Re: [newbie] xscreen saver
On Thursday 14 February 2002 10:42 pm, christiyono wrote: hi all, is it any tricks to put xscreensaver from another distro to be activated in my mandrake 8.0? let say I have xscreensaver rpm from redhat and how to do it? so I can select and activate it from mandrake control center. thank's a lot chris Install xscreensaver (in a terminal, cd to the directory containing the rpm and type (without the quotes) rpm -Uvh xscreensaver*); As a user, type (without the quotes) the following in a terminal xscreensaver-demo This will bring up the xsreensaver configuration tool where you can set up when and how the xcreensaver will come on. You'll also need to disable the default kde screensaver in the kde control center. Finally, add the following line (without the quotes) to your home .baschrc file: xscreensaver Xscreensaver should now be activated and ready to run everytime you log in as user. Hope this helps. Rich Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] DVD-player
On Saturday 15 September 2001 06:26 am, Jonas Jacobsson wrote: Can anyone recomend a dvd viewer for Mandrake 8.0? xmovie needs kernel 2.4.7 and I only have 2.4.3. /jonas xine, videolan, and mplayer are all pretty good. I prefer xine; videolan sometimes has problems with synchronizing audio and video, and mplayer doesn't have a gui. You can find xine and mplayer by going to freshmeat.net and searching for them there. You can get videolan at www.videolan.org. videolan is packaged in rpms as well as source, and as packaged contains everything you need to play encrypted dvds. The current xine, I think, only is packaged as source, but you can get rpms for older versions. mplayer, I think, is only packaged as source. With xine and mplayer, you need plugins to play encrypted dvds. You can get the xine plugin by going to the captain css link on the xine home page, and the mplayer site tells you what plugins you need and where to get them. I think there are some gcc issues when you try to compile mplayer that require you to use certain options with the ./configure command, but I can't remember what those options are. The easiest way to get something that works, I think, is to get the videolan rpms. If you're comfortable installing from source, I'd go with xine. If you're comfortable both with installing from source and a command line only program, then you might want to give mplayer a try. Hope this helps. -- Rich Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Re: [LINUX_Newbies] USA TERROR ATTACK!!!!
On Thursday 13 September 2001 12:39 am, Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote: Mr Buckner, This is exactly what I was after -- a _constructive_ rebuttal based on fact, not hearsay, emotion or experience. As I have tried to make clear, there is never _one_ view of things, particularly in the social sciences (such as this). You obviously believe differently to myself, and you have been able to articulate your views clearly. For that I applaud you. In contrast to what some may think, it was never my intention to force my view upon others, but rather to convince people to be more open-minded about such matters. I have reread the portions of my posts which you have quoted, and I have taken note of some of your observations so that I may learn from them. While you make some very valid points (supported by some good evidence), I cannot agree with most of your argument. Nevertheless, I respect your view, for it is clear that you have carefully thought it over. Regards, Sridhar. Sridhar (if I may call you that, and I would like to in light of your response), Thank you for your response. In my view, and, from your post I believe in your view as well, there is no right answer on the issues we have discussed. I am very glad that you are willing to consider the points I have tried to make, and have no problem at all if you decide to reject them after consideration. What I really wanted, and want, is to open a dialogue with each of us considering the other's point of view, recognizing that reasonable minds may differ. I hope that, as events go forward, you will keep in mind the points I have tried to make and continue to evaluate and re-evaluate their merits. Just to provide you with some context, I was actually shocked at the depth of feeling that recent events and your posts have evoked in me since I have spent most of my life complaining about my government's policies. I was one of the hippies in the streets in the late 1960's protesting my government's stance in Viet Nam. I was one of the happiest people alive when Nixon was impeached. In short, I am a very unlikely person to post to a newsgroup a defense of my country's policies and actions. Watching the film of the attack on 9/11, and reading your posts, however, have caused me to think very hard on the US and how I feel about my country. Doing so reminded me that I truly do love my country. I doubt that any country, other than perhaps the USSR, has ever lived under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation, something I have not thought about for a very long time. When I was six, seven, and eight years old (the late 1950s and very early 1960s), we used to have drills in school about what to do in the event of a nuclear attack (obviously from Russia since, at the time, no one else had nuclear weapons). During those drills, we were to get under our desks at school. Today, we all know that the idea that we would survive a nuclear attack if we got under our school desks, but we would not if we failed to do so, is ridiculous. In fact, the whole idea is so silly that it led to parody charts setting out all the steps we followed during our drills and adding one more step: in the event of nuclear attack, we should follow the steps we practiced in school and, after doing so, we should bend over real far and kiss our a$$s goodbye. That thought -- that we could be annihilated by the USSR -- always colored US policy before the end of the Cold War. It also, undeniably, led to some bad choices about who to support in certain other countries. I still do not believe those choices were made in bad faith or out of unreasonable selfishness. I think those choices were made out of fear and self-preservation. In any event, I am delighted by your post. From a different post, I see that you are young. Being young is the best thing so long as you keep an open mind, evaluate new facts as you receive them, and constantly reevaluate your views based on information as you receive it. Please don't formulate opinions now and believe that you must defend them as a matter of personal honor. You are obviously an intelligent person; use that intelligence to constantly acquire new facts, to evaluate those facts objectively, and to modifiy your views, if appropriate, based on new information. Please understand that the people of the United States. like the people of every country I have visited, are, individually, well-meaning. That is why indiscriminate terrorist attacks are so bad. I am glad we had this dialog. I truly would be interested in citations to reading material that you believe supports the viewpoints you have expressed as I think consideration of other viewpoints, even if you regard them as wrong, is always a useful intellectual exercise. To be honest, if I disagree with those materials, I would enjoy the exercise of reviewing them and deciding in my own mind why they are wrong. Please feel free
Re: [newbie] Re: [LINUX_Newbies] USA TERROR ATTACK!!!!
