By the end of the day, I hope that everyone will have a clear idea of what XML means, what it looks like, and what it is designed to do.

Autobiography:

Education: University of Kentucky - BSc Electrical Engineering and am working on my MBA.

Employer: MEMC Electronic Materials, Inc. where "Technology is Built on Us"(tm)

Experience: I am a Systems Interface Analyst. That means, in case you are wondering, that I work on getting data from one system to another, among other things. I like to think that our team is sort of the mailperson for electronic data here at MEMC. I heard about XML about a year ago, and I have not managed to get away from it since. We use XML here primarily for data exchange.

I have been working in the UNIX environment for about two years, mostly cut and paste shell scripting from existing code and learning on the fly. I have looked at perl(I'm still figuring it out), and plan to look at getting some Java knowledge when I have some free time. I don't consider myself a "hard core" programmer but I think I get by OK with most of my day to day tasks.

Ideas, questions and suggestions are welcome; please contact us by sending mailto:editor@mail.sluug.org

Next STL Linux User Group Meeting Is 21 December

Abstract:

Just in time for the holiday spirit! Games on Linux. With the Christmas season here, video games will once again be one of the hot selling items. Damon Richardson will take a detailed look at 3D video games and cards running on Linux. Concentrating on setting up the NVidia GeForce2 and 3dfx Voodoo series of cards, Damon will discuss the pitfalls and triumphs of installing Quake3 and Unreal Tournament under XFree86 3.3.6 and 4.0.1.

Biography:

Damon Richardson has been using Linux for over six years and us currently employed as a senior programmer at a Linux company. He has had previous involvement with Quake clans around the country, spending numerous hours destroying his opponents. Damon loves to play games on Linux especially Quake3 and Unreal Tournament.

Meetings of the St. Louis Linux User Group (LUG) are held from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM every THIRD THURSDAY of each month. Location: Indian Trails Branch - Saint Louis County Library Meetings are free and open to everyone.

http://www.stllinux.org

And if you want to know, what is 3D graphics?

This term doesn't refer to the sorts of displays seen in science fiction films, in which you can walk around the display and see something from all angles. Rather, it refers to a 2D representation of a 3D object or environment. 3D-capable graphics cards enable a program to specify the basics of the 3D design--an object's shape, color, texture, and so on--and the graphics card does much of the work of determining precisely how that object appears on the screen, This sort of function is very useful for games, engineering models, and so on.
-- Linux Harware Handbook by Roderick W. Smith, 2000 SAMS/Macmillan

Comments, questions and ideas about this session are welcome; please contact Matthew Porter by phone at 314-353-7988 or send mailto:matthew@linuxguys.net

Special Promotion(s)

Title of the Month The December discount special will be 25% on any XML, HTML (include Oracle XML, etc), any Mail book (Sendmail, Managing Mail, etc), any Perl book, and any Apache book. There will be a 10% discount on all other books.

All regularly priced titles are 10% off retail cost at the general meeting. (Excludes featured, or specially priced or promotional items)

The O'Reilly and Associates line of books is available at each monthly general meeting as a convenience to our members.

Each month features a book related to that month's presentation or tutorial topic.
Discounts off retail cost are offered to all members and each month's featured book(s) may be additionally discounted. Usually, all titles are discounted 10%, while special titles are discounted 25%.

Upcoming Events

Meeting Directions

Directions From Downtown

1. Take 40 West to the Hanley exit.
2. Turn left (south) onto Hanley.
3. Turn left (east) onto Manchester, then turn right ASAP into the Sunnen Products driveway.

(NOTE: A security guard from Sunnen is scheduled to be at the door from 6:20 PM to 7:20 PM to allow entry. After 7:20, the door will be unattended and attendees may not be able to enter.)

The SLUUG Steering Committee meets the Tuesday following the general meeting at 6:00 PM in the 2nd floor training room of Daugherty Systems, One City Place in Creve Coeur.

The SLUUG Linux SIG (SLUUG-LS) meets the 3rd Thursday of every month at the Indian Trails Branch Library.

See map at http://www.stllinux.org/directions/

• Missouri Open Source LUG Forming
• Second Edition
• Hazelwood Linux User Group Has Formed
• Lightning Talk Submissions
• Quotations
• Interesting Browsing
• Spotlight on Cybercon
• Linux Demo Day

Missouri Open Source LUG Forming

Date: Friday, December 8, 19:30.

