Utah Open Source Planet

I am pleased to announce the formation of a new local users group: The Utah Apple Users Group. We are a group of technophiles that use—and even cherish—products designed Apple in California. We mainly exist simply as a mailing list where we converse and assist each other.

The state currently has two other related user groups—the BYU Macintosh Users Group and the Utah Macintosh Users Group—but both are affiliated with universities and thus governed by external policies and politics.They are also Macintosh groups, whereas this group covers all things Apple; and, as you are probably aware, Apple has recently expanded it’s product line in significant areas other than their Macintosh computer. UMUG also doesn’t have a mailing list and their forum has been offline for a long time. So, wether you’re a photographer using Aperture, a home theater nut hooking up your Apple TV, an entrepreneur using an iPhone, or a novice with a new iPod, jump on our mailing list and lets chat. We want everyone to feel welcome wether you are a student, a professional, or anyone else.

We do not plan on coordinating any events; we’re going to keep this simple. A website will be coming soon with syndicated news and events and we have an IRC channel for chatting in real time. Join the mailing list by sending an email to utahapple-subscribe@utahapple.org.

It’s time to let loose information about yet-another keynote speaker for the 2008 Utah Open Source Conference. We are very pleased to announce that attendees at the upcoming conference will have the fortune of hearing from Paul Frields, current Fedora Project Leader (FPL).

Before being employed by Red Hat and serving in the FPL position, Paul worked as an engineer for the U.S. government, but has been intimately involved in the Fedora Project community since 2003 (after Red Hat created the Fedora Project out of the ashes of the free Red Hat Linux distribution). Paul’s involvement with Fedora has included working on and chairing the steering committee for the Fedora Documentation Project.

Paul lives in Fredericksburg, VA with his wife and 2 children where he also helps manage FredLUG - the Fredericksburg Linux User Group.

Paul’s personal blog illustrates that he represents many in the open source community. In addition to being a outspoken advocate of open source software and the communities surrounding open source projects, Paul loves music (playing and listening) and good movies. He lists as one thing he hates that he can’t just play music and hack on Linux all day.

As the FPL, Paul claims accountability for everything in the Fedora project. He works with the Fedora Program Manager, Fedora Engineering Manager, and Fedora Community Architecture teams to make sure Fedora is on track and making progress toward meeting the goals of their next release and supporting the community using the current releases. Paul also manages a handful of Fedora Project packages.

Paul plans to talk about the Fedora Project in his keynote presentation, how it came about, where it’s going, and some of the challenges it has faced in its five year existence.

We are truly lucky to have Paul Frields along with Joe Brockmeier as keynote speakers at this year’s conference!

A blurb about the conference

The 2008 Utah Open Source Conference is the second annual gathering of open source enthusiasts in Utah. Following the amazingly successful first conference held in 2007 at Novell’s Open Source Technology Center in Provo, UT, this year’s conference is being held on the Redwood campus of Salt Lake Community College near Salt Lake City.

For more information about this conference, to register to attend, or to see a really neat website driven by open source software, go over to <http://2008.utosc.com/>.

I was eating breakfast at Gondolfo’s when I noticed that Fox News was covering this hard-hitting story from the Associate Press.  Apparently a recent poll shows that pet-owners prefer McCain.

Wow. It’s a good thing there are no important issues that could be covered right now.  Of course, by important issues I mainly mean dead bombshells whose children’s potential fathers are squabbling over custody of the money, former baseball stars who may have used steroids (thank you congress for overseeing that), or even the transcendently wise tips on wearing sunscreen since (this just in) the sun is still hot.

Last week, we announced that Jayce^ Hall will be on couchcast.org.  Well that day is today, so come and listen to him and the couchcast crew as they discuss who will be at the Utah Open Source Conference 2008.

Here’s the details again just in case you missed them the first time:

When: July 7, 2008 12pm MDT (Today)
Where: http://couchcast.org

See you all there!

Registration for the Utah Open Source 2007 is open tonight. If you’ve been waiting to join us for what is truly shaping up to be a great conference, sign up now!

Those of us who’ve spent the past year working hard to bring you this conference would like to invite you to register. Registrations are now being accepted.

https://register.utosc.org

There are two major parts to this conference:

Keynote

The Open Source Definition author Bruce Perens will launch the conference with a free, yes I said free, keynote speech on September 6, 2007 at 7pm for the first 100 people.  This keynote is free and you aren’t required to sign up for the rest of the conference.

If you are not among the first 100 registrants for the keynote, don’t worry. You can still come to the keynote as part of a full conference package. Make sure to choose the keynote when you register. We have room for many more at the keynote, though the exact number will be determined at a later date.

Conference

On September 7 and 8, we have more than 30 planned presenters, most of which are from Utah. Many of these presenters are big names in Utah Technology, including names like Phil Windley, Tim Riker and many more. The full list will be available very soon on the registration site.

Utah Open Source Conference 2007: The Convergence…

September 6-8, 2007

Call for Papers

The Utah Open Source Conference is a gathering of prominent Utah computer experts and business people with a common goal of applying open source technologies to create real world solutions.

