Re: [OT] Locating source of FM radio interference
Personally, in that range? I turn the heating fan off in my car. *Wham* Interferiance is GONE and I can listen to my NHPR. ;-)On 2/16/06, Michael ODonnell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Something near our house has recently startedgenerating spectacular amounts of radio intereferencethat's most noticeable around 89MHz. I have noportable radio equipment of any kind except a humblelittle $10 handheld with a normal telescoping antenna that seems not to be very directional, or at least Idon't understand its directionality. Is there someway I can use it to do some sort of triangulation onthe source of interference? Maybe some particular way of holding/orienting it, or selectively/partiallyshielding it, or tuning it, or... ?___gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.orghttp://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: [OT] Locating source of FM radio interference
On Thursday 16 February 2006 09:09 pm, Michael ODonnell wrote: > Something near our house has recently started > generating spectacular amounts of radio intereference > that's most noticeable around 89MHz. I have no > portable radio equipment of any kind except a humble > little $10 handheld with a normal telescoping antenna > that seems not to be very directional, or at least I > don't understand its directionality. Is there some > way I can use it to do some sort of triangulation on > the source of interference? Maybe some particular > way of holding/orienting it, or selectively/partially > shielding it, or tuning it, or... ? We had an RFI source once that I tracked to a power pole. One of the high power coupling had oxidized until it was loose. It then started arcing. It took a long time to convince the power company to fix it, but that was the culprit. You might collapse the antenna on the FM radio so the audio is not saturated by the noise. Then walk under the nearby power poles to see if it gets discernibly louder. If you can find a noisy pole, you can sit back and enjoy a week or so of conversations with the power company trying to convince then to come out and check it. You can triangulate by noting which directions you must walk to make it go away - assuming it is present outside of the house also. If it is just inside the house, start unplugging things. The generator requires electricity quite certainly. Jim Kuzdrall ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: [OT] Locating source of FM radio interference
If I were still up in the GNH area, I'd offer to come over and help youout. But, I suspect your best bet would be to find a local amateur("ham") radio club and see if they have some folks who could help youtriangulate the source. It can get into a real can of worms - twootherwise innocent stations transmitting at the same time might havetheir signals "mixed" by a dirty pipe joint or a stray diode, and emitspurious signals at their sum and difference frequencies (aka intermodulation).It's also entirely possible that there is a "pirate" broadcaster - i.e.,someone who's decided s/he has something to say to the world, andFCC regs be damned. What they don't understand is that when they'recaught, they might get off with a warning, but could get a $10,000 fine.If none of the hams on the list (and there are a couple :-) can helpyou, contact me offlist and I'll try to conjure up some resources, eventhough I'm in South Florid!
a these
days.Bayard"Brake for Moose - it can save your life" - NHF&GDMichael ODonnell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Something near our house has recently startedgenerating spectacular amounts of radio intereferencethat's most noticeable around 89MHz. I have noportable radio equipment of any kind except a humblelittle $10 handheld with a normal telescoping antennathat seems not to be very directional, or at least Idon't understand its directionality. Is there someway I can use it to do some sort of triangulation onthe source of interference? Maybe some particularway of holding/orienting it, or selectively/partiallyshielding it, or tuning it, or... ? ___gnhlug-discuss mailing
listgnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.orghttp://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
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Re: Hard Disk Failure
Neil Joseph Schelly <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > My boss just came to me with a failed hard drive in a personal computer of > his. I'm remembering only that someone mentioned having some experience with > hard disc recovery services recently, but I can't seem to find it in my list > history. > > Can anyone with experience, suggestions in this regard let me know what I > might suggest to pass on to him? Especially price-wise and expectations? Get yourself a Knoppix CD, boot up with that, get a network connection up and see if you can't rsync the data somewhere else. I was able to do this with my wife's laptop a couple years ago. It's simple, cheap, and fast. If that doesn't work, and the data is important, then consider a data recovery server. But that's likely at the other end of the spectrum: complicated, expensive, and slow :) -- Seeya, Paul ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
[OT] Locating source of FM radio interference
Something near our house has recently started generating spectacular amounts of radio intereference that's most noticeable around 89MHz. I have no portable radio equipment of any kind except a humble little $10 handheld with a normal telescoping antenna that seems not to be very directional, or at least I don't understand its directionality. Is there some way I can use it to do some sort of triangulation on the source of interference? Maybe some particular way of holding/orienting it, or selectively/partially shielding it, or tuning it, or... ? ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Just a Test - Disregard
