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James Turnbull | 4 Jul 2008 01:42
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Open Source Security and the Mozilla Metrics Program


Hi all

A common argument about FOSS is "open source is more/less/elephant
secure than closed source".  Conflated with this is the "there are more
security holes/bugs in Firefox than IE/Safari/etc" discussion.

To those of us who have spent time getting to the bottom of both
discussions there haven't been a lot of data and statistics with any
real science associated with them.  Indeed a lot of the metrics used by
the security researchers and media are outright unreliable and
occasionally subject to some bias.

The Mozilla project has initiated a metrics program/project to track
bugs and develop a baseline model for secure development.

You can read about the project at
http://blog.mozilla.com/security/2008/07/02/mozilla-security-metrics-project/.

The project is advised by Rich Mogull (http://securosis.com/about/) - a
well respected ex-Gartner security boffin.

The site and the associated collateral is well worth a read and the
results look to be interesting.

Regards

James Turnbull

--
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John Ferlito | 4 Jul 2008 07:02
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Mailman woes

Hi,

    Lists on morton have been broken the last few days as mailman
locked up when we had a disk fill up. Even though emails made it into
the archives they didn't get sent out. Anything that was sent this
month and you haven't seen should be resent. For this list that is the
following.

        * [Linux-aus] Open Letter to the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia   Donna Benjamin
        * [Linux-aus] Permission to use Tshirt design   Steve Dalton
        * [Linux-aus] Open Letter to the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia   Donna Benjamin
        * [Linux-aus] LCA09 Opens Call for Papers!   Ben Powell
        * [Linux-aus] Open Source Security and the Mozilla Metrics Program   James Turnbull 

    I could have emailed the above people individually but the main
purpose of this email is to test the list is working again.

Cheers,

John

--

-- 
John
LA Admin Team
http://www.inodes.org/
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Ben Powell | 4 Jul 2008 01:05
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LCA09 Opens Call for Papers!

Hi All,

The LCA09 team is pleased to announce that the Call For Papers (and Call for Mini-Confs) is open as of today.
So march on down to http://linux.conf.au to submit you paper abstracts or mini-conf proposals (or just
come on over to check out the new website).

Below is the press release that goes with the announcement.

Cheers,

Ben.
LCA09

Linux.conf.au  - Hobart Conference 2009 Opens Call for Papers

Linux.conf.au has announced the opening of the call for papers on Friday 4th July 2008, giving the open
source software community the chance to present at one of the world's premier technical conferences.

Hobart TAS, Australia-- (4th July 2008) ---- The call for papers will remain open for a month, after which
the best papers will be selected by an expert panel.

Ben Powell, President of the Tasmanian Linux Users Group, says the 10th annual Linux.conf.au is expected
to attract influential speakers from the international and local technical Linux and Open Source communities.

"This is the first time that the conference has been held in Hobart and given the unique location, and that it
is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, we expect to see significant interest from local and
international speakers and delegates," said Mr Powell.

It is expected that over 100 speakers will be chosen to present at the Hobart conference from a large pool of
international and local submissions.
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Donna Benjamin | 2 Jul 2008 08:55
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Open Letter to the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia

This was just sent to the Deputy PM, Treasurer, Minister for finance and
Senator Kate Lundy and was also CC'd to senior members of the Digital
Education Revolution taskforce.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Open Letter to Deputy Prime Minister calling for consideration of Free
and Open Source Software in implementation of the Digital Education
Revolution Policy for the National Secondary School Computer Fund.

----------------------------------------------------------------
The Hon. Julia Gillard, MP 
Deputy Prime Minister of Australia and Minister for Education 

Dear Deputy Prime Minister Gillard, 

As leaders in the ICT industry we're excited by the government's
commitment toward making a revolutionary improvement in Australia’s
education and training to world-leading standards. We're ready to "join
the barricades" to assist in the interests of raising Australia's ICT
capabilities in the global economy. 

We urge you to consider the cost-saving implications of advocating the
use of free and open source software in schools to further the aims of
the digital education revolution and maximise the impact of this
critical investment in the future. 

Over the past two years we have seen a dramatic drop in price for basic
computing hardware. Free and open source software represents a real
opportunity for further cost savings, which would allow schools to use
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Donna Benjamin | 3 Jul 2008 01:50
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Re: Open Letter to the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia

http://www.techworld.com.au/article/251554/open_source_community_pushes_canberra_school_computer_fund 

Letter Published on Techworld.com.au
http://tinyurl.com/3qwx32 

Open source community pushes Canberra on school computer fund
Consider the options for maximizing value
Rodney Gedda 02/07/2008 17:06:27

Australia's open source community leaders have written an open letter to
Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard calling for consideration of free
and open source software in the implementation of the Digital Education
Revolution for the National Secondary School Computer Fund.

The letter, signed by 10 local open source professionals, calls for
greater use of free and open source software in schools, particularly
with the election promise of $1000 to fund a computer for every
secondary student in the country.

