I have been meaning to write this for some time but oddly enough real world requires time and effort as well. We don’t often realise that Ubuntu success isn’t as much because it is a great distro but rather it is a great community.

Although this applies to most groups with in Ubuntu I would like to use this post to direct my thanks at Ubuntu-ZA. Over the last few weeks we have noticed an uptake in the number of users that pop into our irc channel #ubuntu-za or on the mailing list with issues we might have found simple or mundane but you guys have been there in full force to help out, educate, enlighten and enrich their lifes for the better.

One such case deserves special mention Kilos. He came into #ubuntu-za as a complete new user to Ubuntu. He was a Windows man before. He mentions on his blog one particular case where he was trying to mount a Floppy drive no one in #ubuntu-za had even used a floppy drive in years and yet for hours people offered help and guidance talking him through it.

I don’t want this to sound one sided on the contrary, Kilos has put far far more effort into learning then we as a team have given back. I just felt it was necessary to point this out for references. It truly amazes me how one can learn things if one puts the effort in.

Any how I am rambling I just feel it prudent to share his blog, to think that ubunu-za could have such an impact one some ones life amazes me.

Of course when first reading her email I thought what no internet lets move it to the University Library, clearly not the point of Ubuntu hour which I was pointed out to by Anthony Hook so thanks

Anthony I hope you don’t mind but I paraphrased same of your points and added them to the Wiki so that others don’t make the same mistake I did.

Would you please stop packaging your RIM development platform (That is written in java and runs perfectly well on Linux) in .exe format that does funky checks and api calls that fails to run in wine. Thanksbye.

On serious note I see many forum posts “Can I install this on Linux” to which all reply “No sorry you can’t” Ye you can install it on Linux but you can copy the installed files over to Linux go figure.

I would go into more details but seriously all you need is a windows box to install the files and copy them over

Also if you would like to install your applications using Linux. Take a look at barry-utils you will need at least 0.15 since bjavaloader was only included in this release. Debian has this version and there is a bug on launchpad requesting an update at least for lucid.

This change did how ever break BetterGmail2 a Firefox add-on. The most noticeable change was the break in the “Sub Labels“. Some of my labels only fit on the screen because the first bit is removed and then indented. Ie I have Mailing List/Ubuntu-za which now only displays Mailing List/Ubu which is rather annoying. The reason for this naming convention is Gmails Imap support does this.

but if you try to add subfolders in your mail client, they’ll become labels that look like this: Folder/Subfolder.

I hope there will be a release patch for this soon.

Luckily Android is open-source and some one modified the pre-installed alarm to create Alarming!.

This new-and-improved alarm functionality allows for a “Captcha on Dismiss” this sounds kinda scary but really it is amazing! Often I will press the dismiss button instead of snooze and over sleep this makes it much harder by having to press random buttons on the screen to deactivate the alarm. See the image one their home page.

Nokia has a large(55.07%) share of the mobile’s with in South Africa in fact they have the largest, Yes I know this is only from people downloading applications but most of these users will be tech savvy enough to be able to use a mobile music store.

Back to the problem at hand. With this huge potential market Nokia’s za version of the store is even worse then worldwide and uk at least even with their bugs they allow any browser(mobile/web) to view their site and is mostly usable.

Firstly viewing the site from firefox. “Unsupported Device”

Nokia Music Store does not currently support your device. Further information about Nokia Music Store and compatible devices can be found at the Nseries web site.
You can access the Nokia Music Store from a PC using Internet Explorer

So that is what I did using Useragnet Switcher set to N85 one of the required Nseries I get redirected to an error page

An error has occurred – we apologise for the inconvenience.
If you are using a mobile device please try reloading the Nokia Music Store
If you are using a PC with Internet Explorer click here to try the main Nokia Music site
If the problem persists, then click here and tell us which page you were trying to view

Nokia are you trying to get users to use your product? The Uk version is complaining about slow sales? Maybe their product just doesn’t work good enough.

Their profits seems to be falling quite drastically is laying off staff an attempt to fix this?

I must say from the pics of the HTC-Magic it looks like it has quiet a aesthetic improvement on the G1 although I think my black version looks much better.

I mentioned there was 2 scripts missing from the devel version that I used to use, weenotify, urlgrab.
weenotify was ported over by lavaramano

Urlgrab was another script that used extensively there wasn’t a port for it so I ported the original script.

My current Weechat Plugins
1) weeget – Weechat Script manager to install/update/remove scripts
2) iset – Provides added features for setting configuration vars.
3) urlgrab – Follows your buffers and detects urls (rather crudely currently) and adds them to memory allows opening of them in your favorite browser via /url N
4) notify – Uses Libnotify to alert users of private messages or highlights.
5) shell – Allows execution of shell commands from with in weechat.

Summary
They phone you with the premise that you have won something but they require you to validate you are owner of the mobile by means of giving them the last dialed number. This is the exact same way that the networks validate you for a sim swap. Once doing they they claim to have lost “their” mobile provide “their” last dialed number and get hold of you a copy of your sim that sends/receives as if it was you.

This loop hole has been in the networks for some time. I wonder why it has taken scammers so long to make use of it….

Although this isn’t limited to banking it could spread over to your subscription services but there is little to no gain from subscribing your number to a R5.00 per week service when they are now fitting the bill.

The same process could be applied to sms electricity purchases the only difference is that the coupon you get back is linked to your pre-paid meter box in your home so the fraudster would not be able to make use of it. Funny that Eskom is more secure then the cellphone networks…

Something to note that this scam only really affects pre-paid users since if you are on a contract they require physical proof you are in fact the owner of the sim card by means of ID or drivers license.

I hope that no one I know is affected by this type of scam and they have the common sense not to believe claims made fraudsters.

The command for opening your 11th buffer is /buffer 11 but this is often longer to type then alt+0+f6. Easy way to make this shorter is to alias /buffer with /b.

/alias /b /buffer $*

This tells it to redirect all params to /buffer

the same can be done with /url for those of you using the urlgrab python plugin.

/alias /u /url $*

For further info on weechat commands.