Dan Kegel of Google, a longtime Linux user and developer, will present a
grab-bag of interesting topics:
Quick Picasa 2.7 for Linux demo. (Picasa is Google's photo management
software for Windows and Linux, but many people don't know about the Linux version)
Quick Wine status report. (Wine is Linux's implementation of Win32; it
lets you run many Windows applications.)
* Introduction to Zumastor. (Zumastor is Linux's answer to ZFS, kind of; it
lets you take atomic snapshots of any filesystem, and easily replicate
those snapshots to remote systems.)

Dan is a developer for all three projects and was elected the release manager
for the upcoming 1.0 release of Wine, so feel free to ask all the technical
questions you like.

Date: Thursday January 10, 2008 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Location: Downs 107

Asterisk is an open-source PBX program that provides automatic call
distribution, voice mail and interactive voice response menus. X10 is a
power-line carrier protocol for controlling lights and appliances. What can
you do when you combine them? Claude Felizardo will give us an update on his
home-automation system and how integrating Asterisk has moved his home closer
to what is depicted in popular science fiction.

With over 15 years as a Unix developer, Claude got his start with Linux in the late 90s when he built his own firewall. Most of his friends and family think
he has too many gadgets, but he's always looking for something new to play
with, especially if it can be integrated into his system at home. His previous presentations include an Intro to Home Automation, Hacking TiVo and Monitoring the Weather with Linux.

Date: Thursday November 8, 2007 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Location: Downs 107

Kris Bergstrom will give an introduction to the extremely powerful LaTeX
typesetting system and its application to real-world document production. He
will explain how he uses it in the creation of essays, books, and letters
incorporating graphics. He will also demonstrate the use of LaTeX in his
band's annual fund drive which requires the creation of personalized letters
(mail merge) and envelopes.

Initially designed to typeset mathematical formulae, the LaTeX system
incorporates world-class fonts with international symbols. The system
successfully handles the automatic typesetting of complicated textbooks with
thousands of images and internal page, chapter, and figure references. The
line-breaking algorithm used by LaTeX (or more accurately, by the more basic
TeX engine) is the industry leader (eventually adopted by Adobe for its
commercial program, InDesign).

About the presenter:
Kris Bergstrom was first exposed to GNU/Linux in electronic music courses at
Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. In 2000,
excited by the ideals of Free Software, he tried to switch his desktop from
Windows to Debian but with limited knowledge of networking and basic admin
tasks, was unable to get a basic system up and running. Soon after moving to
Los Angeles in 2002, he joined a Linux Users Group and found the support he
needed to do all his personal and business computer tasks with free software.

Date: Thursday October 11, 2007 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Location: Downs 107

Kerry Garrison is back to demo the new trixbox Pro product from Fonality. This latest incarnation uses the hybrid-hosted model developed by Fonality for
PBXtra, but gives installers the control over the hardware and phone
provisioning that they enjoy with trixbox CE.

Kerry Garrison has been in the IT industry for over 20 years with positions
ranging from IT Director of a large multi-site distribution company to
developing a large hosted web server platform for a major ISP, to running his
own IT consulting business in Southern California. Kerry was introduced to the world of Asterisk by a friend and began installing Asterisk-based phone
systems for his small business clients. He wrote articles about Asterisk and
trixbox that became extremely popular on the net, and eventually published the definitive book on trixbox, "trixbox Made Easy." Today, Kerry is the senior
product development manager for trixbox at Fonality. Kerry regularly speaks at trade shows, user groups, and radio programs. He is also the publisher of both http://www.voipspeak.net and http://www.asterisktutorials.com [dead]. Kerry is an
avid amateur photographer who writes tutorials and product reviews for his
photography blog site at http://L7Foto.com.

Date: Thursday September 13, 2007 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Location: Downs 107

X509 and SSL are complicated topics. While they share the basic PKI
infrastructure that PGP and others do, X509 (and SSL by extension) are more
complicated. Extending beyond the basic encryption, signing, decryption, and
verification of basic PKI, X509 includes a variety of extra pieces and
information enabling more features. This talk will cover what X509 and SSL
are, how they relate, how to use them, and how to learn more. It will discuss
PKI from both an certificate end-user perspective as well as from a
Certificate Authority perspective. If time permits, a small comparison to PGP
will also be included akin to the one at the end of my PGP talk.

Phil Dibowitz is a Senior UNIX Systems Administrator for the Web Systems team
at Ticketmaster. Web Systems manages the Ticketmaster.com infrastructure:
roughly 2000 linux systems organized in four independent, redundant, and
geographically separate clusters across the US. Phil has worked in IT for 9
years and has worked as a Linux, Solaris, and Network Administrator, and has a BS in Computer Engineering and Computer Science from USC. He is also the
author of iptstate(8), mime_dump(1), and check_x509(1), co-founder of the MSS
Initiative, and works on IP Filter and the USB Storage driver in the linux
kernel. Find out more about Phil Dibowitz at https://www.phildev.net/

Date: Thursday August 9, 2007 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Location: Downs 107

Date: Thursday July 12, 2007 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Location: Downs 107