accessing Win2003 shares with Samba

The shares on Win2003 were not being seen on saiwaves komba2. Tried smbclient commandline, able to see those shares which require password. So, made share with permissions not set only for "Everybody" (which is the default), but also added the particular username for which I had the password. Then the share is seen, can be mounted. Added to fstab so that it mounts on boot. Useful info at http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Samba

The uid gid of a user can be found with id -u username and id -g username as given at http://kb.iu.edu/data/adwf.html

The encryption problem mentioned at http://allinthehead.com/retro/218/accessing-a-windows-2003-share-from-os-x is not an issue in our case, with the encryption being turned off before I started checking this problem, probably because the machine is not a domain controller.

wireless networking

Played around with the Linksys WAP54G which had landed at PDS mapping the signal strength with the Acer laptop - reaches nearly 200 feet in open air when kept outside the window. Upto corridor of our building too. But practical use? Not really - typing into USB key far easier for my needs.

problem with google apps start page

TB had some trouble with "verify your domain" in google apps start page creation. The google apps help group had this info:

I was having the same problem that you are having and I just got a
response from the Google Apps Team saying that you need to have the
"Next generation" control panel activated for "Start page" and "Docs &
Spreadsheets" to work, if you have the "Current version" control panel
activated you still can see the option for "start page" but you can't
activate it.

Steps to change control panel:
1. Log into your account and go to "Manage this domain".
2. Go to "Domain settings" (it's under "Services").
3. Go to "Advanced settings" and click on "Edit"
4. Under "Control Panel" you have the option to change to the "next
generation" control panel, select it.
5. Click on "Save Changes

After you should be able to activate the Start page.

Did that and it worked.

ubuntu

Last year I'd tried the Ubuntu 5.10 Live CD on a low spec machine - PII 350 with 128 MB RAM - and had been less than impressed. On a whim, just tried it on the Acer laptop
( http://hnsws.blogspot.com/2006/05/acer-travelmate-242x-getting-sound-to.html
http://hnsws.blogspot.com/2006/05/linux-on-acer-travelmate-2423nwxci.html
and so on ) and was favourably impressed. Display correctly set to 1280 x 800, and apparently full ACPI support - battery monitor shown on panel. Mandriva did not have any of these.

Number of subscribers to satellite radio

Saw an old email of mine, referring to a rediff.com article about WorldSpace having around 75,000 subscribers in India. XM and Sirius combined have around 10 - 15 million in the US. Interestingly, the numbers are roughly in the same ballpark range as the number of millionaires in India and US, too - around 80,000 and 8 million respectively. Not to say that only millionaires subscribe to WS, but the socio-economics of it....

toshiba laptop again

As noted in my previous post, the power problems finally brought the laptop back. External jack method was the solution, with D doing most the work. Then, the WiFi and speakers were not working - once again KR opened it and fixed it.