[Linux-aus] AUUG 2006 conference - a quick tour

Thu Oct 5 14:43:02 UTC 2006

Hi All,

AUUG 2006 opens next week in Melbourne, a quick tour of AUUG 2006
follows. Don't forget to register on-line today!

Cheers
Gordon.

             ============== AUUG 2006 =============

As AUUG 2006 - The Conference for Unix, Linux and Open Source
Professionals - is fast approaching here is a quick tour of some of the
stellar programme ...

Lars Rasmussen of Google
========================
Lars Rasmussen is a member of Google's technical staff and the lead
engineer of the team that created Google Maps.  Lars will discuss the
many pieces of the puzzle comprising Google Maps - in particular, the
pros and cons of AJAX, and delve into some particular technical
challenges that had to be met. Lars will also give a high-level
overview of the challenges involved in working with spatial data:
making it searchable, routable, and browsable.

Peter Gutmann of the University of Auckland
===========================================
Peter Gutmann is a self-confessed professional paranoid, who helped
write the popular PGP encryption package, has authored a number of
papers and RFC's on security and encryption, and is the author of the
open source Cryptlib security toolkit.

Peter will talk on the convergence of Internet Security Threats.
Just as the Internet has subsumed all earlier networking technology
(ARPAnet, ATM, BITnet, DECnet, Ethernet, ISDN, JANET, NSFNET, and
many more), so an omnibus Internet security threat is gradually
subsuming all earlier discrete threats (ID theft, phishing, script
kiddies, spam, spyware, trojan horses, viruses). Instead of being
small-scale (if prolific) nuisances perpetrated mostly by script
kiddies, these blended threats are increasingly being created by
professional programmers and managed by international criminal
organisations. The Convergence of Internet Security Threats looks at
the methods and technology behind this blended virus/trojan/spam/
phishing/ID theft/credit card fraud threat, various less-than-
effective attempts to address it via legislation, technology, and
press releases, and some suggestions for potentially effective
legislation and other protective measures.

Michael Still of Google
=======================
Michael is an Australian (and past AUUG board member) now working at
Google in the US. Michael will talk about "slack" a tool that Google has
open sourced and is used to deploy software to servers. In particular
it's a centralized mechanism for deploying software configurations to
large clusters of machines. This presentation will be the first time
Google have discussed these details of their systems in public.

Ryan McBride
============
Ryan McBride will be presenting a full day tutorial on Advanced PF
Rulesets in PF, OpenBSD's stateful packet filter. As network and
policies become more complex and packet rates increase, more
advanced ruleset techniques become necessary. Ryan will outline
several PF ruleset paradigms that can be used to ensure rulesets
are scaleable both in performance and maintainability. In addition
to troubleshooting techniques, he will also cover some of the newer
and more advanced PF capabilities, including DoS mitigation
techniques, load balancing, and integration with routing, bridging,
carp, and IPSEC.

Ryan is an Information Security Consultant (originally from Canada),
who has over a decade's experience addressing security policy
development, Software Development, VPN design and deployment, firewall
configuration, and intrusion detection system deployment and monitoring.
He has worked with organisations as varied as small offices to
non-profit organisations to "Fortune 50". When not wearing a suit, Ryan
amuses himself by working on OpenBSD's networking code. He will also be
presenting papers on The Continued Evolution of OpenBSD's Packet
Filter and Network Stack Randomness in OpenBSD.

Arjen Lentz of MySQL
====================
Arjen Lentz (originally from Amsterdam, now residing Queensland)
will be teaching a half day tutorial on Optimizing MySQL Applications
Using the Pluggable Storage Engine Architecture.

Arjen has been working for MySQL AB (www.mysql.com) since 2001,
dealing with Documentation, Community Relations, licensing, and
acting as program chair for the 2005 and 2006 MySQL Users Conferences.
He is currently a Support Engineer and Trainer in the Australia
and New Zealand region.  Arjen also co-founded Open Source Industry
Australia Inc. (www.osia.net.au) and helps on the press team of Linux
Australia (www.linux.org.au). He will also be presenting a keynote
address "The Consumer is Dead - Long Live the Consumer" and a paper "An
Introduction to the MySQL Falcon OLTP Storage Engine".

Stewart Smith of MySQL
======================
In addition to Arjen's tutorial, Stewart Smith will be teaching a
tutorial on MySQL Clusters. Stewart is a Software Engineer working for
MySQL AB and is based in Melbourne.

Greg Adamson
============
Greg Adamson will be presenting a paper "Technology Commercialisation
and the Internet", in which he argues that the Internet can be
considered an example of what happens to a technology-based service
when technology selection is not determined through a commercialisation
process.

Tobias Eggendorfer, University of Federal Armed Forces (Germany)
================================================================
Tobias Eggendorfer is a research scientist at the University of
Federal Armed Forces in Neubiberg.  He will be presenting a paper
comparing the efficiency of SMTP and HTTP 'tar pits' for fighting spam.

Karl Auer of Nullarbor Consulting
=================================
Karl Auer planned and implemented the introduction of dynamic addressing
at ETHZ, Switzerland's largest university, until he moved back to
Australia recently.  He will be presenting a paper "Address Management
for Biggish Networks" about his experience there.

Neal Wise of Assurance.com.au
=============================
Will be talking about wireless insecurity.

Michael Still of Google
=======================
"Hacked slugs, solving all your problems with little NAS boxes" by
Michael Still from Google. This talk will discuss how to get your own
version of Linux running on a Linksys NSLU2, known to the Linux
community as a 'slug'. This is a small and inexpensive consumer grade
network attached storage (NAS) system.

AUUG2006 will be held at Rendezvous Hotel in Flinders Street,
Melbourne from Tuesday 10th October to Friday 13th October. For more
details on AUUG 2006 and to register visit
http://new.auug.org.au/events_store/auug2006/

I look forward to seeing you at AUUG 2006!