In a spirit of improving the value and relevance of the ALE organization
to both its members and to the wider Open Source and IT communities,
the ALE Central Meeting for 7:30pm on Thursday, July 19th, 2012 will
be an open discussion and brain storming session to share feedback on
what is or isn’t working in ALE now, and to consider what new directions
may be worthy of exploration and commitment:
“ENVISIONING THE FUTURE OF ALE”
A Public Forum Discussion
moderated by Aaron Ruscetta,
ALE Events Coordinator (etc)
SYNOPSIS:
— As an essentially anarchist organization with no formal charter or
managing hierarchy, the structure and operations of ALE are a highly
representative (and self referential) model of the Open Source ideals and
communities that we strive to support. Like most Open Source software
projects, the duties of maintaining the organization and services are
handled by whatever small cadre of volunteers may feel motivated to
step up and do the necessary or envisioned work. ALE has kept itself
running fairly smoothly for about 17 years under this system, but in
consideration of the changes that the IT industry and the Open Source
world have undergone in recent years it seems that a little self reflection
on our efforts and re-evaluation of our group’s future goals may be in
order. ALL ARE WELCOME!
BIO:
— Aaron Ruscetta has been an active ALE member and volunteer since
discovering an avid enthusiasm for Linux and the FLOSS philosophy
back in 1998. For the past several years he has served as a public face
for the group in various roles including FLOSS Evangelist, meeting
moderator, web site manager and Events Coordinator, as well as
offering public education presentations and civic duty lobbying
surrounding the issues of computerized election systems and electronic
vote fraud. Aaron’s volunteer efforts with ALE have been directly
supported by numerous fellow members, including Michael Hirsch,
Charles Shapiro, J.D. Pfulgrath, Michael Warfield, Michael Trausch,
Joshua Roberts, Stephen Blevins and ALE sysadmin Jim Kinney, and
indirectly by the countless ALE and FLOSS community members who
generously provide relevant presentations or who actively participate
in our meetings and mailing lists.
=============
The meeting will be held at Emory Law School in our
usual Gambrel Hall, room 1C venue.
Our meeting time frame is 7:30pm to ~9:30pm
Directions to Emory Law School can be found at
http://ale.org/?page_id=2
The feature presentation for our ALE Central Meeting
at 7:30pm on Thursday, June 21st, 2012 will be:
“Open Source in Education:
Liberating Students, Teachers, Schools and Budgets
with Liberated Information Technology”
with Jim Kinney
Synopsis:
– This presentation will be a look at tools, techniques and
philosophies from the communities of Free Liberated Open
Source technology that should be integrated RIGHT NOW
in K12 schools.
– Discussions will include a look at elements of the Open
Source universe that are an obvious and natural fit with the
functions and concerns of K12 education. Some specific
software and configuration techniques will be discussed,
along with the benefits of integrating key concepts from
Open Source communities into the daily working process
of K12 schools and related IT practices.
Bio:
– James (Jim) Kinney became a zealous fan of Linux and
Liberated Open Source Software the first time he saw a
discarded Next Cube running Slackware in 1992. In the
20 years since his introduction to Linux & FLOSS goodness,
James transformed his obsession into a career. First at Emory
University where he taught physics, converted their computer
lab to Linux and helped co-found LUGE, the Linux Users Group
of Emory. Next followed a 10+ year stint as an entrepreneur
Linux & Open Source consultant. Notable projects included
the installation of 40+ Linux servers running 2000+ student
stations in Atlanta public schools, server upgrade work at
Google, systems integration for a travel booking company,
and consulting for Cox Communications
– Currently Jim works with the Internet Security Systems
group of IBM along side some [other] really bright people
who are actively involved in protecting all aspects of
critical path communications (despite any MicroSoft
products in the pavement).
=============
The meeting will be held at Emory Law School in our
usual Gambrel Hall, room 1C venue.
Our meeting time frame is 7:30pm to ~9:30pm
Directions to Emory Law School can be found at
http://ale.org/?page_id=2
The feature presentation for our ALE Central Meeting
at 7:30pm on Thursday, May 17th, 2012 will be:
“GRUB 2: Bootloader Magic Demystified”
with Michael Trausch
Synopsis:
– The GRUB 2 bootloader will be presented, with a discussion of
its architecture. There will be emphasis on upstream functionality
in comparison with (some of) the ways that bootstrapping tasks
could be accomplished with GRUB Legacy.
– For those who are unfamiliar with bootloaders, there will be a quick
introduction to what a bootloader does and where its role exists in the
system boot process for the most predominant architecture of common
desktops and laptops, a BIOS-based x86/x86-64 system.
– If there are any particular questions that you have and would like
answered, or _particular_ functionality that you would like shown,
please let me know directly at [mike@trausch.us]. I’ll incorporate
anything I can, and anything that I can’t incorporate I’ll move to the
list for after the meeting.
Reference:
From the GNU GRUB Web site http://www.gnu.org/s/grub/:
– GNU GRUB is a Multiboot boot loader. It was derived from GRUB,
the GRand Unified Bootloader, which was originally designed and
implemented by Erich Stefan Boleyn.
– Briefly, a boot loader is the first software program that runs
when a computer starts. It is responsible for loading and
transferring control to the operating system kernel software
(such as the Hurd or Linux). The kernel, in turn, initializes the
rest of the operating system (e.g. GNU).
