February 2002 - openSUSE Edu - openSUSE Mailing Lists

Linux Seminar
by Richard Ibbotson 08 Feb '02

08 Feb '02

Sheffield Linux Users Group (ShefLUG) Some useful info for those of you who haven't yet received it. We will be holding a seminar at Sheffield Wednesday's football ground at Hillsborough... www.swfc.co.uk .... on the 21st of February. Plenty of parking space. Entrance is free. You don't have to pay anything. Lunch will be served. For more info have a look at..... http://www.sheflug.co.uk/seminar.html there is an online booking form so that you can show your interest by providing your own personal details.. http://www.clubukonline.co.uk/local-events/Linux/linux.html we are dealing with registration requests on a first come first served basis. We have a maximum limit of 200 people. So, if you want to come along please do register right away and we'll be able to find you a chair and some lunch. Roger Whittaker will also be there to give a talk on Linux over the past ten years. We need to have a full turn out. Please do tell everyone you know. Hope we see you there on the 21st of February :) Thank you -- Richard Sheffield Linux User's Group - http://www.sheflug.co.uk . GNU the choice of a complete generation. email lists: http://community.uklinux.net/mailman/listinfo/shef-lug

1 0

Mozilla and Seg Fault?
by Paul Munro 08 Feb '02

08 Feb '02

I recently took the painful time to download Mozilla 0.9.7 onto my Linux machine which previously had had an earlier version on using an "Update Agent" provided by the distro (in this case Red Hat). After loading and updating the packages (which went fine apparently), the mozilla links and event he executable from both command line and icons just falls flat! The error is: Segmentation Fault When running: /usr/bin/mozilla or: mozilla Any ideas as to what may be the problem? I've tried rebuilding the RPM database etc, and that hasn't worked. Would it be worth reloading Mozilla or is this a permanent fixture now? Thanks in advance! Paul

3 2

Re: [suse-linux-uk-schools] X based Windows app. server
by Chris Howells 08 Feb '02

08 Feb '02

> From: Mark Evans <mpe(a)st-peters-high.devon.sch.uk> > Whilst it might like native Windows DLLs how > is an application going to know what kind > of file system it is using? Oops, you seem to misunderstand me sligtly ;) I meant "needs a Windows partition" as in "needs to be able to access the DLLs that normally reside on the Windows partition". So of course, the DLLs would be fine on ext[2-3] or reiser or whatever -- you'd just have the fun job of working out where they needed to go ;) > Considering the whole point of the Linux > VFS is to ensure that only fairly low > levels of the kernel need to be bothered > with this. Yes, absolutely. Chris Howells

1 0

Frontpage? [Thanks]
by Paul Munro 08 Feb '02

08 Feb '02

Thanks go to you all for raising some important points, most of which if I read them correctly were focused on the non-standard way MS FP completes web site design in; I agree of course, and will pass on all messages to the parties involved to shed some light. Although the person actually doing the "designing" is a web "newbie", I do think that FP is a little proprietary. I maybe thought of Hotmetal Pro or Quanta myself--but I'm not running the Apache server.. Thanks again! Paul

3 2

Re: Frontpage [Thanks]
by Paul Munro 08 Feb '02

08 Feb '02

Thanks Derek for replying with words of wisdom. I have tried to explain similar things to my Linux using buddy, but to no avail. It seems that between them they are insisting on using Frontpage on ME to design their site with and then load it onto a Linux run home server in the USA provided by another friend...anyway, the link you gave made me chuckle :-) I haven't used "Frontpage" since Frontpage Express in the Windows 95 days, and that wasn't the full product anyway. Appreciate you taking the time to confirm what I thought! Paul

1 0

Re: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Frontpage?
by Edgehill e-mail service 08 Feb '02

08 Feb '02

IMO Frontpage is only for newbies, and for putting together that quick & dirty "We're just building our site for the first time, please bear with us while we learn to hand-code HTML" page. At least it doesn't produce too much broken HTML :) There are better tools (vi or notepad, for example <wry grin> ) One of the rules for web prsence is "keep it STANDARD" - front page extensions are non-standard - and will look mighty odd on older or non-FP extended browsers. Like Flash, you need the viewer as well as the server tools. ---------- > From: Paul Munro <paul.munro1(a)btinternet.com> > To: suse-linux-uk-schools(a)suse.com > Subject: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Frontpage? > Date: 07 February 2002 18:44 > > Hi! > > Quick questions: > > 1. Is Frontpage any good (never used it myself)? > 2. Does Apache support Frontpage/FP Extensions etc.? > > Personally I would use HTML/Dreamweaver/Flash etc but I have a relative who > wants to put up a web site and was recommended FP by a Linux user in the USA > (?). > > Thanks for your advice. > > Paul > > > -- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-unsubscribe(a)suse.com > For additional commands, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-help(a)suse.com > >

