Re: [ubuntu-uk] Digital economy bill

2010-04-10 Thread Gordon Joly
On 07/04/2010 09:52, Thomas Ibbotson wrote:
 On 6 April 2010 23:18, doug liveseybiot...@gmail.com  wrote:

 And if you're as appalled as other people, this may come in
 handy: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/speakout/extremeinternetl
 You never know -- democracy might actually work.
 I know, I know ...

  
 Ok I've emailed my MP.


I have emailed mine,  I got an email reply on Tuesday and he has 
promised to write back to me in detail.

Gordon

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Re: [ubuntu-uk] Digital economy bill

2010-04-10 Thread Gordon Joly

On 08/04/2010 10:14, pa...@fossbox.org.uk wrote:

Also worth pointing out that GPL isn't threatening intellectual property
protection -- it*is*  a form of intellectual property protection - it
just protects intellectual liberty rather than protecting the rich from
a slight dip in their indecently inflated incomes.

Paula

   

GPL: a *viral* form of intellectual property protection?

Gordo


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Re: [ubuntu-uk] Digital economy bill

2010-04-10 Thread Gordon Joly
On 08/04/2010 11:25, Alan Lord (News) wrote:
 If you check Hansard you even see which way, or if, your MP voted:

 http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmtoday/cmdebate/32.htm



That gave me a 404... I found this:

http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2009-10/digitaleconomy.html

Gordo


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Re: [ubuntu-uk] Digital economy bill

2010-04-10 Thread Ashley Whetter
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Sounds like a right shambles.  I contacted my local MP who I see on the

list didn't vote at all, kinda makes me wonder if there is any point in

MP's if they don't listen to the constituents.


I also contacted my MP who said he and every other Liberal MP would be
voting against it. It wouldn't have made a difference but I still can't
believe he didn't vote and that so few voted against it.

Ashley

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Re: [ubuntu-uk] Digital economy bill

2010-04-10 Thread LeeGroups


 Sounds like a right shambles.  I contacted my local MP who I see
 on the

 list didn't vote at all, kinda makes me wonder if there is any
 point in

 MP's if they don't listen to the constituents.


 I also contacted my MP who said he and every other Liberal MP would be
 voting against it. It wouldn't have made a difference but I still can't
 believe he didn't vote and that so few voted against it.

 Ashley
Perhaps you ought to contact him again and ask why he didn't vote, and 
point out to him that this is perhaps why the public currently have such 
a low regard for MPs...

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[ubuntu-uk] Dell Inspiron Mini 10v

2010-04-10 Thread Barry Drake
Hi there .

I've been lurking and listening for a while.  You seem a friendly group, 
so I thought I'd leap in.

A couple of weeks ago I bought a Dell Inspiron Mini 10v pre-loaded with 
Ubuntu.  Now I've got it working as I want I have to say I'm over the 
moon with the product.  But I fail to understand the attitude of Dell.  
They seem to act as though the only sell Linux products grudgingly.  
Before I bought, I wanted to know what flavour of Ubuntu I would get.  
With difficulty, the sales team were able to confirm that it would come 
with Hardy 8.04.  'What flavour' was a question they simply didn't 
understand!

It came with a very heavily customised version of 8.04.  Frankly, I 
didn't like it a lot, and am now running Lucid beta (Netbook edition) 
and the whole thing is fantastic!

Also, the Mini 10v only has 8 Gig of hard drive.  Why, Oh why do Dell 
insist on including a 1.4 Gig recovery partition?  I didn't spend long 
looking, but never found a way of booting into it!  And the manual only 
tells how to use it from Windows!!!

The supplied restore DVD gives no configuration options at all.  If you 
run it, it re-partitions the HD just as factory supplied.

As you can imagine, my system now uses the whole drive.

Complaints on the Dell forums are always about the amazingly slow speed 
of the Mini V10.  Mine runs at least as fast as my fairly up to date 
Windows XP PC.  The complaints usually come from Windows 7 users.

Dell have a great little Netbook here.  Why must they spoil it?

Oh, the other thing is I wanted a fallback.  I have a nice little Puppy 
Linux installed on a 250 Meg card, and I've added partimage to it.  It 
really is a lovely way of getting back to a stable installation if any 
of the regular upgrades goes sour on me.

