[time-nuts] Sulzer Labs D-5 oscillator

[Steve Rooke]

Hi Mike,

2008/10/12 Mike Monett <XDE-L2G3 at myamail.com>:
>  I have been running Eagle pcb cad on Suse since 2001. I am extremely
>  happy with  linux. But LTspice requires Wine, Pimmy will run  on it,
>  and also  Hotkeyz.  This  will   tide   me  over  until  I  can find
>  replacements, but LTspice will always need Wine.

Ok, I understand the need, certainly, for LTspice. Have you looked at
the hotkey support under KDE, I know it may not be as simple and slick
as Hotkeyz but once configured it may do what you want. I'll cover
what I think you are meaning about the need for Pimmy later.

>  My friend  down  the hall keeps experimenting  with  different Linux
>  distros and  tells me about his experiences, some good and  some not
>  so good. For now, it looks like I will be running Suse and Ubuntu.

Well, we all can have bad experiences with the OS at times. I've
certainly done things that have pushed it well over the edge and it
has fallen into broken pieces but that was my fault for trying to do
something that did not work. But, whenever this has happened, I've
been able to pick up the pieces and put it back together every time,
without having to resort to getting the install disks out. And I
frequently work well beyond the bleeding-edge. It really bugs me the
times I have to completely rebuild my WinXP laptop system after
nothing more than sneezing on it. Quite how an enterprise can even
think about basing it's precious business on this completely puzzles
me but then I'm not taken in by the slick high pressure marketing
stuff. Take Nobodies Word For It is a good adage and was an excellent
Brit TV series. Carol Vordawoman, the thinking man's crumpet (sorry,
off the rails again).

>  I tried  Thunderbird some time ago, but I think I gave  up  since it
>  would not  handle multiple accounts like Pimmy does.  That  may have
>  changed.
>
>  But the  message  there  is  to go to KasMail  and  get  a  bunch of
>  disposable email addresses. Then kill any that pick up spam. But you
>  need a  client  that  takes  care of  all  the  details  in handling
>  multiple accounts,  or  you very quickly get in  a  lot  of trouble.
>  Pimmy does that very well.

OK, so you open up a bunch of tmp mail addresses and want to use them
transparently from a mail client. One obvious way is to use Gmail as
the main account and add the external KasMail mailboxes to it. You can
get Gmail to label the foreign mail addresses with their own account
name and to automatically handle the sending addresses to be the
remote mailbox on replies. When you compose a fresh thread, you just
select the sending address as you require. I use this system all the
time for the same reasons that you have stated.

It's also possible to do the same thing with Thunderbird. Just add the
external email accounts and configure it to send with a return address
of the external email box. I have no idea if these options are as
slick and easy to use as Pimmy as I have never used it.

>  I just  checked  - the last spam I got was a  phishing  email  for a
>  London bank. It was last August 14, which is two months ago.
>
>  One spam every two months is not so bad. I can handle that:)

Congratulations. Last time I looked at my Mother's email account, she
had about 1300 spam messages over the last 30 days. Yes, really! she
is hopeless, hands over her details to every Tom, Dick and Harry
despite my strong advice not to do so.

>  My preferences are stuff that works, doesn't crash and doesn't erase
>  my files.  Once  you are inside a CAD program  or  writing  code, it
>  really doesn't matter what system you are on as long as it works.

Well, not much crashes under the stable, IE. non bleeding-edge, Lunux
these days apart from the stupid Flash plugin under Firefox, I guess.
That's the thing that really bugs me.

>  I really  have no problems running Linux. I still write  most  of my
>  programs in  DOS, so commandline switches are not an  issue.  I just
>  include them  in  my programs so I don't have  to  remember  all the
>  silly options, like all the stuff you can do with PKZip.

That's what 'man command' or --help is for. Mind you that probably
does not apply in the other-world. When I stared out with UNIX there
was no X Windows, it was all command line and I'm at my most comfort
when I'm working down there too. It's certainly much more powerful
than any gui version of the application I have seen.

>  So far,  I  just  haven't  had  the time  to  sit  down  and  do the
>  conversion to  Linux.  But  now my lab is expanding,  and  I  can no
>  longer get motherboards with drivers for Win98, so I have no choice.

Cool, well it's of no loss to you, I would see it as a gain. They have
been saying that UNIX (Linux is just a clone of it) is dead since the
70's and that has kept a smile on my face for the last three decades.
Seems they may have thrown out the bathwater but the baby is still
alive and kicking.

>  And that was my message for those still hoping XP will last forever.

I think Vista will go the way that ME went but I think that XP will
last a bit longer than M$ wants it around due to industry pressure. As
for Windows 7, well that is another unknown so I don't see how people
can say that this will be the answer to all the problems. It's just
going to be millions of extra lines of bloat^H^H^H^H^Hcode and will
require heaps more power, I bet anyone.

>  It won't. Bill will see to that:)

Thought he retired :)

>  Thanks for the encouragement!

My pleasure. Now I'd better duck down for the flack that will fly
around for going so off-topic on this group. Still, I'm no the only
one, there is the sound guys thread going round at the moment.

73 and all best wishes
Steve
-- 
Steve Rooke - ZL3TUV & G8KVD
Omnium finis imminet