Our Featured Presentation at the ALE Central meeting
for Thursday, Nov. 18, 2010 at 7:30pm will be
“Defining the Third Tier in Personal Computing”
presented by avid computer technology historian
and collector, David Greelish
Synopsis:
— The presentation will be exploring the question of
“What is the third tier in personal computing?”.
The first tier was the desktop computer. The second tier
was defined by the laptop, but what exactly is the third
tier? This personal computing category has been largely
indeterminate for over two decades and defining it
presents some interesting challenges. David will also be
discussing computer history in general, showcasing a few
significant desktop computers, a number of handheld
and palmtop / PDAs, with Q & A welcomed.
Bio:
— David Greelish is a long time computer history enthusiast
and collector. He started the Historical Computer Society in
1992, and began creating a newsletter about old computers
in 1993 called Historically Brewed. He now runs
classiccomputing.com where he blogs, produces
a video podcast, and is recording an excellent book into a
free audio book podcast -Â Stan Veit’s History of the Personal
Computer. David has also started creating a local user group
to meet and play with vintage machines, and is planning to
start the first annual Classic Computing Expo next year.
============================
We will be meeting 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 (or via the side bar link).
Our Featured Presentation at the ALE Central meeting
for Thursday, Oct. 21, 2010 at 7:30pm will be
Practical Server Security Management with SELinux
as presented by rabid Linux fanboy and security guru,
James Kinney
Synopsis:
— Running a Linux server with SELinux in enforcing targeted
mode is quite daunting for many, if not most sysadmins.
SELinux really needs to be a part of the toolkit used to
address security issues, but a toolkit that admins will use
and not just turn off by default. Over the course of a 1+
hour seminar, we will demonstrate various tools, both gui
and command line, and consider the analysis process for
resolving SELinux “Access Denied” problems on servers
running in “Enforcing Targeted” mode. If time permits, a
brief look at the concepts of higher security methods like
MCS and MLS will also be covered.
(Full Frontal) Bio:
— James (Jim) Kinney became an over-zealous GNU Linux
fanboy the first time he saw a discarded Next Cube running
Slackware in 1992. Several thousand installs later his
enthusiasm has escalated to “rabidly over-zealous Linux
fanboy advocating for the total world domination process
to speed up!” He is actively involved in helping this process
by promoting that “fdisk solves all windows problems
universally” and that “apple is one byte shy of a whole fruit”.
— In the 18 years since his introduction to Linux goodness,
James has turned an obsession into a living. First at Emory
University where he converted a Mac lab to Linux (and
ultimately used the same lab machines for a proto-type
Beowulf cluster in nice +5 mode so the students wouldn’t
notice) and helped co-found LUGE (Linux Users Group of
Emory). Next followed a 10+ year stint as a Linux
consultant (note to self: windows consultants make money
because things break all the time; Linux consultants only
make money setting things up so they never hear from
the client again until the next time they want a new
machine) with a few notable projects like making Linux
systems run thin clients in schools despite the technical
obstacles and political chaffing, a stint at “We’re not evil,
We just archive EVERYTHING FOREVER” Google, an
appearance at a travel booking company, and a ride with
“we wanna be just like Comcast” Cox Communications,
which all led Jim to realize that he really likes craft and
Belgian beer and Linux security systems (and Linux
fanboy activities like trash-talking other OS wannabes
from Redmond and Cupertino).
— Currently at GTRI, Jim works with some really bright
people who are actively involved in extending SELinux
policy to protect all aspects of critical path communications.
============================
We will be meeting 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 (or via the side bar link).
The highlight presentation at the ALE Central Meeting
for 7:30pm on Thursday, Sept. 16th, 2010 will be:
“The Joy of Sox:
a tour of command-line sound processing”
as presented by the very soxy and alluring Charles Shapiro
Synopsis:
— This short talk will include some rather silly sox stunts, an
explanation of the sox command line with plenty of runnable examples,
and a show-off of my very own simple but effective batch-mode
vinyl/cassette album processor, done in bash(1), sox(1), and lame(1).
bio:
— Charles Shapiro is a fan of fencing, gadgetry, juggling, gizmos,
beer brewing, obscure weaponry, radio control (in all it’s connotations),
and most anything else the that lesser world might consider “geek”.
Consistent to these avocations he has been a professional programmer
for over 14 years, specializing in C and Unix with a couple years of
C++, Perl and a plethora of Python in the mix. He can type faster than
most people can talk, is a Linux Lunacy Cruise alumnae, a liberty
minded friend of the EFF, an officially sanctioned Richard Stallman
impersonator for the FSF, and a seriously committed GNU Linux
zealot since 1996.
=============
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]
Come be a part of the first
Douglasville Ubuntu Hour!
7:00pm on Thursday, August 26th, 2010
at Borders Bookstore in Arbor Place Mall
(6700 Douglas Boulevard, Douglasville, GA)
The event is being organized by Joel Kilthau and
free Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Live Preview & Install disks
will be available.
To RSVP or for additional info please contact Joel Kilthau
The feature presentation at the ALE Central Meeting
at 7:30pm on Thursday, August 19th, 2010 will be:
“Grepping GRUB 2”
with Michael Trausch
Synopsis:
— GRUB 2 is the new major release family of the GNU GRUB bootloader,
which is extensively rewritten to be more feature rich, robust and portable.
GNU GRUB 2 is used by current versions of Ubuntu as the default boot
loader, and the next major release of the Debian project is adopting it as
well. It supports booting from a large number of file systems and
partition types, and can be considered an extensible boot environment
that can launch any number of operating systems. Our presentation
will look at the changes from the GRUB 1 environment and explore the
configuration and use of some of the popular new features of GRUB 2.
Bio:
— Michael B. Trausch is an independent consultant performing
programming and administration services using free software.
He works from home (when everything is going well…) and rears
his 4 year old son, Benjamin. He is an advocate for free software,
and uses Ubuntu as his normal desktop environment and Ubuntu,
Debian, or *BSD on servers. Oh, and he wants to get into building
little electronic doohickeys and stuff. :-)
=============
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
at http://ale.org/?page_id=2