manchester February 2012

manchester@lists.fsfe.org

6 participants
17 discussions

[Manchester] Fwd: [Debian-uk] Alternative Computing event
by Sam Tuke 16 Mar '12

16 Mar '12

-- Sam Tuke British Team Coordinator Free Software Foundation Europe IM : samtuke(a)jabber.fsfe.org Latest UK Free Software news: uk.fsfe.org Is freedom important to you? Join the fellowship.fsfe.org

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[Manchester] Server set up day tomorrow
by Sam Tuke 27 Feb '12

27 Feb '12

Tomorrow we shall meet at Arcspace at 15.00 to build and install the new community mail hosting server. Come along if you'd like to see it built, see Arcspace, or just have a chat. Address details for Arcspace can be found on their website. See you there! Sam.

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[FSFE-Manc] Mailpod project description
by Sam Tuke 27 Feb '12

27 Feb '12

I wrote this yesterday for Arcspace to use in support of their funding requests. I'm not sure what else we could do with it. Let me know if you have ideas. I can stick it in an etherpad so you can all edit it if we decide to use it. __ Manchester community hosting project: 'mailpod.org' Finding a little privacy Privacy is important. It's also increasingly hard to come by, especially if you communicate using computers or mobile phones. Everyone these days has accounts with email, instant messaging, and social networking websites. And lots of them are free of charge to use - brilliant, we're all communicating! The trouble is that providing these services costs companies like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft money. They make a profit by selling information about the services you use to other companies, and by using them internally to sell other products to you directly. Google just changed its privacy policies to allow sharing of user data between all 71 of its different companies and services. This information is also sold to the government - the USA is a major buyer, for example. Aside from selling your details, these big providers have big business interests, and big legal responsibilities, and customer privacy is always the last priority. This isn't their fault - all the laws that allow governments to access your information apply to every company trading in that jurisdiction. It doesn't matter how ethical or privacy conscious a company is, a court can force Hotmail to provide all your personal messages going back years, and they don't need to tell you that they've done it. Clicking a link that goes to website that infringes copyright, transferring legal files using a system that others use illegally, having sent messages to somebody else who gets arrested, or simply being seen or tracked in the wrong place at the wrong time can all provide sufficient grounds for your data to be shared en masse with law enforcement. And not just law enforcement in your own country, or even your own continent - wherever your service provider is accessible or locates servers they are subject to local law. Do you trust Syrian privacy laws? Do you know what they are? If you use the web services of a company like Google, then perhaps you should look into them! A way out People in Manchester are trying to provide an alternative to entrusting our privacy to these popular but untrustworthy services. Technical solutions and alternatives to privacy problems have been around for a long time. But they're not necessarily easy enough to find or use to provide a real solution for non- technical people. Specifically, we're setting up a community owned and run mail hosting service in Manchester. The project is called mailpod.org. - It's set up for privacy, from the ground up. - We encrypt all information we store so that only trustworthy people can access it. - We don't store information that we don't need to, and we certainly don't sell any information. To anyone. - We don't provide lots of other services, so privacy comes first, not our need to continue trading other services, or fulfilling other unrelated obligations. - We're cooperatively run. Our infrastructure is provided by other community projects - *Arcspace* community centre in Hulme provides us with hardware, power, and Internet. - And we are small, only serve Manchester residents, and are in no rush to grow. That way we can stay focused on providing the best possible services to our users. Pioneers mailpod.org will not only provide trust and security for the communication of Mancunians. It will also foster new technical skills among project members, and increase awareness of the risks and opportunities surrounding digital freedom. It will also hopefully become a significant part of the vibrant technically creative scene in England's North West. The project takes inspiration from fripost.org: a successful project started in 2009 in the Swedish City of Gothenburg to achieve the same ends. Mailpod.org is rooted in the Manchester members of the Free Software Foundation Europe: a well-established European non-profit organisation dedicated to freedom and equality in emerging digital societies. __ Sam. -- Sam Tuke British Team Coordinator Free Software Foundation Europe IM : samtuke(a)jabber.fsfe.org Latest UK Free Software news: uk.fsfe.org Is freedom important to you? Join the fellowship.fsfe.org

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[FSFE-Manc] Weekly report for Sam Tuke (week 8)
by Sam Tuke 27 Feb '12

27 Feb '12

= Summary 20-26 February = During three days this week I spent most of my time travelling to Berlin for a Document Freedom Day sprint, having meetings about DFD and UK coordination, and working on documentfreedom.org. = Detail = == DFD == - Had coordination meeting with Matthias Kirschner in FSFE Berlin office, planning events, posters, website features and more - Added link to city sponsorship page from sponsors page - Fixed identi.ca feed on contact page (before it wasn't appearing at all) - Made pages printable using a much improved print.css - most site pages now print well, including articles and 'sponsor a city' information - Improved partners page to list all current partners, include logos, use table-less layout, and be linked in main site navigation (http://documentfreedom.org/partners.html) - Fixed broken news links on front page - Numerous other bug comments and closures == Policy == - Had coordination meeting with Karsten in FSFE Berlin office == Preview == - Start preparing my talk for Liverpool LUG on 07.03 - Order a few thousand Stephen Fry DFD posters from local printers - Continue work on DFD site - try using PHP for forms to kick start development Thanks, Sam. -- Sam Tuke British Team Coordinator Free Software Foundation Europe IM : samtuke(a)jabber.fsfe.org Contact the British team: uk(a)fsfeurope.org -- Sam Tuke British Team Coordinator Free Software Foundation Europe IM : samtuke(a)jabber.fsfe.org Latest UK Free Software news: uk.fsfe.org Is freedom important to you? Join the fellowship.fsfe.org

