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December 17th Meeting Details

OPEN FORUM PLUS!

• I - "The Future Of Linux" Talks: Group Discussion, hosted by Tweeks
  Market acceptance of Linux has really been exploding here in these past couple of years! It's to the point now, where current server/desktop market incumbents (aka Microsoft) are running scared. With their sweeping statements about Open Source being communist, and their hidden agendas of deliberate intent of protocol leveraging (e.g. "de-commoditizing" protocols) as seen in the Holloween Documents; it's no wonder they're afraid of Open Source and what Linux represents in the high end server market.

  
  But see here as AberdeenGroup (as IBM points to) says that:

  "The development of Linux is moving faster than any other
  commercial operating system (OS) to date. It's moving so fast
  that it will leapfrog Windows[r] to replace Unix[r] on the high-
  end in 7-8 years. That means Linux, z/OS[tm] and Windows will be
  the primary server OSs by the end of the decade."
  

  
  Related Links:
  

  A Report by The Register on M$'s Security Obscurity Bribe Program

  A Report by the pundit, Gartner Group: What's The Future of Linux?.
  Among other ineresting points, this report's summary findings state:
  

  "Linux is being viewed [by IT executives] as an opportunity to 
   enable users to get out from under the yoke of proprietary 
   platforms and high software license fees and into a much more 
   flexible and evenhanded negotiating position."
   

  And, the biggest reasons that people are migrating to linux as seen in this bar graph:
  
  The Reasons Why People Are Migrating To Linux
  

• A super article entitled "The State of Corporate IT: A Case For Linux" that goes over a real world case study of one corporation's flirtation with using enterprise wide Microsoft solutions--and how time after time they found themselves caught with more and more proprietary single vendor solutions, unstable oversized server farms, and endless spiraling licensing costs. The solution? Red Hat stepped in and saved them millions!
• An article from Tech Republic on Five steps to deploying Linux in the enterprise. Good Read for IT management.
• Comments to be filed in the US Federal Case, US vs. Microsoft. Speak up before Jan 26th and be recorded in the Federal Register on what you thing about the Microsoft settlement! Your chance to make history!

As a group, we would like to intelligently discuss this topic, and get some insight from various members in the group in their area of industry expertise.

Someone might want to tape this meeting, as it could prove interesting material to look back on.

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II - Video Capture Night, By Jeremy Mann
[CANCELED AGAIN - Jeremy had to skip the meeting due to work related issues. ]
1. Video capture from external source, i.e. camera, VCR, DVD, etc..
2. Editing with glav and Broadcast2000
3. Audio mixing
4. Encoding to VCD/SVCDs and Divx
5. Show examples of VCD output from various sources

a. Band of Brothers captured directly from HBO
b. Space 1999 (old 1970s show about the future), ripped from DVD

III - X-otic Hardware Show-n-Tell: By Jeremy Mann
Jeremy is going to also show some other, yet to be named, X-otic hardware... I guess we'll have to wait and see!

IV - Free Stuff!

Tom should have some Linux Journal magazines to giveaway this month for those who come end enter to win.

More free Lightwave 3D Demo CDs for all who come. This is the industry's premire ray tracing package. Check it out!

This month, our friends at Rackspace Managed Hosting will be donating a bunch of cool T-Shirts to those who come out.

P I Z Z A - N - C O K E !
If there is enough interest, Free Pizza and coke. But please show up before 7:30 if you plan on having pizza! ;)

Other local user groups are ALWAYS more than welcome to attend our meetings...
No Charges or Dues...
ever...
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Mail your entries into Tweeks no later than January 14th! Some recommendations/rules are:

Should be formatted in either PNG, GIF, or JFIF (JPG)

Whole graphic should be under 20kB in size, gif anims under 100kB

Works must be original, but can contain images of group activities

Try to incorporate our group focus... "X-otic computer systems" (although this is not a must if your work is just too cool to have limitations placed on it.. ;) .

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Group Photo Album	Check out our new Group Photo's area! Some good geeky pictures of stuff we love to do!
"The XCSSA Files"	All the useful info that we share and document--we store here and call, "The XCSSA Files". The files are chocked full of useful information that the guru's in our group create.
The XCSSA Archives	We have so much good stuff demo'd at our group, we've decided to start archiving the montly group pages. Check'em out! This area contains most of what we have done 2000-05 on and should give you a good idea about the type of stuff that we do on a regular basis...
Our Mail List	Like what you see? Join Our Monthly Mail List. This is not one of those chatty Spam user group mail lists... We promise. : v )

• 2001-11-05: Some of Infoworld's latest thoughts about Windows XP here and here.
• 2001-10-30: A good article on how Amazon.com switched to Linux to save millions on their technology costs.
• 2001-06-27: An article from Tech Republic on Five steps to deploying Linux in the enterprise. Good Read for IT management.
• 2001-11-06: A good artile on how Linux is finding it's way into many tech-products via the back end, replacing higher priced commercial OS'.
• 2001-11-05: A hole in Microsoft's Passport system (part of the .NET system) has forced them to take Passport off line for now. For more information on the Passport vulnerability, see this e-paper entitled, Microsoft Passport to Trouble.

Our user group's members are not your 
normal run of the mill geeks.  We pride our-
selves in having a wide array of technical and IT
professionals who excel in their fields.  I have found
that I can bring most any question to the group and get an
insightful answer, and thus, have begun point recruiters to our 
members as a service to both.  Feel free to contact the members below 
for job history and resume information.  They're a powerfully diverse resource!

These Pages Have Been Accessed Times.

Email The XCSSA "Reverse Dictatorially Elected Coordinator" Thomas Weeks: tweeksjunk@theweeks.org