[dundee] Taylug Weekly Articles 13 - LUGS

[gordon dunlop]

Hi All,
The theme of this week is LUGS (ear! ear!) as the lug.org.uk site has
recently had a massive make over and has done a bit of re-organisation
in regards to their  contacts with local LUGS. The LUG UK guys do a
marvellous job in running their server that gives you the mailing
lists. I am now (as mentioned in a previous post) on the LUG Masters
mailing list. This a closed mailing list where administration,
technical, mailing, security issues are discussed. The reason it is a
closed list is because security issues within the lug server, mailing
lists & web sites can be discussed without announcing these things to
the world, i.e. keep the mailing lists and web sites safe. Spam tends
to be the main problem with sites within the LUG organisations,
fortunately on the Dundee/Tayside site it is now limited to 2 or 3
spam emails a week (better than my own PC). If anything crops up on
the LUG Master mailing list that might be pertinent to individual LUG
members then I will post it, as in the UKUUG post I made earlier in
the week. Finally, the LUG organisation purpose is really to maintain
the mailing system so that all you Linux geeks can keep in contact
with one another, so give thanks to the guys and galls behind the
scenes.

L – Linux:
Starting off with LUGS, there seems to be a bit of a problem in
Africa, maybe connected to politics?
http://www.tectonic.co.za/?p=2201

Gentoo is getting it's act together.
http://www.gentoo.org/news/20080302-foundation-election.xml

Debian "Lenny" will be released as Debian 5, why don't you do as Mark
does? Call it Lenny the Lion, I love animals. I did have a problem
explaining to the wife a few years ago why I had a system called
"Hoary Hedgehog", it did not sound quite nice. She was O.K. with the
later version of "Breezy Badger" as it seems the association of geeks
and flatulence as quite appropriate. Girls fart too?
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/03/msg00001.html

Onto something serious, direct kernel boot for virtualisation, sounds good.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/XenFullvirtKernelBoot

IBM is putting Linux to the East Europeans, what about the West
Europeans? Are we not supposed to be united?
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSL0486847020080304?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews

KDE is having a conference in Belgium, I think Jonathon Riddle should
invite all TayLUG members with expenses paid to there, especially a
visit to Bruges with the hiring of bicycles to explore that marvellous
ancient city and their museums.
http://dot.kde.org/1204491757/

U – Usual open source stuff
Why do my sons' laugh when I tell them that I use a program called the
Gimp? I think it is brilliant.
http://www.gimpusers.com/news/2008-03-01/all-gimp-hotkeys.html

An open source tool voted as tool of the month.
http://www.linuxsecurity.com/content/view/135074?rdf

Asterisk going global.
http://www.thevarguy.com/2008/03/03/digium-asterisk-scores-global-distribution-deal/

Google getting up their fighting force.
http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/press-release/2008q1/000201.html

Texas Instruments getting into the open source game.
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS4683706835.html

So is South America.
http://argentinadiscovery.page.tl/South-America-warms-to-Open-Source.htm

If a wee school area in the U.S.A. can do it, why can't we?
http://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080305/NEWS01/803050312/1002/NEWS01


G – Gadgets:
We will start off with the Asus EEEPC.
http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/02/asus-shows-off-new-lineup-of-eee-pc-add-ons/
http://clumpc.com/?p=147

Followed by the OLPC.
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2008/tc2008035_429837.htm
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS4348733866.html
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-linux-xo-python/?ca=dgr-lnxw02aLinuxPythonXODev&S_TACT=105AGX59&S_CMP=GR
http://www.builderau.com.au/news/soa/Steve-Wozniak-Cheap-PCs-can-help-the-poor/0,339028227,339286443,00.htm

This is the Everex offering.
http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/?p=818

This is the Shuttle offering.
http://us.shuttle.com/KPC/index.htm

A £2.50 iPod?
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS6250449424.html

Mobile phones?
http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/hardware/0,39042972,62038513,00.htm

I like this, play your games on PS3's and also do your scientific
calculations, Dreamworld!
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/02/28/ps3s_put_to_use_simulating_blackholes/

S - Security
A recent post about firewalls might help people here.
http://www.lpmagazine.org/prt/view/mark-rais.html
http://www.techthrob.com/tech/firestarter.php

PAM again?, I think she is getting a bit of a reputation.
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-polyinstantiation/?ca=dgr-lnxw02LinuxPAMSecurity&S_TACT=105AGX59&S_CMP

An O'Reilly book about security, are the ethical hackers interested in this?
http://www.certforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=209286#post209286

I hope everyone has a good week and maybe find something useful from
my weekly articles, please excuse my silly sense of humour.

Gordon
Taylug Administrator (LUGMaster)