Re: [SLUG] PDA/phone/linux
On Mon, Nov 06, 2006 at 03:01:25PM +1100, Voytek Eymont wrote: > > On Mon, November 6, 2006 1:31 pm, Matthew Hannigan wrote: > > On Mon, Nov 06, 2006 at 12:30:21PM +1100, david wrote: > > > I'm going to be /really/ annoying and ask whether > > you really need a pda phone :-). > > most ppl I know seem to think , yes' The one advantage of having the 2 together is you can dial straight from your contact list. for example open calendar, view appointment, look at invitees and open contact details and then ring, instead of having to transfer phone number by hand or having to keep 2 contact db in sync phone -> pda -> laptop.. I have a hp PDA/phone - I think I would rather have 2 seperate gagets, except for the above scenario > > I thought about it, whether I should get a Treo or Palm handheld > my considered decision was Palm h/h, NOT phone > > > > I think most people would be better off with a separate > > phone and a PDA. Having a slim/small phone is good, and being a PDA is > > incompatible with "slim". > > ditto, exactly my opinion > > > > > So what you should look for is a small phone > > with good connectivity to communicate with the PDA. > > that's what I'd do/have done. > > but, it seems most ppl feel the need for 'single device' > not optimal from where I sit > > > > -- > Voytek > > -- > SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ > Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html > signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Recipe set to match stock/pharma-gif-spam:
Fyi, Adam Bogacki. -- Message: 1 Date: Sun, 05 Nov 2006 03:52:20 +0100 From: "Ruud H.G. van Tol" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: stock/pharma-gif-spam To: "[procmail]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-15 Recipe set to match stock/pharma-gif-spam: s = '[]' # a space and a tab h = '[0-9A-Fa-f]' h2 = "$h$h"h3 = "$h2$h" h4 = "$h2$h2" h6 = "$h4$h2" h8 = "$h4$h4" h12 = "$h8$h4" :0 * ^^(From |Return-Path: <)[^ @[EMAIL PROTECTED]/[^ >]+ { DOMAIN = $MATCH } :0 * 1^1 ^Received: { } N_RCVD = $= :0 *$ ^Content-Type: multipart/related;.*\ boundary=(\")?\/[^\"]+ { H_CTB = $MATCH } :0 * ^Message-ID:.*\/[^ <@[EMAIL PROTECTED]>]+ { H_MID = $MATCH :0 * H_MID ?? ^^\/[EMAIL PROTECTED] { MID1 = $MATCH } :0 * H_MID ?? @\/.+ { MID2 = $MATCH } } :0 * N_RCVD ?? ^^(1|2)^^ *$ H_CTB ?? ^^=_NextPart_000_${h4}_$h8\.$h8^^ * MID2 ?? ^^[^.]+^^ * ^MIME-Version: 1\.0\ ^Content-Type:.*\ ^X-Priority: 3\ ^X-MSMail-Priority: Normal\ ^X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6(\.[0-9]+)+\ ^X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6(\.[0-9]+)+$ *$ B ?? ^--$\H_CTB\ ^Content-Type: image/gif;\ ^$s+name=\"[^\"]*\.gif\"\ (^Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64)?\ ^Content-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>$ .in.suspect.stock-gif/ :0 * N_RCVD ?? ^^(2|3)^^ *$ H_CTB ?? ^^$h+^^ *$ MID2 ?? $\DOMAIN^^ *$ ^From: [^\"<]+ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]@$\DOMAIN>$ *$ B ?? ^--$\H_CTB\ ^Content-Type: image/gif;\ ^$s+name=\"[^\"]+\.gif\"\ (^Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64)?\ ^Content-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>$ .in.suspect.pharma-gif/ Based on about 20 recent samples. These recipes can catch ham with an attached gif too, so please report back here how you refined the conditions to solve that. -- Groet, Ruud -- ___ procmail mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://MailMan.RWTH-Aachen.DE/mailman/listinfo/procmail End of procmail Digest, Vol 46, Issue 6 *** - End forwarded message - -- Adam Bogacki, - email: adam(at)bogacki.netafb(at)paradise.net.nz VoIP: sip:agike(at)ekiga.net [Zfone] Key: 0x4E553910 - DABB 4963 8973 7CCD 33C0 DC27 D7C5 F516 4E55 3910 - signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] PDA/phone/linux
On 11/6/06, Alexander Samad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: The one advantage of having the 2 together is you can dial straight from your contact list. This is pretty much the only reason to put the two together, but don't forget VoIP. You'll need WiFi on the PDA so you can call out with VoIP and no doubt it will require some effort to integrate that with your contacts. In all honesty, it's not that hard to just dial a number into your phone. That small act requires about 5 seconds more per call than calling straight out of an address book, but it gives you masses more choice in what product you get. You could get a PDA with a nice large screen and some really decent features, or even an oqo and then just get a cheapo phone with Bluetooth. The other point is that getting a phone/PDA combo isn't the efficiency helper it might seem to be, (which I'd forgotten about, having been rid of the things for a while now). Try using a PDA phone, for it's PDA functions, while on a call. First of all, you need speaker phone (which is no good in public), or a headset (which is usually impossible to switch to mid call). Even then, you can be limited in what part of the PDA phone you have access too. In any situation where dialing from your address book is beneficial, usually you want to enter appointments during calls - and for the smart phones I've used that issue was so much of a PITA that I resorted to carrying around a (paper) notebook and pen, and if I had to check appointments while on the phone in public, I'd have to resort to calling the person back after putting my BT headset on. Ben -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] PDA/phone/linux
> On Mon, Nov 06, 2006 at 03:01:25PM +1100, Voytek Eymont wrote: >>> I'm going to be /really/ annoying and ask whether >>> you really need a pda phone :-). >> >> most ppl I know seem to think , yes' > > The one advantage of having the 2 together is you can dial straight from > your contact list. for example open calendar, view appointment, look at > invitees and open contact details and then ring, instead of having to > transfer phone number by hand or having to keep 2 contact db in sync phone > -> pda -> laptop.. transfer phone number by hand??? dialing from home phone: (this is simpler to do, that to describe, btw) look up person or phone #, highlight desired phone #, control swipe to run 'DTMF DA' TSR, hold the pda near the hand piece, commence conversation when call answered dialing from mobile: look up person or phone #, click 'quick connect' highlight desired phone #, make sure phone is within your reach, commence conversation when call answered the tsr dialer does dtmf dialing, the built in dialer runs over bluetooth -- Voytek -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] PDA/phone/linux
On Mon, November 6, 2006 7:09 pm, Alexander Samad wrote: > The one advantage of having the 2 together is you can dial straight from > your contact list. for example open calendar, view appointment, look at > invitees and open contact details and then ring, instead of having to > transfer phone number by hand or having to keep 2 contact db in sync phone > -> pda -> laptop.. if you have a Palm and gsmtool-supported phone, gsmtool is worth checking out for that -- Voytek -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Novell and Microsoft
Hi all, Im a little worried, and a little excited about the Novell, microsoft deal. Worried because Microsoft tend to want to screw everyone they come in contact with that is not Microsoft, and excited that they will be working on some mutually benificial projects, like openoffice and Xen. Reading some of Bill Gates recent speeches, it seem M$ is moving from anti opensource to anti GPL. As in, they are happy with BSD style opensource, because they can see how Apple is able to take all the opensourse stuff and close it up and sell it as if they coded the lot themselves. They seem to be happy with open source only if they can turn it around and own it (no surprises there). So I dont know what they have in mind when jumping into bed with Novell? What do you people think? I would be very interested to hear some opinions. Tuxta -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Novell and Microsoft
2006/11/6, tuxta2 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: Hi all, Im a little worried, and a little excited about the Novell, microsoft deal. "Microsoft has done this many times before, so often that Redmond has a name for the technique: embrace, extend and exterminate. And yet people keep doing these deals. Usually, it's weak, struggling, desperate companies with declining market share and little hope of turning things around. In other words, just like Novell. " http://www.forbes.com/2006/11/03/linux-microsoft-novell-tech-cz_dl_1103linux.html?partner=alerts Cheers Praveen -- "Value your freedom, or you will lose it, teaches history. `Don't bother us with politics', respond those who don't want to learn." -- Richard Stallman Me scribbles at http://www.pravi.co.nr -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] PDA/phone/linux
On Mon, November 6, 2006 8:48 pm, Ben wrote: > The other point is that getting a phone/PDA combo isn't the efficiency > helper it might seem to be, (which I'd forgotten about, having been rid of > the things for a while now). -snip- I have been a long time PDA user, largely for reasons you mentioned, every time I was considering new hardware, that exactly why I always ended up going for PDA-only (hmm, 'largely' or 'exactly' ? I'm not precisely certain anymore..) (though, number of my friends moved from Palm PDA to PDA/phone combos, wince variety, they swear by them, (and often, swear at them)) the other aspect that I think was missed so far: I really prefer to have WiFi before I have GPRS, do the wince PDA/phones include WiFi ? -- Voytek -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Novell and Microsoft
On 11/6/06, tuxta2 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: What do you people think? I would be very interested to hear some opinions. This comment seems to be realistic, except for the finishing off bit. I think Microsoft has much more to gain by keeping Linux around and selling IP licenses for it. http://news.linux.com/comments.pl?sid=37578&cid=92628 Humour piece, apparently from 1995: http://www.usd.edu/~bwjames/humor/ms/novel.html FSF article from April this year: http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/ms-vs-eu/article-20060421.en.html My thought on Microsoft's strategy: embrace, extend, and emasculate or enslave. If software patents are widely recognised then Microsoft can force Linux to be nothing more than a backyard hobby, or charge for it, all while appearing not to be a monopoly, because after all, it's reasonable to charge for your IP, right? FSF won't push the GPL issue, because if they do, Microsoft will threaten litigation against other distros on patent grounds. The FSF will be able to go ahead and most likely lose, or back off and cement the validity of software patents. The only way Linux will last as an independant force in the long run is to fight software patents. We need to make sure there is at least one major market where the patents don't have force. If you have to license Linux in the USA, but not in the EU, Microsoft will be tortured by the USA corporations, so they won't push it until they've made the EU think licensing is OK, which is why Novell is such a good ally for them, as it's the strong in the EU. Ben -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] similar to Yakuake for Gnome?
