2002.07.02 Meeting Notes

News

• Job: PC Doctor in Davis is looking for a programmer. Req: 4 years software development, 2 years kernel development.

• "Open for Business," DesktopLinux.com, LinuxDevices.com and Linux & Main have unveiled "LinuxDailyNews.net"

• All of SourceForge.net blocked by "SmartFilter" blocking software. (Apparently they've confused the site with MP3 piracy sites)

• Mandrake to support AMD's Hammer CPU

• MS Meida Player "Security Patch" actually changes EULA (End User License Agreement) so that MS gets the right ot install DRM (Digital Rights Management - copyright/piracy stuff) on your computer, and disable any "circumventing" software that may be installed

• NeverWinter Nights server released for Linux. Client coming, eventually...

• XMMS now supports WinAMP plug-ins (uses WINE)

• IBM Drops Linux Laptop support project

• Cambrige Univ. researcher Ross Anderson released a paper stating that Open Source and closed source software are "equally (in)secure"

• Mandrake to come pre-loaded on Wal-Mart's "Microtel" PCs!

• Alexander Graham Bell has been dethroned. US Congress has decided that a Florentine immigrant (Meucci) invented it. He later worked with Bell in a lab, but couldn't afford the patent fees.

Project Reports

• Demo - There was a demo at the Davis Food Co-Op last Saturday (June 29th). It was fairly slow, probably since we didn't get a chance to advertise it enough in advance. Our next one is not scheduled yet, but we should soon be scheduled for the 3rd Saturdays in July, August and September.

  We are also looking into using the Co-Op's conference room at the same time as the demo, to hold short (15-30 minute) lectures on reasons to use Linux an Open Source. (These will occur 3-6 times during the day, at the same time as the hands-on Linux demo in the Co-Op's demo kitchen.)

• Installfests - Our next Installfest will be on July 21st. We were considering moving to a different location, but, for now, will remain at UC Davis (EUII, Room 1131)

• LERT - No LERT news.

• Library - O'Reilly sent copies of Rasmus's titles. We took one of each (Programming PHP and PHP Pocket Reference) for our library.

Other Business

• California 4-H Presentation - Speakers will be meeting soon to discuss the talk, and create the handouts.

• Class with DCN - No news.

• Raffle - O'Reilly and Associates sent us numerous copies of Rasmus's Programming PHP and PHP Pocket Reference, as well as some t-shirts, which we raffled away.

• Financial Report - $86.50 in voluntary dues were collected.

Presentation

• Rasmus Lerdorf, creator of the PHP Hypertext Processing langauge for web development, discussed the various aspects of the language. (His slides were actually XML rendered by a live PHP-enabled webserver, rendered with Mozilla!)

  Presentation Slides (external link - will move soon)

Attendance

• Henry House
• Mike Simons
• Melissa Hardenbrook
• Bill Kendrick
• Marianne Waage
• Joe Arruda
• Joel Baumert
• Dave Nelson
• Eric Engelhard
• Dan Sharnhorst
• Jeff Newmiller
• Mark Hasbrouck
• Even Egalite
• Jared Duncan
• Paul Barnhart
• Rusty Minden
• Dave Craig
• Ivan Cozick
• (Ivan's father)
• (Ivan's mother)
• Stan Marsse
• Ryan Castalluci
• Seth Nagao
• Cheuk Wong
• Myke Folkes
• Edward Broyes
• Dave Thompson
• Matt Roper
• Ryan Fu
• Jeff DeFay
• Chris Katscher
• Rod Roark
• Ken Shephard
• Carol Lorenger
• Jeff Rousch
• Alan Holligner
• Richard Harkey
• Eric Olinger
• Dave Larson
• Mark Holm
• Joel Alliston
• Richard Crawford
• Steven Peck
• Susan Peck
• John
• Dan Dorsey
• Christine Scobee
• Steve Edburg
• Mark Reiser
• Tim Starbeck
• Jason Lin
• Chris Lin
• Emily Stumpf
• Doug Barbieri
• Paul
• Travis
• Ron Williams
• David Lefer
• Brian Lavender
• Mike Machado
• Zhi-Wei Lu
• Geoff Herteg
• John Alden
• Steven Helms
• Matt Snelham
• Rasmus Lerdorf
• Mrs. Lerdorf
• Patrick Southcott
• Evan Egalite
• ...plus 6 more!

Photos:

• Photos of this meeting.

Quotes from the Meeting

• "You don't really want my code in your kernel" - Rasmus, regarding PHP support in the "Tux" webserver for the Linux kernel

• "Real geeks work in octal!" - Rasmus

• "Nobody counts the cycles of a Java program" - Rasmus

• "There are, I think, 17 different meanings for the '?' character [in Perl] that I've come across" - Rasmus

• "Like a sportscar, it looks nice, but isn't useful day to day" - Rasmus, about when he tried to convince Apple to give him a TiBook

• "I hate programming... ask me to write a multi-byte 'regexp'? No way in HELL I'm doing that!" - Rasmus

• "... Or... don't use 37 global variables... just an idea." - Rasmus, on people's complaints over the "global" keyword in PHP