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2014-08-18.log

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<Svetlana>[04:49:55] <mark_weaver> you could boot the USB stick from any working grub, if you had one.
<Svetlana>[04:50:27] <mark_weaver> just type 'c' from the grub menu to get a command prompt, and then type: configfile (usb0,0)/boot/grub/grub.cfg
<Svetlana>I did it and it took me to a new empty grub prompt. How do I get it to move from here, i.e. to actually boot? I read 'help' for a minute and tried 'boot', but it told me I need to load a kernel first.
***RISCi_ATOM1 is now known as RISCi_ATOM
<tadni>RISCi_ATOM: o/
<RISCi_ATOM>tadni: o/
<RISCi_ATOM>How's it going?
<tadni>RISCi_ATOM: First day of classes for this semester was today, just got back -- probably gonna take a nap soon, then probably work on my blog or some guix packages.
<tadni>You?
<RISCi_ATOM>tadni: Cool! Are you glad to be back? I'm OK. Just got back from cycling (I'm too out of shape).
<RISCi_ATOM>I sadly have not played with guix anymore :(
<tadni>RISCi_ATOM: It's been a long 6 or so months since I had classes, so it's a bit of a readjustment period -- but I'm fairly hopeful for the semester ahead.
<RISCi_ATOM>Cool.
<RISCi_ATOM>tadni: What are you majoring in ?
<tadni>RISCi_ATOM: I'm at a community college right now, just getting a "general transfer" certificate and from there, I'm transferring to UMSL (Fairly big school in St.Louis) for CompSci.
<tadni>Might end up doing teaching, if not, I'll might end up trying to start a foundation where we provide Free Software and Free Culture solutions to education and the like.
<RISCi_ATOM>tadni: That would be awesome! I once worked for an organization that did such things.
<RISCi_ATOM>tadni: http://finalsclub.org https://www.karmanotes.org
<RISCi_ATOM>But I had some issues with some things, so... I don't do any work for them anymore.
<tadni>RISCi_ATOM: I always get a bit peeved, when they force closed coursework software on students. Pearson pretty much has the community college market cornered.
<RISCi_ATOM>tadni: Ya, when I was in school, I hated blackboard >_<
<RISCi_ATOM>I also refused to take "Intro. to Comp. Sci." because they were using VB and other stuff that was not really comp. sci.
<davexunit>blackboard is the worst
<tadni>RISCi_ATOM: Blackboard and "MyXlab" is basically all we use here.
<RISCi_ATOM>But I eventually dropped out because I did not want to go into debt and because the program was not that great.
<tadni>RISCi_ATOM: One of our big State schools (Mizzou) teaches VB as their intro lang...
<davexunit>tadni: at my college, I had a cool math professor that used WebWork (free software) instead of mymethlab for doing math homework.
<tadni>School tool looks decent, but the lack of an active support line is a killer for adoption in schools.
<tadni>davexunit: Oh, neat!
<davexunit>tadni: yeah, it was a really nice change of pace.
<davexunit>other professors used mymethlab.
<tadni>davexunit: Heh, didn's notice the wordplay till now. :^)
<tadni>It would be nice, if there was some foundation or even a foss centered startup in place that supported a suite of tools that would be comparable for the average school to impliment.
<tadni>I think school centered software, is one of the last great areas where free software has failed to roam and a lot of that has to do with textbooks and the "deals" they get on a auth code with them.
<tadni>Free Culture text books would be another needed component I think.
<davexunit>it's a tough business to get into.
<davexunit>I used to work for a text book company.
<tadni>Yeah, especially when you are not working for a powerhouse to start.
<davexunit>they specialized on foreign language textbooks and they are a rare success.
<davexunit>they've been able to compete with pearson and have good market share in the US.
<davexunit>of course, they'd just be the new pearson if they took over.
<davexunit>proprietary software and all.
<tadni>davexunit: Yeah, it's an inherently flawed business model.
<davexunit>very focused on digitizing entire books and making a total virtual classroom.