On a completely different point, someone here mentioned an exhibition 
where there were some OU folk competing an old Windows machine against 
Ubuntu    A short while back, someone gave me two Pentium iii PC's 
built for Windows 98.  I was going to strip them down, but just for fun, 
I tried U-Lite on them.  They turned out to be VERY serviceable, and 
better than they ever were on Win 98.  It just goes to show .

What's my involvement?  With the Linux community, very little so far.  
I've been around for years as part of the Sword Project (Bible software 
that is completely cross-platform).  I've done quite a bit of work on 
Windows, Linux, and Windows Moblle.

Barry

-- From Barry Drake (The Revd) Health and Healing advisor to the East Midlands 
Synod of the United Reformed Church.  See http://www.urc5.org.uk/index for 
information about the synod, and http://www.urc5.org.uk/?q=node/703 for the 
Synod Healing pages.

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Re: [ubuntu-uk] Digital economy bill

2010-04-10 Thread CShadowRun
LeeGroups wrote:
 Sounds like a right shambles.  I contacted my local MP who I see
 on the

 list didn't vote at all, kinda makes me wonder if there is any
 point in

 MP's if they don't listen to the constituents.


 I also contacted my MP who said he and every other Liberal MP would be
 voting against it. It wouldn't have made a difference but I still can't
 believe he didn't vote and that so few voted against it.

 Ashley
 
 Perhaps you ought to contact him again and ask why he didn't vote, and 
 point out to him that this is perhaps why the public currently have such 
 a low regard for MPs...

   
I contacted my MP through 38 degrees, never received a reply, he also 
didn't vote. :(

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Re: [ubuntu-uk] Dell Inspiron Mini 10v

2010-04-10 Thread Bruno Girin
On Sat, 2010-04-10 at 12:36 +0100, Barry Drake wrote:
 Hi there .
 
 I've been lurking and listening for a while.  You seem a friendly group, 
 so I thought I'd leap in.
 
 A couple of weeks ago I bought a Dell Inspiron Mini 10v pre-loaded with 
 Ubuntu.  Now I've got it working as I want I have to say I'm over the 
 moon with the product.  But I fail to understand the attitude of Dell.  
 They seem to act as though the only sell Linux products grudgingly.  
 Before I bought, I wanted to know what flavour of Ubuntu I would get.  
 With difficulty, the sales team were able to confirm that it would come 
 with Hardy 8.04.  'What flavour' was a question they simply didn't 
 understand!

Well, I suppose that they consider it a niche product and haven't
trained their staff in answering questions related to it.

 
 It came with a very heavily customised version of 8.04.  Frankly, I 
 didn't like it a lot, and am now running Lucid beta (Netbook edition) 
 and the whole thing is fantastic!

How heavily customised? Does it come with non-standard software and
drivers or is it just a case of having it heavily Dell branded?

 
 Also, the Mini 10v only has 8 Gig of hard drive.  Why, Oh why do Dell 
 insist on including a 1.4 Gig recovery partition?  I didn't spend long 
 looking, but never found a way of booting into it!  And the manual only 
 tells how to use it from Windows!!!
 
 The supplied restore DVD gives no configuration options at all.  If you 
 run it, it re-partitions the HD just as factory supplied.

That's what they'd do with Windows so I suspect they never imagined that
Linux users may want anything else.

 
 As you can imagine, my system now uses the whole drive.
 
 Complaints on the Dell forums are always about the amazingly slow speed 
 of the Mini V10.  Mine runs at least as fast as my fairly up to date 
 Windows XP PC.  The complaints usually come from Windows 7 users.
 
 Dell have a great little Netbook here.  Why must they spoil it?
 
 Oh, the other thing is I wanted a fallback.  I have a nice little Puppy 
 Linux installed on a 250 Meg card, and I've added partimage to it.  It 
 really is a lovely way of getting back to a stable installation if any 
 of the regular upgrades goes sour on me.
 
 On a completely different point, someone here mentioned an exhibition 
 where there were some OU folk competing an old Windows machine against 
 Ubuntu    A short while back, someone gave me two Pentium iii PC's 
 built for Windows 98.  I was going to strip them down, but just for fun, 
 I tried U-Lite on them.  They turned out to be VERY serviceable, and 
 better than they ever were on Win 98.  It just goes to show .

I just installed Xubuntu Lucid beta 2 on an old Pentium III (700MHz,
384MB RAM, 8.8GB HDD) and it absolutely flies. Windows 2000 that was
running (or rather crawling) on it until last night would take 1/2 hour
to boot and would be very painful to use. Xubuntu takes 1 minute and 30
seconds to go from on to fully logged in with Wi-Fi connected and
makes it a very usable machine: great for web browsing, listening to
music or using the occasional spreadsheet.