Does this get posted? I have been trying to send the merrilug meeting notice to gnhlug-discuss all day. I never get through. This is to check if a spam filter is snagging it. Jim Kuzdrall ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: HB1197 Status
On 2/16/06, Seth Cohn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > (Cain and Abel is a sniffer program, plain and simple... it took _six_ months > for > them to look for weird traffic???) Well, the article doesn't give enough detail to really know what happened, how, or anything. A simple passive sniffer won't generate any traffic. On 2/16/06, Ed Lawson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > In the MSFT world are there not simple daemons which monitor the > status of important system files like the registry and report > changes? Such things certainly exist. As with most things in the payware world, they cost money.Most "corporate" AV software will at least detect and alert about potential cracking tools. I would suggest people curb their rampant hatred of all things Microsoft when making the case for FOSS. For one, people like that just sound like zealots. For another, a lot of the claims that get tossed out by *some* FOSS advocates are at least subjective, if not outright false, when it comes to why FOSS is better then Microsoft. Case in point: Is everyone here running a network IDS, separate from their main servers? Host IDS on their servers? How often do you check for rootkits? Do you boot from trusted read-only media when you run those checks? If not, and you get cracked, does that mean Microsoft is the right answer instead? These best practices apply to nix as well as doze, and I find all the things that could happen generally don't. (I'm as guilty as the next guy, there.) It's usually a question of knowledge first, time second, budget third. FOSS might help with the last, but not the rest. Focus on the strengths of FOSS, not the "my disk is bigger then your disk" stuff. One thing Microsoft cannot and will never do is offer freedom. *Nobody owns Linux.* "Live free or die" and all that. I'd rather be in charge of my own information destiny, thank you very much. Anyone contact Red Hat/Novell/etc for marketing materials and such? -- Ben ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Windows-like registry for Linux?
My cow-orker (from the Windows side of the company and maybe transitioning to Linux) thanks y'all for the feedback and is impressed with the GNHLUG. Same here. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: HB1197 Status
On Thursday 16 February 2006 02:14 pm, Ed Lawson wrote: > Well, this is a password sniffer that has been around for five > years and no doubt has been in anti-virus software for nearly as > long yet they were running a windows box without running > anti-virus software and it was a server containing critical info. > What are the odds it is the tip of the old iceberg? > > Sounds like a sys admin issue to me. It definitely is. The article mentioned that this machine was in a DMZ and that's why the attack didn't go very far. That said, if all this other information was on a machine in the DMZ, then it leads you to wonder why there's a DMZ at all. Theoretically, you should be able to break into the DMZ and still be relatively restricted from accessing anything sensitive. -Neil ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: HB1197 Status
> > HB1197 is now up for a reconsideration vote, since the study > committee > > would seek to know how and why this sort of thing happened, and > how/if > > open source could have prevented it. I suppose one could argue that if the production machines required less TLC, the the sys admin folks would have had more time to learn about the Cisco unit and/or to routine checks on the machines for nasty stuff. In the MSFT world are there not simple daemons which monitor the status of important system files like the registry and report changes? Isn't that rather basic and something readily available in the Unix/Linux world? Ed Lawson ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: HB1197 Status And Freakonomics
On Feb 16, 2006, at 13:36, Bruce Dawson wrote: Anyways, why is the Executive Committee getting involved in legislative actions? Or, why didn't someone clue the legislaturers that less than 1% of the state's computers are mainframes? Ah, I was similarly confused. There is an Executive Committee in the legislature as well as the executive branch. Maybe it's even the House Executive Committee (vs. Senate). Don't quiz me on civics, but it's not the same guys who need voting out over tokens. -Bill - Bill McGonigle, Owner Work: 603.448.4440 BFC Computing, LLC Home: 603.448.1668 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cell: 603.252.2606 http://www.bfccomputing.com/Page: 603.442.1833 Blog: http://blog.bfccomputing.com/ VCard: http://bfccomputing.com/vcard/bill.vcf ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: HB1197 Status
On Thu, 16 Feb 2006 13:47:46 -0500 Seth Cohn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Late breaking news... > HB1197 is now up for a reconsideration vote, since the study committee > would seek to know how and why this sort of thing happened, and how/if > open source could have prevented it. (Cain and Abel is a sniffer > program, plain and simple... it took _six_ months for them to look for > weird traffic???) Well, this is a password sniffer that has been around for five years and no doubt has been in anti-virus software for nearly as long yet they were running a windows box without running anti-virus software and it was a server containing critical info. What are the odds it is the tip of the old iceberg? Sounds like a sys admin issue to me. Ed Lawson ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: HB1197 Status
