November Lunch Meeting

How can Web Services be saved from themselves?

Speaker: Paul Gordon, PhD student, University of Calgary

Technological advancements in IT are usually met with inflated expectations, followed by disillusionment. The niche for a technology eventually become apparent, and this is just starting to become the case in Web Services, where calling one service is easy, but combining them for real-life tasks is very hard. How might emerging technologies such as the Semantic Web and end user content creation technologies (a.k.a. "Web 2.0") improve the way we interact with Web Services? In this presentation we will explore where Web Services failed, and how semantic and social engineering may lead to better Web Services interoperability within communities such as industry groups and scientific fields. The implementation of semantically enabled Web Services in the field of Genomics research will be used as an example of the technical requirements, the computational possibilities, and what such an IT ecosystem will look like to the end-user.

W.R. Castell Central Library

12h00 to 13h00 (lunch time), Thursday, November 27, 2008

October Lunch Meeting

Technical Sharing

Topics:

• Seismic Software Enhancements through XMLification

  Alan Dewar
  How the introduction of XML into a seismic data processing system made life easier for both developers and users.

• PXE: Booting up x86 OSes without media

  Yves Dorfsman
  PXE allows x86 based machines to boot over the network, allowing you to install or preview Operating System without having to use a hard media (CD, DVD). This is a quick overview of how to set it up, and which current OS'es support it easily.

• Configuration Management

  Harold Ditchfield
  Introduction to Configuration Management and an overview of Puppet.

• Why is encrypted mail such a colossal failure ?

  Hrvoje Lukatela
  In a protracted 4-party (two companies, two sets of lawyers) negotiations that required a fair degree of confidentiality where a lot of the communication was done via e-mail, Hrvoje's proposal to start using either GPG or an extremely simple symmetric "home-brew" system went nowhere fast. That got him thinking: if we need (and obviously, we do!) a "better mousetrap" what would be it's characteristics?
  
  Hrvoje is not proposing a solution, but would like to start a discussion on this topic. He will be presenting what is available today and what problems he ran into.

If you are interested in making a 5 to 10 minute presentation, please contact Yves Dorfsman at yves@zioup.com

W.R. Castell Central Library

12h05 to 12h55 (lunch time), Wednesday, October 29, 2008

September General Meeting

CUUG Show & Tell

Speakers: CUUG CRC volunteers

What's everyone doing with technology and computers at home and work? Come and hear brief 5-10 minute talks and Q&A at the first CUUG meeting of the fall.

Mark Hewitt (CUUG's CRC Chairman) will talk about using Debian at home, CUUG, and work, as well as the addition of Greylisting to CUUG email with the Debian postfix and postgrey packages.

Other speakers will talk about similar topics of interest, with discussion from audience members being actively encouraged.

N.B. Due to library scheduling conflicts, this meeting will be held at a different location than usual:

Memorial Park Library

5:30 PM, Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Membership Renewals Due

It is once again time to renew your CUUG membership, for 2008/2009. (Memberships run from July 1 to June 30.) Invoices have been sent out, so if you have not yet received yours, it should be arriving shortly. Membership fees remain at $50.00 (no GST), and cheques can be made payable to Calgary UNIX Users' Group. Our mailing address is still the same:
Calgary Unix Users' Group
Box 878, Station M
Calgary, Alberta, Canada, T2P 2J3

CUUG 2008/2009 Board of Directors

The following candidates were acclaimed to CUUG's Board of Directors at the June general meeting:

• Dick Miller (President)
• John Clarke (Vice President)
• Mark Hewitt (Chairman)
• Kent Drager (Secretary)
• Peter Cromer (Treasurer)
• Christopher Aziz
• Mike Babulic
• Roy Brander
• Mark Carlson
• Yves Dorfsman
• Christian Saunders