Bruno



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Re: [ubuntu-uk] Dell Inspiron Mini 10v

2010-04-10 Thread Liam Proven
On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 2:21 PM, Bruno Girin brunogi...@gmail.com wrote:

 I just installed Xubuntu Lucid beta 2 on an old Pentium III (700MHz,
 384MB RAM, 8.8GB HDD) and it absolutely flies. Windows 2000 that was
 running (or rather crawling) on it until last night would take 1/2 hour
 to boot and would be very painful to use. Xubuntu takes 1 minute and 30
 seconds to go from on to fully logged in with Wi-Fi connected and
 makes it a very usable machine: great for web browsing, listening to
 music or using the occasional spreadsheet.

To be fair, if you wiped  reinstalled the machine with a fresh clean
copy of Windows 2000, I bet it would fly as well. Of course, then it
needs patching up to date, followed by a visit to the very handy
www.ninite.com to install anti-malware  a bunch of useful apps. So
it's hours more work than with *buntu  of course you need a copy of
Windows  a licence.

But it's not solely a magic property of *buntu, handy as it is. Taking
any old PC, formatting its disks  reinstalling it afresh with a
suitable copy of its original OS or something not too much newer will
always give it a huge new lease of life.

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Re: [ubuntu-uk] Dell Inspiron Mini 10v

2010-04-10 Thread Barry Drake
Bruno Girin wrote:
 How heavily customised? Does it come with non-standard software and
 drivers or is it just a case of having it heavily Dell branded?
Heavily branded, as you'd expect, but annoying things like no easy 
access to upgrades, repositories other than the pre-installed one and so 
on.  I know all these things are easy to overcome with a bit of script 
editing, but it's even easier to start over and re-install the whole 
system.  Other than the software sources gui app, the software is very 
standard, and the only specialised driver required is a Broadcom wifi 
driver that is there in the Ubuntu restricted repo.  I think you are 
right in thinking that Dell regard Linux as 'niche'.  It just seems a shame.

Barry

-- From Barry Drake (The Revd) Health and Healing advisor to the East Midlands 
Synod of the United Reformed Church.  See http://www.urc5.org.uk/index for 
information about the synod, and http://www.urc5.org.uk/?q=node/703 for the 
Synod Healing pages.

Replies - b.dr...@ntlworld.com


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Re: [ubuntu-uk] Dell Inspiron Mini 10v

2010-04-10 Thread Barry Drake
Liam Proven wrote:
 To be fair, if you wiped  reinstalled the machine with a fresh clean
 copy of Windows 2000, I bet it would fly as well.
In the case of the old P3's I mentioned, one of them came to me with XP 
installed and it was almost unusable, hence the reason for throwing it.  
I tried Win 98, and it was still very slow.  With U-Lite, it really 
works for the first time in its life I guess!

Barry

-- From Barry Drake (The Revd) Health and Healing advisor to the East Midlands 
Synod of the United Reformed Church.  See http://www.urc5.org.uk/index for 
information about the synod, and http://www.urc5.org.uk/?q=node/703 for the 
Synod Healing pages.

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Re: [ubuntu-uk] The tablet everyone is talking about..

2010-04-10 Thread Les
I've just bought one from the O2 website.
I spoke to a member of staff in my local store and they said that they
also had no stock (Blackpool).

By the way loving the work that has gone here on this week,you guys are
really up for a challenge.

Les

On Fri, 2010-04-09 at 15:51 +0100, John Stevenson wrote:
 Just bought my Joggler online.  
 
 Talking to assistant in O2 shop, she was saying they are sold out in
 all the shops in London.  New deliveries are expected on Thurdsay
 apparently.
 
 
 -- 
 John Stevenson
 jr0cket.com
 leanagilemachine.com
 Tel: 07909 835 008
 
 Excellent BDD immersion workshop at Skills Matter starts from February
 2010  http://bit.ly/6MwtIW



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Re: [ubuntu-uk] Dell Inspiron Mini 10v

2010-04-10 Thread Bruno Girin
On Sat, 2010-04-10 at 14:30 +0100, Liam Proven wrote:
 On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 2:21 PM, Bruno Girin brunogi...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  I just installed Xubuntu Lucid beta 2 on an old Pentium III (700MHz,
  384MB RAM, 8.8GB HDD) and it absolutely flies. Windows 2000 that was
  running (or rather crawling) on it until last night would take 1/2 hour
  to boot and would be very painful to use. Xubuntu takes 1 minute and 30
  seconds to go from on to fully logged in with Wi-Fi connected and
  makes it a very usable machine: great for web browsing, listening to
  music or using the occasional spreadsheet.
 