Late breaking news... Thanks to front page headlines on the computer hack... http://unionleader.com/article.aspx?articleId=de7276ec-e725-42e4-aa26-123b8d304b36 Choice quote: The program may have lain hidden for as long as six months — the last time computer experts ran a thorough check of the state's network. HB1197 is now up for a reconsideration vote, since the study committee would seek to know how and why this sort of thing happened, and how/if open source could have prevented it. (Cain and Abel is a sniffer program, plain and simple... it took _six_ months for them to look for weird traffic???) HB1197's not dead quite yet. Seth > This list is probably the right place for that. We are, after all the > folks in NH interested in working together on F/LOSS. Bill, Chris and > I attended the only hearing we know to have been open to the public on > this, You attended the subcommittee meeting (which I missed), I was the only speaker (save for the sponsor) at the main public hearing. Next year, if not sooner, we can line up lots more people to speak... Seth ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: HB1197 Status And Freakonomics
Well, maybe we can get someone to sponsor a bill that *mandates* Open Source be used. That should get the Executive Committee to stand up and notice that the state has investments in things other than mainframes! Anyways, why is the Executive Committee getting involved in legislative actions? Or, why didn't someone clue the legislaturers that less than 1% of the state's computers are mainframes? Also, someone should point out to the legislaturers that a *lot* of NH residents are involved in the development of OSS software, and this "action to take in-action" does not induce them to vote come re-election. (Of course, the trouble is: how do we quantify "a lot"?) --Bruce Jeff Kinz wrote: > On Thu, Feb 16, 2006 at 06:20:20AM -0500, Seth Cohn wrote: > >>HB1197 was voted ITL (Inexpedient to Legislate) yesterday by the NH >>House. This was no surprise, as the Executive Dept committee voted to >>kill it by 15 to 1, and released the following report on it: >> >>HB 1197, establishing a committee to study requiring state government >>to consider using open source software when acquiring new software. >>INEXPEDIENT TO LEGISLATE >> >>Rep. James B. Coburn for Executive Departments and Administration: A >>sub-committee discussed this issue and determined that the major main >>frame applications are probably not available in open source software. >> There is software called "open office" that is similar to a Microsoft >>product installed on most desktops. Upon checking with the Office of >>Information Technology, > > > Hi Seth, > This phrase, "checking with the office of information technology', seems > key to me. My guess is that the resident technology people have no > experience with or interest in Open Source. I have found that whenever > you are trying to introduce open Source to a noncommercial organization, > such as a school system or a town or any form of government the very > first and most important group of people to convince are the people who > are the current technology gurus for that organization. In this case I > am using the term "guru" very loosely. > > The resident technology "experts" have an established relationship with > the representatives or politicians running the show. This relationship > is based on the technology people taking care of the needs of the > representatives or the politicians and of course recognizing that the > representatives and the politicians hold a great deal of power the > technology people have made sure to take "very good" care of them. > > As a result the technology people have a high level of credibility with > those politicians. So the politicians will take whatever they are told > by these people as gospel. > > Until there is some high-level technology person within that government > body who is an open source advocate it will be difficult to make > progress convincing the politicians that open source is the preferable > technology to use, or even a viable alternative. > > In fact the only reason that the Massachusetts government has made some > progress is due to the chief technology officer for the executive branch > of the state, and his boss, and the head of I. T. for the executive > branch were all being in favor of the Open Document Format. > > And even with these three high-powered, high-level sponsors the ODF > movement in Massachusetts is receiving huge amounts of resistance and in > the short-term may not prevail. (In the long term, I believe that open > source software and open standards will become the accepted and > preferred choices. The problem is, how long is long-term?) > > >>it was determined that the state does not have >>the technical resources to control or support such software. Vote >>15-1. >> >>Yes, you read that right: Let's not have a study committee to look >>into this, because we already know that open source doesn't work on >>mainframes, and of course, we don't have any technical resources for >>this sort of thing now in OIT, so lets not have a study committee >>might see that we'd save millions (and thus could afford to hire a few >>helpdesk staff to support it). > > > This is a typical political maneuver to kill the proposal by making > sure it never gets out of committee. It sucks. It's slimy. And > sleazy. And it's the way things seem to work when dealing with any > democratically elected body of representatives. Inevitably the choices > made by that body aren't made based on what is "right",but are made > based on "what will get me reelected or will gain me the power within this > body so that I can have the leverage I need to get reelected?". > > Of course none of that is any surprise to us. The problem is what do we > do about it? > > The most efficient path to getting open source used by a government body > is to convince those resident technology people that it is to their > benefit to use open source. The problem with this path is that it is > frequently not to the benefit of the bureaucrat
Re: Crontab entries
On Thursday, Feb 16th 2006 at 12:54 -0500, quoth Paul Lussier:
=>Is there a requirement to place parens around a set of commands
=>delimeted by a ';' for crontab entries?
