- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

dates for meetings
by Peter Reutemann 21 Jan '15

21 Jan '15

Hi everyone I've talked to the Bernhard Pfahringer, head of the computer science department, and he's willing to sponsor our meetings (WLUG and Python) again this year. Therefore, I booked the following dates for WLUG: Feb 23 Mar 23 Apr 27 May 25 Jul 27 Aug 24 Sep 28 Nov 23 NB: Some months are unavailable due to exam periods (these periods start already during study week, when the rooms get prepared and cannot be disturbed anymore). This brings me also to the next question: who's up for presenting at the first meeting in February? Any new, funky distros that anyone has taken for a spin? Any Linux-related projects tackled during the summer break? Feel free to contact me off-list and I'll add you to the meeting on meetup.com. As a reminder, our meetings get scheduled here: http://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/ Thanks and see you in February. Hope you all had a good summer break (at the least the folks in the southern hemisphere)! Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Adobe's Photoshop Ditched for Krita at French University Due to Lack of Support
by Peter Reutemann 19 Jan '15

19 Jan '15

"The ATI (Art and Technology of Image) department at University Paris 8 is switching to Krita this year. This department has the double aim to train students both to use graphic software (2D,3D,VFX and Compositing) and to code their own (Python, C#, C++). Until recently the classes used only Adobe Photoshop, but because of inadequate support from the company the department decided to replace that." -- source: https://krita.org/item/goodbye-photoshop-and-hello-krita-at-university-pari… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Fwd: [NZOSS-Openchat] LCA'15
by Peter Reutemann 19 Jan '15

19 Jan '15

Apologies if you've received this already. Cheers, Peter ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Jaco Date: Mon, Jan 19, 2015 at 9:05 AM Subject: [NZOSS-Openchat] LCA'15 To: NZOSS Open Discussion List Thanks to everyone who attended, participated or helped in the Linux Conference last week. Video's should be available online now: * http://www.youtube.com/user/linuxconfau2015 * http://mirror.linux.org.au/linux.conf.au/2015/ * Local ‪NZ‬ mirror at http://mirror.slingshot.co.nz/pub/linux.conf.au/2015/ thanks to SlingshotNZ! Was good to see many familiar faces, but I was also hoping to see others. OTOH I was running around so much & attention focused on the above, I doubt I would've noticed anyway. Looking forward to working at the next one (this counts as doing my bit for the community, right?) cheers - Jaco _______________________________________________ Openchat mailing list Openchat(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz http://lists.nzoss.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/openchat -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Tails 1.2.3 is out
by Peter Reutemann 18 Jan '15

18 Jan '15

"Tails, The Amnesic Incognito Live System, version 1.2.3, is out. This release fixes numerous security issues and all users must upgrade as soon as possible. On January 3rd, the SSL certificate of our website hosting provider, boum.org, expired. This means that if you still are running Tails 1.2.1 or older, you will not get any update notification. Please help spreading the word!" -- source: https://tails.boum.org/news/version_1.2.3/index.en.html Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Security Products Are Wasting Our Time
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 18 Jan '15

18 Jan '15

Apparently 4 out of 5 alerts reported by malware-detection products are false alarms <http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/01/survey-says-security-products-waste…>. And of course the result is predictable: In 2013, for example, when cybercriminals broke into Target’s systems and loaded malware, the company’s FireEye security system issued an alert for the activity, but the company ignored the alerts. As a result, a District Court judge in Minnesota has given the go-ahead for banks to sue the retailer.

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How Many Weeks Has “The Spectator” Been Publishing?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 16 Jan '15

16 Jan '15

Any other readers of “New Scientist” on this list? In the issue of 3rd Jan, the “Feedback” column tried to work out how many weeks various magazines that are still in existence had been publishing. The oldest they could find was “The Spectator”, which first came out on 6th July 1828. Unfortunately they were using Microsoft Excel to do their calculations, with predictably nonsensical results. :) Here’s what I came up with, using the good old “date” command, together with the arithmetic facilities built into bash. Taking it step by step: date +%s prints out the number of seconds since midnight 1st January 1970 to the present time. date -d "6-Jul-1828" +%s does the same for 6th July 1828. Of course this is a very small negative number. It computes and displays fine on my 64-bit system, but might overflow on 32-bit ones. echo $(($(date +%s) - $(date -d "6-Jul-1828" +%s))) prints out the subtraction of the above two numbers, giving the number of seconds from the founding of “The Spectator” to the present time. And finally, echo $(($(($(date +%s) - $(date -d "6-Jul-1828" +%s))) / $((86400 * 7)))) divides that number of seconds by the number of seconds in a week, giving the number of weeks from the founding of “The Spectator” to the present time. Which, by my reckoning, is 9732.