This conference is looking for presenters who wish to share their experience and/or expertise with the community. Any subject associated with the implementation or use of open source technology is welcome, whether targeted at the business case, the geeks from the computer room, or anywhere in between. We are looking for innovations and solutions that can inspire and encourage others in their application of open source in the real world.

Topic ideas include:

• Business solutions (process, applications, infrastructure)
• IT management and implementation
• Web development
• Language skills (Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby)
• Emerging technologies

Presentations should be prepared for a 90 minute class.

To submit papers for this conference please send an outline to participate@utos.org.

Example Outline:

Title: Leveraging Open Source for Billing Infrastructures
Keywords: Open Source, Billing, Accounting, Finance, Postgres, Perl
Audience: Businesses wishing to learn about a new open source billing system
Overview: Billing is a basic need of every business, but accounting is missing from most programmer’s educations. Learn about available tools for the small business that have the right mix of accounting and geek.

The Utah Open Source Conference is shaping up to be the key event for Utah Technology. Whether you are presenting, or simply attending, there will be something for everyone. Learn more at http://www.utosc.org.

If you know anybody who would be interested in presenting, please forward this message.

Hey everybody!

Guess what!  The Utah Open Source Foundation’s very own Jason Hall (Jayce^ [the face]) will be discussing the Utah Open Source Conference with Robert Merrill et al, on CouchCast.

CouchCast is a local show with topics around technology and business.  Its a call-in show, so be sure to get on the line in advance and ask questions.  Feel free to dial in around noon, 347-324-3797 and ask pretty much anything you like.

Discussions will include keynote announcements, presentations, family day, the Utah Open Source Awards, the troubleshooting challenge (last years big hit) and many other aspects of the conference at the end of August.

Jayce will also be discussing the Utah Open Source Foundation, its purpose, goals and plans for 2009.  Things like live streaming of Local User Group meetings, podcasts and other events to make it easier to spread the word about open source in Utah.

Feel free to check it out, here’s how:

When: July 7, 2008 12pm MDT
Where: http://couchcast.org (yes, its flash, sorry) –> hosted by blogtalkradio.

Enjoy the show!

Hi all,

Its been a few days since we blogged about the Utah Open Source Conference 2008 (in fact, more like 2+ weeks).  But I’m back now and ready to let you guys know that while there might be a few more bumps in our migration path, most of the Utah Open Source servers are up and working well.

We have been busy lately, preparing for an exciting and fun Utah Open Source Conference 2008.  New features continue to crop up on our main site.  Check them out and start watching for speakers as we’ll be approving presentations over the next few weeks.  The selection committee, made up of many professional geeks, LUG leaders and others, has been madly voting for their favorites so it looks to be a good list of presentations.

As of right now, UTOSC 2008 will begin in approximately 63 days.  And due to this, I’ve taken the time to create a little javascript that can be included in your site, with a neat countdown.  Have a look at the right hand side of our site.

We’d like to invite everyone to put this link on their website to help us get more people interested in the countdown.  Basically, this is a very similar countdown script to the ones released by each of the big Linuxes (Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE).

Just stick this code anywhere on your site:

<script id=“utosc-banner”
type=“text/javascript”
src=“http://dl.utosc.com/08/scripts/release-counter-ext.js”>
</script>

You should get something similar to this:

See you all at the Utah Open Source Conference 2008!

Cheers,

Clint

Welcome to my disappointment.  Welcome to my frustration.  Welcome, welcome to my not being able to attend FUDCon!  Did I mention I was frustrated and disappointed?  Well, if I didn’t, I am!

Here’s the story.

Many of you probably know that I work for Guru Labs, and as such, I teach Linux for a living.  This coming week, I was on my way, I really was, to New York City to teach a Local System Administration class.

It was all set.  I was going to fly from NYC to Boston on Friday afternoon after my class.  The room was booked at the conference, I even had committed to helping do video recordings of each of the FUDCon attendees (something like 150 of them) on cheese.

Then Friday the 13th happened….

Normally, I like Friday the 13th, and with the exception of this event, it was a great one.  At the last minute, I was informed the class had been cancelled.  Now, this isn’t an abnormal thing and usually I’m not this upset about a class being cancelled.  Saying that means I was banking on some things which normally pull through, but they didn’t  All in all, I’m only frustrated that I can’t go to FUDCon!

I tried hard to still go.  In fact, I finagled and attempted to convince any of the other instructors I could into letting me teach their class.  I hit up my friends for $600, all to no avail.  The cost of the hotel was $400 already, adding another $600 is not in my budget, I’m afraid.  And people say that airlines don’t make any money!

So I will miss you all and the wonderful barcamp sessions I was planning on attending. I’ll miss Paul’s first State of Fedora address.  I’ll miss chatting Seth up about yum, Spot about RPM and politics in general, or Michael about cobbler and func.  In fact, I wanted to spend a bit of time talking with Jef about video and gstreamer, but I guess I’ll just have to wait until FUDCon F11 in 2009 :(

Could someone video record each of them and post them?  Or at least the audio?  Hehe, I know that’s a lot of work, but hey, it can’t hurt to ask.  In fact, if you are willing to stream audio, I have an IceCast server and I’d be happy to help configure your client to accomplish this task.

