[kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: Troubleshooting Without Source Code

[Paul Nijjar]

Man. It's no wonder that people don't use computers any more. They
never work as intended. You're working away setting up a firewall or
finishing that presentation or typing out a meeting announcement, and
-- BOOM -- everything goes awry. You run into a feature that doesn't
work as advertised. Your program stops working mysteriously. E-mail
chokes and your mail server won't restart properly. Vim eats
your meeting announcement and won't give it back. 

Then what? If you're me you sit in shock and horror, waiting awkwardly
for somebody to come by and fix the situation. If you're Tim Laurence,
you pull up your sleeves and get to work. Tim is the Code Whisperer:
he has an arsenal of nifty utilities and techniques that let him
strace and tcpdump his way to the heart of the most belligerent
programs -- even when you don't have access to the source code. Best
of all, he'll be sharing his software Sherlocking skills at this
month's KWLUG meeting. This meeting starts at 7pm.

This month's FLOSS Fund nominee is CIPPIC, the Canadian Internet
Policy and Public Interest Clinic. This legal clinic researches and
advocates for sensibility around technology issues in Canadian law,
including copyright, net neutrality and privacy issues. See
http://www.cippic.ca for more information. As always, if you would
like to contribute to this month's nominee but can't make the meeting,
you can either make your own donation or contact me and we'll work
something out. 

As you might have noticed from the miserable weather, summer is over
and it's October now. Does that mean our allotment of joy is over for
the year? Of course not: Ontario Linux Fest is this month, on October
23 and 24. This year's festival of all things FLOSSY features four
tracks (FLOSS 101, Business concerns, Embedded development, and
Community) and an impressive array of guest speakers. You can register
at http://www.onlinux.ca/olfreg . 

Before this announcement gets eaten a second time, I had better let
you know that this month's KWLUG meeting is at the Heuther Hotel: 

Boardroom (3rd floor)
Heuther Hotel
59 King Street North
(Corner of King and Princess Streets) 
Waterloo 

See http://www.kwlug.org for pictures and maps. 

- Paul