- Free-software-melb - lists.softwarefreedom.com.au

Debate event: “Copyright Is Dead, Long Live The Pirates”
by Ben Finney 23 Sep '13

23 Sep '13

Howdy all, The Wheeler Centre is organising an IQ² Debate with a topic related to free culture, that of copyright and the misnomer “piracy” for copyright infringement. The digital revolution is counter-intuitive to copyright. Technological change is moving too fast for adequate laws to be implemented – and for affected industries to keep pace. With such open access to information these days, how do we know where one person’s work ends and another begins? Is the very idea of intellectual property becoming a nonsense – or is it too important to give up on, for the continuing functioning of the arts and the sciences? And – the million-dollar question – how can we ensure creativity continues to pay? Our speakers will consider the obstacles and opportunities ahead. <URL:http://wheelercentre.com/events/event/copyright-is-dead-long-live-the-p…> -- \ “He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his | `\ enemy from oppression.” —Thomas Paine | _o__) | Ben Finney

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Haecksen miniconf Call For Proposals (linux.conf.au, January, Perth)
by Bianca Gibson 18 Sep '13

18 Sep '13

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "Mary Gardiner" <mary(a)puzzling.org> Date: 17 Sep 2013 14:18 Subject: [OWOOT] Haecksen miniconf Call For Proposals (linux.conf.au, January, Perth) To: "OWOOT" <owoot(a)lists.owoot.org> Cc: CFP closes 1 November. -------------------------------- http://haecksen.net/haecksen-2014-call-proposals Haecksen 2014 - Call For Proposals Submitted by superhaecksen on Sun, 2013-09-15 13:39 Haecksen isn't Haecksen without all the Haecksen! That's you! This year, we're looking for: * Short talks (around 20 minutes, but requests for a double slot of 40 minutes will be considered) on anything related to open tech generally, or women in open tech specifically, that you are currently working on. * A small number of short hands-on presentations about *your personal or professional experience* of preparing, submitting, and giving talks at technical conferences. Think you've got what it takes? Go to http://haecksen.net/node/add/miniconfsubmission and tell us all about it! Submissions are open until 1 November. If you have questions about anything at all, email unicorn(at)haecksen(dot)net. Just a short note: Accepted miniconf speakers do not generally get free admission to the conference. If you would like to speak but CANNOT afford to attend, please let us know in your submission so we can work with you and the LCA organisers to try and make it happen. == About Haecksen 2014 == Haecksen has been a regular feature at linux.conf.au since 2007. In that time, it has stuck to a tried and trusted formula. A group of smart, vibrant women all working in some way with open source technology, spend the day together sharing their experiences and knowledge in a supportive and fun environment. For linux.conf.au 2014, the Oceania Women of Open Technology (OWOOT http://owoot.org) group proposes, again, a one-day Haecksen miniconf. Again, the intention is to feature women speakers and panellists on technical and community topics related to free software and women in free software. This year, however, the emphasis is on fun. Kicking off with a gameshow-style quiz covering achievements of historical women in tech, the day will then move into a series of short, upbeat presentations, before finishing with a light-hearted hands-on education session dedicated to encouraging and assisting women with conference speaker applications, professional speaking skills, and conference attendance. Speakers are expected, and indeed encouraged, to cover topics that range widely from technical talks to professional development, and community involvement. == 2014 Haecksen team == Lana Brindley. Lana will lead organisation of the miniconference prior to and at linux.conf.au 2014. Lana was the lead organiser of the 2011 and 2012 Haecksen miniconfs, and was a member of the LCA 2013 core team. Mary Gardiner. Mary will assist with the call for papers and selecting presentations. Mary was the founder of the Haecksen miniconf and was co-organiser of the 2007 and 2008 miniconfs. Bianca Gibson. Bianca will assist with the call for papers and selecting presentations. Bianca was co-organiser of the 2013 Haecksen miniconf. == About OWOOT == OWOOT (Oceania Women of Open Tech, formerly Aussiechix) was formed in October 2011, but grew out of women's groups in the region active since 1999. OWOOT remains a chapter of Linuxchix. Linuxchix functions as a geographically distributed user group. It has been running for over a decade and contains well over a thousand active members in many different countries. Originally founded with the explicit intention of providing an alternative to occasionally hostile online environments, it is not yet in the enviable position of being redundant. As such, as well as the usual technical aspect of user groups, OWOOT has a heavy social aspect. == Women at linux.conf.au == Possibly due to the community spirit provided by groups like OWOOT, the previous miniconfs have helped attract women in the greater FLOSS community to linux.conf.au. The presence of the miniconf since 2007 has demonstrably helped raise the numbers of women to the conference itself. The inaugural miniconf expected 20 women. Last year, over 80 people expressed interest in the miniconf, and the main conference is now regularly attracting around a 20% female attendance rate. With a reported 4% female contributions to open source projects, a 20% female attendance rate shows the good work the Haecksen miniconf does for promoting and welcoming female talent and perspective to FLOSS projects, and linux.conf.au in particular. _______________________________________________ owoot mailing list owoot(a)lists.owoot.org http://lists.owoot.org/listinfo/owoot