Sorry Ben I don't know anything that has the behavior described - perhaps you can check www.gnomefiles.org ? Good Luck :) James On 11/6/06, Ben <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On 11/6/06, James Dumay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On 11/6/06, Ben <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I'm looking for a Gnome terminal emulator with similar features to > yakuake: > > * rollup/down in response to ` key, > > Explain this a little bit better :P In Quake you could hit the ` (back quote) key, or maybe it was ~, and a terminal window would shoot down from the top of the screen, and take up about half the screen. You could use it to enter cheat codes, configure server options, etc. Yakuake works the same way. It responds to F12 by default, but I changed it to `. It slides down from the top of the screen, as an always on top window. If I hit ` again, it just slides back up. When it's up, you can't see it. In XGL it was visible on all four sides of the cube at once (when rolled down) Ben -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] PDA/phone/linux
What's the PDA for? Email, calendar, contacts, notes, photos, games, browser, various apps, music player, ssh client .. It'll very much depend upon what the requirement is. Mary. Voytek Eymont wrote: On Mon, November 6, 2006 8:48 pm, Ben wrote: The other point is that getting a phone/PDA combo isn't the efficiency helper it might seem to be, (which I'd forgotten about, having been rid of the things for a while now). -snip- I have been a long time PDA user, largely for reasons you mentioned, every time I was considering new hardware, that exactly why I always ended up going for PDA-only (hmm, 'largely' or 'exactly' ? I'm not precisely certain anymore..) (though, number of my friends moved from Palm PDA to PDA/phone combos, wince variety, they swear by them, (and often, swear at them)) the other aspect that I think was missed so far: I really prefer to have WiFi before I have GPRS, do the wince PDA/phones include WiFi ? -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] PDA/phone/linux
On Mon, November 6, 2006 11:36 pm, Mary Cudmore wrote: > What's the PDA for? Email, calendar, contacts, notes, photos, games, > browser, various apps, music player, ssh client .. all of the above, plus a few more, to replace notebook > It'll very much depend upon what the requirement is. yes. -- Voytek -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] PDA/phone/linux
On 11/6/06, Voytek Eymont <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: I have been a long time PDA user, largely for reasons you mentioned, every time I was considering new hardware, that exactly why I always ended up going for PDA-only I wish I'd gone down that path myself. I've wasted $2K messing about with smartphones. (hmm, 'largely' or 'exactly' ? I'm not precisely certain anymore..) (though, number of my friends moved from Palm PDA to PDA/phone combos, wince variety, they swear by them, (and often, swear at them)) Symbian is probably the biggest problem for Smartphones. If they ran a decent implementation of Linux or BSD and had some kind of multiUI toolkit, then companies could actually develop for a consistent platform and not worry that they would need to rewrite software for the next version. Symbian's major flaw is that there are too many versions: Series 60: covers most of the sophisticated phones that still loon like phones Series 80 (640x200 widescreen, option keys and QWERTY): the Nokia Communicators Series 90 (640x320 touchscreen): the Nokia 7710 UIQ: (240x320 touchscreen): Sony Ericsson P800, P900, P910, and possibly a few others. Applications need to be rewritten to work on different devices and it's a PITA. HandyDay was one of the best programs for the P910i that I had. A series 90 version was going to be made, but the developer never ended up doing it, so obviously there's some non-trivial work that needed to be done. the other aspect that I think was missed so far: I really prefer to have WiFi before I have GPRS, do the wince PDA/phones include WiFi ? Some do. Nokia has a fair few out now that do. The Sony Ericsson P990 will, but it may not be released in Australia. It's usually just 802.11b, which is fair enough, but the main problem is actually doing anything useful with it. Getting QoS to work for VoIP is very difficult. PDAs should be much more flexible in this area, since there's fewer OSs and more hacks. One other option is to get a decent PDA with CF or USB functionality and get a GSM card/dongle for it (but drivers will probably only be available for the Native OS) Ben -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] PDA/phone/linux
On Tue, November 7, 2006 12:19 am, Ben wrote: > On 11/6/06, Voytek Eymont <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I wish I'd gone down that path myself. I've wasted $2K messing about > with smartphones. thanks, Ben, I feel $2k richer now... > One other option is to get a decent PDA with CF or USB functionality > and get a GSM card/dongle for it (but drivers will probably only be > available for the Native OS) I'd think Bluetooth to phone is a better option lastly, as much as I like Palm, sadly, I feel PalmOS is heading for dead end, now that Palm is making wince Treos. -- Voytek -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] PDA/phone/linux
> lastly, as much as I like Palm, sadly, I feel PalmOS is heading for dead > end, now that Palm is making wince Treos. ALP is looking good. I think WinCE was inevitable with Palm and PalmSource parting ways... But now PalmSource is part of ACCESS. - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2007: Sydney, Australia http://lca2007.linux.org.au/ "People keep asking me why we aren't married, and he says, 'Every time I am about to ask you, you do something annoying'." - Kate Beckinsale -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Novell and Microsoft
On Mon, Nov 06, 2006 at 10:50:57PM +1100, Ben wrote: > On 11/6/06, tuxta2 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >What do you people think? > >I would be very interested to hear some opinions. > > This comment seems to be realistic, except for the finishing off bit. > I think Microsoft has much more to gain by keeping Linux around and > selling IP licenses for it. > http://news.linux.com/comments.pl?sid=37578&cid=92628 > > Humour piece, apparently from 1995: > http://www.usd.edu/~bwjames/humor/ms/novel.html > > FSF article from April this year: > http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/ms-vs-eu/article-20060421.en.html > > My thought on Microsoft's strategy: > embrace, extend, and emasculate or enslave. > > If software patents are widely recognised then Microsoft can force > Linux to be nothing more than a backyard hobby, or charge for it, all > while appearing not to be a monopoly, because after all, it's > reasonable to charge for > your IP, right? Am I missing something can't we just take the code from Novell and apply any patches to bring it up to where it is now and carry on from there, doesn't that give every one Novell's protection ? or something along those lines. ps I am not a lawyer . > > FSF won't push the GPL issue, because if they do, Microsoft will > threaten litigation against other distros on patent grounds. The FSF > will be able to go ahead and most likely lose, or back off and cement > the validity of software patents. > > The only way Linux will last as an independant force in the long run > is to fight software patents. We need to make sure there is at least > one major market where the patents don't have force. If you have to > license Linux in the USA, but not in the EU, Microsoft will be > tortured by the USA corporations, so they won't push it until they've > made the EU think licensing is OK, which is why Novell is such a good > ally for them, as it's the strong in the EU. > > Ben > -- > SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ > Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html > signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] PDA/phone/linux
david wrote: > Excuse my ignorance... but > > I've been asked to get a PDA phone for my wife, about which I know > zilch. > > Can anyone suggest a retailer in or near the Sydney CBD that actually > doesn't faint when I say the word "linux", or alternatively, is there a > model that is just so good that nothing else is worth considering (yea.. > that was a joke). > > Any help appreciated > > David. > Me I used to be very anti-motorola, but I recently got one free, and then found moto4lin, very impressive all up. If she wants an all in one, PDA then you can get moto's that are linux embedded. IIRC there is also an Australian manufacturer that is bringing out an embedded linux pda/phone. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] PDA/phone/linux