=>
=>At some point I got in the habit of creating entries like:
=>
=>30 02 * * * (foo;bar;baz)
=>
=>But nowhere can I find documentation even mentioning the use of
=>parens. Of course, I haven't even seen mention of having cron exec'ing
=>multiple commands either...
=>
=>Using the parens definitely works, I'm just trying to figure where I
=>picked up that habit...
Parens are one of the two grouping operators. The other is curly braces.
Note that the syntax for curlys is different than for parens.
{ cmd1; cmd2; cmd3; }
That last semicolon is required.
The functional difference is that parens cause its content to execute in a
seperate subshell. The only reason to do so is if a command sequence would
change something about the current environment that subsequent commands
would not want. e.g.,
pwd # Here I am
qaz=44 # Here's what it is.
(cd foo; foo=55; bar)
pwd # I'm still where I started and $foo is still 44.
echo $foo
So the answer is that it is not needed to group your cron entry in parens.
It just burns an extra shell.
--
Time flies like the wind. Fruit flies like a banana. Stranger things have .0.
happened but none stranger than this. Does your driver's license say Organ ..0
Donor?Black holes are where God divided by zero. Listen to me! We are all- 000
individuals! What if this weren't a hypothetical question?
steveo at syslang.net
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Re: Crontab entries
Paul Lussier wrote: Hi all, Is there a requirement to place parens around a set of commands delimeted by a ';' for crontab entries? At some point I got in the habit of creating entries like: 30 02 * * * (foo;bar;baz) But nowhere can I find documentation even mentioning the use of parens. Of course, I haven't even seen mention of having cron exec'ing multiple commands either... Using the parens definitely works, I'm just trying to figure where I picked up that habit... Thanks, You picked up that old habit because the shell runs the set of commands within parentheses as a subprocess. This insures that the group of commands within the parens are run within the same context. Dan ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Crontab entries
Hi all, Is there a requirement to place parens around a set of commands delimeted by a ';' for crontab entries? At some point I got in the habit of creating entries like: 30 02 * * * (foo;bar;baz) But nowhere can I find documentation even mentioning the use of parens. Of course, I haven't even seen mention of having cron exec'ing multiple commands either... Using the parens definitely works, I'm just trying to figure where I picked up that habit... Thanks, -- Seeya, Paul ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: HB1197 Status And Freakonomics
On Thu, 16 Feb 2006 09:57:02 -0500 Jeff Kinz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > My guess is that the resident technology people have no > experience with or interest in Open Source. I trust people know that the main website for the state of NH has historically run on Linux using Apache? There are many governmental departments that use Windows and IIS too. Ed Lawson ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: How times have changed [was Sr. Developer ]
On Thu, Feb 16, 2006 at 10:22:01AM -0500, Fred wrote: > > I would have to somewhat disagree with this. Whenever a group of nodes > interact in concert, that entire group can be considered a node in its own > right, with its own peculiar set of dynamics. It does not matter whether > the "nodes" are ants, computers, or people. > > When the number of interacting nodes are small, one may easily distinguish > them as separate, though they are acting as a group. When the number of > nodes are large, it's much more difficult to cull them apart. > > This is all about emergence of behavior and also a new mathematics I am > quietly (for now) working on. > > So, to differ, "organizations" DO exist -- but their efficiency to act is > inversely proportional to the number of participants. That is to say, the > "collective IQ" of the group, if there is such a thing, will always be > *less* than the IQ of individuals. The reason for this is simple: The > individuals are *not free* to act as the group can. The group itself is by > design forced to act as a unit; therefore it is a node in its own right. > > This scares the willies out of me because group nodes where it involves > humans typically become *less humane* than the individuals themselves. Fred, are you looking at chaos/complexity theory as it applies to human behavior & economics? A whole bunch of stuff came out of the Santa Fe Institute that allowed economists to actually start realistically modeling human behavior wit the same approach the physicists had started using to model complex-chaotic systems. They labeled it "chaos theory". I'm sure everyone has heard of it and it seems to be usable for a great deal more than modeling chaotic physical systems. One of the most interesting items I ran across was that there seems to be some cross-over between the chaos theory and the automata theories being advanced by Stephen Wolfram in "A New Kind Of Science". A great book, but much harder to read than "Freakonomics". Also harder to lift. :) -- Jeff Kinz, Emergent Research, Hudson, MA. speech recognition software may have been used to create this e-mail "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." - Brandeis To think contrary to one's era is heroism. But to speak against it is madness. -- Eugene Ionesco ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: How times have changed [was Sr. Developer ]
