- Roundtable - muug.ca

Who Controls the Internet?
by Bill Reid 13 Sep '06

13 Sep '06

During the break last night our conversation reminded me of a book I had read this summer. "Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World " by Goldsmith and Wu http://www.amazon.com/Who-Controls-Internet-Illusions-Borderless/dp/0195152… -- Bill

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Group policy for Windows updates
by Kevin McGregor 13 Sep '06

13 Sep '06

As referred to in tonight's meeting, I've attached the group policy settings which seem to prevent the annoying uncontrolled reboots. Sorry for the big html file! I hope it turns out okay. You may need IE to view it. :-(

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MUUG Meeting, Sep 12, 7:30pm -- Surviving with a Non-UNIX Desktop
by gedetil＠cs.umanitoba.ca 05 Sep '06

05 Sep '06

The Manitoba UNIX User Group (MUUG) will be holding its next monthly meeting on Tuesday, September 12. The meeting topic for this month is as follows: Surviving with a Non-UNIX Desktop A few months ago, Gilbert Detillieux, a die-hard UNIX user since around 1980, did the unthinkable: he switched to using a Windows-based system as his primary desktop at work! Has he lost his mind? Or were there mitigating factors that affected his decision? How can a UNIX user survive in a Windows environment? Are there tools available that can ease the pain, and allow one to work effectively in a heterogeneous environment, without going through UNIX withdrawal? Come hear how this one person did it. This will be a fairly informal, interactive presentation, which will hopefully lead to some lively discussion on alternative desktop solutions, and the pros and cons of each. The group holds its general meetings at 7:30pm on the second Tuesday of every month from September to June. (There are no meetings in July and August.) Meetings are open to the general public; you don't have to be a MUUG member to attend. ********************************************************************** Please note our meeting location: The IBM offices, at 400 Ellice Ave. (between Edmonton and Kennedy). When you arrive, you will have to sign in at the reception desk, and then wait for someone to take you (in groups) to the meeting room. Please try to arrive by about 7:15pm, so the meeting can start promptly at 7:30pm. Don't be late, or you may not get in. (But don't come too early either, since security may not be there to let you in before 7:15 or so.) Limited parking is available for free on the street, either on Ellice Ave. or on some of the intersecting streets. Indoor parking is also available nearby, at Portage Place, for $3.00 for the evening. Bicycle parking is available in a bike rack under video surveillance located behind the building on Webb Place. ********************************************************************** For more information about MUUG, and its monthly meetings, check out their Web server: http://www.muug.mb.ca/ Also note that MUUG maintains two mailing lists, called "muug-announce" and "roundtable". If you're not already on these lists, we encourage you to subscribe now: http://www.muug.mb.ca/mailman/listinfo/ The "muug-announce" list is used for monthly meeting announcements (such as this one) as well as other important announcements of interest to MUUG members. The "rountable" list is meant to be a forum for follow-ups to topics discussed at the meetings, or for round-table-style discussion on other topics that come up between meetings. Of course, for this to be effective, we need to reach a certain critical mass. So, please subscribe, and stay involved! -- Gilbert E. Detillieux E-mail: <gedetil(a)muug.mb.ca> Manitoba UNIX User Group Web: http://www.muug.mb.ca/ PO Box 130 St-Boniface Phone: (204)474-8161 Winnipeg MB CANADA R2H 3B4 Fax: (204)474-7609

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Problem Reading DVDs
by John Lange 05 Sep '06

05 Sep '06

For some reason we have a stack of DVDs that must have been burned in some strange format. When I put one in my DVD drive the drive refuses to recognize it. When I try to mount it, it simply says "no media". What I would like to do is take a "raw" image off the disk, so I can try to recover it. Something similar to what would be done with "dd" on a hard disk. dd if=/dev/hdc of=/tmp/file But again, it just says "no media". Is there a way to "force" a mount or some other technique so I can read the disk? Or any other suggestions as to how to recover the data? John

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Problems with Shaw?
by John Lange 29 Aug '06