Cheers,

Clint

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-May/msg00007.html

Get yours today! http://fedoraproject.org

Be sure and digg it too:

http://digg.com/linux_unix/Fedora_9_Sulphur_Released

Well, usually I forget to take pictures, because either A) I forget my camera [I brought it this time] or 2) I get wrapped up in the event and forget to bring it with me.  But this release party, I plain just forgot to charge my batteries for my camera, oops!

Fortunately, I was able to snap a few pictures with some of the spare, also not fully-charged, batteries I did have on hand.  However, others took many pictures and I’ve listed them below.

• Sheri Bigelow took some great pictures.  She is a great local photographer, web designer and the local webmistress.
• Tristan Rhodes, a local Asterisk Entrepreneur posted a good blog post.
• Here’s the pictures I took.  Not nearly as many, or as good.

To summarize the party, much celebration was had with foosball, a chess game on one of the largest chess boards around, video games, air hockey and much more was provided by CodeGreene.  The FedoraProject and Utah Open Source sponsored the food and prizes.  If you’ve never had a Chipotle burrito, they are the best burritos around.

I was able to spend time with about 5-7 people myself sharing the Preview Release of Fedora 9 (codename Sulphur) including two who had never had previous success with Fedora or Linux in general.  It was very satisfying to see things work for them.

The Ubuntu folks were there in strength as well.  The Hardy Heron (8.04) CDs were being passed out, while we Fedoran’s provided LiveUSB versions.  I even saw people taking advantage and obtaining both!  Its great to see communities come together and celebrate together.

The party continued at Salt Lake Pizza & Pasta for another couple hours.  Lot’s of talk about the releases, upcoming events, and general mayhem took place including having Heartsbane shoot beer through his nose when I swore at him!

All in all, quite a successful evening and I look forward to helping others in November at our next release party.

Cheers,

Herlo

UPDATE: Another 70+ pictures have been added, check them out!

The following two articles were published in the past couple days.  When they were published and made known to me, I was saddened:

Report: OLPC may eventually switch from Linux to Windows XP
Nicholas Negroponte on Sugar and One Laptop Per Child

It appears, that Greg DeKoenigsberg responded (it appears) to these two articles with a great rebuttal in this article:

OLPC Developers are *not* fundamentalists

Thank you Greg, thank you for saying what I feel inside.  As an open source advocate, I see the value and benefit of free software and its power.  I feel good inside when I contribute and don’t feel anything like a fundamentalist.

Again, thank you Greg.

Cheers,

Herlo

As many of you may already know, Fedora 9 (codename: Sulphur) has been pushed back 2 weeks to May 13.  Being the organizer of the Utah Fedora/Ubuntu Linux Release Party on May 3, its kind of hard to push it back because Ubuntu’s release is still on time.

I’m glad though that the major parts of this release are feature complete and its just a few blocker bugs holding it back.  I’m also really happy to point out that because the folks at the Fedora Project are willing to push the date back, the release will be much better off in the end.

This also goes to show that while many businesses would consider releasing anyway.  Mainly because they promised something, and not releasing would cost them revenue and possible customers.  Open source people don’t follow the same mantra, and I’m proud to say that while I like meeting deadlines, if deadlines slips a little to make a better product, timelines should slip.

In the meantime, enjoy the preview release made available yesterday.  Utah will party with this preview.  Shortly after the party, an update will be made available via yum.  There are some amazing things coming out in a few weeks.  Keep your ear to the ground and enjoy the new Sulphur in your life!

Cheers,

Herlo

Fedora 9 (Sulphur) will be released April 29, 2008
Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) will be released April 24, 2008

All are welcome to join in the celebration of newly released Fedora and Ubuntu distributions. Ubuntu Utah has been gracious to allow revelers from the Fedora camp join in with the Ubuntu Utah team.  The entire event will be sponsored by the Utah Open Source Foundation who will also provide food.

FOOD IS FIRST COME FIRST SERVE, SO COME EARLY AND COME HUNGRY!

If you’ve never been to a release party, they are a blast, and this one proves to be nothing less than spectacular.  In fact, Code Greene’s owner Mac Newbold has offered up his office (or rather playground) for us to hold our party.  Code Greene has foosball, video games, pool, music and more for all to enjoy.

Why: Release of Ubuntu Hardy Heron (8.04) and Fedora Sulphur (F9)
When:  May 3, 2008, 6-8pm (or thereabouts)
Where: Code Greene, 44 Exchange Place Salt Lake City, UT 84111

Please RSVP via upcoming.org if you are participating.

Cheers,

Clint Savage / Aaron Toponce
UTOSF / Ubuntu Utah

I was perusing today, and maybe its just because its April Fools day and I’ve not posted, but I thought this was pretty hilarious…

If you click to add a new calendar item into Google Calendar, you get a new button “I’m Feeling Lucky”…

After clicking this new button I recognized, here’s what I got:

Woohoo!  So right before the Ubuntu/Fedora Release party on May 3, I have a date with Jessica Alba!  Nice!  I might blow off the release party if the date goes well…

I tried this a few more times and here’s the results I’ve received.  I’ve got dates with:

• Anna Kournikova on May 5 at 4pm
• Eric Cartman on May 10 at 6pm
• George W. Bush on May 6 at 4pm
• Matt Damon on May 8 at 8pm

Wow!  I’m popular.  Who else, what else did you get?