--

-- 
Donna Benjamin - Executive Director
Creative Contingencies - http://cc.com.au
ph +61 3 9326 9985 - mob +61 418 310 414
open source - facilitation - web services
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Steve Dalton | 2 Jul 2008 12:00

Permission to use Tshirt design

Hi All

I know I should probably email ctte about this - but just wanted to  
send out to the list in case it inspired others.

Was talking to some people in out LUG (GCLUG) about producing some  
Tshirts for Software Freedom Day. We didn't really want to make any  
money from it - just raise awareness - so would sell them at cost. We  
were hoping we could use the image at

http://www.linux.org.au/projects/T-Shirt/winner.phtml

I spoke to cafuego on irc and apparently this is the best quality  
image we have - but he has also given me a svg that he created -  
slightly different - but pretty good.

Could we have permission to use this? I notice it says on the page it  
should be used only for raising money for LA - if we sell at cost -  
this won't really be the case.

Regards
Steve
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Terry Dawson | 3 Jul 2008 13:48

Linux Australia Council Meeting Minutes: 2008/067/03


The minutes of the Linux Australia Council Meeting are available at:

	http://wiki.linux.org.au/Ctte/MeetingNotes20080703

and are reproduced below:

== Council meeting ==
 * Time: 21:00 EAST, Thursday, 2008/07/03
 * Where: Linux Australia teleconference, and #LACTTE IRC channel
 * Attendees: Steve Walsh, James Turnbull, Stewart Smith, Paul Schulz,
Melissa Draper
 * Special Attendee: Ben Powell

== Notes ==

Starred ( {*} ) items are expected to require discussion at the meeting.
Un-starred items will be taken as noted or carried without further
discussion, unless starred at the beginning of the meeting.

 0. {*} Are there any items to star?

 1. Accept minutes of MeetingNotes20080626

 2. {*} LCA2008 report
  A report from the LCA2008 team on progress.

  Ben Powell reports:

   * Ben has yet been unable to obtain his Westpac ID due to work
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John Ferlito | 4 Jul 2008 08:31
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Re: Mailman woes

Hi,

    Ignore the bit about resending. The missing emails were eventually
discovered in mailman's outbound queue.

Cheers,

On Fri, Jul 04, 2008 at 03:02:31PM +1000, John Ferlito wrote:
> Hi,
> 
>     Lists on morton have been broken the last few days as mailman
> locked up when we had a disk fill up. Even though emails made it into
> the archives they didn't get sent out. Anything that was sent this
> month and you haven't seen should be resent. For this list that is the
> following.
> 
>         * [Linux-aus] Open Letter to the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia   Donna Benjamin
>         * [Linux-aus] Permission to use Tshirt design   Steve Dalton
>         * [Linux-aus] Open Letter to the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia   Donna Benjamin
>         * [Linux-aus] LCA09 Opens Call for Papers!   Ben Powell
>         * [Linux-aus] Open Source Security and the Mozilla Metrics Program   James Turnbull 
> 
>     I could have emailed the above people individually but the main
> purpose of this email is to test the list is working again.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> John
> 
> --
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Steven Hanley | 4 Jul 2008 07:55
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Re: Grant request: BarCampCanberra

On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 01:37:36PM +1030, David Newall wrote:
> Steven Hanley wrote:
> > Small runs of
> > around 20 to 40 t-shirts with a custom three colour logo are likely to be a
> > AUD $200 setup and around AUD $20 or $25 per shirt.
> 
> Would that be for a 100% cotton shirt, or for a fully plastic one?

Thre pre lca2005 shirts (blue with the ls joke on the back) we ordered 50 of
are 100 % cotton and came in at $20 each.

	See You
	    Steve

--

-- 
Steven Hanley sjh@... http://svana.org/sjh/diary
we're all citizens of the womb, before we subdivide
into sexes and shades, this side, that side
   Work Your Way Out - Ani Difranco - Ani
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Chris Fordham | 4 Jul 2008 08:38
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Re: Microsoft drops prices to compete with Linux on low-cost laptops

On Mon, 12 May 2008 23:10:58 +1000, David Newall <davidn@...>  
wrote:

> Brent Wallis wrote:
>> HP will not supply XP pre-installed past June 30 this year,
>> Dell were going to do the same but have announced only last week that
>> they will do a downgrade past that date.
>> Lenovo have not announced anything yet.
>>
>> I reckon HP and IBM will follow Dell....too many sites out there that
>> would suffer if Vista was forced onto them. There are too many techs
>> in MS land that havent even looked at Vista yet..there are many apps
>> out there that just won;t work with it and probably never will.
>
> It was much the same when XP came out, when people stayed with 2000
> instead of switching to XP.  It didn't hurt MS then and it probably
> won't hurt them now, either.  I think MS Office is what drives their
> income, anyway.  People want (are convinced to get) the latest Office;
> and that drives them to the latest Windows.

I don't think its the same. XP was 5.1, and 2000 was 5.0. XP was just a  
skinned win2k with a bit more.
However Vista is demanding a lot more memory and other things making  
upgrade near avoidable for a lot people (and brand new low spec machines  
not being able to run it decently).
And it is hurting Microsoft, that is a fact and shown in the media. They  
are yet to be over-turned however because of their long establishment etc.

> _______________________________________________
> linux-aus mailing list
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