[kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: Compiling Kernels, Choosing Distros, DSL wiring, Screen

[Paul Nijjar]

Clearly, the world is going crazy. Earthquakes. Volcanoes.
Strawberries in May.  Catastrophic offshore oil leaks.  The list goes
on and on. This month, we at KWLUG have joined the crazy parade. This
month's meeting features not one, not two, but FOUR presentations to
blow your mind:

- Rob Day will show us how to compile a kernel.
- John van Ostrand will explain how to work with telephone wiring with
  respect to DSL internet.
- Richard Weait will answer the question: "What Linux Distro Should I
  Use?"
- I will show off GNU Screen, which can make your command-line life
  less painful.

And if that wasn't crazy enough, we have a FLOSS Fund nominee this
month! It is called gPodder, and it's a pretty slick program for
downloading podcasts. After the nominee was announced I switched to it
for all my podcasting needs, and I'm a convert. See http://gpodder.org
for more info, and get in touch with me if you won't be at the
meeting but would like to contribute to the donation.

Speaking of insanity, we've been trying to expand our help options at
the LUG. In particular, we would like to make it easier for new Linux
users to get help with their problems. With that in mind we have
created a brand new mailing list (kwlug-help) and a resource page on
the KWLUG website (http://kwlug.org/gethelp ). If you have been
finding yourself stuck and/or overwhelmed by the traffic on our other
discussion list, this may be a resource for you. People are nice on
the new list, and they promise not to call you crazy or dumb if you
don't phrase your question perfectly.

Also speaking of insanity, our federal government has taken advantage
of the nice summer weather to slip a new copyright act called Bill
C-32 into parliament while we are enjoying our vacations. See

http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/crp-prda.nsf/eng/home

for the official government position,

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5086/135/

for Univerity of Ottawa professor Michael Geist's analysis, and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA1RDyN7JTg
for a YouTube video that shows some of the reasons copyright matters
(but note that this video was created in response to the last
iteration of this bill, C-61).

Amongst other things, it looks like this new bill will make it
effectively illegal to play DVDs using open source software. Despite
the "format-shifting" provisions, you won't be able to legally
transfer a DVD to your video iPod either.

If you are interested in taking action around this issue, you can
contact me and I will get you in touch with some KWLUG members who are
organizing around this bill. There is also lots (and lots and lots and
lots) of discussion about this on the kwlug-disc mailing list. (Of
course, you can study the bill on your own and write a response to
your MP as well.)

On a lighter note, I wanted to plug a rather crazy series of talks
being hosted by KWartzlab: 5+5 talks, version 2. This is a series of 5
minute talks by a number of local artists and makers. It will be held
Tuesday June 29 at KWartzlab, starting at 7pm. See
http://kwartzlab.ca/events/2010-06-29/55-v2 for more information.

Here's our totally sane meeting space for this month's:

St John's Kitchen
97 Victoria Street North
(corner of Victoria and Weber)
Kitchener

There's car parking at the Worth a Second Look parking lot, and bike
parking at the side of the building. Crazy!

- Paul

-- 
http://pnijjar.freeshell.org