9g+cvs20050121, amap-align 2.0, astronomical-almanac 5.6, and treeviewx 0.5.1. In a more medical vein, the gnumed-client 0.2.2a was synced from Debian. Mattias Klose may have the misfortune to have to deal with OpenOffice.org, but he still has time to deal with Zope and this week he did exactly that, uploading zope-cmfplacefulworkflow 1.0.0, zope-pluginregistry 1.1, zope-pas 1.2, zope-plonepas 2.0.1, zope-statusmessages 2.0, and zope-passwordresettool 0.4, all new packages to Debian and Ubuntu. Various pieces of Java software also got updated this week. They include classpath 0.92, an integral part of the free Java stack. This release brings Cairo graphics. You can read more at http://savannah.gnu.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=4573. Also updated were axis 1.4 and wsdl4j 1.5.2. If you use any of the distribution revision control systems (and you should be), this week brought you some new toys. Users of bzr were given 0.11-rc3 (the final was out as of writing) and if you prefer a graphical frontend, olive 0.11, a Summer of Code project that is going strong after the summer is over, was uploaded as well. bzrtools was also updated to 0.11.0 for the new bzr release. Another popular system is mercurial, which was updated to 0.9.1. And for those that cannot decide, there is a tool for moving between revision control systems. It is called tailor and you get version 0.9.26 as of this week. In other server news, several popular applications were updated. They include egroupware 1.2-105 (Users of groupware should read http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html) and horde3 3.1.3.The 0.5.5 release of the, "light and fast" web server, cherokee found its way into Ubuntu. If you fancy a spot of file sharing, nicotine 1.2.4.1 and mldonkey 2.8.1 are now available. However, if you seek the need to protect your identity while doing it, tor 0.1.1.23 can help you do that. Users of gmail received a gift with the uploading of gmailfs 0.7.2, which allows you to turn your gmail account into another file system. The more prosaic use case of merely checking a gmail account got easier with the release of checkgmail 1.10, which apparently uses Atom feeds for notification. On the server end of the mail system, maildrop 2.0.2 and geximon 0.7.3 are now available. A couple of final things you might be interested include a new version of espeak, the speech synthesizer, 1.15, a new Intel video driver update by Matthew Garrett, 1.6.0, the 2nd release candidate of the 1.0 release of Fluxbox, 0.9.15.1+1.0rc2. Andrew Mitchell uploaded the new krb5-auth-dialog 0.6, which is a dialog for dialog for reauthenticating kerberos tickets. Those of you still stuck with Windows partitions will notice the new ntfs-3g 20060920, which allows full read and write to NTFS drives, all done in userspace. Lastly, Xen has 2.6.17 this week, thanks to the hard work of Chuck Short. xen-source-2.6.17 and xen-restricted-modules-2.6.17 were uploaded right on the last day of the month. == Launchpad News == Welcome to another round of Launchpad updates covering changes included in this week's rollout. This cycle was mainly focused on polishing of existing features, although a number of new features that are under development were brought closer to deployment. === Bug watch enhancements === The new features deployed in this rollout make bug watches a bit more convenient to work with: it is now possible to specify a remote bug tracker for a specific upstream product; when adding new bug watches to distribution bugs, the bugtracker and product name will be prefilled if there is information linking the package to an upstream product. The prefilling also works for upstream products that are officially using Launchpad as a bug tracker. For instance, if you visit the page for the [https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/bzr/+bugs bazaar source package in Ubuntu], notice a bug which is an upstream matter, when marking it as upstream you will notice that the name "bazaar" is already filled in. This small improvement is the first in a number of enhancements planned for upstream bug forwarding. Bug information can now also be synchronized from archived debian bugs; this is the reason why a number of bug watches were updated at once this week (and you may have received some bugmail letting you know!). === CVE reports === The CVE report pages were reformatted and optimized; you can see the general CVE status for Ubuntu at https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+cve here This listing displays CVEs related to bugs, and their current status. There are now also CVE reports for upstream products -- but no products have CVEs linked to their bugs yet! === Other bug tracking improvements === Handling of binary package names as input in the Package: field was improved in the bug-filing and bug-changing page. Oh, and the 'Untriaged' status was renamed to 'Undecided'; this avoids confusing the concepts of "status triage" and "importance definition". Time to update your bookmarks! === Distribution and package management enhancements === On the distribution management front, this rollout included new formatting for mirror listings; the number of official mirrors for Ubuntu is growing rapidly, and we aim to make this information authoritative for the distribution in the coming weeks: https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+cdmirrors https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+archivemirrors This rollout meant deployment of the optimization and code improvement work done in the London sprint. Visible results of this deployment are significantly faster publisher runs (with no-op runs taking negligible time, and the faster 'real' runs taking around 7 minutes). Package builds are now issued to saner sets of architectures, taking into account package-specific architecture restrictions. With respect to upload processing, failed uploads now trigger email notifications to theperson uploading as well; uploads to frozen releases go straight to the pending-approval queue, and superseding backport uploads behave as expected. The Soyuz team also invested long hours into an acceptance testing system which was used to verify the changes done over this period prior to rollout. The test system successfully pointed out regressions and allowed fixes to be verified before deployment. A script for automatically retrying failed builds was implemented, and the queue tool was updated to include pocket information and behave correctly in a few corner cases (read the detailed changelog for the details). === Branches in the Bazaar === One interesting Launchpad feature for upstream products is the tracking of series and releases. Each release represents an actual new tarball release of upstream; a series represents a line of tarball releases that were spawned from the same long-term code branch. Product series can now have Bazaar branches linked to them, this branch ideally containing the coding work done for that specific series. The product can select which series is its main development ("trunk", or "HEAD" in CVS terms) series, containing new feature work being implemented. This allows Launchpad to more closely model the coding work done on an upstream product, which will in turn make it easier to use Bazaar to manage the codebase for a product, and in particular, derivations of that codebase. === Other news === On the translations front, improvements to the automatic package imports were deployed; they reduce the amount of manual nursing required for imports of packages with unusual directory layouts. Language pack generation was optimized, as were the pages that report translation status for languages in specific distribution releases. A number of additional performance improvements are in queue and will be deployed as part of the next rollout. In the ticket tracker, subscriptions of support contacts were modified to be implicit. This means that new support contacts are automatically notified of all existing ticket modifications. The calendaring feature in Launchpad was temporarily disabled; we found it was too buggy to be useful, and have chosen to now focus on features which are priorities for this period. Full announcement and changelog at https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/launchpad-users/2006-October/000667.html == In The Press == Ubuntu isn't quite yet synonymous with Linux, but it is increasingly referenced in the tech press whenever the subject of Linux is raised. Check out this recent comment by Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz: ''We're not anti-vendor. We're not here to bash anybody. Every single business we're in must be multi-platform if it's going to be successful. When I'm selling the hardware we're talking about, I'm going to be thrilled to talk to the Linux community about running Ubuntu on Niagara. When I'm talking about Solaris I'm going to be thrilled to talk to you about HP and Dell. They are no longer competitors in my mind. They are now channel partners.'' You can read more at http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3634846 Malcolm Yates, Canonical's ISV and partner manager has been interviewed by Information Week on the topic of Ubuntu's growing relationships with Independent Software Vendors and Original Equipment Manufacturers: "I think the next few months will see us involved more and more with enterprises looking at using Ubuntu to deliver business solutions. Previously, we have seen Ubuntu deployed in organizations where it it was hidden, but now with full and extended support, we are getting calls, to move to Ubuntu as a major Linux platform." You can read the whole thing at http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.aspx?CIaNID=37538&r=hstory Ubuntu Member Melissa Draper was recently interviewed by Australia's LA Updates. You can listen to it at http://www.localfoss.org/taxonomy/term/20 In his speech to the Labour Party conference in Britain last week, Bill Clinton talked about the importance of the "spirit of ubuntu". The resulting BBC News article featured a stylish thong from our very own Cafepress Ubuntu shop. The article can be found at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5388182.stm. And a few weeks back, the newsletter of DistroWatch mentioned the Ubuntu Marketing Team, and more specifically, the Ubuntu Surveys. You can read the newsletter, including the non-Ubuntu bits at http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20060918. If you have not yet taken the survey, you can do so at http://surveys.geekosophical.net. == Meetings and other similar events == [CommunityCouncilAgenda Community Council Meeting] 2006-10-03 17:00 GMT == Upcoming Events == [http://www.linuxinfotag.de Linux Info Tag in Dresden] Dresden, Saxony/Germany 2006-10-08 == Feature Of The Week - Bip == Bip, an IRC proxy, keeps you connected to IRC, stores logs, and can even produce a backlog which displays upon connection from your IRC client to the server. You can install Bip on a server that stays connected, and connect as many clients as you wish while using the same nickname. So, once you setup Bip, you connect to it like you would any ordinary server, while using your IP, port, and a custom password (which bip can generate and encrypt) - Bip will do the rest. For instance, Bip is setup on server 192.168.1.3, using the default Bip port of 7778, and using the username 'Bip', password 'biprocks', and network 'freenode'. I would set my client up to connect to the server and port, and in the "Password" section for the connection on my IRC client, I would enter Bip:biprocks:freenode. Now, I am connected from my localhost to my Bip server, which means I can reboot my localhost and never loose connection to IRC, meaning I won't miss a thing. People on IRC won't even know I rebooted! Info: http://bip.berlios.de Help: #bip on irc.oftc.net for the official support channel. Also, feel free to contact RichardJohnson on IRC as nixternal for more help. You can find him on Freenode and OFTC regularly. == Additional News Resources == You can subscribe to the Ubuntu Weekly News via RSS at: http://fridge.ubuntu.com/uwn/feed As always, you can find more news and announcements at: http://www.ubuntu.com/news and http://fridge.ubuntu.com/ == Security Updates == * USN-353-1: OpenSSL vulnerabilities - http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-353-1 * USN-352-1: Thunderbird vulnerabilities - http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-352-1 == Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Updates == No updates were made, however, several packages were backported: * Accepted amarok 2:1.4.3-0ubuntu8~dapper1 * Accepted konversation 1.0-0ubuntu5~dapper1 * Accepted ktorrent 2.0.2-0ubuntu1~dapper1 * Accepted libvisual-plugins 0.4.0.dfsg.1-1ubuntu1~dapper1 * Accepted cpio 2.6-10ubuntu0.1 == Bug Stats == * Open (15684) (+124 over last week) * Unconfirmed (8228) * Unassigned (11028) * All bugs ever reported (56546) Daniel Holbach has posted a list of Bug Tasks for people looking for things to do. You can read more at https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-desktop/2006-September/000908.html == Conclusion == Thank you for reading the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. See you next week! == Credits == The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by: * Melissa Draper * David Symons * John Little * Eldo Varghese * Richard Johnson * Jenda Vancura * Paul O'Malley * Corey Burger * And many others == Feedback == This document is maintained by the Ubuntu Marketing Team. Please feel free to contact us regarding any concerns or suggestions by either sending an email to ubuntu-marketing(a)lists.ubuntu.com or by using any of the other methods on the [https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarketingTeam Ubuntu Marketing Team Contact Information Page]. -- ubuntu-news mailing list ubuntu-news(a)lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-news -- 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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endace info request
by Gavin Denby 05 Oct '06