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Run Your Choice Of Linux/Android On A Chromebook
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 15 Jan '15

15 Jan '15

Google has posted details <http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2390180/google-will-now-allow-andr…> of how to boot up your choice of Linux distro (including Android) on a Chromebook, as an alternative to its built-in ChromeOS. This is still extremely fiddly, risk-prone and not for the faint-of-heart.

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Australia Bans Crypto Research
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 15 Jan '15

15 Jan '15

A law currently being phased in in Australia <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/14/australia_tries_to_ban_crypto_resea…> would seem to mean serious jail time for those trying to discuss certain advanced crypto technologies with those outside the country: “Was the government warned that it was making a mistake? Apparently so...” Other countries have exemptions for academic researchers. But why should they be treated differently from ordinary people, anyway?

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Microsoft Offers Ubuntu Image with Docker Engine in Azure Marketplace
by Peter Reutemann 15 Jan '15

15 Jan '15

"Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella (seen here) made big headlines late last year when he sang the praises of open source and Linux. Reversing what was long perceived to be a hostile stance for open source, Nadella said that he "loves Linux" and also claimed that 20 percent of Microsoft's Azure cloud is already Linux-based. Furthermore, Microsoft seems to remain committed to providing support for popular Linux distributions in its public cloud offerings. Now, the company has announced Azure Marketplace's first Docker image: Docker on Ubuntu Server by Canonical and Microsoft Open Tech." -- source: http://ostatic.com/blog/microsoft-offers-ubuntu-image-with-docker-engine-in… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Fun With Fontconfig
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 15 Jan '15

15 Jan '15

Fontconfig <http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/fontconfig/> is a set of command-line utilities, as well as an API for programs to use. It allows matching of fonts by names and other characteristics, rather than having to hard-code paths to font file names, or having to embed fonts into every document. For example, you format some text in a LibreOffice document. In the GUI, you will see a popup menu of all the fonts available on your system. Having chosen a font to use and saved your document, you send a copy to a friend. But they don’t have the same font installed, so LibreOffice uses Fontconfig to find the next best available font. As another example, Web pages commonly specify fonts by names like “serif” or even “Arial” (actually the name of a Microsoft-created clone of the original “Helvetica” font). While those who really care about typography and layout will use CSS font specifications to get the exact font they want from some server, the rest of us will muddle through with the common names, and expect the Web browser to find a suitable match on the user’s local machine. The command-line utilities allow you to observe this process in action. Given a reasonably vague font name, the fc-match command will show you the exact font file that will be chosen; thus, on my system: ldo(a)theon:~> fc-match -f "%{file}\n" arial /usr/share/fonts/truetype/liberation/LiberationSans-Regular.ttf (You will likely get a different result, depending on what fonts you have installed.) Sometimes the file names are not so explanatory: ldo(a)theon:~> fc-match -f "%{file}\n" palatino /usr/share/fonts/type1/gsfonts/p052003l.pfb in which case, the fc-query command will give you more info about what exactly is in that font file: ldo(a)theon:~> fc-query -f "%{family}\n" /usr/share/fonts/type1/gsfonts/p052003l.pfb URW Palladio L Or, you could have combined both steps into one: ldo(a)theon:~> fc-match -f "%{family} %{file}\n" palatino URW Palladio L /usr/share/fonts/type1/gsfonts/p052003l.pfb The list of what information item names you can put in those “%{...}” format specifiers is not mentioned in any of the man pages, but you can look in /usr/include/fontconfig/fontconfig.h, which is part of the libfontconfig1-dev package. Be warned, though: not all the items listed there will work with all fonts.

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