 To be fair, if you wiped  reinstalled the machine with a fresh clean
 copy of Windows 2000, I bet it would fly as well. Of course, then it
 needs patching up to date, followed by a visit to the very handy
 www.ninite.com to install anti-malware  a bunch of useful apps. So
 it's hours more work than with *buntu  of course you need a copy of
 Windows  a licence.
 
 But it's not solely a magic property of *buntu, handy as it is. Taking
 any old PC, formatting its disks  reinstalling it afresh with a
 suitable copy of its original OS or something not too much newer will
 always give it a huge new lease of life.

You're right, installing it afresh with a copy of its original OS or
something not too much newer will always make it work better. What is
interesting about installing Xubuntu on it though is that we're talking
about the very latest version of the OS, with modern apps, up to date
security patches and great support online.

So not only is the machine working, in the sense that you can use it,
but it does so to a level where it can integrate into a modern IT
infrastructure,  exchange data with much newer systems and benefit from
a level of support that is on a par with a brand new box. This would not
have been very important 10 years ago but in today's world where
everybody is connected to the net and exchange lolcats with their
friends via facebook, it can make quite a difference.

Bruno



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Re: [ubuntu-uk] Dell Inspiron Mini 10v

2010-04-10 Thread Bruno Girin
On Sat, 2010-04-10 at 14:19 +0100, Barry Drake wrote:
 Bruno Girin wrote:
  How heavily customised? Does it come with non-standard software and
  drivers or is it just a case of having it heavily Dell branded?
 Heavily branded, as you'd expect, but annoying things like no easy 
 access to upgrades, repositories other than the pre-installed one and so 
 on.  I know all these things are easy to overcome with a bit of script 
 editing, but it's even easier to start over and re-install the whole 
 system.  Other than the software sources gui app, the software is very 
 standard, and the only specialised driver required is a Broadcom wifi 
 driver that is there in the Ubuntu restricted repo.  I think you are 
 right in thinking that Dell regard Linux as 'niche'.  It just seems a shame.

That's good to know because it means the hardware is supported out of
the box so if you have the desire and knowledge to re-install the OS
form scratch, you're not locked in with what Dell decided to give you.

It'd be nicer if it was a stock Ubuntu on the box to start with but it's
a step in the right direction.

Bruno



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Re: [ubuntu-uk] Dell Inspiron Mini 10v

2010-04-10 Thread Liam Proven
On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 5:32 PM, Bruno Girin brunogi...@gmail.com wrote:

 You're right, installing it afresh with a copy of its original OS or
 something not too much newer will always make it work better. What is
 interesting about installing Xubuntu on it though is that we're talking
 about the very latest version of the OS, with modern apps, up to date
 security patches and great support online.

 So not only is the machine working, in the sense that you can use it,
 but it does so to a level where it can integrate into a modern IT
 infrastructure,  exchange data with much newer systems and benefit from
 a level of support that is on a par with a brand new box. This would not
 have been very important 10 years ago but in today's world where
 everybody is connected to the net and exchange lolcats with their
 friends via facebook, it can make quite a difference.

True. And whereas (say) Windows 2000 actually is still highly usable,
supporting PCI-E graphics, USB2, stuff like that, it gets very few
security updates, which are mostly for the wretched IE6 - it can't run
anything newer. Firefox 3.6 works fine but Chrome and Safari don't,
nor do current versions of QuickTime, iTunes  various other
proprietary tools.

So, yes, conceded, it's better off with *buntu. But the miraculous
resurrection isn't due solely to *buntu!

I am interested: do people really find Xubuntu much lighter, faster or
more resource-frugal than vanilla GNOME Ubuntu? In my experiments, I
don't,  GNOME offers novice-friendly features like the ability to
lock panel widgets  controls into place, progress bars on file
operations and stuff like that.

When - if - it is ever final, I plan to look at Lubuntu and see how it
fares. It's not there yet, though.

U-Lite is a good option, though.