Place: Border's Cafe at Watson Road and Lindbergh.

Topic: General meet and greet, just to see what is going on. No boxen . . . larger than luggables as this is not going to be an official Border's sanctioned event.

Purpose: We are forming a new Linux User's Group (LUG) in the south/west county area to allow some that might not be able to access some of the other fine LUGs in the area (St. Louis Linux User Group, or Hazelwood LUG).

Our direction is going to be slightly different than that of the other LUGs also. We will be striving to help the development of the Open Source community at large and Linux in particular, also we desire to provide a support resource for ongoing projects (this may range from first installs to kernel hacking to hardware construction).

Ideally, we would have a feel similar the Homebrew Computer Club of yore. Everyone is welcome to come and participate, or just soak up the ambiance (though I doubt if you come for this reason that you will be able to remain stoicly isolated for the whole evening, progress is infectious >:})

For more information members can contact Arlo Gittings at (636) 938-1467 or by sending mailto:proticon@yahoo.comfor details.

The Homebrew Computer Club predates SLUUG and for that matter, several of our members. Dates and locations are fuzzy but a good starting point is mid-70's in the Menlo Park CA area.
-- Tom Parsons

Thanks to Bryan Venable for this URL: http://www.bambi.net/bob/homebrew.html

Second Edition

Kara Pritchard, local Linux Evangelist and Author of RHCE Exam Cram is justifibly proud of the second editon of her excellent book. I had read the first book and was thuroughly impressed with the structure and technical content of the second half. This updated editon should be just as impressive.

RHCE Linux Exam Cram, Second Edition : Exam RH-302
http://www.Fatbrain.com/ Online Price: $23.95 20% off list (you save $6.04)
List Price: $29.99
386 Pages Softcover, Published by Coriolis
Date Published: 11/2000
ISBN: 1576108287

The RHCE Exam Cram contains all of the updated Red Hat curriculum objectives upon which the RHCE revised exam is based. It discusses the many new options available during installation that have eased the configuration process and includes information on Kudzu, the newest tool used to detect and configure new hardware. The book provides a summarized resource for the Linux novice or the Unix expert without having to read extensive documentation, giving the reader that ability to pass the exam most efficiently.

For more information members can contact Kara Pritchard by sending mailto:kara@lpi.orgfor details.

I started the Hazelwood LUG wanting to work with a small Linux group at an introductory level. I had convinced Phil Bunch to assist me with the first meeting. We had expected 8 to 10 attendees and were pleasantly suprized.

With us, there were a total of 18 people at the first meeting held on Tuesday, 28 November 2000. The room is small but still not too crowded. Most of those that attended considered themselves beginners, although only three individuals did not have a Linux box running.

Phil was a tremendous help by keeping me and much of the group discussion focused on beginner topics.

This first meeting was rather unstructured. We started by introducing ourselves and then gave some coverage of the Unix and Linux groups that are in the general St. Louis area. There were some specific Linux questions asked and answers offered from Phil, myself and others. We tried to guide the general discussion that followed toward self help commands common to most Linux distributions. Specifically the man pages, the info system, apropos, locate, how-to-files, and the Linux Documentation Project manuals.

Other discussions rambled accross various topics. From mailing lists, modems, PPP connections, Internet Service Providers, web sites, favored distributions, installations, fixing root passwords, file system layout, setting the system time and many more topics.

The structure and direction of the next few meetings will continue to be up to those that attend. We have encouraged two of the attendees to bring in their computers for installation assistance at the next meeting. Of note, even among those with Linux running there was considerable interest in knowing "When will we have the next Linux InstallFest?".

There have also been a few recommendations for beginner topics such as shell scripting and editors. I will offer a short tutorial (18 slides) on learning how to use the "vi" editor. I believe it will be helpful to beginners.

When possible, meetings will be held at 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM on the 4th Tuesday of each month, except during December, which will be the 3rd Tuesday.

The next three meetings will be:

I believe we can complement SLUUG and the St. Louis Linux User Group with more small Linux and BSD oriented groups. I continue to hope that more will form in the general St. Louis Metropolitan Area. Target Washington University, UMSL, St. Louis University, downtown, Baldwin, Eureka, Fenton, Maplewood, St. Charles and others. The Missouri Open Source LUG is forming this week and David Ulevitch is still considering starting a Washington University LUG some time around January 16th.