Fred wrote: So, to differ, "organizations" DO exist -- but their efficiency to act is inversely proportional to the number of participants. That is to say, the "collective IQ" of the group, if there is such a thing, will always be *less* than the IQ of individuals. The reason for this is simple: The individuals are *not free* to act as the group can. The group itself is by design forced to act as a unit; therefore it is a node in its own right. I think Heinlein said that, to calculate the intelligence of a mob, take the average IQ of its members and divide by the number of people in the mob. So, a mob of 100 people has the IQ of an earthworm. -- Dan Jenkins ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Rastech Inc., Bedford, NH, USA --- 1-603-206-9951 *** Technical Support for over a Quarter Century ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: HB1197 Status
On Feb 16, 2006, at 06:20, Seth Cohn wrote: Anyone interested in helping this effort, please contact me, as we can start laying the ground work for next year... Hi, Seth, This list is probably the right place for that. We are, after all the folks in NH interested in working together on F/LOSS. Bill, Chris and I attended the only hearing we know to have been open to the public on this, and other than a lady who was there to listen to an unrelated rider attempt the attendance was all GNHLUG members. Thanks for the update, and maybe for next year we can line up the proper legislative mumbo jumbo to make it apparent that OIT is the problem. The legislative branch imposes change on the executive branch by resolution all the time, so deferring to OIT on this matter is strange at best. We have to assume they didn't understand what this bill was about. I gave my card to all present at the hearing in case they had any questions and I didn't receive any calls. The part about mainframe code is a red herring as well. They mentioned that EDS was writing a new application for them (medicare, I think) and that cost however many bazillion dollars. So, the obvious thing to do is to specify that the EDS-contracted code would be available under an OSS license. -Bill - Bill McGonigle, Owner Work: 603.448.4440 BFC Computing, LLC Home: 603.448.1668 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cell: 603.252.2606 http://www.bfccomputing.com/Page: 603.442.1833 Blog: http://blog.bfccomputing.com/ VCard: http://bfccomputing.com/vcard/bill.vcf ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: How times have changed [was Sr. Developer ]
Ah, finally got Kontact (Kmail) to not crash on me. Too many email accounts for it, I think. On Wednesday 15 February 2006 12:16, Ben Scott wrote: ... > Group's are neither clueless nor clueful. People are. Groups do > not do things; individuals do. A group may contain many clueful > people doing good things (or clueless people doing evil things, or > whatever), but that does not mean one can know everything about $GROUP > or any arbitrary member of it simply by knowing something about one > or some of its members. > > This is part of what I call this "the myth of the organization". > Organizations are a myth; they don't exist in reality. I would have to somewhat disagree with this. Whenever a group of nodes interact in concert, that entire group can be considered a node in its own right, with its own peculiar set of dynamics. It does not matter whether the "nodes" are ants, computers, or people. When the number of interacting nodes are small, one may easily distinguish them as separate, though they are acting as a group. When the number of nodes are large, it's much more difficult to cull them apart. This is all about emergence of behavior and also a new mathematics I am quietly (for now) working on. So, to differ, "organizations" DO exist -- but their efficiency to act is inversely proportional to the number of participants. That is to say, the "collective IQ" of the group, if there is such a thing, will always be *less* than the IQ of individuals. The reason for this is simple: The individuals are *not free* to act as the group can. The group itself is by design forced to act as a unit; therefore it is a node in its own right. This scares the willies out of me because group nodes where it involves humans typically become *less humane* than the individuals themselves. > -- Ben "This statement is false" Scott -Fred Be afraid, be very afraid... ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Fwd: xine Problem
