(Fwd) The next meeting of the Greater New Hampshire Linux User

[gaf at highway1.com (Gerald Feldman)]

------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
From: "Jon 'maddog' Hall, USG Senior Leader" <hall at zk3.dec.com> 

Hi,

I know it has been some time since we had a meeting, but I have been a little
busy and in a moment you will understand why.

But for those of you who don't care why I have been busy, the next meeting
of gnhlug will be on January 29th, 1997 at Room 301, Morse Hall on the
University of New Hampshire's Durham campus.  Thanks to Rob Anderson for
getting the room.

We do not have a topic yet, but I will try to get one selected in the next
couple of days, and will send it out.  Directions to the meeting will
follow with the topic, but I wanted you to all get your calendars marked.

Now, some news:

First of all, the Linux Trademark issue has been brought before the Trademark
Board, and they have responded back.  For those of you who are not familiar
with this, the basic issue is that a Mr. Della Croche has obtained a trademark
for the word "Linux" from the U.S. Trademark office, even though we believe the
word was in common usage long before his trademark.  For more information on
this, come to the meeting, or look at:

                     http://www.ssc.com/linews/lte.html
and
                     http://www.ssc.com/linews/tmark.html

We feel that we have a solid case, and that eventually it will be overturned,
which means that (at least in the United States), Linux will be a word in
common usage, which can not be a trademark in and of itself.

Secondly, I have been planning part of the USELINUX convention out in
Anaheim, California (January 6th to 10th)  For more details, see:

                     http://www.usenix.org/ana97/index.html

Linus will be there, as well as a series of other Linux and UNIX "luminaries".
I will be going there too (notice I do not include myself with the
"luminaries"), so that is another reason why our meeting was delayed.

Third, I finished a one-half hour TV show on Linux, which will be shown as part
of the USER GROUP show, produced by PCTV ( http://www.pctv.com ) and will
be airing the week of January 20th.  On the show we have several of the
Linux vendors speaking, as well as a person from Apple showing MkLinux, and
Jim Paradis and Jay Estabrook of Digital talking about the Alpha port.

Steve Gaudet of DCG Computers, Inc. and I built an Alpha Linux
workstation on the Linux show.  Steve will be listing all the parts, part
numbers, ordering information, etc. on his web pages, to allow someone to
build their own kick-butt Alpha Linux system.  This will be aired on the Jones
Computer Network and Mind Extension University and most Satelite systems.
Contact your cable company to find out if they carry "USER GROUP".  We might
also show this tape at a future meeting, if some of you can not see it.

The final show of the series, that of "UNIX Futures" will be taped out at
USELINUX, so I am helping to plan that.

Fourth, I am happy to announce a rather drastic price reduction in Alpha
chips and boards, which brings them into a *very* competitive situation with
Intel Pentium PROs (i.e. we blow their doors off for the same money).  This
has allowed OEMS such as Aspen systems, DCG Computers Inc, and others to put
together really useful systems (32 Megs of memory, 2 gigs of disk, 500 Mhz EV56
Alpha) for under $5000. (Monitor sold separately), or to sell you really fast
boards and chips at greatly reduced prices from before.

Fifth, for those of you who are Java fans, the first ALPHA release of Java
for the ALPHA Linux platform was announced:

chapman at wilbursoft.com said:
> Well folks, here it is, the fabled first release of the JDK1.0.2 
> (sorry, not 1.1) on Linux/AXP.

> Now, mind you, its broken in many ways.  Including not having any 
> AWT, so you can't use it for applet viewing.  Sorry.

> You can get the file by going to http://alpha.cti-reseach.com/~rchapman
> Sorry, I don't have an FTP site for it yet.  There are 
> also source diffs relative to the original Sun 1.0.2 source there.

> Note that I will be out of town and not reading email starting about 
> 12 hours from now until late January 1st.

> Merry Christmas!! --randy 

Finally, and most importantly, I am planning to travel to Helsinki, Finland
in mid-January.  As some of you know, Linus Torvalds and Tove Monni have had a
baby girl (born December 4th, 1996).  They have honored me by asking me to be
one of the godfathers of this cute person (my first godchild) and I have
accepted.  So I will be traveling to Helsinki to participate in the naming
ceremony.  I will have baby pictures on my return, beware!!

ONE MORE THING:

I will also mention that while I was running around, Dave Marston of the
Northern New England UNIX User's Group contacted Bruce Dawson and asked if
he would be willing to talk to Dartmouth University about Linux.  Although it
was delayed once due to inclement weather, Bruce is picking up the gauntlet
again to go up on the evening of January 27th.  I will be going along for
morale support.  Hopefully out of that meeting we can get some more members
to join in the fun.

So with all this stuff happening, our meeting was delayed a bit, but hopefully
now we will be back on schedule.  Whew!!!

I hope you all had happy holidays, and I hope you all have a safe and sane
New Year's.

md

-- 
=============================================================================
Jon "maddog" Hall                     Internet: maddog at zk3.dec.com
Senior Leader, UNIX Software Group    Executive Director, Linux International

Digital Equipment Corporation         Linux International
Mailstop ZK03-2/U15                   80 Amherst St.
110 Spit Brook Rd.                    Amherst, N.H. 03031-3032 U.S.A.
Nashua, N.H. 03062-2698 U.S.A.
                                      WWW: http://www.li.org
Voice: +1.603.881.1341                Voice: +1.603.672.4557