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O'Reilly UG Program News--Just for User Group Leaders
February 3, 2004
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-New O'Reilly User Group Wiki is Up and Ready for Action
-Put Up an O'Reilly ThinkGeek Banner, Get A Free Book
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Book Info
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***Review books are available 
Copies of our books are available for your members to review--
send me an email and please include the book ISBN number on 
your request. Let me know if you need your book by a certain date. 
Allow at least four weeks for shipping. 

***Please send copies of your book reviews
Email me a copy of your newsletters or book reviews.
For tips and suggestions on writing book reviews, go to:
http://ug.oreilly.com/bookreviews.html

***Discount information
Don't forget to remind your members about our 20% discount on O'Reilly, 
No Starch, Paraglyph, and Syngress books and conferences. 
Just use code DSUG.

***Group purchases with better discounts are available
Please let me know if you are interested and I can put you in 
touch with our sales department.

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General News
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***New O'Reilly User Group Wiki is Up and Ready for Action
Try it out by listing your group to promote your events, projects, and
yourselves to your fellow O'Reilly User Group Program members. Wikis 
are
fun!
http://wiki.oreillynet.com/usergroups/view?HomePage


***Put Up an O'Reilly ThinkGeek Banner, Get A Free Book
We are looking for user groups to display our ThinkGeek banners on
their web sites. If you send me the link to your user group site with
one of our O'Reilly ThinkGeek banners, I'll send you the O'Reilly
book of your choice.

O'Reilly ThinkGeek Banners:
http://ug.oreilly.com/banners/thinkgeek/

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O'Reilly News for User Group Members
February 3, 2004
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Book News
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-Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks
-C# Cookbook
-Security Assessment
-Wicked Cool Shell Scripts
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Upcoming Events
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-Darryl León, Ph.D. ("Sequence Analysis in a Nutshell"), 
San Diego Bioinformatics Forum, San Diego--February 10
-Jesse Liberty ("Programming C#," "Programming Visual Basic .NET"), 
.NET Face to Face, Atlanta, GA--February 20-22
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Conferences
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-Joe Trippi keynote added to Digital Democracy Teach-In
-O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference
-OSCON 2004: Call for Participation--Last Chance
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News
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-Wireless Mesh Networking
-Interviews with Digital Democracy Activists
-The Ideal Digital Photographer's Workflow, Part 2
-The New Breed of Version Control Systems
-Why Run Free Software on a PDA?
-Troubleshooting with Postfix Logs
-What's New in Tomcat 5
-Effective Forms Authentication, Part 1
-Serialization in .NET, Part 1
-The Macintosh's Twisted Truth  
-Smart File Sharing Between Macs and PCs
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News From Your Peers
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-San Gabriel Valley Linux Users Group Meeting, Pasadena, CA--February 
12

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Book News
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Did you know you can request a free book to review for your
group? Ask your group leader for more information.

For book review writing tips and suggestions, go to:
http://ug.oreilly.com/bookreviews.html

Don't forget, you can receive 20% off any O'Reilly, No Starch, 
Paraglyph, or Syngress book you purchase directly from O'Reilly.
Just use code DSUG when ordering online or by phone 800-998-9938.
http://www.oreilly.com/


***Free ground shipping is available for online orders of at 
least $29.95 that go to a single U.S. address. This offer 
applies to U.S. delivery addresses in the 50 states and Puerto Rico.
For more details, go to:
http://www.oreilly.com/news/freeshipping_0703.html

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O'Reilly New Releases
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***Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks
ISBN: 0596003145
From building a home arcade machine to creating a cubicle intrusion
detection system, "Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks" offers an array 
of
inventive, customized electronics projects for the geek who can't help
looking at a gadget and wondering how it might be "upgraded." The book
begins with less complex hacking projects then moves into more advanced
hacks. Clear step-by-step instructions allow even those with no formal
electronics- or hardware-engineering skills to hack real hardware in
clever ways.
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/hardwarehks/

Excerpts are available free online:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/hardwarehks/chapter/index.html