D'oh. Sent this to Ben only. Silly gmail. -- Forwarded message -- From: Lawrence Tilly <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Feb 16, 2006 9:33 AM Subject: Re: xine Problem To: Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Thanks for the extra tips, Ben. I have seen some complaints about kernal patches killing xine ( libdvd actually ) but I haven't applied one recently. For grins, late last night I rebooted the box for the first time since I uninstalled and reinstalled the xine RPMs and...it's working again! Mostly. There is a slight ghost of a vertical bar running down the xine window in the right third of the image. I will have to play with other sources to see if it's specific to only certain DVDs, all DVDs, or all media xine is playing for me. I'm also going to try burning some sample DVD stuff and play it elsewhere to see how that looks. One final thing I thought about was that when I installed the unit, I left the master / slave jumper on the device in the position where the role should be auto-detected ( can't remember the official term here...sorry ). This was the same setting that the CD burner that was in that spot initially was using and I had no problem with that device. However, it was also the only device on that connection. When I swapped in the DVD burner I also added a spare basic CD drive ( also using the "auto" jumper setting ). I think I'll pop the box and set those to Master / Slave manually just in case that's impacting this. Anyway, thianks again and if anyone thinks of anything else please post!!! -Lawrence On 2/15/06, Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 2/15/06, Lawrence Tilly <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Any suggestions?? > > DTVZ is right in that things like "Can't seek to block" and "Invalid > IFO for title" do sound like low-level trouble. For example, bad > media, or a bad drive. But it could also be a problem in a driver or > subsystem in the kernel. Have you updated your kernel since it worked > last? Also, check the kernel log (dmesg) to see if it's trying to > tell you something. > > -- Ben ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: HB1197 Status And Freakonomics
On Thu, Feb 16, 2006 at 06:20:20AM -0500, Seth Cohn wrote: > HB1197 was voted ITL (Inexpedient to Legislate) yesterday by the NH > House. This was no surprise, as the Executive Dept committee voted to > kill it by 15 to 1, and released the following report on it: > > HB 1197, establishing a committee to study requiring state government > to consider using open source software when acquiring new software. > INEXPEDIENT TO LEGISLATE > > Rep. James B. Coburn for Executive Departments and Administration: A > sub-committee discussed this issue and determined that the major main > frame applications are probably not available in open source software. > There is software called "open office" that is similar to a Microsoft > product installed on most desktops. Upon checking with the Office of > Information Technology, Hi Seth, This phrase, "checking with the office of information technology', seems key to me. My guess is that the resident technology people have no experience with or interest in Open Source. I have found that whenever you are trying to introduce open Source to a noncommercial organization, such as a school system or a town or any form of government the very first and most important group of people to convince are the people who are the current technology gurus for that organization. In this case I am using the term "guru" very loosely. The resident technology "experts" have an established relationship with the representatives or politicians running the show. This relationship is based on the technology people taking care of the needs of the representatives or the politicians and of course recognizing that the representatives and the politicians hold a great deal of power the technology people have made sure to take "very good" care of them. As a result the technology people have a high level of credibility with those politicians. So the politicians will take whatever they are told by these people as gospel. Until there is some high-level technology person within that government body who is an open source advocate it will be difficult to make progress convincing the politicians that open source is the preferable technology to use, or even a viable alternative. In fact the only reason that the Massachusetts government has made some progress is due to the chief technology officer for the executive branch of the state, and his boss, and the head of I. T. for the executive branch were all being in favor of the Open Document Format. And even with these three high-powered, high-level sponsors the ODF movement in Massachusetts is receiving huge amounts of resistance and in the short-term may not prevail. (In the long term, I believe that open source software and open standards will become the accepted and preferred choices. The problem is, how long is long-term?) > it was determined that the state does not have > the technical resources to control or support such software. Vote > 15-1. > > Yes, you read that right: Let's not have a study committee to look > into this, because we already know that open source doesn't work on > mainframes, and of course, we don't have any technical resources for > this sort of thing now in OIT, so lets not have a study committee > might see that we'd save millions (and thus could afford to hire a few > helpdesk staff to support it). This is a typical political maneuver to kill the proposal by making sure it never gets out of committee. It sucks. It's slimy. And sleazy. And it's the way things seem to work when dealing with any democratically elected body of