I'll add my 2c - I bought an o2 Atom PDA/Phone about 6 months ago, and it's a decision I'm quite happy with, despite it being a Windows Mobile device. I honestly have no idea how I lived without it before. http://www.seeo2.com/product/XdaAtomExec/template/Product.vm The Atom is a very small, slim phone/PDA, which was the biggest reason why I bought it. Previously I've used small phones + larger PDA's via bluetooth (both a Linux Zaurus, and other Palm/Windows PDA's), and I'd often leave the thing home because of the bulk of a normal sized PDA + a phone, so it wasn't utilised effectively, and I saw little to no benefit to owning a PDA. I use my Atom *all* the time. Yes, it's a Windows Mobile device, and oh yes, it's buggy as hell. I reset the phone at least once a week, it does stupid stupid shit, and I do get frustrated with the thing at times, but overall it's actually a pretty sweet device, and it's the least buggy Windows Mobile device I've used (with latest firmware et al), which at least says something. It's a phone, PDA, voice recorder, MP3 player, in-car GPS navigation (*so* bloody useful), basic web browser/ssh client via wifi or gprs, occasional game unit, etc. I hate to say it, but the convenience wins over the frustration - it's made my life a heck of a lot easier since owning it. Talk to me 12 months ago about owning a Windows Mobile device (or even repeating the immediate last sentence I just wrote) and I'd have argued with you the opposite until I was blue in the face :-) I'm really looking forward to Trolltech's phone stuff - if somebody releases a hackable Linux PDA/phone around the size of the Atom, and it ran a pretty sweet PDA application stack (I was never impressed with Linux as a PDA on my Zaurus, but it still makes for one hell of a cool geek toy), I'd buy one in an instant. I'm really hoping that'll happen in 2007. R On Mon, Nov 06, 2006 at 07:09:06PM +1100, Alexander Samad wrote: > On Mon, Nov 06, 2006 at 03:01:25PM +1100, Voytek Eymont wrote: > > > > On Mon, November 6, 2006 1:31 pm, Matthew Hannigan wrote: > > > On Mon, Nov 06, 2006 at 12:30:21PM +1100, david wrote: > > > > > I'm going to be /really/ annoying and ask whether > > > you really need a pda phone :-). > > > > most ppl I know seem to think , yes' > > The one advantage of having the 2 together is you can dial straight from your > contact list. for example open calendar, view appointment, look at > invitees and open contact details and then ring, instead of having to > transfer phone number by hand or having to keep 2 contact db in sync > phone -> pda -> laptop.. > > I have a hp PDA/phone - I think I would rather have 2 seperate gagets, > except for the above scenario > > > > > I thought about it, whether I should get a Treo or Palm handheld > > my considered decision was Palm h/h, NOT phone > > > > > > > I think most people would be better off with a separate > > > phone and a PDA. Having a slim/small phone is good, and being a PDA is > > > incompatible with "slim". > > > > ditto, exactly my opinion > > > > > > > > So what you should look for is a small phone > > > with good connectivity to communicate with the PDA. > > > > that's what I'd do/have done. > > > > but, it seems most ppl feel the need for 'single device' > > not optimal from where I sit > > > > > > > > -- > > Voytek > > > > -- > > SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ > > Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html > > > -- > SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ > Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] PDA/phone/linux
On Mon, November 6, 2006 8:10 pm, Ryan Verner wrote: > I'll add my 2c - I bought an o2 Atom PDA/Phone about 6 months ago, and > it's a decision I'm quite happy with, despite it being a Windows Mobile > device. I honestly have no idea how I lived without it before. that's the one, or, followup model, what one of my friends got to replace his Palm PDA, a while back; likewise, you mirror his comments; -- Voytek -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] similar to Yakuake for Gnome?
Acutally ben I found something almost exactly fits what you described http://forgeftp.novell.com//greent/homepage/index.html On 11/6/06, James Dumay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Sorry Ben I don't know anything that has the behavior described - perhaps you can check www.gnomefiles.org ? Good Luck :) James On 11/6/06, Ben <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On 11/6/06, James Dumay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > On 11/6/06, Ben <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > I'm looking for a Gnome terminal emulator with similar features to > > yakuake: > > > * rollup/down in response to ` key, > > > > Explain this a little bit better :P > > In Quake you could hit the ` (back quote) key, or maybe it was ~, and > a terminal window would shoot down from the top of the screen, and > take up about half the screen. You could use it to enter cheat codes, > configure server options, etc. > > Yakuake works the same way. It responds to F12 by default, but I > changed it to `. > > It slides down from the top of the screen, as an always on top window. > If I hit ` again, it just slides back up. When it's up, you can't see > it. In XGL it was visible on all four sides of the cube at once (when > rolled down) > > Ben > -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] [OT] SQL Server 2005 SP2
Hey, WAY off topic but did anyone get a copy of SQL Server 2005 SP2 before Microsoft pulled it from their website? I need it for testing on Vista. ~James -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] PDA/phone/linux
On 11/7/06, Voytek Eymont <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Mon, November 6, 2006 8:10 pm, Ryan Verner wrote: > I'll add my 2c - I bought an o2 Atom PDA/Phone about 6 months ago, and > it's a decision I'm quite happy with, despite it being a Windows Mobile > device. I honestly have no idea how I lived without it before. that's the one, or, followup model, what one of my friends got to replace his Palm PDA, a while back; likewise, you mirror his comments; Friend of mine likes his atom, but says that o2 service sux big ones. He's been waiting a few weeks to get his back from service. Not the first time either. -- Christopher -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Novell and Microsoft
Sadly, having an algorithm coded in open source doesn't protect one from the patent lawyers. For instance LAME (despite it's acronym) is a GPL implementation of a MP3 encoder. Hence basically anyone can use this code, under the terms of the GPL. However any MP3 implementation contains algorithms patented by the Fraunhofer Institute. So no matter how you write the code, you still infringe upon the ideas articulated in their patents. So while Fraunhofer cannot stop you distributing the code as a published work, they can potentially want you to licence the use of their patented algorithm in a product. But that licence doesn't usually go with the code, but with the product that implements it. ALso section 7 of the GPL specifically says that must cease distribution of GPL software if you believe it to be infringing on someone else's intellectual property. So my understanding of the agreements is that Microsoft are basically saying to Novell - "You full well know that some of the code in SuSE Linux infringes on our IP". (From elsewhere I read that this would possibly in things like Mono, OpenOffice, Samba, etc). "But because we have this arrangement, we will not enforce you to meet your patent obligations" (I would presume there might also be bits of Novell's IP that Microsoft uses but hasn't paid for to date). So Microsoft is providing protection for the product, rather than the code. Therefore it would not automatically pass protection on to other products with the same source code. Of course the big problem with software patents, is that often seem to cover the smallest algorithm, and also seem to often cover ideas that have been obvious for ages, been implemented before, yet no one prior to the patent holder bothered to register their idea. (I am not a lawyer either :-) ) Regards, Martin On 11/7/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Mon, Nov 06, 2006 at 10:50:57PM +1100, Ben wrote: > On 11/6/06, tuxta2 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >What do you people think? > >I would be very interested to hear some opinions. > > This comment seems to be realistic, except for the finishing off bit. > I think Microsoft has much more to gain by keeping Linux around and > selling IP licenses for it. > http://news.linux.com/comments.pl?sid=37578&cid=92628 > > Humour piece, apparently from 1995: > http://www.usd.edu/~bwjames/humor/ms/novel.html > > FSF article from April this year: > http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/ms-vs-eu/article-20060421.en.html > > My thought on Microsoft's strategy: > embrace, extend, and emasculate or enslave. > > If software patents are widely recognised then Microsoft can force > Linux to be nothing more than a backyard hobby, or charge for it, all > while appearing not to be a monopoly, because after all, it's > reasonable to charge for > your IP, right? Am I missing something can't we just take the code from Novell and apply any patches to bring it up to where it is now and carry on from there, doesn't that give every one Novell's protection ? or something along those lines. ps I am not a lawyer . > > FSF won't push the GPL issue, because if they do, Microsoft will > threaten litigation against other distros on patent grounds. The FSF > will be able to go ahead and most likely lose, or back off and cement > the validity of software patents. > > The only way Linux will last as an independant force in the long run > is to fight software patents. We need to make sure there is at least > one major market where the patents don't have force. If you have to > license Linux in the USA, but not in the EU, Microsoft will be > tortured by the USA corporations, so they won't push it until they've > made the EU think licensing is OK, which is why Novell is such a good > ally for them, as it's the strong in the EU. > > Ben > -- > SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ > Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html > -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFFT6TGkZz88chpJ2MRAqVoAJ46G3xXY5KS3fs4GVjhEm8WXwrdFQCgzjRU VpvvAox+WoWljoId1Fwib2g= =RYv8 -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -- Regards, Martin Martin Visser -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Novell and Microsoft