Bio:
Michael B. Trausch is an independent consultant and developer
performing all manner of IT services using free software, including
network systems administration and programming (in many different
and often disliked languages). He works from home (when everything
is going well) and devotes much of his time to parenting his six year
old son, Benjamin. He is an advocate for free software, public
education, and freedom in general, accepting the responsibilities that
come with it. He is also obsessed with typography and Unicode, and
drinks way too much coffee. ;-)
=============
The meeting will be held at Emory Law School in our
usual Gambrel Hall, room 1C venue.
Our meeting time frame is 7:30pm to ~9:30pm
Directions to Emory Law School can be found at
http://ale.org/?page_id=2
Our highlight presentation at the ALE Central Meeting
for 7:30pm on Thursday, April 19th, 2012 will be:
CMake or
How I Learned To Stop Worrying and
Love Automated Build Systems
with Ryan Curtin
Synopsis:
— Maybe you’ve heard of CMake before. If you haven’t, maybe you’ve
heard of autotools. And if you have worked with autotools, well, I am
sure your friends have heard your sighs of sorrow. If you have worked
with CMake, you probably have your own sighs of sorrow too.
Build systems, or “makefile generators”, as CMake calls itself, are
never pretty. But it’s better than that festering mess you call a Makefile.
I mean, come on! You don’t even know how it works anymore. Nobody
does. It’s this horrifying black box that executables magically come out
of. Oh, and it’s not portable… don’t even think about running that on
HP-UX or whatever. And if it is portable… well, I can only imagine
the nightmare _that_ Makefile must be.
— CMake provides most of a solution to your building and compilation
problems. It has a nice language which lets you define how to build
your projects, and on top of that, it’s portable, even to Windows.
Unfortunately, there is some voodoo required when dealing with CMake.
My aim in this presentation is to shed light on some of this voodoo and
give you enough knowledge to (a) start building your simple (or
advanced) projects with CMake and (b) know how to find solutions to your
more complex problems (and unfortunately with CMake, Google-fu isn’t
always enough).
Bio:
— Ryan Curtin is a Ph.D. student at Georgia Tech studying machine
learning. He [denies having any] interesting biographical trivia [despite
being an extraordinarily complex biological machine which is constantly
learning through the generation of trivial biographical data ].
=============
We will be meeting at Emory Law School in our
usual Gambrel Hall, room 1C venue.
Meeting time frame is 7:30pm to ~9:30pm
Directions to Emory Law School can be found
[here]
The highlight presentation at the ALE-NW@SPSU meeting
being held Thursday, April 12th, 2012 at 7:30pm in room
J131 of the Atrium (J) building on the SPSU campus will be:
LexisNexis® :
Solving Big Data Problems with the
Opensource HPCC Systemsâ„¢ Platform
presented by Dr. Flavio Villanustre & Arjuna Chala,
and featuring a Door Prize giveaway of
a Nook (Android) E-Reader!
Synopsis:
— HPCC (High Performance Computing Cluster) is an open source
massive parallel-processing computing platform that solves
Big Data problems. An overview of the HPCC Systems architecture
and its major components including Thor, Roxie and ECL will be
presented along with how this platform compares to other big data
technologies like Hadoop. System requirements covering the
supported Linux distributions will be reviewed. Also included will
be a demo of how this platform can integrate with Pentaho
Spoon/Kettle for powerful data ETL capabilities.
Speaker Bios:
— Dr Flavio Villanustre —
– VP Infrastructure & Products, HPCC Systems and LexisNexis –
Flavio is the Vice President of Infrastructure and Products. In this
position, Flavio is responsible for Information and Physical Security,
overall infrastructure strategy and new product development.
Previously, Flavio was Director of Infrastructure for Seisint. Prior to
2001, Flavio served in a variety of roles at different companies
including Infrastructure, Information Security and Information
Technology. In addition to this, Villanustre has been involved with
the Opensource community for over 15 years through multiple
initiatives. Some of these include founding the first Linux User Group
in Buenos Aires (BALUG) in 1994, releasing several pieces of software
under different Opensource licenses, and evangelizing Opensource
to different audiences through conferences, training and education.
— Arjuna Chala —
– Architect Integrations, HPCC Systems and LexisNexis –
Arjuna is responsible for providing strategic and technology direction
for the analytics and business intelligence components of the
HPCC platform.
About HPCC Systemsâ„¢:
HPCC Systems™ from LexisNexis® Risk Solutions offers a proven,
data-intensive supercomputing platform designed for the enterprise
to process and solve Big Data analytical problems. As a superior
alternative to Hadoop and legacy technology, HPCC Systems offers
a consistent data-centric programming language, two processing
platforms and a single, complete end-to-end architecture for
efficient processing. For more information, visit HPCC Systems
at http://hpccsystems.com.
=======
For a campus map and a link to directions please see
http ://www.spsu.edu/visitspsu/campusmaps/index.htm
Parking in non reserved spaces in the P60 deck is best.
building J, the Atrium building, is a short distance east
of the parking deck.
======
ALE-NW@SPSU meetings are open events and we hope
you will join us! Also remember that topic suggestions
and presentation offers the meetings can be emailed to
[ jdp (at) algoloma ]