Category: Announcements - CombatWombat Speaks

XFCE Bluetooth

by cw

Wow, looooong time no post, eh? I am here to tell you that I am on Debian Wheezy, running on a Dell Inspiron 17R (n7110) laptop. I use XFCE 4.8 for my DE. Thunar is the default file manager in XFCE, and is fast and easy... but doesn't natively handle… more »

Blog Traffic

by cw

Hmmm, I'm not spending much time here lately...too many other projects on the boil...but checked out the statistics for the past month, and all of a sudden they have shot through the roof. Yet most of my content is old (well, to me anyhow). So tell m… more »

Mailwasher Pro 6.3 on Linux

by cw

It is possible to get Mailwasher Pro 6.3 running in Linux using the following: Ubuntu 8.10 "Intrepid Ibex" Mailwasher Pro 6.3 -- a Windows only program that has a cost. Used for pre-checking email accounts before download to email application. Thunde… more »

Intrepid Journeys

by cw

I upgraded to Intrepid (Ubuntu 8.10) today. What a long day. It took ages, but was really painless to do the upgrade. WELL DONE UBUNTU TEAM !!! The only hitches I have had so far: On a fresh install (another PC), Synaptic wouldn't search properly.… more »

New Search Engine - Cuil

by cw

A new Search Engine has been unveiled to the world, with an indexed 120 Billion pages. It is called Cuil, is pronounced "cool", and is an old Irish word for "knowledge". They have a Firefox extension available after you have done a search, at the bottom… more »

Fame + Fortune in a life of crime as Botnet Master

by cw

Today, the "wonderful" Kiwi court system failed to show any backbone, as usual, in failing to convict the teenage Botnet master 'Akill'. He admitted all the charges, got slapped with a piddling fine, and offered a job (with the Police!!!).What kind of me… more »

MS loves me after all!

by cw

Proof that MS loves me after all:ROFL more »

Smart school Principal

by cw

http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/A000A8F459252EDECC25747F00172D28?opendocument&utm_source=topnews&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=topnews more »

The new hate MS revolution

by cw

I'm in fighting mode right now. I've been wondering why the stats for my blog continued to be full of crap from search.live.com - search results that were consistently one word, eg "email" or "contact", that had the same user environment and browser, and… more »

Open Fyre

by cw

Looking for a graphics application that is simple, and produces beautiful fractal / chaotic images like gradient waves? Look no further than Fyre. It is easy to use, and fun to play with.In Hardy Heron, this package is broken so that you cannot save the… more »

Turn off AVG Office virus scanning

by cw

For MS Office on Windows, AVG7.x uses a DLL file to tell Office to run a virus scan upon every access. This slows access to your work considerably for large documents.The "Off" switch for this is as follows: Start > Run, type:regsvr32.exe /u C:\Progra~1\… more »

Congratulations to you

by cw

Well done, interwebby, you have successfully viewed the pages of CombatWombat.7doves.com more than 10,000 times this month! Seriously, I'm glad you all enjoy my ramblings. Please keep the comments flowing, and let me know what you love/hate about this bl… more »

Tithing - do you?

by cw

A serious topic for today; Do You Tithe?I have heard that some non-Christians tithe, I have even heard of some Christians that do!! Why is this and what are the pros/cons? For that matter, what exactly is this "Tithing" thing? How is it supported doctrin… more »

Firefox turns 3, Wine turns 1, MS turns in their grave

by cw

Another great day in Open Source land! Firefox has released version 3.0, and Wine has released version 1.0(at last!);" The Wine team is proud to announce that Wine 1.0 is now available. This is the first stable release of Wine after 15 years of developme… more »

Firefox 3 waiting in the wings

by cw

Get ready to download Firefox 3 tomorrow. Mozilla is aiming for a world record. With your help they might just do it! more »

Thunderbird Email Signatures Background Problem Solved

by cw

An issue with Thunderbird had been bugging me for a while, niggling at the back of my brain; How do I get Thunderbird Email to work with an HTML signature, where there was an image in the background? The problem is that Thunderbird overwrites the BODY ta… more »

Free Antivirus for Windows

by cw

Having needed to find another free antivirus for Windows based computers, I came across an excellent alternative to AVG8 (which feels more sluggish than it's old version);Comodo Antivirus.This application has a built in application monitor, akin to ZoneA… more »