The Novell/MS should really mean nothing to developers who respect intellectual property of Microsoft - Microsoft and Novell under the deal (and any Novell customer) are able to share each others respective intellectual property and allow external developers to extend and contribute to those projects. People crying about the entire community not getting covered simply don't get it... You can be sued now and you could be sued before the deal if you infringe on someones intellectual property and in some cases, rightly so. Novell are not handing the keys out to anyones castles, as GPL'd and similarly licensed software will stay open and free - Novell can't give this away on their own terms. Also take in the fact that the deal is very much product differentiation for Novell - offering security in the knowledge that Microsoft will not come for their first born son any time soon. James On 11/7/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Mon, Nov 06, 2006 at 10:50:57PM +1100, Ben wrote: > On 11/6/06, tuxta2 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >What do you people think? > >I would be very interested to hear some opinions. > > This comment seems to be realistic, except for the finishing off bit. > I think Microsoft has much more to gain by keeping Linux around and > selling IP licenses for it. > http://news.linux.com/comments.pl?sid=37578&cid=92628 > > Humour piece, apparently from 1995: > http://www.usd.edu/~bwjames/humor/ms/novel.html > > FSF article from April this year: > http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/ms-vs-eu/article-20060421.en.html > > My thought on Microsoft's strategy: > embrace, extend, and emasculate or enslave. > > If software patents are widely recognised then Microsoft can force > Linux to be nothing more than a backyard hobby, or charge for it, all > while appearing not to be a monopoly, because after all, it's > reasonable to charge for > your IP, right? Am I missing something can't we just take the code from Novell and apply any patches to bring it up to where it is now and carry on from there, doesn't that give every one Novell's protection ? or something along those lines. ps I am not a lawyer . > > FSF won't push the GPL issue, because if they do, Microsoft will > threaten litigation against other distros on patent grounds. The FSF > will be able to go ahead and most likely lose, or back off and cement > the validity of software patents. > > The only way Linux will last as an independant force in the long run > is to fight software patents. We need to make sure there is at least > one major market where the patents don't have force. If you have to > license Linux in the USA, but not in the EU, Microsoft will be > tortured by the USA corporations, so they won't push it until they've > made the EU think licensing is OK, which is why Novell is such a good > ally for them, as it's the strong in the EU. > > Ben > -- > SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ > Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html > -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFFT6TGkZz88chpJ2MRAqVoAJ46G3xXY5KS3fs4GVjhEm8WXwrdFQCgzjRU VpvvAox+WoWljoId1Fwib2g= =RYv8 -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] PDA Phone
David, I can tell what not to get... I bought a HP Ipaq 6515 at one point in time - it was a brilliant concept - converged PDA, phone, GPS, etc.. The problem with it and the prior model that I upgraded from was the incessant need to reset it at times nearly every hour. IT wouldn't run third party software at all well - typical m$ imMobile v5 crapware, as a matter of fact it couldn't even run its own software - I'd get a phone call and could not answer it, not for quids, push the soft key on the screen - no joy, same for the green button on the set itself, would end up having to reset it and ring back, most infuriating at the time, for the money that you pay for them they are just not worth the aggro. In the end it had pissed me off so badly I was about to throw it on the ground and stomp on it, but I thought better of it and took it back from whence it came and demanded my money back, this happened all within the space of 10 days of use! Not to mention crappy hardware as well - within the first hour of use the belt holster clip rivets sheared off and the PDA half of the holster fell to the ground, fortunately without the PDA in it, it got caught on the seatbelt on the way out the door of the car. The only thing securing your then $1200 PDA to your belt were 3 x 3mm 'plastic rivets', no solid metal here to protect your investment as once you drop it - your warranty is history, I suspect it is part of the game plan to sell more PDA's, they blame it on you for not being more careful when the reality of it is that mobile phones get bashed around, they get dropped, they know this but they do not engineer it in to the design of the device. I couldn't get it to sync using synce to linux either, it is a windows only machine. The work around for this was to save everything you did on it to an SD memory chip and get an SD card reader to pick it up using linux. One more thing about it was that I bought it for near $1200 from H N, in the space of time that I had it the price had dropped by $300, definitely do not rush out to buy one, and if you buy one make sure you shop around real hard, e-bay is a place to look but be vewy, vewy careful. I had been looking at the palm treo 700, they are good and do interface with linux, but the camera VGA resolution is a bit poorly considering the money that you pay for them. In the end I gave up on the PDA phone idea and got a '3' Mobile LG 880U camera phone with near the same level of functionality for far far less of a cost - it was a throw in with the connection for a year on a $45 a month plan. As to finding what you need, google for PDA on google, you'll find a myriad of choices there. Cheers, Nick Tomlin. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Novell and Microsoft
On Tue, Nov 07, 2006 at 10:17:15AM +1100, Martin Visser wrote: > > So my understanding of the agreements is that Microsoft are basically saying > to Novell - "You full well know that some of the code in SuSE Linux > infringes on our IP". (From elsewhere I read that this would possibly in > things like Mono, OpenOffice, Samba, etc). "But because we have this > arrangement, we will not enforce you to meet your patent obligations" (I > would presume there might also be bits of Novell's IP that Microsoft uses > but hasn't paid for to date). So Microsoft is providing protection for the > product, rather than the code. Therefore it would not automatically pass > protection on to other products with the same source code. Which would then stop Novell from being able to distribute GPL code, as the GPL also states that you have no rights to distribute if you are paying royalties etc, on distribution. Basically, you can't use patents or other such legal matters to prevent distribution of GPL code if you are distributing it yourself. > > Of course the big problem with software patents, is that often seem to cover > the smallest algorithm, and also seem to often cover ideas that have been > obvious for ages, been implemented before, yet no one prior to the patent > holder bothered to register their idea. > > (I am not a lawyer either :-) ) > > Regards, Martin Byron Hillis -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Novell and Microsoft
On 2006.11.07 10:17 Martin Visser wrote: Sadly, having an algorithm coded in open source doesn't protect one from the patent lawyers. For instance LAME (despite it's acronym) is a GPL implementation of a MP3 encoder. Hence basically anyone can use this code, under the terms of the GPL. However any MP3 implementation contains algorithms patented by the Fraunhofer Institute. So no matter how you write the code, you still infringe upon the ideas articulated in their patents. > ALso section 7 of the GPL specifically says that must cease distribution of GPL software if you believe it to be infringing on someone else's intellectual property. I was always under the impression that mathematics cannot be patented. If the algorithm is mathematics then the patent is invalid (even if it has been "granted" and has patent numbers etc etc). Therefore, clause 7 of the GPL is not infringed. In other words, "Distribute and be Damned!" Robert Thorsby -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] low sound volume
On 5 Nov 2006, Chris Allen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I have a Dell work station (about 3 years old) with external speakers > and Ubuntu 6.06 installed. The sound through the speakers is very low. > > If I turn the volume up to FULL on the screen AND on the the speakers, I > can hear a music CD at a level JUST load enough to be acceptable if > there is there is no outside interference. For DVD videos I must hold > both the external speakers to my ears (at FULL volume). > > We have another PC in the house (MS XP) with external speakers, that my > family use for watching their favorite disks. It's sound can be very > loud indeed. I tested those speakers on my Ubuntu box to see if that > would help. Same problem. > > It seams my system is suppressing the sound volume delivered to > speakers. All the GUI screens about sound that I can find say volume is > up FULL and so is the volume Knob on the speakers themselves. > > I don't kneed sound often and can't be sure when the problem began. I'm > pretty sure it was not a problem when I first installed Ubuntu in > July/August. If you go into the sound controls you may find an internal gain control which also needs to be turned up. -- Martin -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Web based poll/survey software
