From msemtd at yahoo.co.uk Fri Sep 23 02:04:00 2005 From: msemtd at yahoo.co.uk (Michael Erskine) Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2005 10:04:00 +0100 Subject: [Nottingham-pm] O'Reilly UK User Group Programme newsletter - Issue 13-05 Message-ID: <200509231004.01003.msemtd@yahoo.co.uk> All, News from O'Reilly -- I especially liked the interview with Autrigus Tang (author of PAR) and his info on the Haskell language. Enjoy, Michael Erskine. O'Reilly UK User Group Programme NEWSLETTER Issue 13-05 ================================================ HIGHLIGHTS ================================================ NEWS FROM O'REILLY AND BEYOND -O'Reilly Media Acquires Useractive -User Group Members receive special a 50% discount Learning Lab Courses -GAO Report: Tim O'Reilly's Letter to Congressman Wu -Michal Zalewski on the Wire -State of AJAX -RSS Feeds: More Hype Than Reality -The Next 50 Years of Computer Security: An Interview with Alan Cox -Perl Internationalization and Haskell: ?An Interview with Autrijus Tang ? -An Introduction to Tiger Terminal, Part 4 -What Is Automator (and Can It Make Your Life Easier?) -What Is .NET -Using Your Webcam for Surveillance -Announcing the 2005 ONJava Reader Survey -Building J2EE Projects with Maven -Hosting Your Podcasts -Top Ten Digital Photography Tips -Inside Katrina ?BOOK NEWS - Books for review - Coming soon CONFERENCE NEWS YOUR BOOK REVIEWS YOUR NEWS ================================================ NEWS FROM O'REILLY AND BEYOND ================================================ --------------------- General News --------------------- ***O'Reilly Media Acquires Useractive Useractive is the company behind the O'Reilly Learning Lab. With Useractive's Learning Sandbox technology, Learning Lab offers a browser-based, creative learning environment that is based on a learning-by-doing philosophy. Programming environments and technologies are all supplied online. For instance, students in the Linux System Administration Course get root access on O'Reilly-maintained Linux systems online. The Web Programming Series, for example, supplies all of the tools and technologies needed to learn the programming languages. This means students can practice what they are learning without having to get separate administrative access to a host machine. Students can earn a Certificate for Professional Development from the University of Illinois' Office of Continuing Education upon completion of a selected series of courses. For more information, go to: ***User Group Members receive a special 50% discount Learning Lab Courses As an O'Reilly User Group member, you save on all the courses in the following University of Illinois Certificate Series: -Linux/Unix System Administration -Web Programming -Open Source Programming -.NET Programming -Client-Side This offer ends December 31st, 2005. ?To redeem, use Promotion Code "ORALL1" to save 50%. Each course comes with a free O'Reilly book and a 7-day money-back guarantee. Register online: ***GAO Report: Tim O'Reilly's Letter to Congressman Wu The GAO recently announced the findings for a report on the cost of college textbooks requested by Congressman Wu of Oregon. Tim O'Reilly wrote this letter to Congressman Wu referencing O'Reilly's solution: SafariU. SafariU empowers professors to create and publish their own textbooks, costs professors nothing to use, and offers their students more focused course content at less cost. ? ***Michal Zalewski on the Wire What motivates a hacker? Perhaps curiosity, the pursuit of knowledge, or the simple joy of saying "Hmm, that's funny! What happens if I ...?" Eccentric security researcher Michal Zalewski exhibits these traits. Fearless interviewer Federico Biancuzzi recently talked with Zalewski about his curious approach to computer security, the need for randomness, and how the hacker mind works. ? --------------------- Open Source --------------------- ***The Next 50 Years of Computer Security: An Interview with Alan Cox ?Alan Cox is well known for his long-standing work on the Linux kernel, but at O'Reilly's EuroOSCON (October 17-20), he will speak about computer security. According to Alan, we're just at the beginning of a long journey into getting security right. Eager for directions and a glimpse of the future, O'Reilly Network interviewed him about his upcoming keynote. ***Perl Internationalization and Haskell: An Interview with Autrijus Tang Self-proclaimed "Net activist, artist, and anarchist" Autrijus Tang will be a featured speaker at this October's EuroOSCON. He discusses one of his conference topics--Haskell--extensively in this interview with O'Reilly Network. Autrijus also covers Gettext bindings, Perl internationalization tools, CPAN, and more in this wide-ranging conversation. ? --------------------- Mac --------------------- ***An Introduction to Tiger Terminal, Part 4 In part four of our introduction to Tiger Terminal, you'll learn how to tap the power of shell scripting to automate repetitive tasks. Mary Norbury-Glaser (MacinTech UG) walks you through the process, step by step. ***What Is Automator (and Can It Make Your Life Easier) Automator provides an intuitive drag-and-drop workbench for quickly streamlining repetitive tasks. Here's a look at creating workflows and working around Automator's inherent limitations. --------------------- Windows/.NET --------------------- ***What Is .NET .NET is probably one of the more muddled and mismanaged brands in the history of Microsoft. Elucidator James Avery clarifies things by describing the two chambers at the heart of .NET: the Common Language Runtime (CLR) and its essential components, and the Base Class Library (BCL) and its major features. ***Using Your Webcam for Surveillance