Back from Holiday, updates

by cw

Arrived back from my holiday at Pauanui today. Holidays are too short!! Anyhow, had a great time with the family, and even managed to do some reading...But I promised to chip in regarding the ATi driver update to 8.5. Well... "nothing to see here, move a… more »

VirtualBox 1.6 Networking problems

by cw

After upgrading your VirtualBox to 1.6, now administered by Sun Microsystems, you will find that Host networking is broken for systems that used to work, based upon the AMD PCNET III card. This means that where you have a network using TAP devices, it wo… more »

Migrating from horrid Windows apps

by cw

I just moved a friend onto Linux, Hardy Heron Ubuntu 8.04, from XP. This would have been a relatively simple job, had it not been for her choice of apps to run in XP; Incredimail for email, and Hallmark Card Studio v1 for events. To compound it all, she… more »

MS deceit not FACTS

by cw

ItWire's David Williams has been running some articles on MS's "Get the Facts" campaign, and how bogus it is. I had to chip in with my 2c worth;I moved off Windows because I am an IT professional, that didn't like the drawbacks or Facts on MS Windows:1.… more »

the Matrix is born

by cw

I came across an amazing project today. What this system does is it replicates itself, like a small fabrication plant; they call it 3D printing. It enables you to replicate machines quickly, for little cost. And it is open source.Wow, imagine what could… more »

Grab the remote control

by cw

This is more for my benefit, because I keep forgetting how to do this:Problem how to do remote control of client initiated VNC session if client runs Linux?(Under Win32 the UltraVNC Single-click is the method of choice.)On the clients computer you need x… more »

Heron impressions

by cw

After about a week of using the Hardy Heron in-toto, I thought it may be time to chime in with some impressions.Firstly, this is opinion, based upon my system, my settings, my eyeballs; YMMV.The beta version was pretty good. A bit rough around the edges,… more »

Sin control, and software freedom

by cw

I've had this thought bouncing around in my little cranium for some time now; "Just as sin is control, so software freedom is salvation." Huh? You may say.Well let me expand this a bit. Sin is defined as "estrangement from God", and "that which separates… more »

Heads up for AMD users upgrading to Heron

by cw

"It seems AMD's scripts to build an Ubuntu package for 7.10 include a diversion for /etc/xdg/compiz/compiz-manager so they can add fglrx to the list of supported drivers. The problem is that they don't remove this diversion on upgrade/uninstall so when y… more »

MS does it again

by cw

In the usual vein of remarkable arrogance and lake of care for their customers, Microsoft Inc, the world's largest pack of idiots, has just decided," to hell with all those freeloaders on Hotmail. We are going to make them do our thing, our way.! "That's… more »

ATi Efforts... continued... 8.4

by cw

See post here for loading instructions.ATi has released its latest installment of the LINUX CATALYST driver, version 8.4. Not a big step up again; these are the interesting bits:New FeaturesThis release of the ATI Catalyst? Linux driver introduces early… more »

New 30 bit colour displays for all?

by cw

Hp have just announced that they have been collaborating with Dreamworks to create a new technology in the colour display range. What this means to Joe and Jane Average, is that their new TVs and monitors will have a greater clarity of colour, with less… more »

Fonts for nothing

by cw

Hands up all those who like something for nothing. Wave. Good, most of you, and the rest are lying. So how about some free FONTS? Font definition:A design for a set of characters. A font is the combination of typeface and other qualities, such as size, p… more »

Stop Hotlinking

by cw

Hotlinking is the practice of using somebody else's images or resources, directly sucking them from the site rather than copy them.I had setup the anti-hotlinking file, htaccess, to stop this bandwidth theft, and reassign the image/resource a URL of my c… more »

How much does it cost to acquire the ISO?

by cw

Microsoft have decided to change their usual acquisition fare, and are now purchasing the "International Standards Organization",or ISO.Last year when MS was found to have fraudulently biased voting in favour of their OOXML format, they threatened to thr… more »

Happy Birthday CombatWombat

by cw

One year ago today, the CombatWombat blog got real, in a b2Evo engine on a real web server. Previously I had dabbled with wordpress, but found it too restricting for skins. And if you couldn't tell, I don't like off-the-shelf skins. I am unique, so's my… more »

GUTSY ATi Efforts

by cw

As Gutsy's reign draws to a close, and the era of the Hardy Heron is nearly upon us, I thought it might me time to revisit the display driver issues of ATi. Following is the much easier situation we now have:This recipe is for those who have a relatively… more »