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Re: [free-software-melb] [luv-talk] Filling Software Freedom day "Sugar on a Stick" CD & "Edubuntu 12.04.3 + OpenDisc 12.09" DVD
by Rodney Brown 15 Sep '13

15 Sep '13

On 16/09/13 04:04, Wen Lin wrote: > Hi Rodney, > > Good on you for making the SFD "Sugar on a Stick" etc CDs & DVDs. Any > cost involved please let me know so I can reimburse you. > I currently have ~16 CDs of "Sugar on a Stick" Fedora-Live-SoaS-i686-19-1 burnt and ~10 of OpenDisc.12.09_Edubuntu-12.04.03 DVDs burnt Battle of Wesnoth didn't make the cut, ... I think there is < 10Mb free on the DVD I have labels to print on the CD/DVDs in SVG. > You need a hand in burning the CD/DVD? How many you intend to make? > From what Tony said, the 16 CDs should be enough, though it is running Fedora after all. I think it shouldn't be to hard to burn up to 50 DVDs here, so I should be Ok. More generally how useful are media for people? Edubuntu 12.04.03 gives a current LTS Ubuntu with LibreOffice etc installed. A similarly well populated Fedora iso would be worth distributing. > Cheers, > Wen > > > > On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 8:57 AM, Lev Lafayette <lev(a)levlafayette.com > <mailto:lev@levlafayette.com>> wrote: > > > On Wed, September 11, 2013 8:05 am, Rodney Brown wrote: > > For Software Freedom Day, I try to fill the media we write to > give away > > > > For "Sugar on a Stick" Fedora-Live-SoaS-i686-19-1, the CD will have > > 5-6Mb left, not enough for very much, but text and links in the > Readme > > are small. I've assumed this CD may interest people with younger > > children. > > Sounds good Rodney! Thanks for doing this.. > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > luv-talk mailing list > luv-talk(a)lists.luv.asn.au > http://lists.luv.asn.au/listinfo/luv-talk

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Petition opened for keeping an "FttP-ed" NBN
by Adrian Colomitchi 11 Sep '13

11 Sep '13

Hi gals and guys, I signed the petition "The Liberal Party of Australia: Reconsider your plan for a 'FTTN' NBN in favour of a superior 'FTTH' NBN" on Change.org. If interested, here's the link: http://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/the-liberal-party-of-australia-recons… Regards, Adrian

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Filling Software Freedom day "Sugar on a Stick" CD & "Edubuntu 12.04.3 + OpenDisc 12.09" DVD
by Rodney Brown 10 Sep '13

