conferences

conferences

[Russell Coker]

Last week was the SE Linux Symposium: http://www.selinux-symposium.com/

Before the conference I went to the NSA crypto museum with some friends.  It's 
a really good museum where you can play with a working Enigma machine and 
touch many other things including Crays.  The museum was more crowded than 
usual in the afternoon, I saw as many as three visitors in the museum who 
weren't in my group.  It's good and it's free, I recommend that everyone 
visit it.

On the first day of the symposium I ran a tutorial on administration of SE 
Linux and installing the strict policy.  The audience was smarter than I 
expected and some of the people who finished first assisted others.  I had 
planned that most people would take the entire duration of the tutorial and 
that some people would not be able to complete it on time.  For future events 
I will have to prepare much more material and try and make it as long as the 
SE Linux tutorial I ran at Linux Kongress a couple of years ago which lasted 
more than five hours.

On the last day I gave a talk about running SE Linux play machines.  When 
running such machines some amusing things happen (such as people running 
"FORMAT C:").  Also I intentionally presented parts of the talk in a humorous 
manner, but I didn't expect it to end up as a stand-up comedy performance.  
While giving the talk I was concerned that I might not be succeeding in 
delivering the technical information, but afterwards several people expressed 
interest in getting a copy of the notes so I it seems that the technical 
content was appreciated.  One man said that he was unable to wrote notes 
because he was laughing too much which is why he wants to download a copy of 
the notes.

At the end of the Symposium I was on the distribution panel.

Overall the symposium was a great success.  It seemed that everyone learned 
many new things and also got the chance to meet people that they had 
previously only seen online as well as many other interesting people.


After the SE Linux Symposium there was the CPLUG Security Conference: 
http://cplug.net/conference/

Eric Andreychek organized the conference and gave an introductory talk on SE 
Linux.  I gave a repeat of the talk on running play machines which didn't 
seem to go as well as the previous day, it certainly didn't get as many 
laughs.  But the audience feedback was still good.  After the talk I showed a 
laptop running RHEL 4 with SE Linux and the strict policy running in the 
"play machine" configuration to some delegates who had some fun playing with 
it.

The CPLUG conference was also a great success.  I am encouraging Eric to run 
it again next year.

I have been encouraging Eric to run a tutorial on SE Linux based on the notes 
from my tutorial at the SE Linux Symposium.  He is considering this and there 
is a member of the LUG who has volunteered to provide the necessary office 
and computers to run it.

-- 
http://www.coker.com.au/selinux/   My NSA Security Enhanced Linux packages
http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/  Bonnie++ hard drive benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/postal/    Postal SMTP/POP benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/~russell/  My home page

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Re: conferences

[Dale Amon]

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On Sun, Mar 06, 2005 at 05:41:43PM +1100, Russell Coker wrote:
> Last week was the SE Linux Symposium: http://www.selinux-symposium.com/

Bad timing. I was in DC on a job for much of February;
I will be back for half of May and perhaps even in
April. 

I'd have loved to see the light side of SeLinux admin :-)

-- 
------------------------------------------------------
   Dale Amon     amon@islandone.org    +44-7802-188325
       International linux systems consultancy
     Hardware & software system design, security
    and networking, systems programming and Admin
	      "Have Laptop, Will Travel"
------------------------------------------------------

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Re: conferences

[Greg Norris]

On Sun, Mar 06, 2005 at 05:41:43PM +1100, Russell Coker wrote:
> Before the conference I went to the NSA crypto museum with some friends.  It's 
> a really good museum where you can play with a working Enigma machine and 
> touch many other things including Crays.  The museum was more crowded than 
> usual in the afternoon, I saw as many as three visitors in the museum who 
> weren't in my group.  It's good and it's free, I recommend that everyone 
> visit it.

I've gotta agree with Russell... the Crypto Museum was quite slick.  
Well worth a visit! ;-)


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Re: conferences

[Karsten Wade]

On Sun, 2005-03-06 at 17:41 +1100, Russell Coker wrote:

> At the end of the Symposium I was on the distribution panel.