***C# Cookbook
ISBN: 0596003390
"C# Cookbook" provides practical answers to day-to-day C# programming
questions, using code recipes collected especially for developers 
working
on the .NET platform. In addition to the complete, documented code 
samples
showing how to solve hundreds of specific problems, you'll find
discussions of how the underlying technology works as well as material 
on
alternatives, limitations, and other considerations where appropriate.
This definitive collection of recipes will help developers of all 
levels
solve problems now.
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/csharpckbk/

Chapter 8, "Regular Expressions," is available free online:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/csharpckbk/chapter/index.html

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Publishing Partners New Releases
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***Security Assessment
Publisher: Syngress
ISBN: 1932266968
The National Security Agency's INFOSEC Assessment Methodology (IAM)
provides guidelines for performing an analysis of how information is
handled within an organization: looking at the systems that store,
transfer, and process information. It also analyzes the impact to an
organization if there is a loss of integrity, confidentiality, or
availability. This book shows how to do a complete security assessment
based on the NSA's guidelines.
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/1932266968/


***Wicked Cool Shell Scripts
Publisher: No Starch Press
ISBN: 1593270127
101 useful, customizable, and fun Linux, Mac OS X and UNIX shell 
scripts
that you can use to solve common problems and personalize your 
computing
environment. Includes an interactive calculator, a spell checker, a 
disk
backup utility, a weather tracker, a web logfile analysis tool, and 
much
more. The cookbook-style examples are all written in Bourne Shell
(sh) syntax.
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/1593270127/

================================================
Upcoming Events
================================================
***For more events, please see:
http://events.oreilly.com/

***Darryl León, Ph.D. ("Sequence Analysis in a Nutshell"), 
San Diego Bioinformatics Forum, San Diego--February 10
Darryl will discuss "Bioinformatics: What is commercially viable 
and what is not."
5:30-8:00pm
Diversa Corporation
4955 Directors Place, San Diego, CA 92121
http://www.sdbioinfo.org/next.html


***Jesse Liberty ("Programming C#," "Programming Visual Basic .NET"), 
.NET Face to Face, Atlanta, GA--February 20-22
Jesse is a featured speaker at this weekend conference for programmers
working in .NET. Marriott Atlanta Century Center, Atlanta, GA.
For Registration and information go to:
http://www.mentor-network.com/

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Conference News
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***Joe Trippi keynote added to Digital Democracy Teach-In
Joe Trippi, the man whose ground-breaking use of Internet-based
campaigning propelled Howard Dean from obscurity to early front-runner,
has just signed on as keynoter at the Digital Democracy Teach-In. 
Former
Dean campaign manager Trippi will take Teach-In participants inside the
campaign's unconventional experiment in Internet politics, and look at
both victories and lessons learned. While Dean may no longer be leading
the pack, the other candidates are rushing to emulate Trippi's Internet
strategy--as "Wired News" declared recently, "Internet politics is 
dead.
Long live Internet politics." Trippi will kick off the Teach-In at 8:30 
am
this coming Monday, February 9, in San Diego, CA.

Digital Democracy Teach-In
February 9, 2004
Westin Horton Plaza, San Diego, CA
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/et2004/edemo.csp
Co-located with the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference

To register, go to:
(Sorry, no user group discounts apply.)
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2004/create/ord_et04?x-t=edemo.create.form


***O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference
February 9-12, 2004
Westin Horton Plaza San Diego
San Diego, CA 92101
http://conferences.oreilly.com/etech/

Use code DSUG when you register, and receive 20% off conference 
pricing.

To register for the conference, go to:
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/pub/w/28/register.html


***Last Chance--OSCON 2004: Call for Participation
Individuals and companies interested in making presentations or giving
tutorials at next summer's O'Reilly Open Source Convention in Portland,
Oregon are invited to submit proposals. This year's theme is "Opening 
the
Future: Discover, Develop, Deliver." Tracks of interest run the open
source gamut from Apache to XML, and we're also looking for proposals 
for
sessions that help attendees add open source to their companies. The
deadline for submitting proposals is February 9. 

