THE OPEN PITT
What's cooking in Linux and Open Source in Western Pennsylvania
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Issue 5 October 2004 www.wplug.org
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In this issue:
Pittsburgh's Wireless Community
Important Security Update
September Roundup
From the Editors: Innovation
Hot Off the Grill...
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Coming Events
Oct. 9: General User Meeting, Topic: Voice Over IP Using Asterisk. 10am
to 2pm, 1507 Newell-Simon Hall, CMU
Oct. 16: New User Tutorial, Topic: Linux Basics. 10am to 2pm, 1507
Newell-Simon Hall, CMU
Nov. 6: General User Meeting, Topic: Darwin and Mac OS X. 10am to 5pm,
1507 Newell-Simon Hall, CMU
Nov. 13: Installfest. 10am to 5pm, 1507 Newell-Simon Hall, CMU
Dec. 4: General User Meeting, Topic: Creating Flexible Documentation with
DocBook. 10am to 2pm, 1507 Newell-Simon Hall, CMU
The public is welcome at all events
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Pittsburgh's Wireless Community
by Drew Celley
Pittsburgh is a very high-tech city. Didn't we used to be labeled as one
of the top wireless cities, simply by association with Carnegie Mellon
University? While we may not have the highest percentage of Wi-Fi users,
we always end up on the map with at least an honorable mention. However,
I'd like to see this situation improve.
Back when I worked at local ISPs, I stumbled upon some of Breezecom's
equipment--the old 802.11 stuff. It was very new at the time, and also
very expensive, but even the limited 3Mbps speed was faster than any of the
analog dial-up speeds by far. I figured that this would be the future of
Internet access, and would ask my bosses questions about it. One of them
was uninterested, and the other mentioned packet radio, a HAM radio method
of data transmission usually measured in bits per second.
Like many WPLUG users, I watch science fiction on TV, and have fantasies of
blinking gadgetry transmitting data through the air, displaying pictures
and video and neat looking technical schematics. In the real world, we can
equate this to surfing, blogging, instant messaging, and the like. How do
you think we're gonna get there? Like most things, with a small step.
The community-run wireless networks, like Seattle Wireless, NYC Wireless,
and even commercial ISPs like Telerama have paved the way. They have shown
us all how it is done--and it works. They have already explored hardware,
software, interference, and many of the other issues related to providing
Internet over Wi-Fi. As I figure it, there should be significant interest
in our city to do something similar, and so now I'll point you to
, Pittsburgh's Wireless Community website.
As the name implies, Pittsburgh's Wireless Community website is geared
toward building a community of those interested in wireless networking here
in Pittsburgh. There are lots of links to equipment and software
information, with particular emphasis on related local issues. If you are
interested in building a link, experimenting with wireless equipment, or
discussing local hotspots, you can post a message, get in touch with
others, and share your experiences. Get connected!
Drew Celley runs wifimaps.com and pghwireless.net and is working on the
forthcoming O'Reilly book _Geo Hacks_.
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Important Security Update
The Mozilla project and the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team reported
the discovery of several security vulnerabilities. Affected are the
Mozilla Internet suite, Firefox browser, and Thunderbird e-mail client.
These vulnerabilities, part of a type known as buffer overflows, could
potentially allow an attacker to crash the program or execute malicious
code on a user's system.
Users are strongly urged to upgrade to the latest version available for
each program, which include fixes. You can use your distribution's update
mechanism, or obtain the newest packages directly from the Mozilla web site
at .
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September Roundup
Sep. 25 General User Meeting: Bill Moran of Potential Technologies gave
WPLUG a preview of the presentation he prepared for the Ohio LinuxFest,
covering strategies for dealing with unwanted e-mail. He described various
sanity checks that a mail server can perform to assess the validity of an
incoming message, the proper use of blocklists and Sender Policy Framework,
and the importance of avoiding false positives. A PDF version of Bill's
presentation is available at .
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From the Editors: Innovation
Open Source programs are often criticized for lacking originality.