Cheers,

Herlo

So I’ve done it.

Yes, I really have done it this time!

Well, maybe…time will tell.

I’ve gone and posted an idea for a project on the Fedora wiki page for the Google Summer of Code (GSoC), but that’s not all, no!

In addition, I took the time to apply to be a mentor at the Google Summer of Code Project page.  And what’s weirder, is I hope I get the opportunity to make this idea a reality, because I think its something that Fedora could really use.

I’m somewhat surprised it hasn’t already been created. A couple of people found this idea too, and have emailed me about it, and I need to reply.  Soon that will happen.

I am really excited.

Cheers,

Herlo

Mailing lists can be a pain in the butt, especially when discussions spiral into topics about which pizza delivery company is best, which text editor is best, which Linux distribution is best, which caffeinated beverage is best, etc.

We at Utah Open Source (UTOS) know you work hard day in and day out and deserve a break from the hardship of having to deal with meaningless discussions about what’s best. We give you something better — perhaps the best mailing list ever: utos-announce. We created this list so we can mail out announcements about upcoming UTOS events, but you can use it too, to announce anything you’ve got coming up… well, as long as it has something to do with open source in Utah.

Subscribing to the utos-announce list is simple: Go to < http://utos.org/mailman/listinfo/utos-announce >, enter your e-mail address, your name (optional), a password (also optional), and select the Subscribe button. If you’ve followed these instructions so far without making any mistakes or being distracted by a flamewar continuing on one of the other mailing lists you’re subscribed to, a confirmation message will be sent to your e-mail address with instructions on how to confirm your subscription. Follow those instructions (They’re real, real simple… like “click on this” simple.) and you’ll be ready to receive amazing, exciting announcements!

Subscribing to the utos-announce list is a great way to stay informed about the latest developments of the upcoming UTOSC conference. Find out who the keynote speakers will be before the story is aired on the local evening news. Learn what exciting schwag and promotions conference sponsors will be offering in their booths. Get the low-down on entertainment options while you’re attending the Utah Open Source Conference. Ahhh… the possibilities are endless.

What? You’re still here? Go subscribe already!

Before there can be another Utah Open Source Conference in 2008, there needs to be a list of people who will present on various topics. This is how YOU can contribute to the conference: by being a presenter!

The UTOSC Call For Papers begins now at <http://2008.utosc.com/>! Papers can be submitted until June 1, after which time chosen presenters will be announced.

Some people are natural public speakers and presenters while others are reluctant to imagine themselves in front of a group of people at a conference. Because this year’s Utah Open Source Conference theme is “HOWTO”, nobody should feel unqualified or inexperienced to present. We want presenters who can share information at all levels.

And now, some tough questions.

What should I talk about?

You should talk about Open Source software, philosophy, technology, etc. The theme for this year’s conference is “HOWTO” so your topic can be targeted at beginners, experts, or someone in between.

It may help to see what topics were presented last year. Go to <http://www.utosc.com/2007/sessions/> for information about 2007’s conference sessions.

This year, several sessions will be targetted at beginning or “newbie” users including those who are family members of an Open Source geek. Basic sessions on using OpenOffice.org, GIMP, or K3B are good examples of these types of sessions.

We are asking for presentations in one of the following categories, so bear that in mind also:

• Business
• Technical
• Community
• Education

What does a response to a call for papers look like?

You should come up with a brief outline, or abstract, of your presentation and who would be interested. You should also provide some information about you, your experience with open source software and the specific aspects you’re proposing to speak about.

Here’s an example of an abstract:

Title: Open source home security

This presentation will outline how I have used a
Linux server, IP cameras, and open source software,
to provide around-the-clock video and image
surveilance of my home which is archived for later
viewing and is available for viewing via the Web
when I’m not at home. 

The presentation will describe how to set up a
system similar to mine and what alternatives are
available for software and hardware in the system.

What’s in it for me?

There are lots of perks reserved for people chosen to present at the Utah Open Source Conference!

Resumé material

Having presented on a topic at a conference is a great thing to add to your resumé and could make the difference the next time you apply for a job.

Free admission

If you’re chosen as a speaker, we’ll let you — and your family — into the conference for FREE!

A picture and a paragraph

Speakers are asked to submit a digital photo and a paragraph of biographical information which will be seen by those viewing the UTOSC website and those reading the conference program.

Warm fuzzies

Being involved in the Utah Open Source Conference is a great experience. Just ask anyone who was involved in 2007’s conference.

What’s that URL again?

Go to <http://2008.utosc.com/> and get yourself an account. Then you can submit as many presentation ideas as you like.

I have a few minutes this evening after a full day at the hospital.  My first child, a little girl, was born last nite.  Everything went well and we’ve been getting used to the new addition in the hospital today.  We’ll be back home tomorrow sometime, and I’m sure life will be a lot different.

For those of you waiting with bated breath, wait no longer. The Utah Open Source Conference volunteers have been hard at work year preparing an even more awesome conference for 2008.

Because 2007 was such a grand success, we’ve made some minor changes and improvements to help with a smoother conference. This year’s conference is at a different location and we’ve added a full day on Thursday.

The Utah Open Source Conference 2008 will be held at the Salt Lake Community College, Redwood Road campus August 28 - 30, 2008.