To submit a proposal, go to:
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/os2004/create/e_sess

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News From O'Reilly & Beyond
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General News
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***Wireless Mesh Networking
Tomas Krag and Sebastian Buttrich take a look at some of the principles 
of
wireless mesh networking and they demonstrate how to install and run a
mesh network on a Linux-based computer.
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wireless/2004/01/22/wirelessmesh.html

Tomas will discuss how wireless technologies can bring Internet and
Intranet connectivity to the developing world at O'Reilly's upcoming 
ETech 2004.
http://conferences.oreilly.com/etech/


***Interviews with Digital Democracy Activists
On a recent NPR "Fresh Air" program, Terry Gross interviewed William
Greene of RightMarch.com, as well as Wes Boyd and Eli Pariser of
MoveOn.org. William and Wes will both be featured speakers on February 
9
at O'Reilly's Digital Democracy Teach-In.
http://freshair.npr.org/day_fa.jhtml?display=day&todayDate=01/21/2004


***The Ideal Digital Photographer's Workflow, Part 2 
Ken Milburn follows up on suggestions he made in Part 1 of this 
two-part
series about creating a minimally destructive workflow for the work you 
do
inside image-editing software. Here he offers five nondestructive 
editing
steps to take once you've downloaded your images. Then he provides some
second-stage editing techniques to enhance the impact your images will
have on your clients, or your friends and family. Ken is the author of 
the
upcoming "Digital Photography: Expert Techniques."
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/2004/01/21/digital_photography.html

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Open Source
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***The New Breed of Version Control Systems 
CVS, part of the glue that holds open source development together, is
showing its age. Many competitors have emerged recently, fixing
misfeatures and adding new ideas. Shlomi Fish explores several current
open source version control systems that may be better for your needs 
than CVS.
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2004/01/29/scm_overview.html


***Why Run Free Software on a PDA? 
As PDAs gain power and capabilities, embedded Linux is more and more
attractive. Sharp's Zaurus is a popular Linux PDA. Why aren't more 
palmtop
computers running free software? Guylhem Aznar explores and evangelizes
Linux on small devices.
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/01/29/zaurus.html


***Troubleshooting with Postfix Logs 
Kyle Dent, author of "Postfix: The Definitive Guide," discusses Postfix
logging in general, how to find all relevant information in the logs, 
and
how to increase the amount of logging when more information is needed. 
He
also suggests a few configuration guidelines that might help prevent
problems from the start.
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2004/01/22/postfix.html

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Java
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***What's New in Tomcat 5 
In December 2003, the Apache Tomcat developers released version 5.0.16 
as
the first stable release of Tomcat 5. Jason Brittain looks at the 
latest
features and offers insight into the goals established for version 5.0,
which had a direct impact on development.
http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2004/01/28/tomcat5.html

Jason is a coauthor of "Tomcat: The Definitive Guide."
ISBN: 0596003188
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/tomcat/index.html

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.NET
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***Effective Forms Authentication, Part 1 
ASP.NET offers several possibilities for authenticating users, but when
you come right down to it, there's only one reasonable alternative for
most applications: forms authentication. Mike Gunderloy takes you
step-by-step through creating a forms authentication project and helps 
you
avoid the potholes.
http://www.ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2004/02/02/effectiveformsauth.html


***Serialization in .NET, Part 1 
Serialization of data using built-in .NET support makes persistence 
easy
and reusable. Dan Frumin reviews the support available for 
serialization
and look at a couple of scenarios for using it.
http://www.ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2004/01/26/serializationpt1.html
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Mac
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***The Macintosh's Twisted Truth  
Here's a recent "Wired News" article abridged from Owen Linzmayer's new
release, "Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the World's
Most Colorful Company."
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,61795,00.html

Apple Confidential 2.0
No Starch Press
ISBN: 1593270100
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/1593270100/


***Smart File Sharing Between Macs and PCs 
There are lots of ways to share files between Macs and PCs, and most of
them are aggravating at best. Wei Meng Lee shows you a method that's 
much
easier and cleaner than just about every other solution.
http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2004/01/30/pc_share.html

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News From Your Peers
================================================
***San Gabriel Valley Linux Users Group Meeting, 
Pasadena, CA--February 12
Come to the next meeting of SGVLUG to see "Hacking TiVo" by Claude
Felizardo.
This presentation will cover Tivo hacks, selection criteria, and 
enhancing
one of today's most popular consumer electronics gadgets--the TiVo.
Time: 7-9pm
Location: Guggenheim Building, Room 101 on the Caltech Campus in
Pasadena, CA 
For directions and more information, go to:
http://www.sgvlug.org/



Until next time--

Marsee