3 2

[suse-linux-uk-schools] de-myth-tification (was: Plans for a Linux distro)
by Damian Counsell 08 Feb '02

08 Feb '02

This is a long email, but, I hope, illuminating. It's very difficult to resist the temptation to launch a personal attack on Frank Shute---not least of all because he has no reservations about such behaviour himself. Amusingly, his name appears in quotes whenever it pops up in my mailbox and I am beginning to wonder if 'Frank Shute' is a sort of Alf Garnett of the SuSE-Linux-Schools list, created as a front to troll the mild and reasonable into a frenzy. Oh! for a Slashdot-style moderation system. I am going to give 'Frank Shute' the benefit of the doubt, anyway, and try to concentrate on the points rather than the person. It's easier to separate arguments from an individual when the arguments have been so overused and are so divorced from reality that they already have lives of their own. >That's my point too! They're taking students they really shouldn't be >taking because a decree has gone out that 50% of people should go to >university. So irrespective of the individual merit of an applicant, >university's are feeling compelled into dropping standards to fill >what is by any stretch of the imagination a bogus quota dreamed up by >some think-tank. > This presupposes a wondrous past age when universities admitted students solely on the basis of merit. University entry is a great deal more meritocratic than it has been for a long time. (It's a shame our state secondary education system has simultaneously adopted a system of selection on the basis of house price, thought this has happened by default and is another argument entirely.) It was only relatively recently that UK higher education institutions were obliged to publish objective admission standards. When my dad attended university in the late fifties/early sixties only a small fraction of the population were admitted. Back then a degree was a prize for the elite, yet there were still a significant number of admissions made on arbitrary criteria---old school tie anyone? Unfortunately this class-based elite gave the idea of elitism a bad name. It's an irritating feature of Cambridge life that the railway station has only one proper platform. This was ordered by the university when the station was built to ensure that the "young gentlemen" could be observed by the university authorities and prevented from avoiding lectures. Today you need 5 grade As at 'A' level, grade 8 piano and a gold Duke of Edinburgh award just to get a sniff of the place. (I exaggerate, but only slightly---I had lunch with an geography don at St Catharine's a couple of months ago who confessed in hushed tones she had let someone in with a 'B' once.) Back then most of the students probably had nice titles and wardrobes put precious little of substance to be proud of---though possession of a penis was, of course, an essential prerequisite for entry. There's nothing wrong with saying that "all shall have prizes" (or even "50% shall have prizes") as long as the outside world has a clear sense of the relative "worth" of those prizes---I think we might agree that a degree from Cambridge is possibly more valued in the graduate jobs market than one from Anglia Polytechnic University---and the advertised admissions criteria for each institution vary accordingly. >Whatever, that is not the real point. The thing is that these students get >> access to the courses otherwise quite a few university lecturers are out of a >> job. > > >As I indicated, I don't really care. Why give people jobs if they >aren't worthwhile? > If people are happy to pay for their children to obtain "bogus" degrees, why not let them do so? Our universities educate more people to a higher standard and more cheaply than most equivalent continental institutions and our "worthless" lecturers generate more and better publications from their research than most of their European counterparts at a fraction of the cost. Check out the results of the last Research Assessment Exercise for a level of productivity that would put most other British industries to shame. I was always surprised at the number of Germans I met as an undergraduate student and researcher at Oxford. They came from a primary and secondary educational system that I had admired for years as an exchange student, yet, when I asked them, they all felt that British higher education was far superior. And the German universities (more disorganised, crowded and inefficient than some of our railways) were relatively better than, say the Italian ones. If you don't believe this, read this http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/soe/cihe/newsletter/News15/text14.html review which refers to a survey in "Der Spiegel" (that famous British tabloid) putting British universities ahead of the rest of Europe's as of 1999. >Now we are beginning to suffer the consequences of the more >choice/falling standards/lack of people doing intellectually rigorous >subjects. > >The few who do go and do maths/engineering at university get >immediately cherry-picked by industry for well-paid jobs thus leaving >education to pick up the crumbs for maths/sciences teaching. The >result is declining teaching standards & even fewer students going on >to do maths/science at uni. > This has nothing to do with increased choice/falling standards/lack of rigour and everything to do with paying teachers too little. Put up salaries and the problem would fix itself within two years. Similarly, the "shortage" of well-qualified maths/engineering graduates is just like the shortage of I.T. staff in the late nineties---a result of people in senior management being unwilling to pay the going rate for people sneeringly referred to by the technologically illiterate as "techies". This *does* trickle down, however. If big brother can earn as much with a degree in "meedja studies" as he would with a degree in physics then why should little sister bother with all that calculus and those dead hard sums? There are 71% of science engineering and technology (SET) graduates in full-time employment after graduation, compared with 68% of non-SET graduates in full-time employment (courtesy of the DTI: http://www.dti.gov.uk/ost/setstats/data/5/setstats2001-tab0508.htm ). This is hardly a huge difference in employability given that the non-SET students probably do at least 10 hours less timetabled work per week at uni. Students are simply making a rational choice of subject to study. >The fact is that huge amounts are being wasted to meet the bogus >targets