November 2024 - Talk - lists.gtalug.org

Reminder of General Meeting
by Alan Heighway 12 Nov '24

12 Nov '24

As the WordPress Turns <https://new.gtalug.org/?p=115> with Ron Barnes and Evan Leibovitch What’s the line between using open source and exploiting it? WordPress is one of the world’s best-known open source applications, powers more than 40% of the world’s websites. But a recent drama between co-creator Matthew Mullenweg and CMS hosting outfit WP Engine has led to forced forks, strange code changes, acrimony and, of course, lawyers. We’ll be trying to make sense of this story, giving the history, and looking for clues that might prevent this from happening to other major open source projects. Date / Time: November 12th, 2024 19:30 EST Location: In Person: TMU George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre, 245 Church Street (just north of Dundas), Room 201 (See note below) Online using Nextcloud: https://hub.gtalug.org/call/7m45sf9i NOTE: The doors to the building are normally locked. There will be someone from GTALUG at the doors on the southeast corner of Church and Gould to let people in. If you come late or don’t see anyone at the door please SMS at 647 657 6575 for THIS NIGHT ONLY. Do not call. *A*lan *H*eighway <http://heighway.ca/> heighway.ca VA3WAH / VA3YKZ [image: Please consider the environment before printing]

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[GTALUG-Announce] GTALUG Membership Dues
by Warren McPherson 12 Nov '24

12 Nov '24

With the AGM arriving, please remember to send in your dues. It is easy to do. In your bank's online app, select Interac e-Transfer. Send $20 to "membership(a)gtalug.org" Thank you! --- GTALUG Announce mailing list announce(a)gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/announce

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video: Benno Rice on "The Tragedy of systed" (fwd)
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 10 Nov '24

10 Nov '24

I posted this link to the list over five years ago. Look in the archives: there were a number of replies. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk <talk(a)gtalug.org> To: Toronto Linux Users Group <talk(a)gtalug.org> Cc: D. Hugh Redelmeier <hugh(a)mimosa.com> Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2019 18:12:39 -0500 (EST) Subject: [GTALUG] video: Benno Rice on "The Tragedy of systed" Reply-To: D. Hugh Redelmeier <hugh(a)mimosa.com>, GTALUG Talk <talk(a)gtalug.org> I think that this is pretty interesting: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_AIw9bGogo> --- Talk Mailing List talk(a)gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk

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Re: [GTALUG] Manual vs Automatic transmission (was: summary, bottom line, my last word [...])
by Howard Gibson 08 Nov '24

08 Nov '24

BODY { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px; }On Tue 05/11/24 5:20 PM , William Park via talk talk(a)gtalug.org sent: On 2024-11-05 12:52, o1bigtenor via talk wrote: > Think the modern car with its automatic > transmission being driven in 6 to 8" of fresh snow and the temperature > is just under freezing - - - if you have to stop for some reason > - - - good luck getting going again - - - in a manual transmission - > - - piece of cake!!!) Can you explain in more detail? I was thinking about buying manual Kia Rio (cheapest new car on the market, now no longer sold). My automatic has 1, 2, 3, 4, D, N, R, and P. Why is manual different? Manual transmission driver here. I have just had to replace my old Honda Fit with a newer 2019 model with a six speed transmission. I love it. You get stuck in snow either because you are in or on top of a snow drift, or because you are sitting on very slippery ice. Manual transmissions work nicely at getting out unstuck in the snow, but I have extracted automatics. Rocking a car out of a snow drift is easy using the clutch of a manual transmission, and much more difficult with an automatic. I forget how I did it. Maybe I popped back and forth between drive and neutral. Outside of a snow drift, there is no difference between the two transmissions. I don't know how technical people are here. Your transmission is a torque multiplier, in most gears anyway, with first gear giving you maximum torque and minimum speed. Under civilized conditions, torque is good. More torque is better. Under winter conditions, the worst thing you can do is spin tires and generate glare ice. If the road is slippery, you need to use minimum torque. You do this by starting in second gear. Often, I roll my windows down so that I can hear my tires spin. Tires spinning is bad. Always remember that if it is difficult to get started, it will be difficult to stop. What has this to do with GNU/Linux? -- Howard Gibson hgibson(a)eol.ca http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson

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soapbox, what I consider a GParted failure
by CAREY SCHUG 07 Nov '24

07 Nov '24

So winblows allows usb (and probably internal) disks to be formated EXFAT but without any partition table. WHAT POSSIBLE EXCUSE is there for gparted to not recognize this? Obviously wimblows can detect there is data, directories, etc on the device, why not GParted? --Carey

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tip: creating compact PDFs from LibreOffice
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 05 Nov '24

05 Nov '24

I have a document with pictures. I printed it to PDF from LibreOffice. The result was 20MB: too big to mail. I used a program called "shrinkpdf" to shrink the PDF. There are no options. The size was 128k. It was a bit fuzzy. Then I found out that LibreOffice's export to PDF lets you control the resolution and clarity of pictures. The default setting gave me 333k. It looked much better than the output of shrinkpdf. Conclusion: LibreOffice's export to pdf is usefully different from printing to PDF.

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An Obituary to Enjoy...
by Colin McGregor 04 Nov '24

04 Nov '24

I would NEVER wish anyone dead, but there are some obituaries that can be enjoyed. Here is an example of the sort of obituary I mean, that of Darl Charles McBride : https://www.memorialutah.com/obituaries/darl-mcbride Who was Darl Charles McBride? At one point the man was THE most hated person in the Linux community, because as head of SCO he launched a series of anti-Linux lawsuits, details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darl_McBride#Leadership_of_The_SCO_Group

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