This years theme is HOWTO. The concept is that within the technology, education, community and business tracks, there will be plenty to talk about.

• HOWTOs will help others get started
• HOWTOs will help families use open source together
• HOWTOs will provide a stepping stone along the road to technology mastery
• HOWTOs will let those that are masters get together and make the products better.

These are just a few of the many things that HOWTO theme will accomplish during the Utah Open Source Conference (UTOSC) 2008.

The Salt Lake Community College Computer Science department is excited to be a sponsor of the 2008 conference and will be using it to improve students’ awareness and understanding of open source software.

The Utah Open Source Foundation is also re-dedicating itself to ensure the pricing structure remains reasonable for those who’d like to come and are on a budget. The pricing structure right now is tentative, but no major increases in the fees are planned for attendees.

We currently have a tentative plan on our wiki, so feel free to have a look. If you have suggestions, please join the chat anytime in the #utos channel on irc.freenode.net or email clints at utos dot org with your comments.

Watch closely over the next week for the Call for Papers, updates on the basic schedule, and the Call for Volunteers among other exciting announcements, including our keynote speakers.

See you all in August.

Clint Savage
Founder, Utah Open Source Foundation

Well, it appears that I am one of the many victims of Qwest and their lurid line noise issues, thus no DSL for me! Because of this, I’m in the process of scrambling for a new location for our UTOSF HackNight this evening. If anyone who’s coming would like to donate their location, or know of some place central to those in Salt Lake County with free wireless and open all night, let me know. I accept emails at herlo1@gmail or you can twitter me at http://twitter.com/herlo.

If nothing pans out, fear not, I do have a possible alternate location for this event, which I should be able to arrange for by the end of the day as a backup plan. As it stands now, everyone should just arrive at my place @6:30 (instead of 7pm) in Murray and we’ll carpool and caravan as desired.

See you all tonight for an awesome hackfest!

Cheers,

Herlo

So I’m back at work today after a very hard Sunday (fudpub was not friendly to me) at the slack^H^H^H^H^Hhackfest. However, I have to say that it was probably the best learning experience one could have at a conference. The BarCamp concept really worked well and I think it gave me some much needed information to move ahead on projects with which lately, I’d been struggling.

In addition to all of the learning, I was able to meet some really cool people there. Of course, there were my friends, Jared Smith, Evan McNabb and Derek “goozbach” Carter, and it was great to see them.

But I didn’t just come for my friends, and it was great to meet so many others.

I met Paul Frields when Jared introduced me. He quickly informed me, that Paul would be the “New Max”. After spending the last 2.25 days near or around Paul, I think he’ll be a great leader. And to be honest, it feels to me as he’ll put his own stamp on things. Not to take away from what Max has done, and will do, but I think Paul will be an awesome leader and I look forward to his friendship and leadership.

I was able to visit with Jim Whitehurst, the new Red Hat CEO. He stopped me to ask about my Eeep c and what I thought. We talked for a good 5 minutes before I realized who he was, and then I congratulated him on the job and said I expected great things :) He was quite excited to see the Eeep and it was awesome to know how passionate he was about Fedora. And to take the time out on a Saturday, that’s awesome!

A few more people I met who were awesome and friendly: Michael DeHaan, Karsten Wade, Seth Vidal, Russell Harrison,Toshio Kuratomi and another who’s name escapes me (who I helped get lost somewhere near Cary and Apex) and so many more names I cannot recall, though I’ll not forget your faces. Thank you for your valuable time and helping me get acclimated to this awesome community. I’d like to thank everyone who spent time helping us naive souls learn the way of the Fedora.

In the future, I plan to take much of what I learned and start working with it in my spare time. I’ve also started the process of joining the documentation project and look forward to helping them. My ambassador duties are simple enough that I can continue doing that as well, so this year should be a good year.

Thanks again to my company Guru Labs, for helping me arrange my schedule around FUDCon and hopefully they’ll be as accommodating for Scale next month.

Cheers,

Herlo

I’ve just done an update of the database for this blog.  I did an export and a giant find/replace for some formatting tags I wanted updated.  If you notice anything really odd about the site, pages not displaying, content screwed up, etc please let me know.

It appears all is well.. so far.

What I did was go back and add the code tag to all of the blockquotes, which shoud clean up a bit of the formatting.  This should help avoid things like reformatting of dash-dash, etc.

The Utah Open Source Foundation would like to announce the availability of a new podcast available for meetings that have been recently streamed/recorded.  They’re available at http://podcast.utosf.org.  These presentations are available from many of the LUGs around the state.  Check them out…

Please let us know what you think as we’d like to do more and better versions in the future.  If you’d like to have your meetings streamed and recorded, please let us know.

Cheers,

Clint Savage

I spent yesterday evening putting the final touches on my server transition. The DNS update should be making its way through the ever clogging interweb tubes as you read this. Hopefully by Monday it’ll have made its way to the far corners of the interweb.

I do want to thank everyone that offered services and advice. There were a number of people that stepped up and offered discounted or even free hosting for this blog, and I really do appreciate those offers. In the end the server ended up on SliceHost running a xen Ubuntu 7.10 image. (I actually bought the SliceHost image about a month ago and, due to the holidays, had been unable to get everything migrated.) I’m glad to hear the good remarks in SliceHost’s favor. I hope I am as satisfied as the rest of you.