I am looking for some web based software to run a poll or more of a survey with multiple questions eg Q1 Do you like Pizza? yes/no Q2 What toppings would you like in the future? Q3 Choose your favourite crust. (i) thin (ii) thick (iii) cheesy I have found the VotePlugin and PollPlugin for twiki but not sure if that will do the job. Does anyone have any suggestions for something that can be pretty much dropped into a site hosted by an external Web Host? -- Simon Wong <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Novell and Microsoft
On Tue, 2006-11-07 at 10:39 +1100, Robert Thorsby wrote: > I was always under the impression that mathematics cannot be patented. > If the algorithm is mathematics then the patent is invalid (even if it > has been "granted" and has patent numbers etc etc). Therefore, clause 7 > of the GPL is not infringed. > > In other words, "Distribute and be Damned!" > > Robert Thorsby As I understand it, the patents are on methods rather than specific algorithms. As such you get such gems as "One click shopping" and so on. Whether you consider these patents as valid or not, it is going to present an interesting problem for Novell if someone decides to enforce clause 7. -- James Purser Producer/Presenter - Open Source On The Air A LocalFOSS Production http://www.localfoss.org irc: #localfoss on irc.freenode.net signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Using rsync server on windows to backup a linux box to a windows one
Hi guys, I've installed rsync server for windows and can open a cygwin command prompt and ssh into the box where I want to grab files from. From the linux box I can run rsync and it'll happily go through the following, but not transmit files. rsync --verbose --progress --stats --compress --recursive --times --perms --links /home/mbrown/logs/apache/* 10.0.9.52 building file list ... 3 files to consider rsync[30016] (server receiver) heap statistics: arena: 12952 (bytes from sbrk) rsync[30014] (sender) heap statistics: arena: 45720 (bytes from sbrk) ordblks:2 (chunks not in use) smblks: 0 hblks: 0 (chunks from mmap) hblkhd: 0 (bytes from mmap) usmblks:0 fsmblks:0 uordblks: 38008 (bytes used) fordblks:7712 (bytes free) keepcost:3592 (bytes in releasable chunk) Number of files: 3 Number of files transferred: 0 Total file size: 632864 bytes Total transferred file size: 0 bytes Literal data: 0 bytes Matched data: 0 bytes File list size: 101 Total bytes written: 113 Total bytes read: 20 wrote 113 bytes read 20 bytes 266.00 bytes/sec total size is 632864 speedup is 4758.38 How do I get the linux box to send files to the windows one? I need to back up the entire /home directory and all the subdirectories and files, and I'd rather not have to do it all in one go over the weekend. Do I initiate the command from the Linux machine, or the windows one? If I do it from the windows one I get the following: The authenticity of host ' 10.0.9.1 (10.0.9.1)' can't be established. RSA key fingerprint is e0:26:9b:6e:e4:b6:06:fa:da:e4:c5:6f:32:d1:00:2b. Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes Warning: Permanently added ' 10.0.9.1' (RSA) to the list of known hosts. Administrator@ 10.0.9.1's password: Permission denied, please try again. Administrator@ 10.0.9.1's password: Permission denied, please try again. Administrator@ 10.0.9.1's password: Permission denied (publickey,password,keyboard-interactive). rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (0 bytes received so far) [receiver] rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(459) [receive r=2.6.8] There is no Administrator account on 10.0.9.1. There is root, but if I put in [EMAIL PROTECTED] into the command it won't accept the root password. But if I just try to ssh in, it will. I'm confused. Any ideas? Cheers, Michael. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Using rsync server on windows to backup a linux box to a windows one
On 07/11/06, Michael Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: How do I get the linux box to send files to the windows one? I need to back What do the ssh server logs have to say about this attempt? Also I don't see in your rsync command line that you tell it to use ssh to connect - it probably tries to connect directly to an rsync server. Read "man rsync", section titled "USING RSYNC-DAEMON FEATURES VIA A REMOTE-SHELL CONNECTION" (at least with rsync 2.5.6 on Debian). Administrator@ 10.0.9.1's password: Permission denied, please try again. Administrator@ 10.0.9.1's password: Permission denied, please try again. Administrator@ 10.0.9.1's password: Permission denied (publickey,password,keyboard-interactive). rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (0 bytes received so far) [receiver] rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(459) [receive r=2.6.8] Well - you try to login as user "Administrator" on the Linux box, and you say you don't have such a user so how do you expect this to work? There is no Administrator account on 10.0.9.1. There is root, but if I put in [EMAIL PROTECTED] into the command it won't accept the root password. But if I just try to ssh in, it will. Maybe root is specifically forbidden from logging in directly through ssh ("PermitRootLogin no" in sshd_config), which is generally a good thing(TM). I'm confused. Any ideas? Make sure rsync uses ssh to connect, make sure the user is capable to login to the other side using the private/public key pair (so you don't have to type a password interactively), look at the log files. HTH, --Amos -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] similar to Yakuake for Gnome?
On 11/7/06, James Dumay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Acutally ben I found something almost exactly fits what you described http://forgeftp.novell.com//greent/homepage/index.html That looks great, thanks for searching. I won't be using it though. I've installed over 150MB of dependencies and now I'm finding .exe files? I nearly have all the support I need to run the email viruses I'm smugly avoiding...and it still wants more, so I think I'll just give up, install KDE and try to get yakuake working in Gnome. Thanks for your help. Ben -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] similar to Yakuake for Gnome?
whoa hold on... the only reason Mono executables have a .exe extension is because it is defined in the ecma-international standard for the Common Runtime Language. And it can't execute viruses. Besides, if your using Ubuntu, you have all the dependencies you need. What's so god aweful about .exe? James On 11/7/06, Ben <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On 11/7/06, James Dumay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Acutally ben I found something almost exactly fits what you described > > http://forgeftp.novell.com//greent/homepage/index.html That looks great, thanks for searching. I won't be using it though. I've installed over 150MB of dependencies and now I'm finding .exe files? I nearly have all the support I need to run the email viruses I'm smugly avoiding...and it still wants more, so I think I'll just give up, install KDE and try to get yakuake working in Gnome. Thanks for your help. Ben -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Creating a really really simple .deb package
On Sun, 2006-11-05 at 10:06 +1100, Penedo wrote: > I've never tried this but recently I found dpsyco in my Edge repository - > here is a pointer to the Ubuntu universe copy: > http://packages.ubuntu.com/feisty/admin/dpsyco > there is a slightly newer package in Debian. > > I'd be glad to hear from people who used this thing and understand what it's > really like. > > Cheers, > > --P I installed that, and was very disappointed at there being absolutely no documentation whatsoever to get me started, which I really need, as I'm not at all familiar with this sort of stuff. I found a program called "dpkg-repack" which will build a .deb files out of files on your hard drive that have already been installed. e.g. if I type "sudo dpkg-repack metacity-common" it will grab all the files installed that are owned by metacity-common and stuff them into a .deb file. This technique works with what I'm doing to the point of the version numbers. I have managed to get dpkg-repack to build into a folder, where I can modify the version number in ./DEBIAN/control, but can't seem to build any further from there afterwards. I tried "sudo dpkg-repack --root=./ metacity-common" on the generated folder, but it complained that the package wasn't installed. I suspect --root has to point to a chroot installation or something. Any more pointers? -- Jeremy Visser Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] GPG id: CF13C41A Website: http://narnia.bounceme.net/jeremy/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Using rsync server on windows to backup a linux box to a windows one
Well - you try to login as user "Administrator" on the Linux box, and you say you don't have such a user so how do you expect this to work? I actually didn't specify a username, it defaulted to Administrator. I was thinking this was something that cygwin was doing. I did try specifying root, but that wasn't working either. Maybe root is specifically forbidden from logging in directly through ssh ("PermitRootLogin no" in sshd_config), which is generally a good thing(TM). Yeah, but, no. I can log in as root via ssh. Sorry if that wasn't clear. And it just magically started working so I can log in with rsync now as well. Why it would work now and not before I have no idea, hence the confusion. Thanks for the advice, I'll have a look at the logs and see what happened. Cheers, Michael -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] similar to Yakuake for Gnome?