10 Sep '13

For Software Freedom Day, I try to fill the media we write to give away For "Sugar on a Stick" Fedora-Live-SoaS-i686-19-1, the CD will have 5-6Mb left, not enough for very much, but text and links in the Readme are small. I've assumed this CD may interest people with younger children. Suggestions are welcome. The DVD will be similar, I'll aim to fill it, maybe removing "Battle of Wesnoth" from the OpenDisc collection for it's 300Mb, but suggestions for links and text would be welcome. ../Win32-SFD-2013/ total 96M 1.8M Sep 10 21:37 Antikythera.045.pr 24M Sep 6 2012 BYOB 3.1.1 Setup.exe 16M Sep 6 2012 Pingus-0.7.6.exe 2.4M Sep 6 2012 pyglet-1.1.4.msi 20M Sep 9 08:43 python-3.3.2.msi 1.5K Sep 10 23:11 ReadMe.txt 34M Sep 10 00:23 ScratchInstaller1.4.exe du -sh .. 694M .. --Current ReadMe.txt-- This CD boots Sugar on a Stick, version 9 Avocado http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick (Fedora-Live-SoaS-i686-19-1) The directory Win32-SFD-2013 contains other Free Software which is not part of Sugar on a Stick ==Windows installers in this directory== Antikythera.045.pr ameso — The Antikythera Mechanism on Squeak EToys http://www.spinellis.gr/sw/ameso/ EToys is an application on Sugar, but can be downloaded for Linux and Windows. BYOB 3.1 — Build Your Own Blocks (a/k/a SNAP!) http://byob.berkeley.edu/ The newer version now called Snap! is browser based running in Javascript Pingus is a free Lemmings(tm)-like puzzle game ... http://pingus.seul.org/ pyglet: a cross-platform windowing and multimedia library for Python. http://www.pyglet.org/ Python Programming Language 3.2.3 http://python.org/ Scratch 1.4 http://scratch.mit.edu The new release 2.0 is browser based requiring Flash ==Links: Other== Wikipedia: Category:Educational programming languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Educational_programming_languages Racket — programming language previously called DrScheme http://racket-lang.org/ SEUL.org — Simple End-User Linux, currently focusing on Linux in education, Linux in science http://www.seul.org/ Visual Transistor-level Simulation of the 6502 CPU and other chips! http://www.visual6502.org/ KhanAcademy Computer Science http://www.khanacademy.org/cs Software Freedom Day 2013 Melbourne http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2013/Australia/Victoria/Melbourne/SFD --cut-- Last year's DVD ReadMe.txt --cut-- SFD Melbourne 2012 http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2012/Australia/Victoria/Melbourne/SFDMel… OpenDisc 12.09 with some updates http://www.theopendisc.com/ Edubuntu-12.04.1 x86-64 live DVD http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/releases/12.04/release/ Virus scanned with Microsoft Security Essentials on 2012-09-08 ... ==Windows installers in this directory== BYOB 3.1 — Build Your Own Blocks (a/k/a SNAP!) http://byob.berkeley.edu/ Intel 4004 - 35th Anniversary Project http://www.4004.com/ Pingus is a free Lemmings(tm)-like puzzle game ... http://pingus.seul.org/ pyglet http://www.pyglet.org/ Python programming language (2.7.3 & 3.2.3) http://www.python.org Racket programming language http://racket-lang.org/download/ The R Project for Statistical Computing (R Programming language) http://www.r-project.org/ SQLite http://sqlite.org/ Vim http://www.vim.org/ ==Suggested Firefox plugins== Adblock Plus NoScript ==Links: FSF== Philosophy of the GNU Project http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/philosophy.html The Right to Read: A Dystopian Short Story http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html ==Links: ODF== Rob Weir's Writings (on the ODF OpenDocument Format) http://www.robweir.com/blog/presentations-and-publications (2009-04-25 - Document Freedom Day)"Taking Control of Your Documents" http://www.robweir.com/blog/publications/Taking-Control.pdf http://www.robweir.com/blog/publications/Taking-Control.odt ==Links: Other== Guide to Open Source Software for Australian Government Agencies http://www.finance.gov.au/publications/guide-to-open-source-software/index.… KeePass Password Safe http://sourceforge.net/projects/keepass/?source=recommended KhanAcademy Computer Science http://www.khanacademy.org/cs Open Hardware http://openhardware.org/ SEUL.org http://www.seul.org/ The Go Programming Language http://golang.org/ Visual Transistor-level Simulation of the 6502 CPU and other chips! http://www.visual6502.org/ ==Links: Licensed Microsoft Software available for download - (non-Free)== Office Online File Converters and Viewers (Read Word documents) http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/office-online-file-converters-a… Microsoft File Checksum Integrity Verifier (MD5 and SHA1) http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=11533 Microsoft Security Essentials (anti-virus program) http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/products/security-essentialsv --cut-- Linking David Wheeler's 2007 "Why Open Source/Free Software (...)? Look at the Numbers!" paper http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html and some others of that ilk is obvious. Other suggestions?

