SAGE-AU Victorian Chapter Meeting - “Freebase”

SAGE-VIC have been invited to attend the first Freebase user group meeting outside of the US. Since a few SAGE-AU monthly meeting regulars are very interested in going to this event, we have decided that this would be a great opportunity to try something different, meet some new faces and at the same time learn about Freebase.

Freebase (http://freebase.com) is a free database of everything. Currently in alpha release, Freebase offers a structured view of all kinds of data and APIs to let you use that data (all licensed under Creative Commons) in your own applications.

DATE: Tuesday 9th October 2007
TIME: 7:00 PM
VENUE: Horse Bazaar, 397 Little Lonsdale St, Melbourne (Yahoo! Maps or Google Maps)

The venue, Horse Bazaar, has good wifi, so bring your laptops.

The format will be:

* 7pm: arrive, grab drinks, meet people
* 7:30pm: a short presentation of Freebase and what it’s all about
* after that: experiment, explore, play, hack, talk, share ideas, or whatever comes naturally

For current information, visit http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/271565/.

Spam Open Forum - Part Two

Thanks to everyone that came along to the SAGE-AU Victoria Spam Open Forum. Again, it was a very interesting to learn how others are combating the spam problem, as well as listening to the new approaches system administrators are using at the ISP level. I’d like to hold another forum in 6 months or so to see how much the landscape has changed.

Securing Next Generation and Rich Internet Applications

Thanks for everyone that came along to my presentation titled “Insecurity 2.0 - Securing Next Generation and Rich Internet Applications”. The feedback was excellent and the discussions were very interesting.

I’ve reworded this post to clear up some confusion.

Part of the talk covered the idea of “malicious mashups” where we explored the possibility of mashups being used for malicious purposes where we explored the idea of legitmate mashups being programatically used for unethical or criminal purposes. This is not to be confused with malicious code simply being used in mashups or AJAX/RIA applications (which is not new). With the inherent openness of the next generation web services, it’s only a matter of time before we see a mashup used for questionable purposes. It’s highly likely that these already exist, but I haven’t seen any of great note. Please contact me if you’ve come across any examples or have your own thoughts on this matter.

Design-Led Innovation Seminar

Shane Morris, User Experience Evangelist for Microsoft Australia, will discuss how he sees design leading innovation in consumer and enterprise markets into the future.

Event Details
Date: Wednesday 22 August
Time: 6:15pm (for 6.30pm start) - 7.30pm

Costs:
$35 AIMIA Members
$45 AIIA/AFA Discount
$55 Non- Members

Venue: Spring St Conference Centre
Venue Address: 1 Spring St, Melbourne (enter via Flinders Lane)
Sponsored by: Microsoft

Register Here

AIMIA Home Page

More Information on the event at TechEvents.com.au

Shane’s User Experience blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/shanemo

Tweaking Rails Code For Performance and The Daemons Gem

Melbourne Ruby meetup Thursday night

A reminder that the Melbourne Ruby User Group is meeting on Thursday night (July 26), 6:00 PM, at the usual venue:

ThoughtWorks
Level 11, 155 Queen St
(SMS Mark on 0414 740 489 if you have trouble getting in)

Pizza will be provided, and we’ll head down the road for drinks afterwards. Newcomers always welcome!

Talks for the evening will be:

Pat Allan - Tweaking Rails Code For Performance
Ryan Allen - The Daemons Gem

Prototyping HTML and Flex Applications and Actionscript 3 Basics

Melbourne Adobe User Group Meeting

When? Evening of Thursday
19th July 2007, 6PM to 9PM.

Dual presentation by Brian Chau: Adobe Fireworks CS3 for Flex/Fireworks photo gallery feature.

Use Fireworks as a prototyping tool, not just for html pages but also for Flex applications. Also find out about the useful photo gallery feature of Fireworks.

Brian Chau, System Engineer of Adobe. Dreameaver and Flash certified developer.

Actionscript 3 Basics (Part one of a video tutorial)

Details http://www.cartoonsmart.com/actionscript3_basics.html (Scroll Down). Cartoon Smart is a great resource to have a look at, mostly based around Flash, animation, and Web Design.

Where? Melbourne City

New Horizons Learning Centres Australia. NOTE: This venue has restricted entry requirement after 6.00 PM, please read the meeting venue details for all you need to know.