05 Oct '06

ooops works better when I send from an approved address .. anyway ... anyone here use, or know much about these units other than the limited website details http://www.endace.com/ Wondering if anyone is using, or has used these and what they think of these Certainly looks like an interesting mix of open source and hardware embedding

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endace
by Gavin Denby 05 Oct '06

05 Oct '06

anyone here use, or know much about these units other than the limited website details http://www.endace.com/ Wondering if anyone is using, or has used these and what they think of these Certainly looks like an interesting mix of open source and hardware embedding

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Novell goes after SCO money
by Ian McDonald 03 Oct '06

03 Oct '06

In an interesting twist Novell is basically trying to shut SCO down saying they haven't been paying them for their Unix licenses and this is what is funding their lawsuits - money that doesn't belong to them but Novell. http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS2130519101.html I think everybody has long since realised that SCO's threats to Linux are nearly over but this would be nice to finally die... -- 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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Suse drops ReiserFS as default and explains why
by Ian McDonald 03 Oct '06

03 Oct '06

Interesting read for people interested in Linux filesystems and trends: http://linux.wordpress.com/2006/09/27/suse-102-ditching-reiserfs-as-it-defa… Maybe Perry's filesystem could become the default one they are talking about as they want a cluster/distributed file system in the future -- 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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Interesting interview with Mark Shuttleworth on Ubuntu future
by Ian McDonald 02 Oct '06

02 Oct '06

http://www.linuxformat.co.uk/mag/shuttleworth2.html -- 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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Waikato Linux Users Group Incorporated Committee for 2007
by Craig Box 02 Oct '06

02 Oct '06

Congratulations to the following people, who were last night voted in as the Executive Committee for the WLUG for 2007: President: Ian McDonald Vice-President: Lindsay Druett Treasurer: James Pluck Secretary: Bruce Kingsbury General Committee: Simon Green Chris O'Halloran Rod Aldridge Minutes are now available at http://www.wlug.org.nz/MeetingTopics.2006-10-02. Unfortunately, the turnout for the AGM last night was a bit disappointing. If you need to pay your 2006-2007 subscription, information on how to pay is available at https://secure.wlug.org.nz/join.html. Craig