Webcams can be used for more than videoconferencing--they can be used for surveillance as well. Wei-Meng Lee shows you how to do it in a few easy steps. --------------------- Java --------------------- ***Announcing the 2005 ONJava Reader Survey The 2005 ONJava Reader Survey is underway. This is your opportunity to steer the site by helping us understand what you use, what you're interested in, and where you think Java is going. ***Building J2EE Projects with Maven Vincent Massol offers some real-life experience building J2EE applications with Maven. Using the example of a Petstore app, Massol shows you how to generate J2EE artifacts (EJB JARs, WARs, EARs) with Maven. He is coauthor of "Maven: A Developer's Notebook." --------------------- Digital Media --------------------- ***Hosting Your Podcasts ? Once you've created an MP3 of your podcast, where do you store it? And since podcast files are much larger than HTML files or JPEG images, what about bandwidth? Jack Herrington offers several solutions to the podcast hosting problem, from using a dedicated service to reusing your blog or using your own ISP. Jack is the author of "Podcasting Hacks." ***Top Ten Digital Photography Tips ? You have a digital camera and have taken the typical shots of family and friends. Now what? Here are ten tips to make your next batch of digital images so impressive that people will ask: "Hey, what type of camera do you have?" Guess what? It's not the camera. --------------------- MAKE --------------------- ***Inside Katrina MAKE author Dave Prochnow sent us an exclusive writeup of his experiences "inside the eye" of Hurricane Katrina, being off the grid for 11 days, and using his maker skills to get through the trauma. MAKE Show Archive: ***For more information on MAKE, go to: ? ================================================ BOOK NEWS ================================================ ? Copies of our books are available for your members to review -- send me an email with the delivery address together with the book you would like to review. When the review is published, please send me a copy or the url. I would also appreciate if you could send a copy to www.amazon.co.uk Latest books available for review - ????????*???????Asterisk: The Future of Telephony ????????Many organizations are drawn to Internet telephony's promise of cost savings, and its ability to move data, images, and voice traffic over the same connection. Asterisk, an open source system than runs on Linux, offers the best option. This guide covers installing, configuring, and integrating Asterisk with existing phone systems, without the need for additional hardware. ? ????????*???????Prefactoring Cut back on the refactoring time in your projects with new software design process called "prefactoring." This book presents prefactoring guidelines in design, code, and testing, derived from lessons learned by many developers over the years. With these guidelines, you'll create more readable code before you reach the second-guessing stage. ????????*???????Programming Visual Basic 2005 This information-packed guide helps you understand Visual Basic 2005, the next-generation release of the popular Visual Basic programming language. This book aims to make you immediately productive in creating Windows and web applications using Visual Basic 2005 and all of its tools. Perfect for experienced VB6 and VB .NET developers. ????????*???????Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Tiger Edition Maybe you're fed up with the Windows way of life. Maybe you're drawn to the Mac's stability and user-friendliness, its digital media suite, or the fact that a whole computer can be as slick as your iPod. Becoming a Mac convert is easy--so long as you've got Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Tiger Edition. Covering the latest features in Mac OS X Tiger, it teaches you how to smoothly and seamlessly switch to a Mac. ????????*???????Visual Basic 2005 Jumpstart ????????Okay, VB6 developers--time's up. Microsoft no longer supports this version of Visual Basic, but VB 2005 offers several attractive reasons to upgrade. Our jumpstart guide lets you test-drive the beta version of VB 2005 with three hands-on projects that let you learn the new syntax quickly. It's the painless way to migrate, and the perfect training manual for moving to the world of .NET. ????????*???????Windows Server 2003 Network Administration ????????This guide is dedicated to helping you master networking on Windows Server 2003 systems. In addition to fundamental concepts and essential TCP/IP protocols, the book provides a tutorial for planning, installing, and configuring various network programs as they're implemented on Windows servers. Ideal for system administrators and network managers. ****Coming Soon ????????*???????Ambient Findability ????????*???????Beyond Java ????????*???????Essential SNMP (Second Edition) ????????*???????FileMaker Pro: The Missing Manual ????????*???????Halo 2 Hacks ????????*???????iWork '05: The Missing Manual ????????*???????Linux Desktop Pocket Guide ????????