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Join NYLXS in the great borough of Brooklyn, USA at Kings Games for Tech Night, this Sunday Night at 7:00PM until Midnight. This Week Activities: Installfest - Brooklyn Style: Where Software Installs are a Contact Spoort Sendmail Configuration: What are them M4 thingies anyway? Open House Plans: Flyer Designs and Project Plans for the NYLXS Open House Scheduled for the first week of December THe NYLXS Radio Show: The NYLXS Internet Radio Show is reapearing next Saturday evening at 9:00PM. Topics and outline discussion to begin this week. Can Conservatives be part of the Free SOftware Movement? Corperate Stratergy and Free Software: Where we're at and where we need to be. Desktop Freedom: It's a coming The Current Job Market: Is there a future of the Free Software developer? Free Software and City Hall: Discussions and Stratergies for the New York Association of Copyright Stakeholders fairuse.nylxs.com plus more... To join us come to Kings Games 1724 East 12th Street (Corner of Kings Highway) Take the Q train to Kings Highway from Manhattan >From the Brooklyn Suburbs Take the Belt Parkway to Knapp Street: Sheepshead Bay North on Knaps street to the end of the street on to Geritson Ave. Make a half right. Drive to the End to Nostrand Ave, and make the half right to Kings Highway Make a Left on Kings Highway to East 12th Street on to Geritson Ave. Make a half right. Drive to the End to Nostrand Ave, and make the half right to Kings Highway Make a Left on Kings Highway to East 12th Street Chinese Food will be served
Crossfire Server
Play Crossfire, the Multi-User Free Software Adventure Game. Point your Crossfire Client at www.freedom-it.com The Client is available from <A HREF="http://crossfire.real-time.com/download/150release.html"> http://crossfire.real-time.com/download/150release.html</A> I expect to make some special monsters like a MS Dragon, and A Stallmanex Sword
Notice In Service Lecture November 8th
How to write IRC Bots in Perl
Killarny Rose
82 Beaver Street, 2nd Floor
6:30PM
Open Meeting
See - Notes
School Volunteers needed
Volunteers to help bring Linux to NYC public schools is now needed.Contact ruben@mrbrklyn.com or jays@panix.com to help with this effort. Volunteer hours can be recieved for this effort.
NYLXS Charter
The charter for NYLXS is not posted to the mailing list for public review.
Midtown Security
Many buildings in Manhattan now need a photo ID to enter. At IBM, they request you to sign up prior to attending a meeting. Be aware of these changes and contact folks who lead meetings around Manhattan.
Installfeast
We are announcing the first NYLXS lead installation Partyon November 11th, 2001 in the great Borough of Brooklyn USA
Time 3PM until 10PM on Sunday Evening at Ruben Safir Home....
1600 East 17th Street Brooklyn USA
Take the Q to Kingshighway. It's a simple 2 blocks away....
If people object to the late hours, we can negotiate :)
Lecture Series - Inserver
The New York Linux Scene was established to development leadership within the New York Area in Linux related technologies and development. In order to accomplish this, NYLXS is dedicated to volunterism and education. The most important need for those of us in the computing field, either professionally or hobbyists, is the presentation of new areas of discovery and development being explored by memberships of the Linux fraternaty.We are kicking off our inservice program, which hopes to bring recent research and developments to peers in a useful and productive manner. The first presentation will be my good friend and co-worker Brian Sietz.
Brian, a High School award winner in programming, is a Senior Computer Science major students at NYU. During his time in NY he worked for 2 years at the NYU Dental School where he developed his skills in Web programming, Perl, terminal programming, database development, Apache system administration, object orientated programing, and system administration. Later he moved on to a now defunct startup called Scalable Technologies where Brian extended his skills to include PHP, shell and some advanced C.
Currenly he is finishing up at NYU, and expects to enter the full-time job market in the very near future. Anyone who hires him is getting far more than they pay for.
Brian will be presenting to the NY Linux community an introduction on building IRC robots in Perl. The presentation will be followed by Questions and Answers, drinking and eating :)
This first inservice presentation will, preliminarly take place, subject to change, at the
******************************************************** Killarny Rose 2nd Floor 82 Beaver Street Beaver, Pearl and Wall Street NYC, NY on Thursday November 8th, 2001 at 6:15PM. ******************************************************** Cost - it would be nice to order a beer or soda from the bar.... Dinner can be ordered. Food is inexpensive and good. |
Yesterdays 1st meeting of NYLXS drew a nice crowd, more than my expectation, which resulted in a number of unfinished points being made. I thought the meeting was very productive, in that it served it's purpose as a coming out and getting to know you affair.
First, I hope that we can get Sunny's notes of the meeting on line quickly, but until then let me cover a little bit of ground, hopefully to ease us into our next meeting, and to develop a sound foundation for the next meeting.