<tadni>Makes BIG money though.
<davexunit>no physical book, everything online.
<davexunit>yeah, huge amounts of money.
<davexunit>and of course, there are tons of paywalls in place to get you access to certain levels of content, which will expire and then oh shit, no more learning from this book until you pay up.
<tadni>davexunit: Oh, fun... :^/
<tadni>Man, our education system needs so much revamping -- it's crazy.
<tadni>Two things that never should have been privatized, Education and Healthcare.
<davexunit>yup
<ijp>private schools aren't inherently bad
<ijp>just like private healthcare isn't inherently bad
<ijp>it's just a bad default
<tadni>I mean, private and public higher-level education have a lot in common -- inherently.
<davexunit>it seems like a no win situation: the government is incompetent and corrupt, so public services are run poorly. the private sector is greedy and corrupt, so private services are for the wealthy only.
<XexonixXexillion>How do I add a user to the audio group? I added "audio" to the user's list of supplementary groups, but after running guix reconfigure, they've still not been added to the audio group. Do I need to run something else?
<waxysubs>XexonixXexillion: it's likely that if the user already exists, the supplemental groups will be updated. for now, I suggest you edit /etc/group manually.
<waxysubs>(or run the appropriate user tool; I always forget because I just edit /etc/group myself)
<waxysubs>s/will be/will not be/
<tadni>Hrm, on my GNU machine -- ratpoison fails to load from Slim, but Guile-wm works.
<waxysubs>ratpoison works for me
<waxysubs>but I think I had to make sure my PATH was set (and other env variables) at the top of .xsession before trying to run ratpoison.
<tadni>waxysubs: My earlier install worked, now it's not for some reason.
<tadni>I could careless ... assuming I could get terminus-font working in guile-wm, but so far, that's still problematic.
*tadni will figure it out one way or the other. :^P
<waxysubs>see 'xserver.conf' in gnu/services/xorg.scm
<waxysubs>I guess your font isn't in that path.
<waxysubs>there are probably X programs that extend the font path, but I don't remember the details.
<XexonixXexillion>How do I set up dbus properly? I can't find anything on that in the documentation.
<waxysubs>specifically, search for FontPath
<waxysubs>there's a dbus service in gnu/services/dbus.scm
<waxysubs>the dbus service work is in a very preliminary state I think
<waxysubs>anyway, gotta run...
<tadni>waxysubs: o/
<tadni>Hrm, the /gnu/store/xxxxx-terminus-font/share/fonts/terminus/ is added to my xsession, but doesn't seem to do anything.
<tadni>Ah, it looks like I didn't have xset.
<tadni>Hm, it's in my fontpath ... put not loading.
<tadni>Oh, no it isn't.
<tadni>Well, I got the x11 adobe helvetica font working at least ... so it doesn't crash anymore (guile-wm).
<tadni>Better than nothing. :^)
<tadni>Hrm, not sure what has happened. Now guile-wm too complains about "Failed to execute login command" via slim -- just like ratpoison was prior.
<tadni>Ah, I broke something in the guile-wm config and it failed to eval -- so it was effectively non-available at the time I was trying to call it.
<jmd>Anyone know how to pass arguments to packages built with cmake ?
<davexunit>jmd: not sure, sorry.
<tadni_>So, I think I pretty much have this config file where I want it.
<tadni_>:^)
<tadni_>Guile-wm is a bit odd, in that it doesn't auto-update always. Like if you disable gtk widgets in Emacs, you most reselect the frame before it does anything.
<davexunit>someone crashed their guile-wm :P
<tadni`>Hm, that too was very odd. I was in a working guile-wm session and I saw the "failed to execute login command" and it closed me out my session bacn to Slim.
<davexunit>strange.
<jxself>Your PDP-8 is having problems running guile-wm?
<tadni_>jxself: Nah, I'm on a 11.
<tadni_>Guile-wm's tiling module only tiles 1/6 of my screen. :^/
<tadni_>Back to tinywm module for now.