representatives. Inevitably the choices made by that body aren't made based on what is "right",but are made based on "what will get me reelected or will gain me the power within this body so that I can have the leverage I need to get reelected?". Of course none of that is any surprise to us. The problem is what do we do about it? The most efficient path to getting open source used by a government body is to convince those resident technology people that it is to their benefit to use open source. The problem with this path is that it is frequently not to the benefit of the bureaucrat in charge of IT to use open source. Why? Because open source saves money, time and manpower. I just finished reading a fantastic book named "Freakonomics". it's a great book, only about 200 pages, written in a way that is enjoyable to read and easy to follow. In other words it is not a typical economics book at all. The author tells great stories about how more closely examining the economics of particular groups of people reveals often startling information about what truly is motivating them and what they perceive to be beneficial to themselves. >From the point of view of a bureaucrat, the purpose of life is to secure their position within the bureaucracy by gaining control of the largest budget and the largest number of people as possible. So instead of an efficient solution the bureaucrat strives
Re: HB1197 Status
On Thu, 16 Feb 2006 06:20:20 -0500 Seth Cohn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Upon checking with the Office of > Information Technology, it was determined that the state does not have > the technical resources to control or support such software. I believe there are some things that should be done before planning for next year. First, go and read the committee file on this bill in order to ascertain exactly what information was presented to them on paper to compare that to what was said. Second, go talk to the folks at OIT to ascertain what their issue was regarding support and what their position happens to be on Open Source generally. I seriously doubt OIT directly supports desktop applications in various departments. People need to look at RSA 4-D and study it. Look at the various entities created there and what their roles are. Obviously there are several and a great deal of lobbying can go on with them before going to the legislature. In fact, if the entities created under RSA 4-D are doing a good job, then they should be studying open source anyway. If not, why not and what do they need to get it on their radar? I really do not want to discuss this further, but the public perception of what the legislative process and politics in NH is like and what really goes on are two very different things. This is a good example. It is entirely possible OIT opposed it simply because they saw it as an assault on their turf and assigning their job to some study committee when this task has been assigned under RSA 4-D anyway. In fact I could make a good argument against the legislation on the basis it was the wrong way to get the state to consider using more open source software. Ed Lawson ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: HB1197 Status
HB1197 was voted ITL (Inexpedient to Legislate) yesterday by the NH House. This was no surprise, as the Executive Dept committee voted to kill it by 15 to 1, and released the following report on it: HB 1197, establishing a committee to study requiring state government to consider using open source software when acquiring new software. INEXPEDIENT TO LEGISLATE Rep. James B. Coburn for Executive Departments and Administration: A sub-committee discussed this issue and determined that the major main frame applications are probably not available in open source software. There is software called "open office" that is similar to a Microsoft product installed on most desktops. Upon checking with the Office of Information Technology, it was determined that the state does not have the technical resources to control or support such software. Vote 15-1. Yes, you read that right: Let's not have a study committee to look into this, because we already know that open source doesn't work on mainframes, and of course, we don't have any technical resources for this sort of thing now in OIT, so lets not have a study committee might see that we'd save millions (and thus could afford to hire a few helpdesk staff to support it). Based on this bogus report, we're going to work to have similar legislation introduced again next year, and deal with both of these misperceptions (I suspect someone at OIT wanted this dead on arrival, since they never testified on it in a hearing, but worked behind the scenes against it.) It didn't help that the Science/Tech committee didn't get this bill to consider, either... ExecDepts didn't understand this issue. Next year, I'd love for a few dozen people to show up, and help explain how Open Source works, the benefits (on lots of levels), and how it would increase NH economy, etc. Hopefully, people like Mr. Hall and others can appear and help this happen. Anyone interested in helping this effort, please contact me, as we can start laying the ground work for next year... Seth ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