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Fwd: [LCA2013-Chat] LCA2014 Registrations now open!
by Bianca Gibson 10 Sep '13

10 Sep '13

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Joshua Hesketh <snip> On behalf of the *linux.conf.au 2014* team we are pleased to announce that we have now started accepting early bird registrations. According to Luke John, organising director, “The start of registration represents the culmination of a lot of groundwork in planning for the conference and it's a real milestone to be at this point in the process”, “While there's still a lot to do, it's really starting to take shape now, and I'm quietly confident that we've got a great line up of speakers and topics and we are looking forward to an awesome conference”. Paul Del Fante also chipped in to offer encouragement for those of you who may feel a bit daunted by the distances. “It's Perth, it's Summer, we've got a fantastic Linux conference on, warm beaches, balmy evenings, city life, so come on over and share in our hospitality”. The *linux.conf.au 2014* early bird registrations will be open till 2013/10/13, but are for a limited number of places and may close earlier before we move on to the formal registration period, and we'd please ask anyone who registers during this time to keep an eye out for any minor issues or inconsistencies you come across. The *linux.conf.au 2014* Organising Team. http://lca2014.linux.org.au #lca14 <luke.john(a)osmahi.com> _______________________________________________ Chat mailing list Chat(a)lists.lca2013.linux.org.au http://lists.lca2013.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/chat_lists.lca2013.linux…

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Software Freedom Day 2013 : Free Software for a Free Society
by Lev Lafayette 08 Sep '13

08 Sep '13

Linux Users of Victoria and Free Software Melbourne Present... Software Freedom Day 2013 : Free Software for a Free Society Software Freedom Day is an international event celebrating of Free Software. Starting in 2004 in now hosts over a thousand events in over forty countries. The Melbourne event will be held on Saturday, September 21st, 9.30 to 17.00 at 110 Grey Street East Melbourne (Melbourne Unitarian Church hall) It's about 5 minutes from Jolimont Station , or a brisk 10 minute walk from Parliament station or West Richmond. There's plenty of parking at the site as well! Speakers 9.30 Introduction: Video Welcome from Dr. Richard Stallman 10.00 Andrew Pam, Content Creation with Free Software Tools 11.00 Pat Sunter, Free and Open Source In Public Decision-Making 12.00 Adam Bolte, Protecting Yourself Online 13.00 Lunch 14.00 Ben McGuiness, Pirate Party's Policy on Copyright and Patents 15.00 Kathy Reid, The Orgnisation of Free Software Communities 16.00 Lev Lafayette, Beyond Software - Steps Towards A Free Society Plus plenty of t-shirts, software and other paraphrenalia giveaways, videos and a free lunch (with open sauce). -- Lev Lafayette, BA (Hons), GCertPM, MBA mobile: 0432 255 208 RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt

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Keysigning party
by Ben Finney 04 Sep '13

04 Sep '13

Howdy all, We have been discussing the idea of regular GPG keysigning parties for our group. A keysigning party is an opportunity to efficiently use a gathering of people to perform the necessary steps in verifying the identity of GPG key holders <URL:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_signing_party>. There is a good site <URL:http://keysigning.org/> which is a repository of information on what a keysigning party is and, importantly, what people need to know in order to prepare and participate. I think we will use some middle ground between the “Sassaman” <URL:http://keysigning.org/methods/sassaman-efficient> and “Ad hoc” <URL:http://keysigning.org/methods/adhoc>>. Specifically, I think the party will be small enough to use Ad hoc, but the central point of contact to co-ordinate the participating keys will be helpful. Adam Bolte has offered to give more information and co-ordinate, but I'm happy to answer questions here too. -- \ “By instructing students how to learn, unlearn, and relearn, a | `\ powerful new dimension can be added to education.” —Alvin | _o__) Toffler, _Future Shock_, 1970 | Ben Finney