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AGM tonight, 7:30, TW2.07
by Craig Box 02 Oct '06

02 Oct '06

In accordance with Rule 6 of the charter, I would like to remind all members that the Waikato Linux Users Group (Incorporated) will be holding its Annual General Meeting tonight, Monday, 2 October, 2006, at 7.30pm, at the regular meeting location of room TW.2.07 at the University of Waikato. New committee -------------- All WLUG members are encouraged to stand for election onto the WLUG committee for 2007. The charter specifies the committee as consisting of a President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer, and three general committee members. **Please note at this point there is nobody seeking election for the position of secretary!** To stand for the committee, please email secretary at wlug.org.nz. If you wish to nominate someone, please contact them and ask if they are willing to stand; if you would rather not contact them yourself, feel free to email me and I will pass your request on for you. People with uncertain futures (who may be leaving the Waikato) are encouraged not to let this stop them standing for election, but please only stand if you are committed and prepared to take on a relatively small workload. To be granted voting rights at the meeting, you must have been a paid member for 2005-2006, and signed a new membership form for '06-'07. (Remember, you have 90 days to pay.) Regards, Craig Box WLUG Secretary

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Opensource ORC
by Ian McDonald 28 Sep '06

28 Sep '06

If this interests you have a look at: http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/09/18/191251 -- 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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One laptop per pc update
by Ian McDonald 28 Sep '06

28 Sep '06

For those that saw the documentary and want to know more about technical status update this is interesting at: http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/weblog/?p=222 -- 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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Torvalds talks about GPLv3
by Ian McDonald 26 Sep '06

26 Sep '06

http://software.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=06/09/19/1531258&from=rss -- 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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Short article on Gnome 2.16 new features
by Ian McDonald 25 Sep '06

25 Sep '06

This will be in Ubuntu 6.10 out next month: http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/09/18/2031230 -- 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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MEETING TONIGHT: Codebreakers documentary, end of year windup and free pizza
by Craig Box 25 Sep '06

25 Sep '06

For tonights meeting, we will air BBC World's documentary "The Codebreakers", about free/open source software. We will also present a short recap of the events of Software Freedom Day and a general pre-AGM wrapup, and then we will feed you with the promised Italian flatbreads. A synopsis for the documentary is below. Craig -- The famous digital divide is getting wider. A documentary, The Codebreakers aired on BBC World in May, examines whether free/open source software (FOSS) might be the bridge? FOSS contains 'source code' that can be used, copied, studied, modified and redistributed without restriction. It has been around for over 20 years but most PC owners are not aware that the Internet search engines and many computer applications run on FOSS. "It's not that FOSS has had a bad press, it has had no press because there is no company that 'owns' it," says executive producer Robert Lamb. "But we found that in the computer industry and among the afficionados, it is well known and its virtues well understood." The crew of the independent producers who made the film went to nearly a dozen countries around the world to see how the adoption of FOSS presents opportunities for industry and capacity development, software piracy reduction, and localization and customization for diverse cultural and development needs. Stories from The Codebreakers include computer and Internet access for school children in Africa, reaching the poor in Brazil, tortoise breeding programmes in the Galapagos, connecting villages in Spain, and disaster management in Sri Lanka. The documentary also includes interviews from key figures around the world. Intel, IBM, Sun and Microsoft all seem to agree that FOSS is a welcome presence in computer software. According to Jonathan Murray of Microsoft "The Open Source community stimulates innovation in software, it's something that frankly we feel very good about and it's something that we absolutely see as being a partnership with Microsoft." For more information, and to download a copy, see http://www.apdip.net/news/fossdoc

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Myspace videos in Debian or Ubuntu??
by Ian McDonald 23 Sep '06

23 Sep '06

Folks, Most myspace videos don't play in Linux that I can see because they use a newer flash movie format and the Linux version is still stuck on 7 (although 9 is on it's way...) Can anybody tell me if I'm wrong or a workaround? 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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Open office to support plugins
by Ian McDonald 23 Sep '06

23 Sep '06

http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-6118676.html?part=rss&tag=6118676&subj=news -- 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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Running Linux on old PCs.
by Ian McDonald 22 Sep '06

22 Sep '06

Good article here: http://polishlinux.org/choose/linux-on-old-hardware/ -- 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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Updated proprietary drivers
by Ian McDonald 21 Sep '06

