LOCAL--Durham, NH - 02/19/97 - Greater New Hampshire Linux User's Group

[hall at zk3.dec.com (Jon 'maddog' Hall, USG Senior Leader)]

Keywords: Privacy Unix  Linux  gnhlug Beer

The next meeting of the Greater New Hampshire Linux User's Group will be on
Wednesday, February 19th, in room 301 of Morse Hall on the Durham campus of
the University of New Hampshire (directions below), starting at 7:00 P.M.

Our agenda will be Mr. Rodney Thayer discussing the use of Pretty Good Privacy
and how to use it on Linux.  We are hoping to have a live demo.  Mr. Thayer's
bio and abstract are below.  We also plan to have a discussion (started at the
last meeting) about a bill going through the New Hampshire House that would
allow an electronic signature to have the same authority as a hardcopy one.

In addition, we will be discussing the plans for the Linux Installation Fest
on Saturday, March 1st. This is where we are going to try and help new users
of Linux install Linux to their systems, and help old users of Linux to update.
Newbies take precedence, since we think that people that have been using Linux
awhile know what they are doing (well, except for those Digital Marketing
types).

The discussion items for tonight currently are:

	o discuss installation needs (disk space, knowledge of system
          parameters such as video board chip set, monitor refresh rate, etc.)

	o discuss purchasing of needed equipment (more disk space, supported
	  video cards, etc.) at a computer show on February 22nd
		(http://www.ncshows.com/)

	o discuss pre-installation fest activities such as backing up system,
          and carving up disk space

Finally, we will start to confirm people who have registered through the
web site at:

http://www.sr.unh.edu/~rea/linux/installfest/form.html

YOU HAVE TO REGISTER....FOR SEVERAL REASONS:

	o we need to know what you have on your system (more or less)
	o we need to know that you know what you have on your system
	o we need to know how many people are planning on coming, so we can
          panic now, instead of at the last minute.  Of course we will panic
	  at the last minute anyway, but being masochists we realized that
	  having the form allows us to suffer over a much longer time. :-)

We plan on doing the bulk of the installations via CD-ROM, so it is good if
you have a CD-ROM on your system.  Floppy distributions are tedious, and not
that many people have ETHERNET cards.

Don't be upset if you don't know ALL of the information on the form, but
there are some things which are fairly critical to know:

	o are your disks IDE or SCSI
	o What type of SCSI controller do you have, if any?
	o What is the make and chipset of your video card, and how much
		video ram does it have?
	o Bring along the page out of your manual on your monitor that talks
		about the statistics of horizontal and vertical sync (usually
		in the back of the manual)
	o What type of sound card, and its IRQ and control layout
	o If your CD-ROM plugs into your sound card, what type of CD-ROM
		is it.
	o What type of ETHERNET or network card

just do your best to fill out the form, and know that the more information
you have, the easier the installation will be.

We plan on mainly using Red Hat 4.1, but there was some mention at the last
meeting about using Slackware also, so there will be some other distributions
there.

At the last meeting we also discussed future topics.  These topics are:

o 3D video cards:  What can they do, how does XFree86 support them
o rpm - a real packaging system, or just another pretty face?  What can you
	do with rpm, and can it help you?
o A comparison of the Debian release of Linux with the others
o A comparison of Hurd with Linux
o Bug Lists in Linux - what is broken, and for how long
o Security - how to install it and set it up (including PAM and Password
		shadowing)
o Firewalls
o Real Time Linux
o SMP, and where it will be in 6-8 months
o PVM and other parallel machines (C* talk?)
o Alpha customers and their experiences vs SPARC and Intel
o non-Intel architecture Linux
o netBSD, FreeBSD vs Linux
o SGML - the Linux Documentation Project and how to write it up
o Commercial uses of Linux

So that about caps the mail.  I will start to find out where I caSo that about caps the mail.  I will start to find out where I can get speakers
for some of these topics.  You start thinking about whether you wish to
participate in the installation fest, either as a helper or an installee.

Hope to see you at the meeting on the 19th, if not at the fest.

md
====================Rodney Thayer's bio and abstract=========================
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----


              The Greater New Hampshire Linux User's Group

                              Presents
                           Rodney Thayer
                   Sable Technology Corporation

                  "Applying PGP To Digital Commerce"

Rodney Thayer has 20 years experience in the software development business.
For the past 10 years he has been designing, implementing, deploying, and
troubleshooting networking software.  He currently is the Principal of a
consulting firm based in Newton, Massachusetts where he is involved in the
implementation of communications products for a variety of customers,
including software vendors, major end-user organizations, and several
governmental organizations both foreign and domestic.  He also writes and
lectures on the deployment, troubleshooting, and implementation of data
communications networks.


Mr. Thayer  will talk about how PGP can be used in the business world
today, for exchange of information, digitally identifying documents, and
other commerce applications.  In this presentation, we will discuss the
application of PGP, including mechanics, the cryptographic and legal
issues, and the infrastructure requirements for it's use.

The state of the art in digital message encryption is now at the point
where it has become practical to use encrypted and digitally signed
email for digital commerce.  Recently, one scheme, PGP, has emerged
from the realm of the cyberpunk as a legitimate tool for business.
Commercial products are now available that support PGP encryption in
electronic mail and for documents and digital storage.

PGP is no longer a cult tool for computer junkies and cyberpunks.  It
is a legitimate, sound cryptographic technology that can be used,
today, for digital commerce.  As an increasingly crypto-aware business
community searches for solutions, the question of how to use message
encryption tools such as PGP becomes germaine to the business community.

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========================Directions to Morse Hall===============================
Non-Richly-Formatted Directions to Morse Hall:

Proceed to University of New Hampshire, on Rt. 155A in Durham, New Hampshire

Coming in from Route 4 you will be entering the town from the west..
Continue past the tennis courts on the right, over the railroad tracks which
run under the road, and go to the first traffic light.  Turn right.

You will pass a road on your right, but keep going.  Eventually you will see
Morse Hall on your left and an after-hours parking lot (F lot) on your
right.  Park in F lot.  Proceed to Morse Hall, across the street.

On the first floor of Morse Hall you can only get into the building from
opposite sides of the building. One door is on the street side, while the
other faces the rest of campus and has only walking access.  Room 301,
on the third floor (natch).



-- 
=============================================================================
Jon "maddog" Hall                     Internet: maddog at zk3.dec.com
Senior Leader, UNIX Software Group    Executive Director, Linux International

Digital Equipment Corporation         Linux International
Mailstop ZK03-2/U15                   80 Amherst St.
110 Spit Brook Rd.                    Amherst, N.H. 03031-3032 U.S.A.
Nashua, N.H. 03062-2698 U.S.A.
                                      WWW: http://www.li.org
Voice: +1.603.881.1341                Voice: +1.603.672.4557