On 11/7/06, James Dumay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Besides, if your using Ubuntu, you have all the dependencies you need. 150MB needed to be installed (I'm just following the readme) and now nand is spitting out an error because I don't have "vte-sharp-2.0.pc" What's so god aweful about .exe? I guess it's one of those negative association things. You're right, they probably work fine, but 150MB of dependencies and still not enough is a joke and I don't even know where to get hold of vte-sharp2 for Ubuntu.-2.0.pc Yakuake on KDE needed: KDE and... Yakuake. Sure, KDE takes up a fair load of space, but at least then I have KDE. Ben -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] similar to Yakuake for Gnome?
Ben wrote: On 11/7/06, James Dumay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Besides, if your using Ubuntu, you have all the dependencies you need. 150MB needed to be installed (I'm just following the readme) and now nand is spitting out an error because I don't have "vte-sharp-2.0.pc" What's so god aweful about .exe? I guess it's one of those negative association things. You're right, they probably work fine, but 150MB of dependencies and still not enough is a joke and I don't even know where to get hold of vte-sharp2 for Ubuntu.-2.0.pc Yakuake on KDE needed: KDE and... Yakuake. Sure, KDE takes up a fair load of space, but at least then I have KDE. How about saving yourself the pain of compiling it and just download the 30Kb deb for ubuntu? http://forge.novell.com/modules/xfcontent/file.php/greent/releases/0.9.1/greent_0.9.1_all.deb -- dave. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Novell and Microsoft
On Tue, 2006-11-07 at 10:29 +1100, James Dumay wrote: > Novell are not handing the keys out to anyones castles, as GPL'd and > similarly licensed software will stay open and free Yes, but as you point out, > You can be sued now and you could be sued before the deal if you > infringe on someones intellectual property Just because the copyright owner grants you licence to use something of theirs via GPL does not mean that you have right to use any patented technologies belonging to some third party that said software happens to use (willingly or not). As Brendan Scott pointed out in this week's OSWALD email, if the royalty payments indeed covered any (for instance) .Net technologies, then in effect Novell has acquiesced to the legitimacy of those patents. [ie, to be effective, a patent holder has to demonstrate that they are enforcing it. Gaining royalties from someone over it is such evidence]... ...which in turn makes explicit the fact that the rest of the world (ie, anyone not a Novell customer) has NOT been granted a right to use. Incidentally, this has ever been my concern with Mono in GNOME. Nothing against the language, or the project, or any apps written with it. But while _C#_ has been submitted for ECMA standardization, the _framework libraries_ (ie, ".Net", which Mono clones) appears to be heavily patented*, which would seem to put it in the same category as the GIF patent in terms of its free/non-free status, GPL or not. ++ Naturally all concerned will continue to muddy the waters - for example, I and many others are inferring what the "royalty payment" is for (danegeld, perhaps?) and much discussion is based on such speculation. Certainly we can't expect any clarity from the two companies in the subject line... after all, they're out of the line of fire. I rather expect that the entire topic is already far beyond the possibility for dispassionate debate, although SLUG's discussion of it has been quite measured. You should see TLUG in Toronto. Jeesh. AfC Sydney * I'm not an IP lawyer, of course. But I did some cursory searches on CAMBIA's Patent Lens a while back and oh my goodness there are a lot of patents covering .Net. That's fine (ie FOSS fine) if we're all given a worldwide royalty-free grant to use them. That has not been the case. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] similar to Yakuake for Gnome?
Try installing libvte2.0-cil and libvte2.0-cil Mono libraries in debian based operating systems end with a -cil postfix. James On 11/7/06, Ben <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On 11/7/06, James Dumay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Besides, if your using Ubuntu, you have all > the dependencies you need. 150MB needed to be installed (I'm just following the readme) and now nand is spitting out an error because I don't have "vte-sharp-2.0.pc" > What's so god aweful about .exe? I guess it's one of those negative association things. You're right, they probably work fine, but 150MB of dependencies and still not enough is a joke and I don't even know where to get hold of vte-sharp2 for Ubuntu.-2.0.pc Yakuake on KDE needed: KDE and... Yakuake. Sure, KDE takes up a fair load of space, but at least then I have KDE. Ben -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] similar to Yakuake for Gnome?
On 11/7/06, David Gillies <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: How about saving yourself the pain of compiling it and just download the 30Kb deb for ubuntu? Because that would be too easy :-) Working fine now... just need to work out how to set config options... Ben -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] MBR, GRUB .. & a Capital C with a Cedilla
Hi, I've recovered a partition to the point where GRUB recognises its fs (FAT), restored the MBR, and written GRUB to it. However, trying to boot it via LILO or GRUB ends up with what AbiWord describes as "U+00C7 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C WITH CEDILLA" - something I can't Google by. Can anyone suggest what it means ? -- Adam Bogacki, - email: adam(at)bogacki.netafb(at)paradise.net.nz VoIP: sip:agike(at)ekiga.net [Zfone] Key: 0x4E553910 - DABB 4963 8973 7CCD 33C0 DC27 D7C5 F516 4E55 3910 - signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Using rsync server on windows to backup a linux box to a windows one
On 07/11/06, Michael Fox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: What package did you use to install the ssh server onto Windows Server? I am thinking of grabbing something similar to enable sshd on a 2003 server. Just trying to determine the best way to do it. cygwin, open ssh etc. I used cygwin. Specifically, this build of it. http://www.itefix.no/phpws/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=6&MMN_position=23:23 But then I'm using windows XP Pro SP2. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
RE: [SLUG] similar to Yakuake for Gnome?