The various zip codes of the Hazelwood LUG attendees:

For more information contact Stan Reichardt by phone at (314) 298-1183 or by mailto:stan@mail.sluug.org

Current information will posted at http://www.sluug.org/~stan/hzlug.html

Lightning Talk Submissions

We still need more submissions from the general members. All submissions must be received no later than Midnight of Saturday, December 16th, 2000.

LIGHTNING TALKS will be held in two sessions of five consecutive five-minute talks separated by a ten-minute recess.

Note that the speaker need not be a SLUUG member, just that their topic would be of interest to us. So tell your fellow cow-orkers and spread the word. We are not particularly against commercial presentations - remember it's only five minutes if it's a stinker.

The most current Lightning Talks information is at

http://www.sluug.org/~mike808/lightning-talks.html

LIGHTNING TALKS are consecutive five-minute talks on a tight schedule. You should be prepared to take the stage immediately, explain your idea, and then leave immediately. If you want to take questions, chat, or trade business cards, resumes, or URLs, you do it *after* the session. Be prepared to provide a URL for your topic.

If you'd like to give a LIGHTNING TALK, send an abstract of about 50 words about your topic to:

mailto:mike808@mail.sluug.org?subject=Lightning+Talk+Submission

The SLUUG Steering Committee will be presented with recommendations, and will make the final selection of talks at the December 19th, 2000 meeting. Notification will be sent to the selectees, and the schedule announced at the December Linux SIG meeting on December 21, 2000.

The final schedule of Lightning Talks will also be announced in the Cronicle prior to the January 10th, 2001 meeting.

There are only 3 kinds of people that can count...

Those who can, and

Those that live in Florida.

Virus:
http://www.wirednews.com/news/technology/0,1282,40457,00.html - Wild worm with pro-linux message

Learning Basics:
http://www.linux.org/lessons/ - Getting Started with Linux

Open Source:
http://www.vision.com/press_and_news/vision_news/2000/oct_17_2000.html - StarOffice Goes Open-Source
http://www.upside.com/texis/mvm/story?id=39f869180 - Freedom 2.0 Linux client Goes Open-Source

Follow Up:
http://www.phreedom.net/~davidu/ - IDS_TALK-11_08_2000.ppt 220k
http://www.westerndigital.com/service/archive/ac31600-quality.html - Disk Drive that Clunks
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/linux-laptop/ - Linux Laptop homepage
http://www.stllinux.org/meeting_notes/2000/1019/ - October STL Linux SIG presentation notes

Cybercon is this month's SLUUG Corporate Spotlight company.

Cybercon, a St. Louis based Internet hosting center, offers advanced Internet hosting and managed services. We provide the Internet infrastructure and support that allows you to keep your servers up and running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Our data center was not only built with scalability in mind, but also with the intention to avoid any single point of failure in our connectivity, power, or HVAC. We boast direct connections to UUNET (MCI WorldCom), Sprint, AT&T and Level 3 Communications as well as triple power feeds from Ameren UE and redundant Liebert indoor cooling systems. We provide these services so you can concentrate on your business while we concentrate on maintaining your Internet servers.

For more information you can send mailto:jeff@cybercon.com or visit the Cybercon web site at http://www.cybercon.com/ or contact our staff 24 hours a day at 314-621-9991

[ Editor's note: Ask about the December free palm top promotion! ]

On Friday November 24, 2000, Noon-6 pm the St. Louis Linux User Group held a Linux demo day event. The location was the Comp USA Store at 11970 St. Charles Rock Road, Bridgeton, MO.

We had live demonstrations of a multititude of software programs that run under Linux. This includes everything from office productivity applications (i.e. Star Office and WordPerfect Office 2000) to server applications (i.e. Sendmail, Bind, etc.) to games (i.e. Arena, Quake3, Unreal Tournament, etc.).

Some of the recovering Microsoft victims went on to attend the first meeting of the Hazelwood Linux User Group on the following Tuesday.

A special thanks goes to Karen R. at CompUSA who was very helpful with co-ordinating the event with us and made many last minute arrangements.

Special Interest Groups (SIGS)

St. Louis Unix Users Group - Linux SIG (SLUUG-LS)

Indian Trails Branch Library
8400 Delport Drive (at Midland)
(at Midland)
(314)-428-5424

For more information on SLUUG-LS refer to the WWW home page for the group at http://www.stllinlux.org or contact Matthew Porter by mailto:matthew@linuxguys.net

Digital Alpha SIG

St. Louis UNIX Users Group Steering Committee

Sponsors