New Server Stats:

Information from /proc/cpuinfo shows four listings for “Dual-Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 2212 HE”, which I’m sure is shared with a number of other “slices”. I have 256M RAM dedicated to my “slice” and it is running Ubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy” Server. To help maintain a healthy speed I’m running the latest WP-Super-Cache plugin for Wordpress and memcached underneath. I hope this new setup can withstand Digg and its minions.

Thoughts About the Old Host:

Having been with BlueHost for about nine-months I think I learned a few things about bulk-hosting companies and more specifically about my needs as a webmaster. For your everyday site I’m sure BlueHost is more than adequate. I have nearly a dozen other sites and blogs that I maintain, all (previously) hosted there, which have seen minimal issues. This site however is a different story. As the number of active Ubuntu users continues to rise the load on this site gets heavier and heavier. In its earlier days this site was not a threat to any host, but as it has matured I’m sure there are many hosts that would tremble at the thought.

I’m sad to say that I’m really disappointed in the way that BlueHost handled the load issues. It isn’t an uncommon practice for hosting providers to temporarily suspend a site with a high load, but I think it is a bad practice. I think a better solution would be to contact the site owner and notify them of the server load. Offer to keep the site online and available (when it really is needed most!), perhaps for a small additional fee worked into the contract. When a hosting provider takes down a site under a heavy load all they are doing is making both parties look incompetent. If BlueHost had gone the extra mile with my server load vs suspending the site and making it unavailable I would be singing a different tune now altogether. Praises vs grief.

It’s water under the bridge now and we’ve moved on. Here is to 2008 and (hopefully) a very accessible, very active Ubuntu Tutorials blog!

As many of you have noticed the site has been down for the majority of the day.  I really don’t have any idea why other than because I’m over my “PHP quota”, which I don’t know why would be the case.

I’m honestly pretty fed up with my hosting provider at this point.  I’m very actively working on transfering all of my sites to a new server that I’ve set up.  Just getting things sync’d and I should be ready.

I think its honestly *really* pathetic that a hosting provider can’t keep my site online 24/7 whereas my old PIII 500MHz kept it running just fine.   The only reason I don’t keep it hosting on my server at home anymore is because I have a pretty poor bandwidth pipe.  Bluhost has really been a disappointment lately.

If there continues to be downtime I apologize.  I am aware of it and I’m very actively working on it.  Thank you for your patience.

Okay, this time we found a better way to produce and release the UTOSC 2007 videos - YouTube!  These videos are a great way to escape the in-laws (or watch while wrapping presents).

Because YouTube will let you create your own group, we’ve done so and are making the videos available on our group page. If you are interested in seeing more videos, you can sign up and watch the currently available videos.

Currently, there are only a few videos, and more will be coming everyday. A special thanks to Doran Barton (fozzilinymoo) and OpenSourceTV.tv for helping us out with these videos. We look forward to releasing more videos, and as we do so, announcements will be made here.

Cheers,

Clint Savage
Utah Open Source Foundation

If you are an entrepreneur or someone looking for work, the Open Source Technology Center is here to help. Next Thursday is the Home Runs in IT conference. This conference is being put on to help those “seeking new job opportunities, considering new ventures, and open for new ideas in IT.”

The Utah Open Source Foundation is sponsoring a table at this one-day event and (hopefully) a representative will be there to help where we can. This project has been put together by Shauna Theobald, our very own Stephen Shaw and many others and it looks to be a great conference. There’s quite a lineup available at the Home Runs in IT conference site.

Members of any User Group (UG) is free, along with ex/Novell employees, and students. Sign up today as space is limited!

Cheers,

Clint Savage

Randy and Aaron, of NorthTemple.com (the blog of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint’s design group), pulled up behind a vehicle with a humorous license plate this morning on the way into the office.

No surprise here.

Since the electronic voting equipment manufacturers are completely incompetent when it comes to security, I and any other person with a working brain (when it comes to security, that is) have been expecting that we would be hearing an awful lot about machines “malfunctioning” in this year’s election.

If you haven’t caught any of the stories yet, check out Pete Ashdown’s recent post on some voting experiences that have been sent in to him, as well as Pete Ashdown’s recent post on some voting experiences that have been sent in to him, as well as this story on KFDM’s website.

There are other stories surfacing already.

Pay very close attention to your voting. Make sure the machine shows what you really wanted to vote for before you commit your vote. Double-check the printout from the voting machine and make sure that every one of the items marked is what you really wanted to vote for.

It’s your responsibility to ensure that your vote was recorded as you want it. The electronic voting systems adopted in the state of Utah are so insecure that it doesn’t matter how good the elections officials and workers are at their jobs; votes are going to be stolen this year and with greater ease than in any past year.

It’s up to you, the voter, to protect yourself and your vote.

I have known Marc Christiensen for years and have a lot of respect for him. He does a great job of keeping on top of things, which is why I was surprised that he didn’t catch the problems found in the Oracle press release he quotes in his recent post.

I’ll quote the part he quoted and intersperse it with my comments.