The YaKuake page on wikipedia suggested Tilda as a GTK+ alternative... http://tilda.sourceforge.net/ I'm going to give it a go later, maybe you'll have better luck with it than greent. HTH, Rog > -Original Message- > From: Ben [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Tuesday, 7 November 2006 1:29 PM > To: James Dumay > Cc: SLUG > Subject: Re: [SLUG] similar to Yakuake for Gnome? > > On 11/7/06, James Dumay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Acutally ben I found something almost exactly fits what you > described > > > > http://forgeftp.novell.com//greent/homepage/index.html > > That looks great, thanks for searching. > > I won't be using it though. I've installed over 150MB of > dependencies and now I'm finding .exe files? I nearly have > all the support I need to run the email viruses I'm smugly > avoiding...and it still wants more, so I think I'll just give > up, install KDE and try to get yakuake working in Gnome. > > Thanks for your help. > > Ben > > -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Creating a really really simple .deb package
On Sat, Nov 04, 2006 at 11:09:34PM +1100, Jeremy Visser wrote: > I would like to know how to create a Debian package that consists of one > file, not generated by source. I have tried using a Makefile that just > copies files and running it with CheckInstall, but have failed to get it > to recognise any changes. I'm not sure what CheckInstall does, but this should be a fairly easy. That said, building your first package has a bit of a learning curve no matter what. Firstly, write your Makefile to do what it needs to do; but make sure you allow for a prefix variable correctly; e.g. --- prefix := /usr install: cp file ${prefix}/share/blah --- This allows you to easily put it in whatever package (deb, rpm, blah) you want. automake makes it easy, if you want to learn it. Put it in a tarball and use dh_make to get the initial framework for the package. Then, your debian/rules file, using CDBS, can be as simple as --- #!/usr/bin/make -f include /usr/share/cdbs/1/class/makefile.mk include /usr/share/cdbs/1/rules/debhelper.mk DEB_MAKE_CLEAN_TARGET:= clean DEB_MAKE_BUILD_TARGET:= all DEB_MAKE_INSTALL_TARGET := install prefix=$(CURDIR)/debian/tmp/usr --- dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot and you're done. However, if you are really interested in learning about Debian packaging, don't use CDBS but build it up by going through the new maintainers guide [1] to actually learn what CDBS does. [1] http://www.debian.org/doc/maint-guide/ -i -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] MBR, GRUB .. & a Capital C with a Cedilla
Adam Bogacki wrote: Hi, I've recovered a partition to the point where GRUB recognises its fs (FAT), restored the MBR, and written GRUB to it. However, trying to boot it via LILO or GRUB ends up with what AbiWord describes as "U+00C7 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C WITH CEDILLA" - something I can't Google by. Can anyone suggest what it means ? Is it a character like this? Ç -- dave. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Creating a really really simple .deb package
On 07/11/06, Jeremy Visser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: I can modify the version number in ./DEBIAN/control, but can't seem to build any further from there afterwards. To quote the dpkg-repack manual: The package can be built from this temporary directory by running "dpkg --build", passing it the generated directory. Cheers, --P -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Novell and Microsoft
On Tue, Nov 07, 2006 at 10:29:21AM +1100, James Dumay wrote: > > The Novell/MS should really mean nothing to developers who respect > intellectual property of Microsoft - Microsoft and Novell under the deal > (and any Novell customer) are able to share each others respective > intellectual property and allow external developers to extend and contribute > to those projects. > Sure, the world is rosier for Novell customers and non-commercial developers, but for the rest of us it's significantly murkier. Microsoft have effectively asserted rights over the creation of software by positioning themselves (with Novell) as arbiters of our community. (Note I said software, not FOSS. It has much broader implications than that, though FOSS is the obvious target.) They only have to say that a project *may* be infringing on their patents and businesses will have to reconsider whether they can use it under threat of licencing - a SCO redux. Granted, this is little different from before, though now the battle lines are drawn a lot more clearly. Now that this precedent has been set, Microsoft's strategy is pretty straight forward: Pick a few high profile projects (Mono, Samba, OpenOffice), sue their biggest commercial users for using "non-Microsoft licenced" software that *may* infringe on their patents, watch as customers flock to Microsoft and Novell seeking indemnity. If Microsoft deems your software to be "unlicenced", how are you going to fight it? You *know* you probably have a legal leg to stand on with GPL (if the software is licenced that way), but how would you as a company fund the fight against the Microsoft behemoth if they ever took you to court? Red Hat call it an innovation tax, and that's exactly what it is. > People crying about the entire community not getting covered simply don't > get it... You can be sued now and you could be sued before the deal if you > infringe on someones intellectual property and in some cases, rightly so. > If you are a non-commercial contributor, you are safe. If you are a commercial contributor, you are not. I don't know about the percentages, but i'd say the split in numbers between the two groups is weighted towards commercial contributors. For Microsoft it's never been about the non-commercial contributor. They don't see the backyard tinkerer as a threat. This deal strikes right at the heart of FOSS in commercial environments. > Novell are not handing the keys out to anyones castles, as GPL'd and > similarly licensed software will stay open and free - Novell can't give this > away on their own terms. > It's quite true they don't have the right to relicence the software they don't hold the copyright of. They *have* flagged companies who contribute to and use FOSS as potential patent violators through their actions. > Also take in the fact that the deal is very much product differentiation for > Novell - offering security in the knowledge that Microsoft will not come for > their first born son any time soon. > And what a big product differentiator that is. As a non-Novell customer, i'd like to keep my first born. Lindsay -- http://slug.org.au/ (Sydney Linux Users Group) http://lca2007.linux.org.au/ (linux.conf.au 2007) http://holmwood.id.au/~lindsay/ (me) -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Creating a really really simple .deb package
Jeremy Visser wrote: This technique works with what I'm doing to the point of the version numbers. I have managed to get dpkg-repack to build into a folder, where I can modify the version number in ./DEBIAN/control, but can't seem to build any further from there afterwards. I tried "sudo dpkg-repack --root=./ metacity-common" on the generated folder, but it complained that the package wasn't installed. I suspect --root has to point to a chroot installation or something. Any more pointers? To rebuild a package, I usually: 1. apt-get source 2. cd 3. dch -i This will open debian/changelog , then you can increment the package version/release/etc, put in changelog info, etc 4. dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -uc -b This will only build the binary packages, no source stuff will be spat out before you run this, make sure that /debian/control is executable At step 4, it might complain about unsatisfied build dependancies. I'm pretty sure there's a nice apt/dpkg automatic way of doing this, but I can't remember what is it. It'll tell you anyhow and you can then do the usual apt-get install -- dave. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Creating a really really simple .deb package
On Tue, 07 Nov 2006 14:29:21 +1100, David Gillies uttered > This will only build the binary packages, no source stuff will be > spat out > > before you run this, make sure that /debian/control is > executable > I suspect you mean /debian/rules here. debian/control contains the information for the source and binary packages built from and contained in the package, whereas debian/rules contains instructions on how to build them. Cheers, -- Steve C offers you enough rope to hang yourself. C++ offers a fully equipped firing squad, a last cigarette and a blindfold. - Erik de Castro Lopo -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Novell and Microsoft
On 11/7/06, James Purser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Tue, 2006-11-07 at 10:39 +1100, Robert Thorsby wrote: > I was always under the impression that mathematics cannot be patented. > If the algorithm is mathematics then the patent is invalid (even if it > has been "granted" and has patent numbers etc etc). Therefore, clause 7 > of the GPL is not infringed. > > In other words, "Distribute and be Damned!" > > Robert Thorsby As I understand it, the patents are on methods rather than specific algorithms. As such you get such gems as "One click shopping" and so on. I thought the RSA patent and the GIF patent were both for specific algorithms? cf http://www.cyberlaw.com/rsa.html which outlines the ways in which an algorithm can be patented... -- There is nothing more worthy of contempt than a man who quotes himself - Zhasper, 2004 -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Creating a really really simple .deb package
Steve Kowalik wrote: On Tue, 07 Nov 2006 14:29:21 +1100, David Gillies uttered This will only build the binary packages, no source stuff will be spat out before you run this, make sure that /debian/control is executable I suspect you mean /debian/rules here. debian/control contains the information for the source and binary packages built from and contained in the package, whereas debian/rules contains instructions on how to build them. Oops, yes, you're right :-) -- dave. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] U+00C7, LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C WITH CEDILLA
I hope I'm not just wasting your time with something too obvious to say, but the "U+00C7" should be what you get when you use the character map accessory and click on a latin capital c cedilla. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Creating a really really simple .deb package
On Tue, 2006-11-07 at 14:21 +1100, Penedo wrote: > On 07/11/06, Jeremy Visser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > I can modify the version number in ./DEBIAN/control, but can't seem to > > build any further from there afterwards. > > > To quote the dpkg-repack manual: > > The package can be built from this temporary directory by running "dpkg > --build", passing it the generated directory. Cool, that works! I now have a .deb of the ttf-xfree86-nonfree package with the version at "4.2.1-3jeremy1". Nice. I've also tried the other methods, but this one just happened to be the one that I worked out first. The methods involving a Makefile, or the dpsyco method sound like better ideas, but doing it this way works for now. -- Jeremy Visser Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] GPG id: CF13C41A Website: http://narnia.bounceme.net/jeremy/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[Fwd: Re: [SLUG] Novell and Microsoft]