Go here for more information.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and Security-Enhanced Linux

SAGE-AU Victorian Chapter Meeting - Tuesday 10th July 2007

DATE: Tuesday 10th July 2007

TIME: 7:00 PM till 8:00 PM

VENUE: Ground Floor Tutorial Room, Baillieu Library The University of Melbourne - Parkville

AGENDA: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and Security-Enhanced Linux

Luie Matthee from Red Hat will be presenting on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux). Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, released in March 2007, contains more than 1200 components with development spanning over a two year period, so there are a huge number of new features covering a broad range of functionality. This release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux has many features and enhancements related to SELinux which will be covered by Luie.

PRESENTER: Luie Matthee, Red Hat

WEB: See http://www.sage-au.org.au/display/SAGEAU/Victoria for more info.

WHO: SAGE-AU Members, prospective members, and other people involved with system administration.

MENU: A carefully selected range of traditional SysAdmin fare (ie. pizza) is provided free of charge to attendees. Members with special dietary requirements should contact the executive prior to the meeting.

DIRECTIONS: To get to the venue by public transport, catch a University, No
8 (Moreland) or No 1 (East Coburg) tram up Swanston St or the number 19 tram (North Coburg) up Elizabeth St. The tutorial room is at the south end of the ground floor of the Baillieu Library.

SAGE-AU’2007 - The 15th Annual Australian System Administrators’ Conference

SAGE-AU is pleased to announce the fifteenth annual Australian System Administrators’ conference (SAGE-AU’2007) will be held at the Sebel Parramatta Hotel, Sydney from 23rd to 27th July, 2007.

You can view the technical program by visiting http://www.sage-au.org.au/display/conf/Technical+Program for more information.

Expression Studio and Silverlight - Melbourne PHP User Group Meeting

Date: Thursday 12th July 2007
Time: 7.00pm

Address

Hitwise Melbourne
Level 6, 580 St Kilda Rd
Melbourne

Expression Studio Round Up - Dave Glover - 7:15 - 8:00pm

Coinciding with the official release of Silverlight, Microsoft have recently launched a bunch of brand new tools for web development work called Expression Studio, with the express purpose of enabling collaboration between developers and designers in creating standards based websites. Featured in this suite of applications is Expression Web, a web authoring tool with comprehensive support for css and… PHP!

Dave Glover will be coming along to give us the low-down.

Doing Silverlight with PHP - Ben Cornwell - 8:15 - 9:00pm

Silverlight is Microsoft’s offering in world rich-client platforms like Flex and Open Laszlo. Based on XAML, Silverlight provides a framework for creating user interfaces for the web that are standards compliant, great looking and encompass complex animation, audio and video.

Ben’s presentation will provide an introduction to Silverlight and a live demonstration of how to create Silverlight interfaces with PHP and AJAX.

Socialising & Networking - 9:00pm onward

After the meeting we’ll be moving downstairs to the Cartel Bar, for an informal chat over a few cold ones.

Pizza, softdrink, tea, coffee and comfy swivel chairs will be provided with compliments of our major sponsor, Hitwise.

For more information, visit
http://phpmelb.org.

Best “Out of Office” Automatic Replies

I’m taking a break from work for a few weeks, and even though I *won’t* be enabling an “out of office” reply, if I did, it might look something like this…

1. I am currently out at a job interview and will reply to you if I fail to
get the position. I may be a little moody so be prepared.

2. You are receiving this automatic notification because I am out of the
office. If I was in, chances are you wouldn’t have received anything at
all.

3. Sorry to have missed you, but I am at the doctor’s having my brain
removed so I can be promoted to our management team.

4. I will be unable to delete all the unread, worthless emails you send me
until I return from vacation on 4/18. Please be patient, and your mail will
be deleted in the order it was received.

5. Thank you for your email. Your credit card has been charged $5.99 for
the first 10 words and $1.99 for each additional word in your message.

6. The e-mail server is unable to verify your server connection and is
unable to deliver this message. Please restart your computer and try
sending again.

(The beauty of this is that when you return, you can see how many
in-duh-viduals did this over and over.)

7. Thank you for your message, which has been added to a queuing system.
You are currently in 352nd place, and can expect to receive a reply in
approximately 19 weeks.

8. Hi, I’m thinking about what you’ve just sent me. Please wait by your PC
for my response.

9. I’ve run away to join a different circus.

10. I will be out of the office for the next 2 weeks for medical reasons.
When I return, please refer to me as “Wendy” instead of “Will”.

(I have no idea where this list orginated, it’s been doing the email rounds)