O'Reilly User Group Program
NEWSLETTER
March 1, 2002

HIGHLIGHTS THIS WEEK:

NEWS:
-Steven Johnson on "Emergence"
-The O'Reilly Community Press Publishes Essential
Grassroots Documentation
-Report from TED: Geeks and Movie Stars
-Hierarchical Menus with the Underrated 
style.display Object
-Perl Golf Challenge
-Learning the Mac OS X Terminal, Part 3
-The Visual Display of Quantitative XML
-A Quick Tour of .NET Web Services

UPCOMING EVENTS
-Tim O'Reilly on Emerging Tech Trends
-Jesse Liberty on ASP v. ASP.NET
-Eric Ray on Perl and XML
-Noel Rappin on Jython


BOOK NEWS:
-Web Services Essentials
-Hardening Cisco Routers 

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NEWS FROM O'REILLY & BEYOND
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Spread the word to your members....

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GENERAL NEWS
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STEVEN JOHNSON ON "EMERGENCE"
At the beginning of the Web era, Steven Johnson wrote "Interface
Culture," a book that found an enthusiastic reception among web folks,
who appreciated its theme that wired culture is creating new metaphors
for ways to see the larger world. Now Johnson, the founder and editor
of one of the Web's earliest magazines, FEED, has written "Emergence,"
which takes up the theme of bottom-up organization of complex systems.
David Sims and Rael Dornfest talked to Johnson about emergent theory
and its relationship with the Web. 

Read the interview:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2002/02/22/johnson.html


THE O'REILLY COMMUNITY PRESS PUBLISHES 
ESSENTIAL GRASSROOTS DOCUMENTATION 
Since the advent of computers, do-it-yourself documentation has been a
foundation of grassroots technology development. FreeBSD, Linux, Perl,
Apache, MySQL, and other core Internet technologies have flourished
with the help of documentation created by dedicated members of their
technical communities. The O'Reilly Community Press, a new series from
technical publisher O'Reilly & Associates, publishes essential
community-generated documentation. Thanks to that classic user
interface, the book, hackers can now access the wisdom of their
community on the bus, at the beach, or in the bathroom.

Read the press release here:
http://press.oreilly.com/commpress.html


REPORT FROM TED: GEEKS AND MOVIE STARS
Why does Walter Mossberg receive more passionate mail about Mac vs. PC
than he ever received about the Gulf War? Jimmy Guterman reports from
the Technology, Entertainment and Design conference in Monterey, where
techies mix with artists and authors.  

The whole story:
http://oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2002/02/25/ted.html

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UPCOMING EVENTS AT SOFTPRO BOOKS IN BURLINGTON, MA 
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TIM O'REILLY ON EMERGING TECH TRENDS
Tim O'Reilly will talking about emerging tech trends that O'Reilly is
following.  Topics will include bioinformatics, community wireless, web
services, and the evolution of what he's calling "the internet
operating system."

Wednesday March 13--6:30 PM


JESSE LIBERTY ON ASP V. ASP.NET
The principal difference between ASP.NET and ASP is that the new
programming model is more object-oriented and more event-driven. This
will be illustrated by extracting records from a database and filling a
DataGrid in a web form, coloring some records based on their content,
and responding to the ItemDataBound event. Along the way Jesse will
also explain how to create code-behind pages for Web forms, how to
retrieve data from a database and how to populate the DataGrid.

Wednesday, March 20--6:30 PM


ERIK RAY ON PERL AND XML
Erik Ray is coauthor of the upcoming book "Perl & XML." More powerful
than HTML yet less demanding than SGML, XML has proven itself to be
flexible and resilient. XML is the perfect tool for formatting
documents with even the smallest bit of complexity, from Web pages to
legal contracts to books. However, XML has also proven itself to be web
services like SOAP and XML-RPC. As the Perl programming language was
tailor-made for manipulating text, few people have disputed the fact
that Perl and XML are perfectly suited for one another. The only
question has been what's the best way to do it.

Wednesday, April 3--6:30-8:00 PM


NOEL RAPPIN ON JYTHON
Noel Rappin is coauthor of "Jython Essentials." Jython is an
implementation of the Python programming language written in Java,
allowing Python programs to integrate seamlessly with any Java code.
The secret to Jython's popularity lies in the combination of Java's
libraries and tools with Python's rapid development capabilities.

