Southern Vales Linux Users Group (SVLUG)

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) in the Sunday Mail

Sun, 25 Feb 2007 21:30:09 +1100

Since Joel receiving the One Laptop Per Child laptop at linux.conf.au last month, He has given a presentation at a LinuxSA meeting that kicked off a series of media interest.

In the Adelaide Sunday Mail dated 25/02/2007 there is a nice write up about the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)

Quote:

A LAPTOP computer set to revolutionise education world-wide is the prized possession of an Adelaide electrical engineering student.

University of Adelaide student Joel Stanley, 21, is one of only two Australians to own an early-model laptop from the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program.

The brainchild of US MIT Media Lab co-founder Nicholas Negroponte, the program aims to provide laptops to children in developing countries such as Brazil, China, Egypt, Thailand and South Africa at a cost of less than $127.

You can find the full article online titled "Laptop astounds student" were the quoted text came from.

Joel has been keeping a rough record of this, and in case anyone would like to follow along, you can find his online record here at Joel's One Laptop Per Child Media Snippets

Veronica Mars: Ubuntu vs Mac OS X

Sat, 10 Feb 2007 08:50:06 +1100

This is old news and some of you already know about it, but it is worth the adding. I heard my first mention of Linux, and specifically Ubuntu, in a television show. In this episode the school has been receiving bomb threats. As Veronica is walking towards the schools computer lab she hears two people arguing.

Quote:

Male voice: If you havent even tried Ubuntu how can you say you dont like it? It had the 2.6 kernel and Gnome 2 on the day Warty Warthog was released.

Female voice:(who turns out to be Mac, the resident girl geek Veronica turns to for computer help): Im happy with OS X. Its got (something about all the awkgrep that I need) and I dont have to worry about font de-uglification.

Clip One

Linux.Conf.Au 2007

Sun, 21 Jan 2007 09:58:01 +1100

Well.. the annual Australian Linux Conference is over again for another year. As usual it was amazingly fantastic, with a broad range of talks and tutorials.

Bloggers and Flickr'ers have been asked to tag their uploads with either 'lca2007' or 'linux.conf.au', so searching on these in Google should enable you to get a taste of what th event was like.

One huge feature this year was that videos were taken of all of the talks.. some of these appeared on the website even before the conference itself actually finished. They can be found on the conference website here: http://lca2007.linux.org.au/Programme

Check them out.

Ai2 Robot

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 06:09:52 +1000

Starting on the 29 October 2006 with the normal collection of coupons from the Advertiser / Sunday mail and redemed at BP and 'On the Go' service stations.

If you are a 7 day subscribers of The Advertiser and the Sunday Mail can secure their Ai2 Robot collection by providing their details on this page:
http://www.advertiser.com.au/competitions/ai2-robot.html

The Ai2 Robot web site:
http://www.microbric.com/ai2/page.php?sId=1

Programming Manual for the Ai2:
http://www.microbric.com/ai2/sitefiles/File/BricWorkshelp.pdf

Community based Ai2 sites:
http://community.mawsonlakes.org/lab/ai2/ (Thanks to Paul)

Howto: Install Bricworks under Ubuntu 6.06.1 / 6.10

BarCampAdelaide

Wed, 20 Sep 2006 23:28:23 +1000

What is a BarCamp?
BarCamp is an international network of unconferences open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies and social protocols.

BarCamp is 100% non-commercial, non-profit and community driven no one is paid for their time, no one is charged to come and no profits are made.

A BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from participants. If you want to attend, you are encouraged to give a presentation or a demo of some kind.