29 Aug '06

Recently I have been experiencing problems with all of our customers who access our services through Shaw including my own home internet connection. These problems seem to be wide-spread throughout the city. While throughput speeds and latency have remained good, jitter has become a major problem. What this means is upload/download speeds would appear to be normal but applications that require real-time packet delivery are effected. At home I notice major problems with things like VoIP and gaming. A packet analysis using ethereal indicates major spikes in the "diff" values and jitter with many packets arriving out of sequence. This only happens on at the destination end, not at the Shaw-customer end. This is near impossible to report as a problem because the techs you get on the phone have never even heard of jitter and any upload/download test they get you to run will be fine because TCP is built to handle this. However, things like First Person Shooter games are now a complete lost cause. My question for the group is, is anyone else experiencing this problems? I'm trying to determine how wide spread this is before attempting to escalate the issue. Regards, John Lange

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Re: [RndTbl] Problems with Shaw?
by Trevor Cordes 29 Aug '06

29 Aug '06

On 25 Aug, John Lange wrote: > > My question for the group is, is anyone else experiencing this problems? > I'm trying to determine how wide spread this is before attempting to > escalate the issue. I just wanted to add a "me too". Strangely enough, I started playing some UT2004 again (after a 6 month absence) on the weekend and immediately noticed horrendous lag/jitter. It was really bad on the weekend but was a fair bit better yesterday and today. It wasn't just a jitter issue -- Shaw was dropping packets all over the place too, based on my ping tests. I use cricket for traffic monitoring and it's pretty clear packet loss and latency went to hell in the past week. The graphs represent traffic between 2 Shaw Extreme modems, one in Chazwood, one on Regent. http://tecnopolis.ca/transient/latency.gif http://tecnopolis.ca/transient/loss.gif Let us know how it goes with Shaw... the "Extreme" service is supposed to be FOR gamers and is advertised as having low latency, etc.

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What's The Greatest Software Ever Written? - News by InformationWeek
by Bill Reid 14 Aug '06

14 Aug '06

Interesting article: http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=191901844&p… -- Bill

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Simple HTTP server.
by Sean Cody 25 Jul '06

25 Jul '06

The HTTP protocol is so ridiculously simple yet usually implemented in a convoluted and complicated way (ie. Apache, IIS). If you ever wondered how a web server works but didn't care to read the spec (RFC1945) take a look at this 'simple' implementation in Perl., This is a basic web server, written as the basis for a component in an embedded project I'm working on. I've since decided to re-implement it in C (perl + chroot = annoying) but the perl version would be a decent instructional tool. http://bitbucket.ca/misc/www.tgz I've implemented the bare minimum you need to make a web server. The bare minimum needed is: GET <-- Standard 'grab me a document' or CGI with appending key/ values to the URL. POST <-- CGI without appending to URL For the hell of it... MIME types and Cookie support are also in there but only because they were easy. Just so it works 'out of the box,' I've included a simple site which tests most of the functionality (save for cookies, I know it works but too lazy to write a test case). Contents of the Tarball: www/www.pl <-- Web server... runs on port 8080 by default but open it up and take a gander. www/site/environment.cgi <-- sh shell script...spits out the current environment variables, ie CGI not in Perl www/site/cgi_test.cgi <-- Perl script, simple GET/POST handling. www/site/index.html <-- simple web page www/site/gibson_for_dummies.jpg <-- included in simple web page and proves MIME types are working. The only use for this thing is if you really wanted to know how a web server worked and didn't want the pain of dealing with the RFC or the Apache source. I've tried to keep the code as clean and clear as possible (I know at least one other person that could read and understand it). If you find the damned thing useful then feel free to use it however you want. -- Sean

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opening an eMac
by schwartz 15 Jul '06

15 Jul '06

Can anyone tell me what tools can be used to open an eMac safely? No, I don't think a sledge hammer would be wise, though I'm tempted! And does anyone know if an eMac can be upgraded to USB 2 from 1.1 ? This is to connect an external hard drive.

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Linux on WRT54G
by John Lange 04 Jul '06

04 Jul '06

Further to the topic of installing Linux on the WRT54 series of Linksys devices; Linksys has a relatively new device, the WRTSL54GS. Basically its the old WRT54GS PLUS a USB port! And yes there is a OpenWRT available for it. No more storage limitations; just plug a USB hard drive in or other USB type storage and you're off ! For those wanting to run Asterisk on it you now have room for voicemail. John

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