which do nobody any good except the government because they >can then advertise how `successful' they've been & hence get re-elected. > Targets are very useful things, but so are cars---and we all know how dangerous they can be. People who set themselves a list of targets at the start of a day, however, generally achieve more than people who don't. When it comes to government, at least with a target there is something to argue about. I would much rather compare some more-or-less objective performance measure (or argue about its objectivity) than spend time reading an infantile media ruckus about whether or not some old woman was left covered in blood in a hospital waiting room. Public hospital statistics are, like proper public university admissions criteria, shockingly recent innovations which will take time to get right. Methods for calculating UK unemployment figures have varied for decades for political reasons, but now most people use EU criteria which are reasonably reliable and allow for useful comparisons across time and between nations. The same will happen with waiting lists etc. Like many things in a democracy, the obsession with waiting lists arose in response to opposition, public and media demands rather than any real interest on the part of governments. >- Although it's said that IQ has improved, I personally think IQ is > another entirely bogus statistic & can't be measured satisfactorily. > At the start of this paragraph I experienced the transient nausea that, for me, always accompanies agreeing with 'Frank Shute'. Luckily he got back on form by paraphrasing the Nazi "interpretation" (too generous a word, I know) of "Darwinism". >Darwinism would seem to say that since the brain-dead can > live on social security and procreate, people should be getting > thicker > "Darwinism" has never and will never say any such thing. Even if we suppose a population of individuals with inherited mental deficiencies in a persistent vegetative state copulating like rabbits (whoa) there is a phenomenon called recombination which ensures all those scare stories---that there is a supposedly "stupid" subpopulation of humans (usually the too-poor-to-be-educated) reproducing at a faster rate than "the rest of us"---are just that: scare stories. If you want a more extensive tutorial on the scientific shortcomings of the eugenics movement then email me and I'd be happy to oblige with a reading list. >Gross exaggeration. Exams might or might not be easier. Independent >> studies suggest they are different but no easier. > > >Then the studies suck and are done by people who are far from >independent. > I merely quote this "argument" because it condemns itself so eloquently---especially as it actually reads like "ya boo sucks!". And it makes me laugh. I need a laugh. >There was a more varied education available then: Unis, Polys, >Colleges, apprenticeships...and everybody could find their niche. > And everyone knew their place. We really should keep these oiks away from too rigorous an education, especially if their parents can't afford a decent school to give them the right 'A'-level grades. A good solid practical apprenticeship would do some of these simple, working-class youngsters good. Whoops, I'm at it now. >So should we deny these kids on the grounds they can't pass A >> level maths? > > >No, you should deny them on the basis that university isn't the best >place for them to learn such a subject. Education needs to be >stratified but not just on the grounds of academic ability. > Perhaps we should stratify education on the grounds of social class or height, or aptitude with a Game Boy? (Actually, I think we should just keep it as it is and stream students according to the income of their parents ;-) . For all the talk of a "classless society" parental income is still the best predictor of final educational outcomes in this country---it's even more reliable than IQ.) If we have a limited number of places at a football academy, we don't admit students on the basis of the stylishness of their haircuts or their ability to pull in a provincial nightclub---or, indeed, how close their parents live to the training grounds. If we select footballers on their relevant skills, what is wrong with stratifying education on the grounds of academic ability? If we must select in our educational system then it is the only fair way to do it. This is one of very few policies compatible with both left- and right-wing ideologies and yet both sides are reluctant to adopt it---I have my own pretty cynical theories as to why. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is, funnily enough, a quote from Marx. >The exams are easier to pass, there's no question of this - the >results prove it. > The first part of this sentence is worthy of examination (excuse me), but the second part is a complete *non sequitur*. It *is* possible for exam results to improve rapidly across an entire nation over a very short time period in exactly the same way that a country's literacy rates can rise markedly. Indeed, the latter is a far harder achievement which has been reproduced more than once in various locations with no relaxing of criteria. Whether academic attainment has improved or not in England and Wales is a question worthy of subtle and disinterested statistical analysis of a kind I fear may be beyond even the so-called 'Frank Shute'. > Hence, there has to be a wider gap between the >ability of those who scrape a certain grade & those at the top-end of >that grade. A distribution diagram will prove this point. > No it won't. I could begin a disquisition on norm-referencing versus criterion-referencing and the mixture of the two rumoured to be at the heart of English exam boards' grade calculations, but I won't because I'm bored now and it would be like explaining to a skinhead with a broken bottle in his hand why violence is wrong. >the Stalinist govt's bogus targets > Just to round off: our government, for its many faults, is not "Stalinist". Whatever else it is, it could hardly be described as a "nationalizing, totalitarian socialist regime". (And, no, just because lots of other people voted for it, but you didn't, doesn't make it "totalitarian".) I happen to have the day off work today so I have a little time to deal (almost) patiently with one of the more recent displays of wilful ignorance on this list. When the inevitable spluttering, ill-considered reply appears would someone else be interested in carrying the baton of reason? I've got better things to do. -- Damian COUNSELL http://www.counsell.com/