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[FSFE-Manc] Talk on the 29th of March, you choose!
by Anna Morris 23 Feb '12

23 Feb '12

Hi all, we are very lucky to have Bob Ham coming to speak on the 29th of March (our next but one meeting) and he has 2 choices for talks for us - see below. Can you all let me know what you would prefer please? I wouldn't mind learning about emacs (as to me they are still a tipe of imac........) but I would happily learn about JACK too (didn't he build a house????) :D Best Anna > The first is about JACK, titled simply "An Introduction to JACK". > Here's the outline: > > A short history and discussion of the JACK Audio Connection Kit, its > operating principles, design and implementation > > * A short history of JACK > * Some sound card basics > * The JACK system > * Demonstration > > Obviously, the demonstration (and hence the talk) would work best with a > decent sound system. The talk is quite technical and goes contains > phrases like about "sound card buffer" and "callback". But it is a nice > demonstration of free audio software. > > The second talk is about GNU Emacs, titled "An Introduction to GNU > Emacs" (my titles are innovations in and of themselves, I realise :-) > Here's the outline: > > A short introduction to, and demonstration of the GNU Emacs text > editor and IDE > > * History of Emacs > * Basic ideas > * Demonstration > > This talk was written with the intention of converting my fellow LUG > members to use Emacs so it's pretty simple. The history is quite > interesting. However with the Fellowship audience I'm not sure if I > would be preaching to the converted, or teaching my grandmother how to > suck eggs, or even preaching about how to suck eggs to my converted > grandmother :-) So, I'll let you decide which talk would be best :-) Bob Ham -- www.ethical-pets.co.uk - The pet shop thats *all sorts *of ethical!

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[FSFE-Manc] Fwd: [MAN-LUG] Horde vunerability...
by Anna Morris 22 Feb '12

22 Feb '12

Hi, don't know if anyone is on the lug list - this dosn't sound good, wern't we discussing running horde? Anna ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Daniel Botting <zen78553(a)zen.co.uk> Date: Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 9:58 PM Subject: [MAN-LUG] Horde vunerability and possible talk idea To: MAN-LUG(a)listserv.manchester.ac.uk Hi all, First of all if anybody runs Horde you should be aware of the below: http://lists.horde.org/archives/announce/2012/000751.html ... Many thanks Dan The MAN-LUG list is archived at: http://listserv.manchester.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A0=MAN-LUG -- www.ethical-pets.co.uk - The pet shop thats *all sorts *of ethical!

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[FSFE-Manc] continued...
by Anna Morris 19 Feb '12

19 Feb '12

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet/9090617/Phone-and-email-reco… found it online. its freaky - but technologically, I don't think it will affect us. It seems to be at the users broadband connection end that this data is gathered. We need to look into this as a group though, somehow, this is just... I despair at this! a x -- www.ethical-pets.co.uk - The pet shop thats *all sorts *of ethical!

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[FSFE-Manc] encryption
by Anna Morris 19 Feb '12

19 Feb '12

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01cmxcc/The_Andrew_Marr_Show_19_02_20… thing on andrew marr (9 mins in) re sunday telegraph article (can anyone get hold of a copy of it?) saying gov will be requiring emails to be kept (unassumingly by providers) for 1 year so gov can read them if they want.... a x -- www.ethical-pets.co.uk - The pet shop thats *all sorts *of ethical!

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[Manchester] mailpod logo thoughts
by Anna Morris 19 Feb '12

19 Feb '12

so here is my very silly idea for a logo. I thought cogs, wires and a peapod would be fun, maybe when we get a fitpc thing we could stick a windmill in the top!! Its only a very basic 5 min mockup, but what do you think? Best Anna -- www.ethical-pets.co.uk - The pet shop thats *all sorts *of ethical!

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[FSFE-Manc] video
by Anna Morris 17 Feb '12

17 Feb '12

http://youtu.be/JOSzAs2_X7E heres the server video! Its still only a draft: I want to add some descriptive slides (like the subtitles in Sherlock) and there is a min of music at the end for a scrolling description of the project, tools, motives and reasons etc. Otherwise, do you like? I know its kinda buggy and timing is bad, my computer cant really handle this level of video editing. best a -- www.ethical-pets.co.uk - The pet shop thats *all sorts *of ethical!

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manchester February 2012