German government outlaws open source software

by cw

Berlin announced today that it will henceforth be illegal to own, operate, or distribute open source software for computers. This includes the famous Linux operating systems and BSD. The reason behind this was explained by the Chancellor, Angela Merkel,… more »

ROFL

by cw

Been a while since I had any downtime to just surf / blog/ whatever... so I was reading another geek's blog, and came across this gem:Computer Geeks Quizcheck it out. It scared the living daylights outta me. As a side note: in order to enter fhe preform… more »

Dell moves 40,000 Ubuntu PCs

by cw

See the article at the RegisterI think it's all been a marvelous marketing experiment.Dell does diddly-squat marketing/promotion of the fact that they do linux at all, relying upon the word on the web to get around through the likes of the linux forums.… more »

Moving VirtualBoxes

by cw

Tonight I had to move my VirtualBox guest from one host to another. The guest had a snapshot that it was working from. This caused me a little grief due to ambiguous wording in the Virtual box documentation, and from the look of the forums, others are ha… more »

Spamming prats

by cw

Terribly sorry everyone, but today I installed a CAPTCHA image plugin for this site, in order to avoid having to cull all of those spams about drug names that I cannot pronounce. Why o why do they persist in the pointless pursuit of making everyone's lif… more »

Anti smacking

by cw

A concerned citizen of Sweden recently had cause to Blog about the problems of the Anti-Smacking repeal of Section 59 in NZ's law. He raises some excellent points, it is just a shame that our government is hell-bent (literally) on removing parental auth… more »

Brother printer in Linux

by cw

Using Ubuntu Feisty ( Mint flavour ;-). Brother DCP115C (same as MFC210C for most functions).Follow the steps that are available on the Ubuntuforums website written by Bobsongs. For Printing to A4 make sure that you alter the file in /etc/cups/ppd using… more »

VirtualBox USB

by cw

If having problem getting XP to recognise USB connected to Ubuntu Feisty host:sudo gedit /etc/fstabEnter this in your fstab under all of the rest of the lines, make sure you do not edit anything BESIDES adding this new line.Reboot and see how well it wor… more »

Dell and Linux

by cw

Dell have posted(link) a fantastic brief newbie intro to linux, and what it means to the general populace.Good on ya, Dell! I am impressed by the commitment you're showing up with. And the video is factually easy, without being down your throat. I've alw… more »

NZ's state religion

by cw

There is a storm in a teacup in little old NZ, with the Prime Minister, Helen Clark, trying to rid the country of the evil Christians. Brian Tamaki is standing up to say that we need the Christian heritage and state religion. my two cents:"A religion is… more »

Feisty Beauty

by cw

I have to say, after upgrading a Bianca system that was heavily customized, that the Ubuntu team has done a wonderful job of the upgrade system. Since then I have also added the UbuntuStudio repos, and their themes. Very nice, suits me well, as you can s… more »

Other news

by cw

In other news...Bang bang bang bang: roofers doing my home/office at the moment, replacing the corroded corrugated iron that leaked terribly; with smart new galv.NZ's section 59 Anti-smacking bill passed yesterday, despite 83% of the country being agains… more »

Run XP on Linux for Free

by cw

That's right folks, you read it correctly. Do you have that nasty habit that you just can't break? Does it sound like something that once was urine? Well, Doctor Wombat is here to help. Just head on over to Innotek and grab the right setup package for yo… more »

TV on Linux

by cw

Just managed to get an elderly TV capture card working on my main box, after many hours of scouring the web, looking for the solution.Running Ubuntu Edgy 6.10 ( Linux Mint 2.2).Card: Prolink Pixelview playTV Pro pv-bt878p+ Rev 9FTuner needs to like PAL-B… more »

OpenOffice 2.2 Coming soon...

by cw

Well okay, OpenOffice 2.2 is already available, but do you have it installed on you Ubuntu / Debian machine yet? Don't know how?I've built the packages for these distributions, in converting them from the supplied RPM format. Currently I am uploading the… more »

Linux Magic SysRq

by cw

The following comes with a warning: it may set fire to your cat, or cause your hair to fall out. YMMV.Ok, this is handy to know. If you have some bad hardware or a bad install of linux, then you may occasionally get system lockups, g. where only the mous… more »

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