🚀 go-pugleaf

/usr/group/edmonton, the UNIX Users' Group of Edmonton, has concluded its
operation for the year 1988-89.  This year saw the association's membership
rise from 50 to 80.  /usr/group/edmonton meets once a month. We are very
proud of the diverse range of speakers we were able to attract over the
past year, and it's our hope that we will be able to continue to provide
a wide variety of meeting topics to the membership at our future meetings.


JUNE 1:
		Bill Joy
		Sun Microsystems, Inc.
		Mountain View, California

Bill Joy, Vice-President of Research and Development at Sun Microsystems,
Inc, gave a discussion about Sun's philosophy with regards to developing
new technology, as well as some insight into what Sun is planning for the
future.


MAY 31:
		Ken Thompson
		AT&T Bell Laboratories
		Murray Hill, New Jersey

Ken Thompson, the author and designer of the UNIX operating system, talked
about "Plan 9" - a distributed architecture currently being developed at
AT&T Bell Laboratories.  The goal of this project is to develop a distributed
system which resembles (to the user) a single mainframe system. This was
a rather unique talk in that none of the research group has published yet.


MAY 3:
		Richard Gimbel
		Sequent Computer Systems, Inc.
		Portland, Oregon

The impact of new, mid-range computer systems based on advanced, parallel
computing architectures which offer the performance of large scale mainframes
at supermini price tags was discussed.  Examples and benchmarks from real-
time, software development, 4GL/RDBMS and simulation application areas were
given and the presentation concluded with a discussion of future directions
and UNIX standards issues.


APRIL 5:
		Martin Kratz
		Cruickshank Phillips
		Edmonton, Alberta

Martin Kratz, one of Canada's leading 'computer' lawyers and co-author of
the recently published book "The Computer Virus Crisis" (Fites, Johnston,
and Kratz, New York 1988), talked about some of the current issues of the
law as it relates to computing.  Some of the areas discussed were the
Copyright Law, licenses, how a license differs from a copyright, what is
public domain software, what is a compilation copyright, etc. This was
a very topical discussion, taking place as the rec.humour.funny compilation
copyright flame-fest was just winding down. Martin had some interesting
comments on Brad Templeton's position ...


MARCH 1:
		Peter Johnston
		University of Alberta Computing Services
		Edmonton, Alberta

		Steve Sutphen
		University of Alberta Computing Science
		Edmonton, Alberta

Peter Johnston, co-author of the recently published book "The Computer Virus
Crisis" (Fites, Johnston, and Kratz, New York 1988) talked about electronic
viruses, worms, how they differ from each other, and how users may avoid
them.

Steve Sutphen, a long-time UNIX expert, gave an in-depth presentation about
the Internet worm that was released on November 3, 1988, a date now regarded
by many computer scientists as "Black Thursday."


FEBRUARY 15:
		Bruce Folliott
		University of Alberta Computing Science
		Edmonton, Alberta

Bruce Folliott gave a tutorial about electronic mail and USENET.  Topics
covered included sending and receiving electronic mail, posting and reading
USENET news articles, and setting up mail and news connections.  A few other
message handlers (e.g. ELM, EAN) were also briefly mentioned.  The tutorial
closed with a discussion on the recently created CA (Canada-wide) mail
domain and how to register with this domain.


JANUARY 4:
		Ernie Kowalec
		Western Diversification
		Government of Canada

Ernie Kowalec described the Western Diversification Fund, how it can help
business, and how individuals and businesses can apply for government
assistance.


DECEMBER 7:
		Ed Cheng
		Myrias Research Corporation
		Edmonton, Alberta

		Barry Hannigan
		Enersystems Development Ltd.
		Edmonton, AB

		Harold Knopke
		Aspen Computing Solutions
		Edmonton, AB

		Neil McCulloch
		Alberta Public Safety Services
		Edmonton, Alberta

This meeting was a database "bake-off".  Each of the above speakers talked
about their experiences with Oracle, Sybase, Informix, and Empress.


NOVEMBER 17:
		Brian Reid
		Digital Equipment Corporation
		Palo Alto, California

Brian Reid, from the Western Research Laboratory of Digital Equipment Corpor-
ation, Palo Alto, California, talked about the Open Software Foundation,
future trends DEC sees in the computing industry, and the OSF's strategic
partnership with IBM. 


OCTOBER 6:
		Phillip King
		Nexus Computing Corporation
		Edmonton, Alberta

		Ted Bentley
		Myrias Research Corporation
		Edmonton, Alberta

Phillip King gave a tutorial about the 'vi' visual text editor and Ted Bentley
gave a tutorial the n/troff (and related) text processing tools.


SEPTEMBER 7:
		Dean Frey
		Alberta Technology, Research, and Telecommunications
		Edmonton, Alberta

		Shaun Hammond
		Alberta Public Safety Services
		Edmonton, Alberta

The September meeting was our traditional wine and cheese "fall kick-off"
held at the University of Alberta Faculty Club, with  Dean Frey talked about
voice/data integration at Alberta TR&T. After the break, Shaun Hammond
described how APSS has grown since 1985 from an eight user 68010 based
Unix system to a shop running two large Sun servers with a mid-size and
a small departmental server providing computing facilities to nearly
100 users spread across two sites. The insight into the problems you
can run into when dealing with vendors and government purchasing
departments was both horrifying and amusing.

Our next year of operation kicks off in early September with a Wine & Cheese
social at the Faculty Club, University of Alberta.  For more information about
/usr/group/edmonton, please address electronic mail to alberta!usrgroup.

					Robert Lake
					President, 1988-89
					/usr/group/edmonton