Today Oracle announced that it would provide the same enterprise class support for Linux as it provides for its database, middleware and applications products. Oracle starts with Red Hat Linux, removes Red Hat trademarks, and then adds Linux bug fixes.

Sound like what CentOS and White Box Enterprise Linux (WBEL) do. OK, that’s fine.

Currently, Red Hat only provides bug fixes for the latest version of its software.

Wrong.

Red Hat provides seven (7) years of support from the release date of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) release (since RHEL3, only 5 years for RHEL2.1), including the production of errata packages for both security and bug fixes. This means that support, including updates, will not be terminated until after October 2010 for RHEL3 and February 2012 for RHEL4.

This often requires customers to upgrade to a new version of Linux software to get a bug fixed.

Wrong.

However, it is true that Red Hat does not backport drivers or other new feature support to released versions.

Oracle’s new Unbreakable Linux program …

Oracle’s “Unbreakable Linux” program has been around for years. Perhaps, they meant to convey that this new incarnation of the (existing) Unbreakable Linux program, which now includes an Oracle branded Linux distribution.

… will provide bug fixes to future, current, and back releases of Linux. In other words, Oracle will provide the same level of enterprise support for Linux as is available for other operating systems.

Thus implying that Linux is backwater, until Oracle steps in and makes it acceptable. Sounds like big software company marketting people to me :) .

Oracle is offering its Unbreakable Linux program for substantially less than Red Hat currently charges for its best support.

Given that Red Hat has support option from nothing (no support contract is required) or pay-per-incident phone support up to 24×7 on-site Red Hat employees managing your systems with a couple dozen options in between, “best support” could mean a lot of things.

Of course, tons of people get confused easily by Red Hat’s “licensing” costs. No! They are not charging you for a license. Everything in RHEL is free and open. You can buy both a support contract and/or (a) subscription(s) to Red Hat Network (RHN).

“We believe that better support and lower support prices will speed the adoption of Linux,

Well, duh!

… and we are working closely with our partners to make that happen,” said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. “Intel is a development partner. Dell and HP are resellers and support partners. Many others are signed up to help us move Linux up to mission critical status in the data center.

I’ve got news for you Oracle, Linux is already mission critical in lots of data centers, including yours. That’s right, Oracle has been using Linux as the platform for delivery of their hosted applications services for years. I am also personally familiar with enough Fortune 500 companies data centers to say that they all have at least one of their mission-critical applications running on Linux. But don’t take my word for it; almost all of them have made public statements in some form or another which indicate that this is the case.

Please, will you folks stop treating Linux like something you are coming along to save from “certain self doom”. You’re not. Most of you are, on the other had, making wonderful contributions, but all of our Linux are not belong to you.

Although this last one isn’t really that big of a deal, it’s yet another example of how marketing people in companies that should know better keep implying that Linux isn’t ready for “real world” workloads.

BTW: I’m sitting in a lousy hotel room in Austin, Texas with NyQuil in my system, feeling sick and extremely drowsy. Maybe I should post while in this state, but I’m doing it anyway (isn’t that one of the corollary definitions of “stupid”?). So, if I messed up a detail or a link, please, let me know, but bear with me. Also, I only have Internet access in the evenings, if it’s working (took a couple of hours to get a stable connection tonight). I’ve gotta go sleep now. I sure hope I don’t feel this crappy, tomorrow. Goodnight.

This very well written article describes (in very easily understood terms) how the centralization and industrialization of food processing in the U.S. has lead to the point where contamination can easily occur and is very hard to track down. It also points out how we could easily make the problem much, much worse.

Rather than talking further about this, I’ll let you read the article. It’s very good. But I would like to point out that there are a lot of parallels in network & systems security that could be drawn here.

This morning, this story was brought to my attention. When I read it, my first reaction was, “Wow.” and that was about it.

I hope and pray that those childrens’ mother will be found soon and that she is all right.

For those who may not be familiar with the Reiser’s, Hans runs Namesys and is a key figure behind the development of the reiserfs and Reiser4 (read about Reiser4 on WikiPedia) filesystems. Reiserfs was the first journaling filesystem for Linux.

In the story, the reporters point out that the police do not regard Hans Reiser as a suspect at this time.

This makes a lot of sense to me, since Nina dropped off the kids and they were with him, she went to the grocery store and never showed up at her friend’s, according to her plan for that day. Her vehicle was found with the groceries inside of it. Thought the article doesn’t say anything about it, I have to assume that the police have already verified that she did make the purchase at the grocery store and I would, therefore, also have to assume that they have video of her shopping at the store and leaving it.

There also was no mention of a search warrant for Hans’ home, but I’m sure they had one. I think it was a very good idea of the police to take the precaution of searching his home early on and to use a cadaver sniffing dog.

Much of the investigative processes and police procedure is the process of elimination. They take each possibility one by one and seek to prove or disprove it and move on to the next. That’s the same proccess we computer folk use when troubleshooting a problem. Both investigation and troubleshooting follow this line because it works very well.

CNN published this story about the capture of Warren Jeffs. It’s an interesting read. However, what I think is a more important part might go unnoticed by most people.

A paper license tag, a salad and stories that didn’t make sense pricked the suspicions of a state trooper who stopped the car of a wanted fugitive polygamist in Las Vegas.