Wednesday, April 24--6:30-8:00 PM

All events to be held at:

Softpro Books
112 Mall Road
Burlington, MA 01803-5300

For more information see:
http://www.softpro.com/events.html

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JAVASCRIPT
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HIERARCHICAL MENUS WITH THE UNDERRATED 
STYLE.DISPLAY OBJECT
You can better manage your Web real estate using hierarchical menus.
Learn how with these JavaScript examples by Bill Pena, coauthor of
"Designing with JavaScript, 2nd Edition"
Read what Bill has to say here:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/2002/02/22/hierarchical_menus.html

For more information, order a review copy of
"Designing with JavaScript,2nd Edition"
Order Number: 360X
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/designjs2/

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MAC
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LEARNING THE MAC OS X TERMINAL, PART 3
In parts one and two, Chris Stone helped you get comfortable with Mac
OS X's Terminal app.  Now he provides a virtual cornucopia of
cron-related goodies.
Read Chris's article here:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/mac/2002/02/26/terminal_three.html

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PERL
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LOS ANGELES PERL MONGER'S GOLF CHALLENGE
What is Perl Golf?
Perl Golf is a competition where all participants will try to
create/shorten Perl code that has a certain purpose to the least amount
of (key)strokes.  
For more information check out: 
http://la.pm.org/golf/

Are you interested in started your own Perl Golf challenge?
talk to Samy Kamker of the LA Perl Mongers.
The Los Angeles Perl monger site: 
http://la.pm.org/

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XML
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THE VISUAL DISPLAY OF QUANTITATIVE XML
Fabio Arciniegas A. shows you how to use SVG and XSLT to present 
your data in the most appropriate, efficient and 
attractive way possible. 
Fabio's article:
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/02/27/visual/index.html

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.NET
--------------------
A QUICK TOUR OF .NET WEB SERVICES
Brian Jepson shows you some simple Web services with code examples.
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2002/02/25/examples.html

For more information, get a copy of  
".NET Framework Essentials, 2nd Edition."
By Thuan L. Thai, Hoang Lam
Order Number: 3021
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/dotnetfrmess2/

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BOOK NEWS
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REVIEW COPIES ARE AVAILABLE, email me for a copy. 
If you need your books by a certain date, please allow at least three
weeks for shipping.

Don't forget, your members get 20% off any O'Reilly book 
they purchase direct from O'Reilly. Just use code DSUG when ordering.

WEB SERVICES ESSENTIALS 
Order Number: 2246

This concise book gives programmers both a concrete introduction and a
handy reference to XML web services, first by explaining the
foundations of this new breed of distributed services, and then by
demonstrating quick ways to create services with open-source 
Java tools.  
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/webservess/

Chapter 6, "WSDL Essentials"
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/webservess/chapter/ch06.html

The "Web Services Essentials" press release is available here:
http://press.oreilly.com/webservess.html


HARDENING CISCO ROUTERS
Order Number: 1665

As a network administrator, auditor or architect, you know the
importance of securing your network and finding security solutions you
can implement quickly. This succinct book departs from other security
literature by focusing exclusively on ways to secure Cisco routers,
rather than the entire network.  The rational is simple: If the router
protecting a network is exposed to hackers, then so is the network
behind it.
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/hardcisco/

Chapter 10, "NTP"
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/hardcisco/chapter/ch10.html

The "Hardening Cisco Routers" press release is available here:
http://press.oreilly.com/

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ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM YOUR PEERS
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Kansas -

The Kansas City Java Users Group, http://www.kcjava.org, has organized
an open source users group portal project named GroupHQ. Any and all
developer's are welcome to help code, and all users groups are welcome
to use the first release of code, due out later this year.

If your users group has requirements, or you wish to volunteer with
development, please contact Steve Mitchell at JavaSIGLeader@hugkc.org.
We are especially interested in architects and senior developers who
which to contribute design reviews and code reviews once we get under
way.  Watch http://sourceforge.net/projects/kcjava for details.

Florida-

North Tampa O'Reilly Users Group seeking new geeks for membership!
Please email ken.cole@att.net for information.  New Website and Virtual
Meetings, as well as F2F meeting schedules forthcoming.

Calgary, Canada-

Next Meeting of the Calgary ORACLE Users Group
Thursday March 7th, 8-10am
Fifth Avenue Place
Suite 202 237 4th Ave, West Tower
Presentation: Oracle Workspace Manager, Jane Lockhart
Check our new Portal website at http://atlas.coug.ab.ca/


Until next week,

Marsee