*???????Practical Development Environments ================================================ CONFERENCE NEWS ================================================ ***Registration is Open for EuroOSCON Join developers, systems and network administrators, and IT managers at the very first O'Reilly European Open Source Convention in Amsterdam on October 17-20. EuroOSCON will explore the best and newest open source technologies, particularly for companies, governments, and nonprofits. EuroOSCON showcases the diversity in open source while maintaining a practical edge. Use code "euos05usrg" when you register, and receive 25% off the registration price. To register for the conference, go to: ? ***Put Up an O'Reilly EuroOSCON Banner, Get a Free Book We're looking for user groups to display our conference banner on their web sites. If you send me the link to your group's site with our O'Reilly 2005 O'Reilly European Open Source Convention banner, I will send you the O'Reilly book of your choice. EuroOSCON Banners: ***ETech 2006 CFP Now Open O'Reilly's Emerging Technology Conference 2006 is scheduled for March 6-9 in San Diego. We invite technologists, strategists, CTOs, chief scientists, researchers, programmers, hackers, standards workers, business developers, and entrepreneurs to lead sessions and tutorials at ETech. This year's challenge focuses on the amazing amount of digital data in our worlds: how do we visualize the data, filter it, remix it, and access it in meaningful ways? Proposals are due by September 19th. ================================================ CONFERENCES/EXHIBITIONS ATTENDED BY O'REILLY UK ================================================ ***Developing Software for an Open Source Environment, IBM Bedfont Lakes, Sept 29th This major seminar will take a look at software development in the Open Source environment and what you need to think about when planning your next software project. Our keynote speaker, Jono Bacon (Linux Evangelist and Journalist), is one of the foremost commentators on the adoption, advantages and pitfalls of Open Source architecture. He will be ably supported by cornerstone vendors in this burgeoning field: IBM, Red Hat, MySQL, Corexe and TheDevelopersCatalogue.Com will look at the directions for Linux, databases and software development. ***Linux World, Olympia, London - 5-6 October This year's annual event for the UK's Linux community will provide your company the unrivaled platform to showcase your products and services in front of thousands of visitors and buyers. LinuxWorld Conference & Expo 2005 is being held at Olympia 2 on the 5-6th October 2005. ***Quest Software Seminar, London - 7th October A one day PL/SQL training seminar "You Wrote WHAT?" - Presented by Steven Feuerstein ***EuroOSCON, Amsterdam -17-20 October The Future Is Open - The 2005 O'Reilly European Open Source Convention brings together diverse projects and communities from across the continent and around the world to address the changes and challenges unique to the European computing community. ***Mac Expo, Olympia, London 27-28th October Thought-leaders such as David Pogue, Deke McClelland and Andy Ihnatko will throw the spotlight on cutting-edge developments in applications such as Mac OS Tiger, Apple's iLife, Adobe Photoshop, InDesign and QuarkXPress. Discover the hidden tips and tricks utilized by the Mac's top practitioners to dramatically enhance your skills and gain the insights you need to get the most from your technology investment. www.mac-expo.co.uk ================================================ YOUR BOOK REVIEWS ================================================ *** Scottish ColdFusion User Group reviewed - JavaScript 4e - ***Udruzenje Linux Korisnika BiH, ULK - reviewed - Network Security Tools - Linux in a Windows World Eclipse IDE Pocket Guide ***Edinburgh Perlmongers reviewed - Perl Testing ================================================ YOUR NEWS and more ================================================ ? ***The HP User Group - Seminars: Further information from admin at hpug.org "Making and Breaking OpenVMS Clusters" ?- ?15th September ?- ?Warrington "Data Centre Operations: Coping Today, Developing Tomorrow" - 27th September, Bristol "Unified Messaging" ?- ?29th September ?- ?London That's all for now Josette ___________________________________________________________ To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. http://uk.security.yahoo.com From msemtd at yahoo.co.uk Fri Sep 23 08:06:33 2005 From: msemtd at yahoo.co.uk (Michael Erskine) Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2005 16:06:33 +0100 Subject: [Nottingham-pm] Mind-Meld events for the group Message-ID: <200509231606.34186.msemtd@yahoo.co.uk> Hi all, Fristly, sorry for the quietness on the Nottingham Perl Mongers mailing list of recent: I've been neglecting nottpm in favour of nottlug. For those who don't know, most of our activity is merged with the Nottingham GNU/Linux User Group (http://www.nottingham.lug.org.uk/) especially when it comes to social events. To date nottpm hasn't had any technical meetings apart form the Duncan John Fyffe's Perl talks held at the LUG. I hope to remedy this short-fall with a series of ad-hoc "mind-meld" events, the purpose of which is to learn as much Perl magic from each other as possible. The ideal venue for such an event would have space, power, and net access for a number of PCs so that programming practices can be demonstrated and theories can be tested. This all depends on interest levels etc. and may result in the venue being my dining room :) . Anyhow, this is a partially-formed idea -- let me know of any thoughts out there. Regards, Michael Erskine. -- The speed of anything depends on the flow of everything. ___________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Messenger - NEW crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com From perl at tecspy.com Sat Sep 24 11:53:05 2005 From: perl at tecspy.com (Michael) Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2005 19:53:05 +0100 Subject: [Nottingham-pm] YAPC::Europe 2006 in Birmingham Message-ID: <4335A091.2000304@tecspy.com> "Good news everyone..." The YAPC::Europe 2006 will be staged in Birmingham - there's no formally published info at the moment but I'm sure we can find out more form our friends at Birmingham PM. http://www.yapceurope.org/conferences.html Regards, Michael Erskine.