[lug] April BLUG News - installfest, talks, proposed laws, etc.

Tue Apr 1 20:01:52 MST 2003

Hi, everyone.

I've got various news to give, so I figured I'd put it all in one
message.

-Future talks-

In the past week, I've lined up speakers for April and May.  We'll be
hearing about Grass/GIS software from Karen Robine this month, and
OpenOffice from Solveig Haugland next month.  I've reserved rooms for
us in the law school, but will confirm them within the next day or two
before 'officially' announcing it.

-Installfest-

I spoke with Shane from the SoftPro Books in the shopping center at
Baseline and Foothills, and he's offered the back room for us to use
for our installfest.  We'll have access to power and network.

I received a suggestion that the installfest would be better planned
for *after* people finish their taxes, rather than before, so I've
moved the date from April 12th to the 19th.  Softpro opens at 10:00
and closes at 5:00 on Saturday, so if you'd like to have something
installed, please come early enough that we don't have to keep our
host waiting.  Let's plan on doing most of the installing between
11:00 and 3:30, to give us a decent buffer.

-The Press-

I received an email from Caron Ellis (csellis at bcbr.com), from the
Boulder County Business Report, who writes:
> I'm writing a story about Lindows and am looking for users.  Do you
> know if anyone in the Boulder Linux Users Group has tried it?

Please contact her if you use/have tried Lindows and would like to
talk about it.  (I did mention, in my reply, that Lindows is only one
part of the Linux world.)

-Book Reviews-

Starting at 8:00 P.M. MST on April 1st, the *fifth* person who sends
me a book review of any book that's been given away in the past year
at BLUG meetings will receive a copy of "Internet Site Security"
authored by Erik Schetina, Ken Green, and Jacob Carlson, published by
Addison Wesley.

http://www.awprofessional.com/catalog/product.asp?product_id={8177FBA0-EE49-46CD-83F5-AB309AA46D02}

Send your review to Christopher.Riddoch at colorado.edu, and it will be
posted on the BLUG website and forwarded to the publisher.  For
information on writing good book reviews, the following pages may be
helpful:

http://www.wlu.ca/wwwlib/subject/writerev.html
http://www.laurentian.ca/library/book.html

-The DMCA-

Forwarded to the NCLUG list by Sean Reifschneider, originally reported
by Neal McBurnett:

> Subject: Colorado "Super-DMCA" bill impacts on Internet privacy, security
...
> I just ran across warnings about Colorado Bill HB03-1303 on
> Communication Devices.  The bill was delayed a week, and goes to a
> final vote in the Senate on Monday Apr 7.
>  
> I haven't finished digesting these developments, but thought it
> would be worth sending this out in advance of the NCLUG meeting this
> evening on Security.
> 
> This proposed Colorado bill is being pushed by the MPAA.  Edward
> W. Felten <felten at cs.princeton.edu>, (609) 258-5906, Associate
> Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University, says that the
> model legislation would have the possibly unintended effect of
> outlawing critical and popular Internet technologies like NAT
> (Network Address Translation).  Many say that it clearly would
> outlaw Vitual Private Networks (VPN), private email (TLS-SMTP), etc.
> 
> Some of the *intended* consequences of the bill also look like they
> limit our civil liberties and might outlaw important software and
> technologies used every day by system administrators who are trying
> to keep their networks secure.
> 
> For more info:
>   http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/superdmca.html
>   http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/doc/2003/security_29mar.pdf
>   http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/cat_superdmca.html
> 
>  Colorado bill:
>   http://www.leg.state.co.us/2003a/inetcbill.nsf/fsbillcont/A2F0DA113DF2BFC087256CC2006BFB94?Open&file=1303_ren.pdf
> 
>  History:
>    http://www.leg.state.co.us/2003a/inetcbill.nsf/billsummary/FFD96D398232513587256CBF00543930
> 
> http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/03/28/1541230&tid=103
> 
> Neal McBurnett                 http://bcn.boulder.co.us/~neal/

BLUG's goal is not to be a political action group, but occasionally
things happen that may directly affect our lives as users and
developers of free or open source software.  This bill has already
passed the state's house of representatives, and will be brought up in
the state senate on April 7th.

Who should you contact?  That depends on where you live.  There are
various districts in the Boulder/Denver area - Much of Boulder proper
is in District 18, which is represented by Ron Tupa.  Contact
information: Office Location: 200 E. Colfax, Denver, CO 80203, Phone:
303-866-4872, E-Mail: ron.tupa.senate at state.co.us.  (Boulder County is
split between several representatives, please make sure you contact
*your* representative.)  This information was found on
http://www.state.co.us/gov_dir/leg_dir/senate/members/sen18.htm

-Final Notes-

That's all for now!  Time for me to go update the website a little. ;)

-- 
Christopher.Riddoch at colorado.edu
 - epistemological humility -