21 Sep '06

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=551&num=1 https://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&q… This may be of interest to people. It shows the drivers changing and in some cases improving. It also shows the danger of non-free drivers as well. These drivers support old versions of X and not the latest (so I can't use easily on Debian Unstable). They don't yet support ailgx and of course you are limited to Intel/AMD platforms. The ATI driver drops support for old cards too... Now if Intel would mark their cards faster as they have supported the community by making open source drivers. -- 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 Local Community Team for New Zealand relaunched
by Craig Box 21 Sep '06

21 Sep '06

Ubuntu New Zealand: Local Community Team ---------------------------------------- Ever since the birth of computers, enthusiasts and fans around the world have collected together in garages, universities and pubs to talk about their interest, learn from each other and help promote their interest. Combine this with the huge popularity of Ubuntu, and you get the Ubuntu Local Community (LoCo) project. A LoCo team is formed to help groups of Ubuntu fans and enthusiasts in a particular region to help advocate, promote, translate, develop and otherwise improve Ubuntu. With the support of Jono Bacon, the Ubuntu Community Manager, and the awesome AustralianTeam, we're launching a New Zealand team for Ubuntu (http://ubuntu-nz.org/) What's involved? ---------------- What would you like to be involved? Activities other teams have engaged in include, but are not limited to: * development & coaching new, interested contributors * regional customisation * translations * advocacy, both virtually and locally * CD & merchandise distribution * IRC support (or just hanging out) There are no set goals for the team yet - it's entirely up to you, the new members, to decide as a group what we should do. Involvement in a LoCo is an easy way to get involved with the global Ubuntu community for non-developers and developers alike. There are people involved from many teams within Ubuntu who can help you gain useful skills for further involvement if you are keen! How can I get involved? ----------------------- Join our mailing list (https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-nz) and our IRC channel (#ubuntu-nz on Freenode - irc://irc.freenode.org:6667/#ubuntu-nz) More details are available from the website: http://ubuntu-nz.org/ Craig (Please pass this message onto your local LUG mailing list if it hasn't been there already!)

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Linux Client Migration Cookbook
by Martin, Anthony (NZ) 20 Sep '06

20 Sep '06

"Linux Client Migration Cookbook" available for download IBM has published a final draft of its "Redbook" titled Linux Client Migration Cookbook, Version 2: A Practical Planning and Implementation Guide for Migrating to Desktop Linux. The 376-page book, which targets enterprises needing to begin an evaluation of desktop Linux, is available for free download. <http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS5790800597.html>

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Problem with Google Earth Updating
by Leslie Katz 20 Sep '06

20 Sep '06

Thanks very much to both Simon and zcat for taking the trouble to reply to my query. I began by trying zcat's solution (merely editing my .bashrc to change Firefox to firefox) and it worked, so it seems as though some PATH designation already supplied the necessary path. Funny about that capitalisation. Like many things, it's so obvious, once someone else has the wit to point it out! Thanks again, Leslie

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Correction re AGM
by Craig Box 20 Sep '06

20 Sep '06

The regular meeting location is room TW2.07, not room LitB, at the University of Waikato. Sorry for causing confusion. Craig

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REMINDER: Annual General Meeting, 2 October
by Craig Box 19 Sep '06

19 Sep '06

In accordance with Rule 6 of the charter, I would like to announce to all members that the Waikato Linux Users Group (Incorporated) will be holding its Annual General Meeting on Monday, 2 October, 2006, at 7pm, at the regular meeting location of room LitB at the University of Waikato. New committee ============= All WLUG members are encouraged to stand for election onto the WLUG committee for 2007. The charter specifies the committee as consisting of a President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer, and three general committee members. To stand for the committee, please email secretary(a)wlug.org.nz. If you wish to nominate someone, please contact them and ask if they are willing to stand; if you would rather not contact them yourself, feel free to email me and I will pass your request on for you. People with uncertain futures (who may be leaving the Waikato) are encouraged not to let this stop them standing for election, but please only stand if you are committed and prepared to take on a relatively small workload. To be granted voting rights at the meeting, you must have been a paid member for 2005-2006, and signed a new membership form for '06-'07. (Remember, you have 90 days to pay.) Regards, Craig WLUG Secretary

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Problem with Google Earth Updating
by Leslie Katz 19 Sep '06

19 Sep '06

When I try the above from within the application, I get the following message: "Could not launch any web browser. Please make sure you have set the $BROWSER environment variable to the name of the filename we should launch!" When I issue the command "env", among the output, I find the following: "BROWSER=Firefox" Why is that not sufficient for Google Earth's purposes? Do I need to add a version reference or some other thing?