Mr. Dhanapalan: I have read most if not all of your posts on this topic, and disagree with the vast bulk of what you say. The post to which I am responding, however, reflects such a far too short-sighted view of history that the temptation to respond is irresistible. On Wednesday 12 September 2001 06:38 am, Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote: [snip] Umm... Have you actually read or seen what's _really_ going on? By this, I mean from _credible_ sources like good historians and theorists (e.g. Wade, Johnson, Vogel, etc.), not the mass-media, which is notorious for its oversimplification of facts. It appears that YOU are the victim of mis-representations and hearsay. How can you expect to be truly objective when you _live_ in the country? This is simply impossible, because of factors like emotional attachments, habits and teachings (e.g. from schools and the media). The same would go for any nation that one is attached to. I don't expect to be able to be objective about my country, because I like it. No one is truly objective. Everyone has biases that affect their thoughts and reasoning. Is a non-resident of the US who hates the US necessarily more unbiased than a US resident who loves his country? No, not necessarily. Your posts reflect your biases. This post no doubt reflects mine. The fact that I have biases (or that the poster to whom you were replying above has biases) does not inevitably mean that the point of view I express is wrong, that the point of view the previous poster expressed is wrong, or that your point of view is incorrect. [snip] Not so. Your approach is very un-scientific indeed. [snip] Any analysis of historic trends, causes, and effects is by its very nature un-scientific because any such analysis ultimately amounts to an expression of the analyst's opinion. Your posts are full of subjective, qualitative views about whether the US is good or bad, how much harm it has caused, and the like. Those opinions, with which I disagree with strongly, may be honestly held, but they remain un-scientific opinions. [snip] Your inflexibility and lack of receptibility to different ideas and viewpoints is worrisome. If you read academic political papers over the years, you will notice how attitudes and views change with time, as situations change and new evidence and theories come to light. The world is ever-changing, not static. You need to try to evolve with this or risk falling behind and being cast aside as an old relic. Many older people I meet tend to be Cold Warriors, that is those who are stuck in the old Cold War mentality that communism is all evil and that the USA is the bastion of world democracy and hence is all good. Could you be one of those Cold Warriors, Jose? Here's a wake-up call: nothing is perfect. Since the end of the Cold War, people have been noticing the widening cracks in the armour of the Anglo-American neoliberal system, which for so long had remained stable due to the constant communist threat. You seem to imply that one can read academic political papers and that those papers somehow establish the right answer about whether the US is good or bad, and that events predating the Cold War are now irrelevant to a qualitative evaluation of the US. I think you are clearly wrong on both points. First, academic political papers reflect nothing more than the opinions of their authors. As a colleague of mine likes to say opinions are like a$$holes, everybody has one. I daresay that, if I wanted to spend the time, I could find academic papers that would support almost any view, even views that are later shown to be demonstrably wrong. After all, the head of the US Patent Office in the early 1900s expressed the view that everything that could be invented had by that time already been invented, and Bill Gates thought that 64k (not 64m) of memory ought to be enough for anyone. Second, I don't think any reasoned, or reasonable, evaluation of the US's conduct in the past several decades can be made without considering the forces that dictated and drove US foreign policy both before and during that time. You are absolutely right that the US government made some horribly bad decisions about who to back in a number of countries over the last several decades. In some cases, I believe the US government was simply fooled by those they ultimately backed. After all, when Castro displaced the prior government in Cuba, he was initially hailed as a hero in the US. When he made known his preference for what he called Communism, the US views changed dramatically. In any event, you are also absolutely correct that the US sometimes backed very bad people simply because the US thought it would be helpful in the global struggle with Communism. But I think you ought to consider how US views on Communism were formed, and why the US regarded resisting its spread as imperative and for the greater global good. By the
Re: [newbie] USB Hubs
On Monday 12 February 2001 08:13 am, Aaron Benedict wrote: Are there any 4 port USB hubs that can be recommended for use with LM 7.2? Is the Linksys one any good? Thanks, Aaron I have a Linksys 4 port USB hub working under LM 7.2. My Zip drive works fine through it. The only problem with it is that, on my system, LM 7.2 won't automatically recognize my Zip when it's hooked up through the hub, but will recognize it if the Zip is hooked up directly to the PC. That's was easily solved just by editing rclocal to directly load the usb-storage module. Other than that, my Linksys works fine. -- Rich
