[kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday; OpenVPN

Paul Nijjar paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca
Fri Apr 1 21:50:27 EDT 2011


Remember back when computers were fun? The Internet was new and you
could find Pee-Wee Herman fan pages in hand-edited web directories and
you could leave your server open to finger requests (imagine! A
worldwide telephone book!) and you could send e-mail halfway across
the world and maybe even correspond with strangers! It was awesome!
Now you can't even surf the net in a coffee shop without someone
getting all Firesheep in your face (thanks for that, you guys. My
facebook friends really appreciated me declaring myself a "winy
looser").  Okay: I know there wasn't even Internet at the coffee shop
back then, but let's not let facts get in the way of nostalgia. Things
were good in the Good Old Days, and now computers are dangerous and
untrustworthy.

Fortunately, Lori Paniak is here to make computers fun again. Although
he won't undo Google or eliminate spam (at least not this month), he
will show us how we can use OpenVPN -- software that allows us to
make secure connections to other networks. You can easily configure
OpenVPN to connect networks together, to connect a home machine to
work, or to connect your laptop at the coffee shop to your home router
so that you can log into social networking sites without snooping
eyes. He'll give us the details during his presentation, which will
begin at 7pm. 

In FLOSS Fund news, our April nominee is Firebug, the web
development debugger John van Ostrand demonstrated during his great
presentation last month. You can learn more about Firebug at
http://getfirebug.com/ , and if you want to participate in the
donation despite not being able to attend the meeting then contact me
and we will make connections. 

In other local news, this Saturday (April 2), Darcy Casselman will be
hosting the KW cell of the 11.04 Ubuntu Global Jam. The Jam will
consist of an informal conference about contributing to Ubuntu,
followed by some people getting down and boogeying away some Ubuntu
bugs in the upcoming release. The event will be held at Kwartzlab
starting at 2pm, and you can learn more at
http://loco.ubuntu.com/events/team/776/detail/

In Bill C-32 news... Bill C-32 is dead. The latest attempt at a
copyright bill died table thanks to the upcoming federal election.
Maybe the fourth time will be the charm, but in the meantime you can
question your candidates about copyright and free software and make
sure that candidates know free software should be on the agenda.

In website news, the KWLUG website will have some short downtime so
that we can apply some security updates. This may happen after the
meeting on the evening of April 4, or it could happen on April 11. 

In announcement-closing news, our meeting will be held at St John's
Kitchen: 

St John's Kitchen
97 Victoria St N
(at the corner of Weber and Victoria) 
Kitchener

There is lots of bike parking along the side of the building, and some
car parking available at the thrift store parking lot. 

- Paul 

-- 
http://pnijjar.freeshell.org 




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