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Software Freedom Day Event
by Lindsay Druett 17 Sep '06

17 Sep '06

Hi There, From what I have seen and heard, the feedback has been awesome. I'm still getting up to speed as to what other LUGs and other groups have done to celebrate Software Freedom Day, but on the whole, from what I have seen looking at the software freedom webpage, I feel very confident to say that ours was world class and we gave awesome open public exposure to open source software. There are photos of the event that took place online, look at http://softwarefreedomday.org/gallery/2006/gallery/2006/oceania/nz/hamilton Thankyou all who got involved in making this event happen. I would like to this opportunity to single out three people out who did an outstandingly stunning job of making this happen... Craig Box, Ian McDonald, and Bruce Kingsbury. Without you guys, this event would not have happened. I would also like to thank Sue Kingsbury, Bruce's wife who supported Bruce, and also Cairo and Destiny, Bruce's daughters, who took turns dressing up as Tux, I think it was mostly Cairo. And, I would also like to thank our supporters... IT Partners (http://www.itpartners.co.nz/) for the loan of the computers WAND Group (http://wand.cs.waikato.ac.nz/) for loan of the TV and other bits and pieces Gateway Christian Centre (http://www.gateway-net.com/) for the loan of the tables and chairs Mystique Costume Hire who made the Tux Penguin Suit especially for us and also Telecom, Centreplace/Downtown Plaza management. Furthermore, I would also like to thank those who helped behind the scenes, those who came on the day, demonstrated open source software and shared their experiences with OSS, and also Ron Dean particularly, but others who have taken photos of the event that has taken place. I would like to take an opportunity to make comment that Open Source Freedom day is about celebrating and putting a day aside to promote free and open source software, however, it is not a day to be seen as a day put aside, or a an event to be held on that day, where there is open season to denigrate vendors, in particular Microsoft, who choose the copyright and charge out a licence fee on a per user and/or per seat basis. Hey, excellent work... Regards, Lindsay Druett, WLUG President.

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Problem Installing Democracy Player
by Leslie Katz 16 Sep '06

16 Sep '06

Thanks to both of you for your replies. I should've said in my original post that I had already installed pyrex, without overcoming the error message about Pyrex.Distutils by doing so. I apologise for that omission, which was caused by my being a bit flustered. However, something written by Dominic reminded me of an earlier occasion on which I sought help on this list regarding a python script. The person who kindly helped me then pointed out that installing python2.4, while not uninstalling python2.3, wouldn't, of itself, help me to run a script that said it required python2.4. Python2.3 was being used as the default version on my system, so that I had to force the script to use python2.4. When I did that, the script worked. Since Dominic had told me that the Pyrex scripts should appear in /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages, I went looking, not there, but in /usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages. Sure enough, that's where they'd been installed. I therefore copied Pyrex/ into /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages and re-ran run.sh. On that attempt, there was no longer a complaint about the absence of the module Pyrex.Distutils. Instead, I got a different complaint further into the setup script, as follows: Traceback (most recent call last): File "setup.py", line 175, in ? packages = getCommandOutput("pkg-config --list-all") File "setup.py", line 124, in getCommandOutput raise RuntimeError("%s outputted the following error:\n%s" % RuntimeError: pkg-config --list-all outputted the following error: Package dbus-1 was not found in the pkg-config search path. Perhaps you should add the directory containing `dbus-1.pc' to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable Package 'dbus-1', required by 'NetworkManager', not found I went looking on my system for RPMS with dbus in their name and found I had four of them. One in particular was called dbus-python-0.22-10.FC3.2.i386.rpm and I assumed it was the relevant one. I got a list of all the files in that package. There were six of them: dbus.py; dbus.pyc; dbus.pyo; dbus_bindings.a; dbus_bindings.la; and dbus_bindings.so. I went looking for those six files and found them all in /usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages. I therefore tried the same trick as I'd tried with the Pyrex directory, namely, copying all six files into /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages, but the trick would only work once. When I re-ran run.sh, I still got the same error message I set out above. (It's those files with "binding" in their names that are causing the trouble, I suspect.) My current question, therefore, is how do I get into /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages copies of the dbus-python rpm's files that will work? One last thing. Craig raised a wry smile on my face by telling me upgrading was good. I've been wanting to upgrade for ages, but I'm too afraid. What I really need is a step-by-step guide in words of one syllable, explaining to me how to prepare for an upgrade, so that, after upgrading, I'll still have all my current data, my applications that I've separately installed and my settings for my current applications. Without that security blanket, I feel I'm stuck with FC3 indefinitely. Thanks again, Leslie