But it was the pumping carotid artery in the neck of Warren Steed Jeffs that convinced Nevada Highway Patrolman Eddie Dutchover that he had cornered someone big.

This is an excellent example of security “Done Right”. Dutchover correctly applied behavioral profiling. It takes a smart person with the right training to be able to correctly do behavioral profiling without it degrading into racial profiling or some other mostly ineffectual form of profiling.

Eddie Dutchover, I take my hat off to you and your expert application of such effective techniques. Bravo!

Also, in the same CNN story, you can read about how Utah is getting first crack at prosecuting Jeffs.

There are also a couple of interesting video clips linked within the article. They are linked via a JavaScript thingy, so I’ll refer you to the CNN article to view them (I could work out URLs to give you some direct links here, but I’m not going to take the time to do that, tonight).

On May 25th, I was reading The Wall Street Journal. The cover story was titled, “Credit-Card Issuers’ Problem: People Are Paying Their Bills“.

Why would this be a problem for them? After all, they are in business to make money, right?
(more…)

The May 26-29, 2006 issue of USA Today ran this story.

Basically, the Federal Excise Tax was introduced in 1898 to help pay for the Spanish-American War. At that time, a tax on phone service was a tax on only the wealthy. The US Department of the Treasury is finally ending this tax.

The result is that all phone companies (including cell phone carriers) must stop charging for the Federal Excise Tax on August 1st. Individuals and business can also file for refunds next year (on your 2006 tax return) to receive a refund for any excise tax paid on long-distance calls since March 1, 2003.

You should read the whole story on USA Today’s website (it’s quite short), as there are some interesting details. For example, there are some narrow circumstances in which you might have to still pay a 3% excise tax.

Here’s hoping you get some bones back next April 15th.

Another reminder for the Multi-Distro Release Party being held this coming Saturday. Ubuntu (Gutsy Gibbon), Fedora (Werewolf) and OpenSUSE (10.3) will be available via network install.

Map: http://tinyurl.com/yprnqr
When: Saturday, November 10, 2007 1pm-5pm MDT
What: Installfest, pizza, drinks and more.

Cheers,

Clint Savage
The Utah Open Source Foundation, Open Source for Utah, and the world!

And so the saga continues!

Transaction Summary
=============================================================================
Install     98 Package(s)
Update    1092 Package(s)
Remove       2 Package(s)

Total download size: 1.3 G
Is this ok [y/N]: y

Resulted in:

$ cat /etc/*release
Fedora release 8 (Werewolf)
Fedora release 8 (Werewolf)
Fedora release 8 (Werewolf)

I did have a few problems, mostly things that were from non-fedora repositories. Once I cleared those up, all went well. Fedora 8 is beautiful.

A couple things to note. My ATI drivers seemed to stay in place and as horrible as ever for dual displays. I’m going to be trying xrandr as soon as I can find the open ATI drivers. Another is that I love to use vlc, but its in the livna repository and currently requires python 2.4, but Werewolf uses python 2.5. I guess I’ll have to get the src.rpm and rebuild it with python 2.5 as the requirement. I also noted that my mouse pad is currently not working, I’ll have to find out why the synaptics drivers stopped working.

Update: I’ve decided it might be useful to at least include a couple cool pictures of the new theme, so here you go.

Cheers,

Clint

Wish me luck. I’ve decided to take the plunge and upgrade to werewolf tonight. After reading Max Spevack’s post about how to upgrade to Fedora 8, this post from Will Woods stating that Rawhide is now ready to go and of course the current code freeze for this Thursday’s release, I think its time to upgrade.

In fact, I plan for Fedora 9 to do this much earlier so I can help test the release. I post here and now to make sure that commit to helping the Fedora Project squash bugs for Fedora 9. I’ll accomplish this by installing it at Test 1 and actually report bugs as I find them.

Wish me luck with this upgrade and my future endeavors. I think its a good cause and a great way to get further involved with the community.

Cheers,

Herlo

Just a quick reminder that Saturday, November 10, from 1-5pm will be the Multi-Distro Release Party at the Open Source Technology Center at Novell. Ubuntu (GutsyGibbon), Fedora (Werewolf) and OpenSUSE (10.3) will be available via network install. Also, we’ll have a few short presentations about the three released distributions, food and a network install server for the Installfest.We hope to see you all there!

Map: http://tinyurl.com/yprnqr
When: Saturday, November 10, 2007 1pm-5pm MDT
What: Installfest, pizza, drinks and more.

Cheers,

Clint Savage
The Utah Open Source Foundation, helping Open Source grow in Utah

This month, we’ll begin our newsletter. UTOSF plans to send out this newsletter to all of the user group (UG) communities in Utah and surrounding areas. We post it here for your benefit and invite you to sign up for the News mailing list at http://utos.org/mailman/listinfo/ to receive this and other news.

In the future, UTOSF plans to make this a regular article released near the end of every month, so come by and see how we’re improving our community.

Utah Open Source Planet

The Utah Open Source Planet, run by Gabriel Gunderson can be accessed in another way, from Utah Open Source Foundation. Point your browser to http://planet.utosf.org and receive the latest and greatest local Utah bloggers talking about everything from linux to food to programming to weight loss. These people are part of Utah Open Source and have a good nose for what’s going on in tech a