Who What Where When
Who? Anyone who is interested in technology, the Internet and several related topics, covered in an unconference style
What? A good opportunity for the many flavours of geeks in Adelaide to share ideas and projects. You don't have to contribute, you just have to be interested.
Where? Moana Pioneers Memorial Hall, Nashwauk Cres Moana SA 5169 Google Map. Other States involved are BarCampSydney and BarCampMelbourne and BarCampPerth and BarCampCanberra.
When? 3rd-4th March, 2007
Download Brochure
Links
http://barcamp.org/
http://barcamp.org/BarCampAustralia
http://barcampadelaide.org/
http://barcamp.org/BarCampMelbourne

SFD 2006 @ Hallett Cove (16th September)

Sun, 13 Aug 2006 10:16:37 +1000

Saturday 16th September
Software Freedom Day

Do you want to demonstrate Linux to someone.

This is an event to invite your friends, family, co-workers etc. Anyone who
wants to see Linux working in the following environments -

Multimedia
Internet
Wireless Internet & Communications
Office Software
3D Games
Educational Software
General Games

This event is a family friendly event.

For more info click here

LinuxWorld Conference & Expo, Sydney Australia

Sat, 18 Mar 2006 00:22:19 +1100

28 - 30 March 2006 - Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre

LinuxWorld Conference & Expo provides the powerful combination of education and vendors. The two day conference offers exceptional educational programming, dynamic keynotes, case studies, plenary sessions and tutorials - profiling real life examples delivered by renowned industry specialists.

Find out more here

Adelaide GNOME 2.14 Release Party, Mon 20th March

Fri, 17 Mar 2006 23:59:18 +1100

Let's meet to usher in the the greatest, speediest GNOME release yet!

WHEN: Mon 20th March, from 7:00pm
WHERE: Belgian Beer Cafe (http://www.oostende.com.au/), off Rundle St
WHO: Adelaide lovers of Free Desktops

SVLUG ... The First Installment

Thu, 16 Mar 2006 12:29:35 +1100

Inaugural meeting of SVLUG 2006-03-14 19:30 hrs

The meeting was held in the spacious and airy upstairs room of the Seaford Hotel. Eight people turned up for what turned out to be an informal, interesting, and sometimes humorous, couple of hours of eclecticism. Nonetheless a meeting of minds and diverse perspectives on matters penguin occurred.

Apart from mostly dark mutterings about Evil OS and his minions from the dark side, much light joy and enlightenment promises to emanate from the font of wisdom, namely Tux, at next (and subsequent) meetings tentatively scheduled at monthly intervals, 19:30 hrs Tuesdays.

A recurring theme was the issues surrounding matters educational. As with all people we were there to see what we could get out of it in terms of our own advancement in coming to grips with Linux; mostly the desktop variety and which distro etc. If there was a consensus it seemed to hover around ubuntu / kubuntu although several others were mentioned as well. Two separate themes of education / self education / mutual assistance seemed to me to distill out of conversations. Firstly what we might call 'generalized' education about things like Linux file structures, hierarchies and the like. Secondly about 'nuts and bolts pragmatics of, why can you install and run on this particular hardware, and not that (sometimes even supposedly 'identical' hardware.

It is anticipated that at next month's meeting our founder and prime mover, Dale, will bring a modest box with (hopefully) an extra hdd that we can look at / get demoed installs of one or more distro's (bring along your favorite). Dale may also show us one of his favorite applications, time permitting.

In summary then: It was an interesting and promising beginning for a free association of seekers after wisdom and truth, with perhaps a potential for outreach into a broader community at a later date.

Best wishes to all attendees and a welcome to those wishing to attend our next.

Regards
Harry Sheldon

Root Password Readable in Clear Text with Ubuntu

Tue, 14 Mar 2006 09:01:05 +1100

I thought this was worth a mention for people that use Ubuntu Breezy

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/13/0525254&from=rss
Quote:

Posted by Zonk on Monday March 13, @12:34AM
from the that's-a-big-oops dept.
Security Linux
BBitmaster writes "An extremely critical bug and security threat was discovered in Ubuntu Breezy Badger 5.10 earlier today by a visitor on the Ubuntu Forums that allows anyone to read the root password simply by opening an installer log file. Apparently the installer fails to clean its log files and leaves them readable to all users. The bug has been fixed, and only affects The 5.10 Breezy Badger release. Ubuntu users, be sure to get the patch right away."