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Problem Installing Democracy Player
by Leslie Katz 15 Sep '06

15 Sep '06

Thank you to all of you who've offered help with this problem. I haven't given up yet and am slowly inching forward with the installation process. Now I've reached some problem about pygtk. Whether I'll ever get to the end of the process, I don't know, but, in the way of these things, I suppose that if I do, the application won't be much anyway. Oh well. Thanks again, Leslie

1 0

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

3 2

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

1 0

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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the wlug and joinging
by Haldor Riddering 10 Sep '06

10 Sep '06

hey guys and gals, I've been following this list for a few months now andh ave recently changed my laptop over to ubuntu and going to change my deskyop that way too though maybe another flavour of linux. anyways the questions I have is: I would like to become a paying member of the wlug and mayeb come to some meetings to meet people and learn from them. how do I become a member and where and how often do you guys meet. I read parts of the wiki but am still confused. also is there a map to where the building is at the uni? how long do meetings go for as well. I live in cambridge so will need to drive there and new to hamilton. anyhelp here would be awesome. thanks for help Haldor Riddering

2 1

Interesting article about Konqueror
by Ian McDonald 08 Sep '06

08 Sep '06

This is quite a good read here: http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/08/29/1957219 I didn't know that you could look at man pages and browse other machines that are running ssh using this for example. -- 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

1 0

Good articles from Forbes on Ubuntu and Linux
by Ian McDonald 06 Sep '06

06 Sep '06

Has a number of interesting articles on sidebar. Not technical - good articles though. http://www.forbes.com/home/technology/2006/09/05/linux-ubuntu-opensource_cz… -- 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

1 0

Upcoming elections and you...
by Greig McGill 05 Sep '06

05 Sep '06

Hi All, It's been quite a while since I posted to this list. I've been lurking. I'd just like to ask you all to do me a big favour... For the last four years, the same very dedicated group of people have served as the WLUG committee, give or take a couple of transient members. I'd like to say they've done a great job, especially as this is the first year I've not been involved! ;) The problem is that it's left to them. I know from past experience that there is a lot of complaining behind the scenes, in private emails, and on irc about WLUG being run by an exclusive group who all know each other, and make decisions without enough consultation. That would be fair criticism if anyone else ever stood for the committee besides this dedicated bunch. Please consider standing for the WLUG committee. It doesn't require too much effort. You just need to be prepared to turn up to meetings regularly, do any tasks that are required of you quickly (and there aren't that many), and be good at reporting back to your fellow committee members. If you have good communication skills, and are a reasonably motivated person, *please* put your name forward. I'd like to think I'm not being hypocritical by not standing myself, I did it for four years, the last as president. I don't think it's unfair of me to hope that others will put their name forward. I've stepped right back this year, hardly even attending meetings, as I've had other priorities. I'd also like to think that the current hard working committee could do the same and not feel like if they do, nobody will step up to fill their shoes. Why does the WLUG even need a committee? After all, other LUGs don't have one. Well, I think that WLUG has achieved more than all the other LUGs in NZ put together. We have a world class knowledge base in our wiki, we have a great library, we have excellent knowledgeable membership, we hold regular informative meetings with interesting speakers, and we're just generally damn cool. Not to mentions things like installfests, software freedom days, and other such public advocacy events. WLUG rocks (I reckon). Would all this have happened without that same dedicated bunch pushing it along? I don't think so. Thank you Lindsay, David, Craig, Ian, Perry, Matthias, and all the other regular helpers, Matt, John, Daniel, and others. Right, I've gone on enough. Please consider standing for the 2006/2007 committee. It's not too much work, and it makes a huge difference. Cheers, Greig McGill

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Fwd: Re: DVD woes!! + wifi
by jaytee＠clear.net.nz 04 Sep '06

04 Sep '06

Sorry Bruce This was meant for everyone... ----- Message Forwarded on Tue 5/9/2006 ----- From: "" <jaytee(a)clear.net.nz> To: zcat <zcat(a)wired.net.nz> Subject: Re: [wlug] DVD woes!! + wifi Date: Mon, 04 Sep 2006 09:40:19 +1200 Hi All, Just to update you all on my progress. I got my wifi to work in Ubuntu by using an ndiswrapper using this link: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=197102 One thing that did confuse me was the fact that the command prompt did not return after running a set up script, all that happened was the cursor seemed to (is this usual) just hang, making me think that it had been a failure . When I got to a access point I was happy to find it working. The dvd player which I thought I had got sorted. still does not work. I was using an unencrypted dvd (the reason it worked) when i tried a "normal" dvd the fault still exists. Regards John..