Detractors say, "After all, isn't Linux just a rip-off of UNIX, which is
30-year-old technology to begin with?" This is a bit like denigrating a
Ferrari for having four wheels, since that's what the Model T had, too.
But Linux is definitely *not* your father's Oldsmobile, if you'll forgive
us mixing metaphors.
What is commonly thought of as the "definition" of UNIX is the Portable
Operating System Interface (POSIX) specification. It has proved its worth
over decades of use--even Digital's VMS and Microsoft's Windows NT
implemented POSIX compatibility. For Open Source to follow that route is
perfectly logical, and in no way forestalls opportunities for innovation.
One need only look above and below the POSIX layer.
Many applications, either by design or by accident, are workalikes of or
bear a resemblance to proprietary counterparts. But people often forget
the cases where Open Source applications have outclassed their proprietary
counterparts. In contrast to Mozilla, Internet Explorer only acquired
built-in pop-up blocking with the recent release of Windows XP Service Pack
2. IE still does not come with tabbed browsing, and users can only dream
of Firefox's live bookmarks feature, which provides automatic updates on
your favorite sites using RSS. Writers on the Forbes and CNET web sites
are now wondering how Microsoft's browser can possibly catch up.
More Open Source innovation takes place behind the scenes. A database-like
filesystem allowing easy searching of files, called the Object File System,
was to be included in Windows NT 4.0 in 1996. It was dropped in order to
make the ship date. Later renamed WinFS, it was promised to be in the
forthcoming Windows release code-named Longhorn. But as before, it has
been sacrificed so Longhorn can ship by the end of 2006. Meanwhile, the
Reiser4 filesystem incorporates advanced algorithms to speed searching,
uses disk space more efficiently, is easily modified to add new features,
and, best of all, is available right now.
Low-cost Beowulf clusters have transformed supercomputing, putting high-
performance systems within reach of organizations which could never afford
them before. Linux systems are fast increasing on the list of the most
powerful supercomputers at . IBM's newest Blue
Gene/L, expected to top the list when it is updated this autumn, runs Linux
alongside a custom-developed kernel. Linux will be a hot topic at
November's supercomputer conference here
.
In many cases, finding Open Source innovation is merely a matter of
looking. Browsing through web sites like will
quickly give you an appreciation of the amount, and quality, of software
development happening every day.
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Hot Off the Grill...
Here's a sampling of some important September software releases:
Aimed for extreme ease-of-use, the Lycoris Desktop/LX 1.4 Linux
distribution was released on the 13th.
The Community edition of Mandrakelinux 10.1, one of the major Linux
distributions, appeared on the 16th. The Official version, to be available
in boxed sets, is expected in November.
Anyone with an e-mail account will be glad to hear of the release of
SpamAssassin 3.0 on the 22nd. It employs a variety of techniques to help
keep those "enlargement" ads and other nasties out of your mailbox.
GNOME's answer to Outlook, Evolution 2.0.0 arrived on the 20th with many
improvements.
The arrival of Asterisk 1.0.0 on the 23rd was greeted with great fanfare.
Asterisk offers nearly limitless voice communications, including voice over
IP, private branch exchange switching, automated attendant menus, and
voicemail.
Yellow Dog Linux v4.0, a distribution for Macintosh and other computers
based on the PowerPC processor, was released on the 29th. It is now built
upon Fedora Core 3.
CDs containing OpenBSD 3.6 began shipping on the 30th. OpenBSD is an
operating system geared toward those needing a high level of security.
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Help Wanted
Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science is seeking a system
administrator experienced with UNIX/Linux.
Visit the human resources site at and look in the
employment opportunities for announcement number 91407.
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The Open Pitt is published by the Western Pennsylvania Linux Users Group
Editors: Elwin Green, Vance Kochenderfer
Copyright 2004 Western Pennsylvania Linux Users Group. Any article in
this newsletter may be reprinted elsewhere in any medium, provided it is
not changed and attribution is given to the author and WPLUG.