Let me put out upon Ruth's request, the goals that I envision for NYLXS, so that everyone has a chance to openly comment on them and revise them. As you're aware, I've said repeatedly, that I do not want NYLXS to become a LUG, in the tradition sense, of being driven by a dog and pony show, free meetings, and minimal commitment on 'membership'.
NYLXS is to have a clearly defined membership from which it derives it's Democratic authority from. It exists first, and primarily to servce the free software needs of it's membership, within the confines of approved chater activities.
This is my list of goals for NYLXS, some more easily obtainable than others.
1 - NYLXS is to support Leadership Development in the Open Source community. Leadership development includes technical development, personal development, and political development. In a world, NYLXS needs to develop a steady stream of excellent Free Software citizens.
2 - Training - NYLXS is to develop training programs for both membership and the public. Some space has already been made available in this regard. More should be developed. There are two aspects to training. One is that we want to have traditional training for membership, such as one might obtain in a classroom setting. And we would like to extend such training to the virtual classroom, and with one line workshops.
But secondly, we should develop training with which we can leverage for fundraising and for support of the Linux/OS users as a whole, in business and education. Modeled on typical corporate training, we need to develop proficiency in training OTHERS in the use of the Desktop enviorment, Star Office, Applixware, evolution, the gimp, etc. Ideally we can be the first source for training in businesses and organizations. they needs such a support mechanism in order to adopt Linux broadly and on the Desktop. Greater adaptation of Linux in business and education is a major goal of NYLXS. I'm hoping we can work with with the new desktop Linux Users Group in support of this goal.
3 - Education - The adoption of Free Software by the educational system, the NYC Board of Ed, CUNY, and SUNY, and public libraries,is slower than we would like to see. The true disadvantage of using proprietary software in education is not easy to see by educators and administrators. There are a number of reasons for this. And I will skip over them at this point. Others are more informed than myself on this issue, and can speak clearer on the topic. However, we can do several things for schools to help enhance the adoption rates. These include tech support, petitioning, and networking. Current efforts to get free software into schools have been admirable. I would like us to organize this a little more by having an online tech support ticketing system. This would allow educators to request technical support, and log in an open way our commitment to resolving technical issues in our educational instiutions.
And a large write up of the benefits of free software in schools is also planned for the the nylxs site, a case report, as you will. And we will develop some marketing material as well. :) We can also have a team of tech support people for schools, and liaisons between NYLXS and the educational system.
4 - Installfeasts.. Oh what fun these things are. I have come to learn I can install any Free Software or Open Source software with sufficient scotch.
Next install feast is in Brooklyn, in two weeks on a Sunday, November 11th, 3PM to 10PM, at 1600 East 17th street.
5 - Lobbying. Free Software can exist only long as it is legally protected. I know this seems strange, but indeed, this IS the case. Congress is being constantly lobbied by industry, especially publishers, to legally end garage shop computing and hot-rod operating systems. And strangely enough, the majority of the pressure to stop the Free-OS is not Microsoft, but the MPAA and RIAA.
Large companies and and entire industries, such as the American Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association of America, spend huge amounts of money and time lobbying. One of the reasons that Free Software has been resistant to business tactics is because, obviously, Linux is not a business. BUT, that works both ways, and businesses are adapting to our presence by lobbying for bills which either make free software illegal, or impractical. They are using legal requirements of physical barriers to free software, and using monopoly powers and trust positions to make fee software inoperatable with the broad publicly available Internet.
It is time for the Free Software movement to adapt. While we do not have corporate lawyers and high priced lobbyist on the payroll, we are not without political power and the ability to lobby. Just as our Software development model spring from grass roots associations, so will our lobbying efforts. It will take some funding, but it will take even more leadership and grass roots movement. We can do this, and we must do this if we want to survive as more than a fringe group.
6 - Technical Lectures - I hope that once a month members will present technical lectures on new developments in computing and software. This is not a request to get Alan Cox to come speak about the Kernel Development process today. Instead, we want members to present their own personal research into a new area of Free Software development, and to create a write up, and do a public presentation of the research, with a question and answer session to follow.
I'm always shocked that this is not current standard practice. Computing careers are research and education intensive...similar to Medicine. In order to remain competent in your field, research and presentation is essential. As part of a leadership development function, we hope establish a regular peer review program in this regard.
7 - Create a NY Linux Scene Journal, both on line and in print
8 - Create a regular resource library and lab.
9 - Develop a Consultant's Network and a Jobs network
10 - Make digital online resources available.
11 - Support all NY area Lugs in their goals with man and material.
12 - Rent/Purchase/buy a real physical home for computers, books and even people.