- wlug - University of Waikato Mail Lists

Charter amendments
by Michael Ryan 16 Jan '14

16 Jan '14

> I'm a bit worried about the last bullet-point of Section 4: > > "Attempting to exploit or misuse the society or members of the society for pecuniary gain" > > I'm not a lawyer, but on face value, this seems to include into "ground for expulsion" a very wide range of arguably legitimate behaviours such as: > > Inviting a fellow member to be a partner in a tech startup > Offering one's services to another member as a prospective employee or contractor > Getting technical help via the WLUG mailing list regarding (say) Apache or PostgreSQL, to help him/her develop a for-profit website > > Can someone offer clarification? > > Cheers > David I agree - there are a number of existing rules that are quite specific where I think greater generality would work better. Because of the potential for unfairness I was tempted to make the provisions about expulsion more detailed also - expanding on the right of the member proposed to be expelled, to be able to respond to allegations - but decided the situation of an expulsion was most unlikely to arise and didn't presently warrant more complexity in the charter. In this particular provision, "misuse" is fairly clear as involving an improper intention, but "exploit" is not so objectionable. Making a profit from the exploiter's association with WLUG - the "for pecuniary gain" bit - might merely involve describing a useful relationship, or might for example involve pretending to have an endorsement. It would be better to lose the effect of the specific description in that line by substituting it with, say, "Bringing the society into disrepute" (which I believe would apply to my example, if the good name of WLUG was being associated with some private financial punt). Any comments? I've also found another amendment that could be made - in Rule 7 the word "earlier" should be inserted in the first sentence of the fourth paragraph before "resign", so the sentence reads "Officers and committee members whether elected or appointed shall hold office until the next Annual General Meeting or, earlier, resign or are removed by the committee under Rule 4." "earlier" is intended to apply to both resignation and removal. It avoids the alternative amendment of hanging off the end of the sentence an addition saying "whichever happens first". Regards Michael Ryan Ryan Law Solicitors ph (07) 889 8041 fax (07) 889 8709 DX GA24027 P.O. Box 104 Morrinsville, New Zealand ph (07) 884 0002 fax (07) 884 0039 DX GA24502 P.O. Box 77 Te Aroha, New Zealand This communication is confidential and may contain privileged or copyright material. If you are not the intended recipient, please do not use, disclose, copy or retain it. If you have received it in error, we apologise and would appreciate your advising us by return email and your deleting the email and any printed form you may have made of it. We do not guarantee the integrity of this communication, or that it is free from errors, viruses, or interference arising from its method of transmission.

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Amendments to the charter
by Michael Ryan 14 Jan '14

14 Jan '14

I've attached in .pdf format my suggestions for amendments to the present charter. It's best viewed in colour; the amendments are in blue. For anyone interested, I have the original text version available in latex format. Most of the amendments are additions I suggest be included in the charter, either to clarify matters capable of being mis-interpreted or simply not clear; some are amendments previously adopted by the group but not yet registered with the Registrar of Incorporated Societies. Comments and further amendments are welcome. Regards Michael Ryan Ryan Law Solicitors ph (07) 889 8041 fax (07) 889 8709 DX GA24027 P.O. Box 104 Morrinsville, New Zealand ph (07) 884 0002 fax (07) 884 0039 DX GA24502 P.O. Box 77 Te Aroha, New Zealand This communication is confidential and may contain privileged or copyright material. If you are not the intended recipient, please do not use, disclose, copy or retain it. If you have received it in error, we apologise and would appreciate your advising us by return email and your deleting the email and any printed form you may have made of it. We do not guarantee the integrity of this communication, or that it is free from errors, viruses, or interference arising from its method of transmission.