5 5

FP
by ptaylor 08 Feb '02

08 Feb '02

I don't want to go on too much about MS specific issues, though the current debate on Wine is a link of sorts, but I use FirstPage www.evrsoft.com in my school. It is a free FP clone with more features and much more in the spirit of an HTML editor that is more flexible. The kids get on well with it and I use it now and again to update my web pages on the Linux server when I can't get to it easily in the day to use Quanta et al. Paul

1 0

Re: [suse-linux-uk-schools] X based Windows app. server
by Chris Howells 08 Feb '02

08 Feb '02

> From: Mark Evans <mpe(a)st-peters-high.devon.sch.uk> > I believe you can do this with Citrix. But you'd probably > end up with all sorts of problems about user authenication, > etc. Ah, that's a shame if it's the only way :( I'm guessing that Citrix is going to cost big money :( > (Presumably the application in question won't work with > Wine.) I don't know. While WINE is good, you really need a windows partition to run off. And you also need a lot of patience as WINE isn't very robust at the moment (the kind of applications I'm thinking of are perhaps some multimedia titles, or Kudos or similar). > Are you really sure you want to run a native copy of > Windows? IME Windows will generally run better with > VmWare/Win4Lin :) VMWare/Win4Lin cost more money :( I was hoping for free software (at least freely re-distributable) solution ;) Cheers, Chris Howells

3 6

RE: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Frontpage?
by Grainge, Derek 08 Feb '02

08 Feb '02

> 1. Is Frontpage any good (never used it myself)? Not really. It's good at web pages which look as if they've been done by Frontpage. Actually it's good for rapid development because you can apply borders and navigation bars and a site style to the whole lot in one go. But the pages don't look that sophisticated. > 2. Does Apache support Frontpage/FP Extensions etc.? Now why would you want to do that? Since frontpage extensions are non-standard, this means your pages will look fine on some browsers and not on others. It's not just the server that matters. The answer is yes, but it's not part of the out-of-the-box configuration. http://www.faure.de/Apache+SSL+PHP+fp-howto-1p.html - Apache are sort of saying Frontpage (spit)? Yes I suppose so (spit). -- ******************************************************************************** All mail sent and received may be examined to prevent transmission of unacceptable material. Wellington College does not accept responsibility for email contents. Problems to postmaster(a)wellington-college.berks.sch.uk. Website: http://www.wellington-college.berks.sch.uk ********************************************************************************

2 1