A couple of "Core OS" developers from Linspire will be our guest speakers, and they'll talk about the interesting languages and technologies they use in
their distribution. When asked what they will present in detail, Clifford
responded, "The core OS group at Linspire recently announced that we are
standardizing on Haskell as our primary development language, whenever
appropriate. In reality, we have been using both O'Caml and Haskell for years. Projects include:
hardware detection and configuration,
creation of installation CDs,
package dependancy checker,
translation utilities for IRMA, and
* many internal CGI/Web applications.

"In the whirlwind of diversity that characterizes the Open Source development
model, functional programming provides us an eye of tranquility. In
particular, static typing has proven invaluable. We will discuss the benefits
of systems programming with functional languages using the management of a
Linux distribution as an example."

Date: Thursday June 8, 2006 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Location: Downs 107

The topic for the evening will be "Getting a job in 2006: Is it the dot-com
bubble all over again?" This event will include a presentation on the current
state of the job market in Los Angeles, with special emphasis on tech roles
and open-source fields. There will also be a primer on how to prepare yourself to land the best job possible. Whether you are a linux guru or a newbie, this
session will provide valuable information on how to land a great job. A major
theme will be how to think like a corporate recruiter.

About the presenter:
For over 5 years, Todd Cranston-Cuebas has led technology hiring at
Ticketmaster. He specializes in working with candidates who have backgrounds
in open-source tools and technologies. He has spoken at BOF sessions at a
number of large technology conferences, including ApacheCon, OSCON, USENIX,
and, of course, at SGVLUG meetings. He also is the scheduler and host for this year's monthly perl-centric "Tech Talks" for the LA.pm.

Date: Thursday May 11, 2006 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Location: Downs 107

PGP is an amazing tool for verification and encryption. However, many people
don't fully understand it-even people who use it. This talk mostly will cover
uses and effects of PGP. The discussion will focus on PGP and e-mail, and
other topics will be covered as well. How cryptography works and the math
behind it will not be covered.

Keysigning party

One of the key features of PGP is the "web of trust" that grows out of
individuals signing each other's keys as a way of validating that the
keyholder is indeed the "owner" of the key. We encourge you to create a key
(if you don't already have one), post it to a public keyserver, and bring your "fingerprint" to the meeting for a keysigning party.

About the presenter

Phil Dibowitz is a UNIX systems administrator for the web systems team at
Ticketmaster. The web systems team manages the Ticketmaster.com
infrastructure: roughly 1500 Linux systems organized in four independent,
redundant, and geographically seperate clusters across the United States. Phil 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(1), co-founder of the MSS Initiative, and works on IP Filter and the
USB Storage driver in theLlinux kernel. Find out more about Phil Dibowitz at
https://www.phildev.net/.

Date: Thursday April 13, 2006 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Location: Downs 107

Monthly meeting.

Due to a scheduling conflict, Chris was unable to present this last November,
so we've asked him to return this month.

Chris Smith of Yahoo! to present a slice of life-on-the-inside of the world's
largest content provider.

Chris will demonstrate some of the cutting edge work being conducted at Yahoo! Research Labs, all of which is powered by UNIX and open source computing.

A member of Yahoo!'s Research Technology team, Chris has more than 10 years of experience developing enterprise software solutions for both Internet
start-ups and as a Senior Java Architect for Sun Microsystems.

Date: Thursday March 9, 2006 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Location: Downs 107

Monthly meeting.

When you mention "running more than one operating system" on a computer, most
people will think "dual boot", and for a wide variety of tasks that is quite
appropriate. But how many of you have thought of running more than one system
at the same time? Sure, you're only "one person," so why should the computer
act like you were two people doing different things?

Well, you might not want to reboot your machine -- especially if you have a
long-running task going on such as "seti at home" (since rebooting will cause
the "work unit" to be lost.) You might be a developer, and you're working on
something intended to be "cross platform" -- if every "rebuild-and-test" cycle included "reboot the machine", you'd tire of it rather quickly. Or perhaps you have two programs, each of which runs under a different OS, but you need to
refer to the output of one program while working on the other.

If this describes you and you haven't heard of VMware, then you need to attend the February SGVLUG meeting. This month we'll have Phil Anthony, a Sr. Systems Engineer from VMware, here to talk about what VMware has to offer -- he plans
to talk about the entier line -- from the ESX server to the workstation to
their newest offering, the "free" VMware player. (this is "free as in beer",
folks...)

Date: Thursday February 9, 2006 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Location: Downs 107

Monthly meeting.

Charles Finley of Transformix will be here to show off the Eclipse IDE by IBM. By popular vote, the presentation will be targeting the beginner, but there
will be plenty of opportunity to dig into deeper subjects.

Mr. Finley has extensive software development and consulting experience on the HP 3000, as well as on a variety of large-scale computers, minicomputers, and
personal computers. He has over 30 years of combined experience in the data
processing industry and has held both technical and management positions. He
has conducted over 70 computer-related seminars throughout the U.S. and Canada and is a former faculty member of the Industrial Relations Center at the
California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech) in Pasadena. He studied
management at UCLA, received a Certificate in Data Processing (CDP) from the
Data Processing Management Association, and holds a B.A. in business economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Date: Thursday January 12, 2006 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Location: Downs 107