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ANNOUNCEMENT: Annual General Meeting, 2 October
by Craig Box 03 Sep '06

03 Sep '06

In accordance with Rule 6 of the charter, I would like to announce to all members that the Waikato Linux Users Group (Incorporated) will be holding its Annual General Meeting on Monday, 2 October, 2006, at 7pm, at the regular meeting location of room LitB at the University of Waikato. New committee =========== All WLUG members are encouraged to stand for election onto the WLUG committee for 2007. The charter specifies the committee as consisting of a President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer, and three general committee members. To stand for the committee, please email secretary(a)wlug.org.nz. If you wish to nominate someone, please contact them and ask if they are willing to stand; if you would rather not contact them yourself, feel free to email me and I will pass your request on for you. People with uncertain futures (who may be leaving the Waikato) are encouraged not to let this stop them standing for election, but please only stand if you are committed and prepared to take on a relatively small workload. To be granted voting rights at the meeting, you must have been a paid member for 2005-2006, and signed a new membership form for '06-'07. (Remember, you have 90 days to pay.) Regards, Craig WLUG Secretary

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Firefox 2 beta nice features
by Ian McDonald 31 Aug '06

31 Aug '06

I found this quite an interesting read: http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS3852026030.html It has nice features like adding RSS feeds to Bloglines, unclose tabs, open links in new tab by default etc. This article shows a few things I didn't know about previously. Looks like Firefox isn't sitting still as IE starts to catch up. Competition is great! -- 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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10 misunderstandings about the GPL
by Ian McDonald 31 Aug '06

31 Aug '06

Useful article here if you want to talk to people intelligently about the GPL: http://www.itmanagersjournal.com/article.pl?sid=06/08/21/1659203 -- 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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Acceptable use of the WLUG Mailing List
by Meeting Reminder bot 31 Aug '06

31 Aug '06

The WLUG Mailing List is the discussion-list extension of the Waikato Linux Users Group (Incorporated). As such, we expect members of this list to adhere to the principles espoused in the official WLUG Charter[1], in particular, Rule 6, which covers the activities on this mailing list. While this is an Acceptable Use Policy, the WLUG Committee do recognise the need for informal discussion among list members, and draconian administration is not the goal here. Please keep in mind, however, that your comments to this list do represent the WLUG, and while it is good to be seen as an organisation with a sense of humour, some comments may do major harm to our credibility as a serious advocate of GNU/Linux and all things Free Software/ Open Source related. List discussion should * be honest * accentuate the positive, without hyperbole or blatant misrepresentation * maintain a reasonable level of spelling and grammar * not indulge in ad hominem attacks * not continue inflammatory or abusive threads * not be unprofessional or petty, especially with respect to the names of other software companies * not promote or denigrate political, cultural, or religious views * not indulge in marketing or advertising, other than on a private sale basis, or advertising of jobs - which may be announced once only * not reproduce copyrighted material without permission from the copyright holder * not defame any person or organisation Posters who consistently violate these guidelines will be dealt with at the discretion of the List Maintainer. If you feel you have been unfairly dealt with, you have recourse to any member of the WLUG Committee[2]. Certain mailing list etiquette should also be maintained: * please use only plain text (not HTML) * reply inline or below when quoting, rather than on top * trim quotes (don't reply quoting a 10 page message with a single line of reply) If you have any questions, start reading at http://www.gweep.ca/~edmonds/usenet/ml-etiquette.html. These points have been established over a long time on this list. If you want to question them, please do it off list. As list users, use your discretion when pulling people up over etiquette - please reply off list, and if there is a serious breach, the list administrator will probably have dealt with it off-list already. [1] http://www.wlug.org.nz/WlugCharter [2] http://www.wlug.org.nz/WlugCommittee

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Using Ubuntu and iPods
by Ian McDonald 31 Aug '06

31 Aug '06

Good stuff here (well I think it but I don't have an ipod...) http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9266 -- 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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REMINDER: WLUG meeting is on Monday
by Meeting Reminder Bot 30 Aug '06

30 Aug '06

There's a Waikato Linux Users Group meeting on Monday: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In which CraigBox will present an overview of the http://www.wlug.org.nz/Squid caching WebProxy server, including: * how to set it up for a home network * how to have a gateway machine transparently proxy requests * locking down web access * and a sneak preview of what's coming in the new Squid 3.0.

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