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[Fwd: [SFD-announce] SFD 2013 registration is now ON!]
by Lev Lafayette 03 Sep '13

03 Sep '13

Hi Freedom-lovers, Is the Melbourne Free Software Group interesting in taking up the role of organising Software Freedom Day this year? LUV has done it a few years in succession now, but it's really something that should be in the domain of Melbourne FS. All the best, Lev ---------------------------- Original Message ---------------------------- Subject: [SFD-announce] SFD 2013 registration is now ON! From: "Frederic Muller - DFF" <fred(a)digitalfreedomfoundation.org> Date: Sun, June 16, 2013 4:21 pm To: "SFD announcements" <sfd-announce(a)sf-day.org> -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear all, It is with a great pleasure that we are opening registration for SFD 2013. The wiki has been prepared with the current localized languages available and some of the translations for the Frontpage still need to be updated. We are still finishing some of the design including the countdown which will start working 99 days before the event. As usual we are available for support through email on sfd-discuss or on IRC (#SFD on freenode). The deadline for registered teams to get the free goodies is July 21st which should give us enough time to ship everything everywhere. Simply create your team page under http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2013 (/country/city/team for most) and complete the form on http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/cgi-bin/register.py. All information and links are of course available from the SFD website. As usual artworks are available under http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/Artwork and CC-BY licensed. Feel free to use, enhanced and eventually localize them. I want to particularly thank our sponsors who are making this possible, namely Canonical, Google, and Linode for the time being. Should your organization be interested to sponsor DFF to be able to send more goodies please get in touch with us. Note that there is a deadline to be listed on the magazine ads we run with our media sponsors, Linux Magazine, Ubuntu user, Admin, Smart developer and Linux Journal, which is around mid July or early August. We will be going through various changes in terms of blog location and ways to hear about us, the main reason being that we have moved our non-profit to Hong Kong and the requirements are a bit different than in the US. Besides we are a lot of projects going on and those require some changes. So let's get started and happy SFD preparations! The Digital Freedom Foundation Board ps: do check the SFD 2011 winners for inspiration and thanks again to Lemote and FSF for the prizes. http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/en/competition/winners-2011 [1]: http://mail.sf-day.org/lists/listinfo/sfd-discuss [2]: http://planet.softwarefreedomday.org (language specific planets available through the language switcher) _______________________________________________ SFD-announce mailing list SFD-announce(a)sf-day.org http://mail.sf-day.org/lists/listinfo/sfd-announce -- Lev Lafayette, BA (Hons), MBA, GCertPM mobile: 0432 255 208 RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt

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WikiLeaks Party members quit over problems of integrity
by Ben Finney 22 Aug '13

22 Aug '13

Howdy all, Seven people have quit working for the WikiLeaks Party this week: A total of seven party members and volunteers have now quit, including four delegates of the national council - the party's governing body. <URL:http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-22/assange-blames-party-teething-problems/4904366?section=australianetworknews> We had a brief discussion of the Australian WikiLeaks Party at our last FSM meeting, when we asked the Pirate Party members what they saw as differences between the two parties. One of the differences the Pirate Party members pointed to first was that theirs is run openly and democratically, while WikiLeaks Party appears to run hierarchically and behind closed doors. Leslie Cannold and Daniel Mathews, two of the higer-profile members to quit the WikiLeaks party, both cited failures of principle and integrity within the part leadership as reasons for resigning. Cannold's published resignation letter contrasts the espoused values of transparency and accountability, versus the party's practice of members undermining decisions made legitimately by its governing body. -- \ “If we have to give up either religion or education, we should | `\ give up education.” —William Jennings Bryan, 1923-01 | _o__) | Ben Finney

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