As a budding software developer, I find this copyright and intellectual property topic increasingly tragic. Where does it end? Who doesn't copy ideas? Didn't Microsoft develop Windows 3.1 by borrowing the GUI idea from Apple ( and subsequently squashing them). Now they want to protect themselves from what they did to others. Or perhaps they want to continue to squash any other alternative to them ( or better put "Resistance is futile" It might seem okay to protect ones self from being plagarised but where is the line that stops it going into the rediculous (if it hasn't already). I bet in 20yrs time my high school teacher will be able to sue me for using an idea he/she taught me. It is just getting stupid With governments continually allowing these parasites to squash invention (and making Australia even more the slave of the US and its Corporate feudalism) we will fast become a nation of consumers that can do nothing but sell off resources to support our need to obey advertisers and consume. It is a bit like that line of that movie "in space no one can hear you scream" To me, that is how it seems to be becoming for those who want to make a career out of software developement I appologise if this seems like some esoteric eccentric rant. but I just had to contribute something Regards Phill O'Flynn PS I am NOT anti american but there are certain aspects of their culture (like encouraging of unrestrained greed) that the rest of the world is better off without - Original Message - Subject: Re: [SLUG] Novell and Microsoft From:"Lindsay Holmwood" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tue, November 7, 2006 2:24 pm To: "SLUG List" On Tue, Nov 07, 2006 at 10:29:21AM +1100, James Dumay wrote: > > The Novell/MS should really mean nothing to developers who respect > intellectual property of Microsoft - Microsoft and Novell under the deal > (and any Novell customer) are able to share each others respective > intellectual property and allow external developers to extend and contribute > to those projects. > Sure, the world is rosier for Novell customers and non-commercial developers, but for the rest of us it's significantly murkier. Microsoft have effectively asserted rights over the creation of software by positioning themselves (with Novell) as arbiters of our community. (Note I said software, not FOSS. It has much broader implications than that, though FOSS is the obvious target.) They only have to say that a project *may* be infringing on their patents and businesses will have to reconsider whether they can use it under threat of licencing - a SCO redux. Granted, this is little different from before, though now the battle lines are drawn a lot more clearly. Now that this precedent has been set, Microsoft's strategy is pretty straight forward: Pick a few high profile projects (Mono, Samba, OpenOffice), sue their biggest commercial users for using "non-Microsoft licenced" software that *may* infringe on their patents, watch as customers flock to Microsoft and Novell seeking indemnity. If Microsoft deems your software to be "unlicenced", how are you going to fight it? You *know* you probably have a legal leg to stand on with GPL (if the software is licenced that way), but how would you as a company fund the fight against the Microsoft behemoth if they ever took you to court? Red Hat call it an innovation tax, and that's exactly what it is. > People crying about the entire community not getting covered simply don't > get it... You can be sued now and you could be sued before the deal if you > infringe on someones intellectual property and in some cases, rightly so. > If you are a non-commercial contributor, you are safe. If you are a commercial contributor, you are not. I don't know about the percentages, but i'd say the split in numbers between the two groups is weighted towards commercial contributors. For Microsoft it's never been about the non-commercial contributor. They don't see the backyard tinkerer as a threat. This deal strikes right at the heart of FOSS in commercial environments. > Novell are not handing the keys out to anyones castles, as GPL'd and > similarly licensed software will stay open and free - Novell can't give this > away on their own terms. > It's quite true they don't have the right to relicence the software they don't hold the copyright of. They *have* flagged companies who contribute to and use FOSS as potential patent violators through their actions. > Also take in the fact that the deal is very much product differentiation for > Novell - offering security in the knowledge that Microsoft will not come for > their first born son any time soon. > And what a big product differentiator that is. As a non-Novell customer, i'd like to keep my first born. Lindsay -- http://slug.org.
[SLUG] Making Links 2006 Conference
Does any one know whether anyone from SLUG or LINUX Australia will be attending the Making Links Conference. The two day conference will address ICT capacity, infrastructure and community-building potential for the not-for-profit sector. http://www.makinglinks.org.au/ -- Craig Warner 25 Tudor Street Surry Hills NSW 2010 Ph: (02) 9319 6185 Mobile: 0421 739 747 Skype: craig.f.m.warner Ekiga: surfless Metallurgist, Linux and Cisco enthusiast. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Setting the date format in Thunderbird
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 For the life of me I can't find (and I swear I've googled this before to no avail) where to set the time/date format in Thunberbird. Does anyone know how to do this? It seems to completely ignore the locale settings of my system (en_AU) and go for en_US. - -- dave. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFFUBM+hPPdWeHRgaoRAqbIAKCjsEm1S9jKKMNSJpORCa+9gnhSuACbBVz9 fUfC5qYQ3ZSIlmi6dDmrevE= =+BzF -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
RE: [SLUG] Making Links 2006 Conference
As I'm aware, Pia Waugh, Vice President of Linux Australia, will be in attendance. Regards, Mitch Seaton -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Craig Warner Sent: Tuesday, 7 November 2006 5:04 PM To: slug@slug.org.au Subject: [SLUG] Making Links 2006 Conference Does any one know whether anyone from SLUG or LINUX Australia will be attending the Making Links Conference. The two day conference will address ICT capacity, infrastructure and community-building potential for the not-for-profit sector. http://www.makinglinks.org.au/ -- Craig Warner 25 Tudor Street Surry Hills NSW 2010 Ph: (02) 9319 6185 Mobile: 0421 739 747 Skype: craig.f.m.warner Ekiga: surfless Metallurgist, Linux and Cisco enthusiast. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Intellectual property for newbie programmers (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [SLUG] Novell and Microsoft])
Phill O'Flynn wrote: > > As a budding software developer, I find this copyright and intellectual property > topic increasingly tragic. Where does it end? Who doesn't copy ideas? Didn't > Microsoft develop Windows 3.1 by borrowing the GUI idea from Apple ( and > subsequently squashing them). Now they want to protect themselves from what they did > to others. Or perhaps they want to continue to squash any other alternative to them > ( or better put "Resistance is futile" Let me clarify things a little for those getting started in the programming side of things. There's three different things you need to care about, and they have completely different impacts. Since there seems to be a little confusion in your comments, let me clarify in simple points. These are extraordinarily hand-waving definitions, but hold true for the most part. 1. Copyright. - Don't cut and paste other people's code without asking them. - Don't use someone else's module/API unless you agree to their terms. Plagiarism fits mostly into here, but in the academic and media sense, it's altered somewhat to... - Cut and paste all you like but ALWAYS say where you got it from. Open Source (in the extreme broadest sense of the term) is a massive positive for you here, because it lets YOU make a legally enforcable deal where you let other people copy your work, as long as you can copy theirs back again if you want to. Free Software extends this idea further, but in the most general share-and-share-alike sense it's similar. 2. Trademark - Don't steal someone's logo in a similar industry. - Don't use someone else's name in a similar industry. - Don't "sort of" do either of the above in a similar industry. Basically, don't present yourself to the public in a way that the average layman might get confused and think you are them. And even more strictly, don't ever make money off the similarity. Trademarks are why the Microsoft Pillow Factory on the Princes Highway in Tempe (no really, this actually exists) is completely safe, while a notional "Open Source Microsoftware" company or something that used the "four colours" windows pattern could be in trouble. 3. Patents While copyright and trademarks are quite clear and work pretty well, patents are another story. A patent, fundamentally, goes like this. - You have an awesome idea that isn't obvious to anyone else. Imagine you are the first person to invent gold plating. - You can make a huge of money from it, as long as nobody else knows. Imagine nobody has seen gold cups and forks except for solid gold ones owned by kings and great figures, and now YOU can eat like a king for only $199.90 per fork! - So you go to huge lengths to keep it secret. You never write down the chemical solution formula, and you guard carefully the machines in sealed buildings and you make the machines so only you can operate them. - You die, and because of the extreme secrecy, your idea is lost to society. This, obviously, is very very bad. Forget gold plating, imagine losing the ability to make penicilin. So society does a deal with the devil. - Society lets you exploit your idea in the open, but do so AS IF you had kept it secret. So society enforces your "secrecy" (exclusivity/monopoly) and lets you make even MORE money quickly, because you don't have to go to the efforts to keep it secret. - In exchange, Society forces you to tell it in extreme detail EXACTLY what your great idea is. Now when you die (or rather, in 20 years), all of society benefits and your idea isn't lost. In fact, in any patent application the standard of documentation to this day remains something similar to, "Enough detail so anyone else in your industry could copy your idea" And over the course of history, this deal with the devil has worked pretty well. Much of the key technical and applied scientific knowledge of mankind is stored in the vast patent office collections, and mankind advances on a (relatively short) 20 year delay without losing the ideas. So patents themselves are not inherently bad, even in it. That's a somewhat unpopular idea in this community, but I note that Donald Knuth holds the same position. The problem for us is that the standard of judging what is "obvious" and what isn't in IT is dangerously bad, and when you look at the speed of the IT industry compared to, say, chemistry or engineering or biology, 20 years is just a ridiculously long period of time. In this sense, software patents are completely broken. --- So what should you do then. If you are wanting to be a programmer, you should learn how copyright law works (to the extent you reasonably can without becoming a lawyer), and learn how trademarks work (to the extent you reasonably can without becoming a lawyer) and more or less ignore how patents are SUPPOSED to work, leave campaigning for change to people like Pia and