Our presentation for October 12th will be
“K12LTSP: The Enterprise”
–or–
“The Search for Docs”
presented by
James P. Kinney
Synopsis:
The Atlanta Public Schools organization has seen the light at the
end of the tunnel. Normally, this would just mean the train is closer
than they thought. But this time it just our friend Tux whistling a
happy tune and walking down the tracks to show them a way out of
the dark cave with many twisty passages that all smell of grue.
James Kinney, CEO and Director of Engineering at Local Net Solutions,
will present a “Where Things Stand” synopsis of preparing for and
installing Linux thin clients at 7 Atlanta Public Schools elementary and
middle schools. Topics such as technical hurdles, scaling the process
and government contracting for newbies are bound to come up.
Bio:
Mr. Kinney has been an unusually verbose member of ALE since
sometime around 1997 when he embarked on a process of converting
as much of Emory Universities Physics department to Linux as possible.
This led to the formation of L.U.G.E. (Linux Users Group of Emory)
with Michael Hirsch and Sara Chodrow (with whom he worked in Linux
development at a now defunct media tech startup – ZapMedia). Somewhere
along the way, James formed Local Net Solutions in an attempt to take
over the world. So far the business aspect is doing OK but the Total World
Domination is taking a bit longer than planned.
Note that James has promised to try and keep this presentation under
6 hours (unlike his most recent presentation for ALE which just let out
an hour ago).
==========
Meeting time is 7:30pm to ~9:30pm
Directions to ALE Central meetings at Emory
Law School are linked on ALE.org side bar.
Our presentation for September 14th will be
“How to Cheat and Win with
Clustering for Fun and Profit”
presented by
Vernard Martin
Synopsis:
Linux is the current king of the high performance clustering market.
We’ll give a short history of clustering with Linux and talk about ways
to build an enterprise class cluster on a shoestring budget.
Bio: Vernard Martin is a founding member of ALE and a Senior Problem
Wrangler for the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University
where he runs their computer server environment. He has been using
Linux longer than any sane human being would admit to and recently
retired from being a graduate student at GA Tech. He lives in Atlanta,
GA with with his cat Lietenant and of course, his own baby cluster.
===
Some general background on Linux clustering may be found at
the Linux Clustering Information Center:
http://lcic.org
==========
Meeting time is 7:30pm to ~9:30pm
Directions to ALE Central meetings at Emory
Law School are linked on ALE.org side bar.
Our presentation for August 10th will be
“The Current State of Wireless Security”
with one of ALE’s top security experts,
Michael Warfield
Internet Security Systems Inc., Atlanta
Synopsis:
This session is an overview of the current state of
802.11* wireless standards, security profiles, developments
and practices.
Detail:
As hardware costs plummet, wireless networks are proliferating
rapidly. Many are badly configured and highly insecure, in spite
of improvements in standards and default configurations. This
talk on Wireless Security will be an update on the state of the
art in 802.11 [abgix] security and security practices. Included
will be some recent developments in standards, security
incidents, and developments in the field as well as
recommendations on securing wireless infrastructure.
Bio:
Michael Warfield is the Senior Researcher and Fellow on
the X-Force of Internet Security Systems, Inc. (ISS), a leading
global provider of information protection solutions that secure
IT infrastructure and defend key online assets from attack and
misuse. He is also an active member of the Samba development
team and is a contributor to the Linux Kernel and numerous Open
Source Software projects. Mike has published articles on both
Samba and on Security and is a respected cryptographer in the
Open Source community.
==========
Meeting time is 7:30pm to ~9:30pm
Directions to ALE Central meetings at Emory
Law School are linked on the side bar.
With apologies, we were not able to arrange a formal
presentation for the July ALE Central Meeting.
As an alternative, we are offering a more socially
minded informal event, which is to have a casual ALE
gathering with ALE tasting and free form Linux type
discussions at:
MELTON’S APP & TAP
2500 North Decatur Road
Decatur, GA 30033
404.634.9112
Melton’s is exactly 6 stop lights (and about 2 miles) East
of our usual Emory Law School venue. It is at the corner
of Scott Blvd. and North Decatur roads, next door to a Pet
Supermarket store.
(
Melton’s has an broad selection of brews and some
unique, reasonably priced edible offerings for both
appetizers and dinners. (Consider Irish Nachos for
instance…)
As always, if you have a Linux presentation offering,
contact or idea to share, please get in touch with:
Aaron Ruscetta
or Charles Shapiro
The feature presentation for ALE’s
June 8, 2006 Central Meeting will be
Python Programming —
As Applied to a Small Web Service Project
with world renowned ubergeek,
Charles Shapiro
The Esteemed Mr. Charles Shapiro, currently languishing
in an All-Windoze Shoppe, will attempt to elucidate the
Crunchy Goodness of Object-Oriented Design and the Python
language.
The presentation will feature a simple web-based Python
application which does surprising yet ultimately silly
transformations on solved sudoku puzzles. We’ll look at
some source code and discuss design issues, in hopes that your
humble speaker can learn what he did wrong on this project
before moving on to the next.
You can currently play with the application at:
http://tomshiro.org/sudoku-grinder
bio:
Charles Shapiro is a fan of fencing, juggling, gadgetry and most everything
‘geek’. Consistent to this calling he has been a professional programmer for
over 10 years, specializing in C and unix with a couple years of C++, Perl and
Python in the mix. He can also type faster than most people can talk, is a
Linux Lunacy Cruise alumnae, and has been a happy Linux zealot since 1996.
==========
Meeting time is 7:30pm to ~9:30pm
Directions to Emory Law School are at the
Central Meeting link on the side bar.