2002.12.03 Meeting Notes

News

• Music writer for The Atlanta Journal Bill Wyman has been sent a cease and desist letter for using the name Bill Wyman from the lawyers for the Rolling Stones. While Rolling Stones bass player Bill Wyman is, in fact, older than this other Bill Wyman, that was not in fact his birth name - it was William George Perks. He did not change it to Bill Wyman until 1964, 3 years after the non-Rolling-Stones Bill Wyman was born!

• Verizon sues to block Federal privacy rules. They wish to share name, email address and phone numbers of customers, along with how often and when they make calls, with other companies.

• One person who orders a Tux Games product between November 25 and December 25 will end up getting their order for free.

• Jupiter research says the average American receives 2,2000 spams per year. This will jump to 3,600 next year.

• Dmitry Sklyarov DMCA case (regarding Adobe ebook "encryption") opens today. Both Sklyarov and the president of Elcom (where he works), Alex Katalov, were denied visas into the US.

• Amnesty International reports that Microsoft is amongst companies which are helping the Chinese government censor the Internet. (Others include Cisco, Nortel and Sun.)

• Ireland may soon keep detailed information on phone, cell phone, fax, email and web usage of all citizens for up to 4 years.

• Microsoft asking everyone to stop using the word "Windows." (e.g., "Windows Commander" is now called "Total Commander"; "Windows Backup Wizard" will be "Backup Wizard for Windows")

• GNOME2 to replace CDE in Solaris.

• West Virginia and Mass. appealing recent Microsoft ruling.

• Bioware announced that the Linux client for NeverWinter Nights is almost done - they're working on sound. It will still supposedly be released "this fall." (They have less than a month!)

• IDC has confirmed that Windows 2000 is cheaper than Linux over a period of 5 years. Software acquisition is only 5% of TCO (total cost of ownership); the most important factors are staffing and downtime.

Project Reports

• Demo - Due to the holidays, we may not be able to hold a demo at the Davis Food Co-Op in December. We may be able to hold one earlier in the month, or at a different venue.

• Installfests - The next Installfest will be on December 15th.

• LERT - There was 1 recent call. He fixed it himself before we were able to get someone out to him. (Apparently, Pete Salzman helped him through the problem.)

• Library - No Starch Press donated two copies each of "The Linux Cookbook", "The Linux Problem Solver" and "Linux in the Workplace." One copy of each will go to the library. The others will be given away as prizes. O'Reilly donated a copy of "Mac OS X: The Missing Manual," which we will give away. Bob Toxen donated a copy of his book (published by Prentice Hall), "Real World Linux Security," which will go into the library.

Other Business

• Officer Elections - Out of 293 members who could be e-mailed, 71 voted. Running unopposed, Henry House (with 71 votes) remains Treasurer. Running unopposed, Stephen Helms (with 70 votes) takes over for Melissa Hardenbrook as Secretary. With 38 votes, Mike Simons remains Vice President. (Rusty Minden received 32 votes for this position.) With 60 votes, Bill Kendrick takes over for Pete Salzman as President. (Rusty received 11 votes for this position.)

• Public Kiosk and Newsbeat - No updates to report.

• PC Super Show expo - LUGOD (along with practically every other user group in the Sacramento area) has been notified of a new computer expo and sale, the "PC Super Show." It will be held on Sunday, January 12th at one of the Holiday Inns in Sacramento. User groups may get a table for $100, or for free if they choose to hold a class or workshop. We're planning on attending, and holding a class. (An Installfest was considered, but due to lack of network, and distance from Davis, we decided against it.) Z-World has offered to burn CDs for us to hand out at this event. We're planning on seeing if they can burn copies of Knoppix (a live copy of Linux that runs off of CDROM) and GnuWinII (a collection of Open Source software built for Windows). If you'd like to help, contact Bill Kendrick or mention it on LUGOD's "vox-outreach" mailing list.

• Game - Dmitriy Ivanov did some "Signal Charades" and Ted Deppner guessed and won prizes.

• Financial Report - $50.52 in voluntary dues were collected. $15.00 was spent on the room at the library.

Presentation

• Sean 'Shaleh' Perry, a developer of 'Blackbox' window manager and 'Lintian' package tester for Debian, and packager of over a dozen programs in Debian, did a talk on building Debian packages.

Photos

• Photos of this meeting

Attendance

• Peter Salzman
• Bill Kendrick
• Doug Barbieri
• Henry House
• Ted Deppner
• Marc Hasbrouck
• Allan Hollander
• Dave Nelson
• Jeff Newmiller
• Dmitriy Ivanov
• Jeff DeFay
• Ryan Castelluci
• Kevin Murakoshi
• Mike Simons
• Lorie Obal
• Daphne Paraes
• Cordell Newmiller
• Sean Perry
• Stephen Helms
• Richard Harke
• Christine Scobee
• Karsten Self
• Brian Lavender
• Ken Herron
• ... and 14 others