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Re: [ubuntu-uk] Dell Inspiron Mini 10v

2010-04-10 Thread Barry Drake
Liam Proven wrote:
 When - if - it is ever final, I plan to look at Lubuntu and see how it
 fares. It's not there yet, though.
Any release  8.04 would not boot on either of my old boxes!  Gave up 
with a kernel panic error.  But it was possible to upgrade once the 8.04 
was installed.  As both boxes have the bes part of a Gig of memory, they 
would REALLY fly with Puppy installed, but U-Lite is very fast and very 
usable.  Lubuntu is not possible because it is  8.04!

Barry

-- From Barry Drake (The Revd) Health and Healing advisor to the East Midlands 
Synod of the United Reformed Church.  See http://www.urc5.org.uk/index for 
information about the synod, and http://www.urc5.org.uk/?q=node/703 for the 
Synod Healing pages.

Replies - b.dr...@ntlworld.com


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Re: [ubuntu-uk] Dell Inspiron Mini 10v

2010-04-10 Thread Bruno Girin
On Sat, 2010-04-10 at 17:49 +0100, Liam Proven wrote:
snip
 
 I am interested: do people really find Xubuntu much lighter, faster or
 more resource-frugal than vanilla GNOME Ubuntu? In my experiments, I
 don't,  GNOME offers novice-friendly features like the ability to
 lock panel widgets  controls into place, progress bars on file
 operations and stuff like that.

Well, my completely unscientific comparison between 3 systems currently
running Ubuntu shows the following memory usage when idle:
  * Karmic Ubuntu laptop: ~400MB,
  * Karmic UNR EeePc: ~200MB,
  * Lucid Xubuntu laptop: ~100MB.

The difference is not huge and wouldn't make much of a difference on the
first 2 machines, as they each have 2GB RAM installed. However, the
third one has 384MB RAM so having an OS that uses just above a quarter
of the physical RAM means that it hardly ever swaps, which makes a huge
difference in terms of user response.

In terms of pure processing power, I can't really see a difference
between Ubuntu and Xubuntu so far.

So my first impression is that using Xubuntu rather than Ubuntu really
makes a difference on machines that are limited in physical RAM (say
less than 512MB). This would be compounded on older machines that have a
slow hard disk and for which swapping can kill performance.

At the end of the day, the final word has to be with the end user: in
this case the Xubuntu box is my girlfriend's old laptop that she's being
forced to use while she finds a replacement for her main computer that
recently died and her first reaction in using it today was wow, it's
fast!

Bruno



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Re: [ubuntu-uk] Dell Inspiron Mini 10v

2010-04-10 Thread Liam Proven
On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 7:40 PM, Bruno Girin brunogi...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Sat, 2010-04-10 at 17:49 +0100, Liam Proven wrote:
 snip

 I am interested: do people really find Xubuntu much lighter, faster or
 more resource-frugal than vanilla GNOME Ubuntu? In my experiments, I
 don't,  GNOME offers novice-friendly features like the ability to
 lock panel widgets  controls into place, progress bars on file
 operations and stuff like that.

 Well, my completely unscientific comparison between 3 systems currently
 running Ubuntu shows the following memory usage when idle:
      * Karmic Ubuntu laptop: ~400MB,
      * Karmic UNR EeePc: ~200MB,
      * Lucid Xubuntu laptop: ~100MB.

 The difference is not huge and wouldn't make much of a difference on the
 first 2 machines, as they each have 2GB RAM installed. However, the
 third one has 384MB RAM so having an OS that uses just above a quarter
 of the physical RAM means that it hardly ever swaps, which makes a huge
 difference in terms of user response.

 In terms of pure processing power, I can't really see a difference
 between Ubuntu and Xubuntu so far.

 So my first impression is that using Xubuntu rather than Ubuntu really
 makes a difference on machines that are limited in physical RAM (say
 less than 512MB). This would be compounded on older machines that have a
 slow hard disk and for which swapping can kill performance.

 At the end of the day, the final word has to be with the end user: in
 this case the Xubuntu box is my girlfriend's old laptop that she's being
 forced to use while she finds a replacement for her main computer that
 recently died and her first reaction in using it today was wow, it's
 fast!

Wow! Impressive!

Fair play to you, and thanks for that. Maybe I should give it another look!

Currently have Intrepid NBR running on my Thinkpad X31  whereas there
are a few wrinkles with it, I'm impressed, and it feels faster than
9.x did. I might try Xubuntu as well...

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