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WLUG AGM: Monday 20th Jan 2014
by Rene Bartosh 11 Jan '14

11 Jan '14

Hi everyone The Waikato Linux Users Group Incorporated will hold the AGM on January 20th at 7pm. Agenda: - President's Report - Treasurer's Report - Adoption of updated charter - Election of 2014 Committee - Consumption of pizza Regards Rene

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OpenSUSE Forums Defaced, Email Addresses Leaked
by Peter Reutemann 08 Jan '14

08 Jan '14

"The openSUSE Forums were hijacked yesterday. An alleged Pakistani hacker who goes by handle H4x0r HuSsY reportedly exploited a vulnerability in the vBulletin 4.2.1 software SuSE uses to host the forum. vBulletin is a proprietary forum software. The openSUSE team notes that user passwords were not compromised. 'Credentials for your openSUSE login are not saved in our application databases as we use a single-sign-on system (Access Manager from NetIQ) for all our services. This is a completely separate system and it has not been compromised by this crack. What the cracker reported as compromised passwords where indeed random, automatically set strings that are in no way connected to your real password.' It's shocking to learn that SUSE/openSUSE are using proprietary forum software vBulleting as well as proprietary single sign on solution." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/01/08/1656231 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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Ubuntu developer builds Pirate Bay torrent search into operating system
by Peter Reutemann 07 Jan '14

07 Jan '14

"With support from Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth, a third-party Ubuntu developer is building a torrent search project that may be enabled by default in future versions of the operating system." -- source: http://bit.ly/1cOblWw 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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SteamOS 1.0 is Here, Based on Debian 7.1
by Peter Reutemann 29 Dec '13

29 Dec '13

'SteamOS 1.0 was made available for download today through Valve-owned steampowered.com. In the SteamOS FAQ, we discover that SteamOS 1.0 is based on Debian 7.1 stable. Some of the changes for Steam include backporting eglibc 2.17 from Debian testing, updating the kernel to 3.10.11, and auto-updates from the Valve SteamOS repos. Valve chose Debian because they felt it "is the best way for Valve to deliver a fully custom SteamOS experience" to its customers.' -- source: http://ostatic.com/blog/steamos-1-0-is-here-based-on-debian-7-1 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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Explore Linux Heritage With Beautiful Data Visualizations
by Peter Reutemann 27 Dec '13

27 Dec '13

"A favorite hobby of mine is exploring the history of Unix and Linux, so its no surprise that I find this graph, named the GNU/Linux Distribution Timeline (GLDT for short) on Wikimedia fascinating. The graph clearly shows how the big three distributions, Debian, Slackware, and Red Hat, have branched out to over five hundred other distributions, including Ubuntu, openSUSE, Mandriva, Knoppix, and many, many others." -- source: http://ostatic.com/blog/explore-linux-heritage-with-beautiful-data-visualiz… 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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Minty Day in the Linuxsphere
by Peter Reutemann 27 Dec '13

27 Dec '13

"I'm still lazily using Mint 15, quite happily (until I read these reviews, that is), but others in the blogosphere have been singing the praises of the recently released Mint 16. Most interestingly has been the reported "superb performance" of Mint 16 KDE. Other called Mint 16 Cinnamon "P-p-p-perfect!" Perhaps it's reports like these causing Jim Lynch to ask if Mint is the most popular distribution out there." -- source: http://ostatic.com/blog/minty-day-in-the-linuxsphere 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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Scientists Extract RSA Key From GnuPG Using Sound of CPU
by Peter Reutemann 18 Dec '13

18 Dec '13

"In their research paper titled RSA Key Extraction via Low-Bandwidth Acoustic Cryptanalysis, Daniel Genkin, Adi Shamir and Eran Tromer et al. present a method for extracting decryption keys from the GnuPG security suite using an interesting side-channel attack. By analysing the acoustic sound made by the CPU they were able to extract a 4096-bit RSA key in about an hour (PDF). A modern mobile phone placed next to the computer is sufficient to carry out the attack, but up to four meters have been successfully tested using specially designed microphones." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/13/12/18/2122226 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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Fedora 20 Released
by Peter Reutemann 17 Dec '13

17 Dec '13

"The Fedora Project has announced the release of Fedora 20, code named Heisenbug (release notes). Fedora 20 is dedicated to Seth Vidal, the lead developer of Yum and the Fedora update repository, who recently died in a road accident. Gnome is the default DE of Fedora, and so it is for Fedora 20. However unlike Ubuntu (where they had to create different distros for each DE) Fedora comes with KDE, XFCE, LXDE and MATE. You can install the DE of your choice on top of base Fedora." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/13/12/17/1614254 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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