2002.03.05 Meeting Notes

News

• Trolltech announces 50 beta winners in their Qtopia programming contest. Each have won a Sharp Zaurus PDA. Grand prize winner of the competition will receive a big-screen TV, stereo, and laptop!
• SuSE helped port parts of the Linux Kernel to AMD's new 64-bit "Hammer" processor.
• Debconf 2002 Debian conference announced. Takes place in July.
• "Crossover" plugin now supports Windows Media Player 6.4 under Linux.
• "Netwinder, Inc." created to resurrect the Netwinder Linux appliance.
• GNOME 2.0 beta is out.
• GCC 3.0.4 is out.
• HP is now shipping Linux boxes (servers only)
• Microsoft admits to violating the law (but says no more)
• Bill Gates claims he never said "640K was enough"
• Microsoft claims GPL is "anti-commercialism."
• Microsoft claims HTTP's days are numbered, thanks to .NET.
• Sun charging for Star Office for non-Solaris systems.
• Sun claims "Linux on the Mainframe: Not a good idea."
• Disney CEO Eisner accuses Apple, in part, for music piracy.
• iPod can be used to pirate software off Mac displays at stores.
• Apple creates "Best Mac OS X Open Source Port" category in Apple Design Awards.
• Adobe ports Photoshop to OS X.
• Apple license CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System)
• February marked 40th birthday of videogames.
• Lawsuit claiming video game violence caused Columbine High School massacre has been dismissed.
• ElcomSoft (employer of Dmitry Sklyarov) is requesting DCMA case be dimissed. Something about them not being an American company. :^)
• Savoix Magazine in Singapore causes horrible e-mail loop; Internet catches fire; thousands dead. (Just kidding)
• Bill Jones (candidate for Gov. of Calif.) 'innovates' by spamming thousands (mostly in Canada, because of the ".ca" in their address!) via an open relay in a Korean elementary school.
• 400-year-old law against trespass could mark the end of spam in Australia and possibly entire British Commonwealth.
• MIT students create "Teddy Borg," consisting of a cute teddy bear, plus a 4-port ethernet switch.
• Nerdbooks.com opened their e-commerce site!
• New Sacramento-area tech. magazine coming in April: Wirehed

Project Reports

• Demo - The next demo will probably be Sat. March 16th at the Davis Food Co-Op at 2pm.

• Installfests - Our next Installfest will be Sun. March 17th.

• LERT - A $30 donation for LERT services was made today.

• Library - Dale Nelson donated Progeny Debian Linux to the club.

Other Business

• Voice Empowered Technology Organization - Alicia Kelley spoke about the VETO non-profit, and is hoping for help to develop prototype software for disabled and ESL, using Linux.

• Financial Report - $39.35 in voluntary dues were collected.

Presentation

• Chuck Groom and Devin Carraway of Blue Mug, Inc. of Berkeley, CA visited LUGOD to talk about "Building an Embedded Linux Prototype," including UI design and tweaking GTK+ and the Linux Kernel to run on it.

  Presentation Slides (2MB PDF)

Attendance

• Henry House
• Bill Kendrick
• Devin Carraway
• Chuck Groom
• Joel Baumert
• Marc Hasbrouck
• Eric Mullinix
• Harry Low
• Dave
• Dave Nelson
• Darryl
• Rick
• Geoff Herteg
• Seth Nagao
• Doug Barbieri
• Mike Simons
• Jeff Newmiller
• John Reynolds
• Lee Welter
• Alicia Kelley
• Stephen Helms
• Daniel
• Tim
• ...and 4 others

Photos:

Quote of the Meeting:

• "I've used Linux for long enough that I forget why I started" (paraphrased) - Devin Carraway