Anything interesting from this?  I had to miss it to catch a plane.

- Karsten
-- 
Karsten Wade, RHCE * Sr. Tech Writer * http://people.redhat.com/kwade/
gpg fingerprint:  2680 DBFD D968 3141 0115    5F1B D992 0E06 AD0E 0C41   
               IT executives rate Red Hat #1 for value              
                 http://www.redhat.com/promo/vendor/


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Re: conferences

[Russell Coker]

On Sunday 06 March 2005 17:41, Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> wrote:
> Eric Andreychek organized the conference and gave an introductory talk on
> SE Linux.  I gave a repeat of the talk on running play machines which
> didn't seem to go as well as the previous day, it certainly didn't get as
> many laughs.  But the audience feedback was still good.  After the talk I

I've given the same talk on play machines a few times since then without 
seeming to amuse the audience much.  I guess that because the SE Linux 
Symposium was a fast paced and high-pressure event people were a little 
stressed and needed to relax a bit so the funny parts of what I was saying 
were better received.

Maybe this is something to consider for future conferences.  Often there are 
talks offered for conferences that can be presented in an amusing manner 
without compromising the content.  Scheduling such a talk after lunch on the 
final day and requesting that the speaker make it as amusing as possible 
might be good strategy.

> I have been encouraging Eric to run a tutorial on SE Linux based on the
> notes from my tutorial at the SE Linux Symposium.  He is considering this
> and there is a member of the LUG who has volunteered to provide the
> necessary office and computers to run it.

It seems that Eric is planning to go ahead with this.  Not sure about when it 
will happen.


After the Harrisburg event I quickly visited Philadelphia, Raleigh, and 
Boston.  Then I went to Poland to speak at the Open Source Security 
conference: http://www.oss.org.pl/en/

The OSS conference was run by a Polish company that runs conferences which 
gave it a different feel to most Linux conferences that are run by technical 
people.  It was a well run event and had a very high quality audience.  I 
spoke about some fairly complex topics and the audience seemed to understand 
well which was quite impressive as there was only one native English speaker 
in the audience!

The conference had a registration fee that I believe to be equivalent to 6 
weeks salary for a skilled programmer.  This was very expensive (the most 
expensive conference I've ever spoken at).  I guess the price explains the 
high skill level of the audience, no company will send anyone but their best 
people to such an expensive conference.

I had three speaking slots for a total of 3 hours and 15 minutes of talking, 
which was considerably more than anyone else.  I am not sure whether this was 
due to the importance of the SE Linux project in the opinion of the 
conference organizers or whether it was due to me volunteering to do a lot.  
I suspect that both factors were involved.

I had planned to give a repeat of the hands-on tutorial I gave at the SE Linux 
Symposium but due to a mis-communication no computers were provided.  So I 
rearranged my schedule (easy to do as there was only one stream and no issues 
of conflicts with other talks) and added a talk on my SE Linux play machines 
to the list and moved the talk on writing policy to the largest time slot.

The majority of the conference was in Polish as it was for an all-Polish 
audience and most of the speakers were Polish.  So I spent a lot of time 
hanging around outside the conference room (there was no convenient transport 
to go anywhere else).  I had a laptop running RHEL4 setup with a SE Linux 
"play machine" configuration that I showed to many people.  At least a dozen 
people tested it out between talks and during talks that didn't interest 
them.  They seemed quite impressed.  I find that giving someone 
root:user_r:user_t access to a SE Linux machine and the ability to see the 
AVC messages in the logs often gives them a better understanding of how 
things work than just speaking about it.

My talks seemed well received and the conference organizers seemed interested 
in getting me to speak at a future event that they run.  This will only 
happen if I can combine it with a trip to another country.  The journey from 
Poland to Australia sucks quite badly at the best of times and I was 
recovering from the flu at the time with partially blocked ears which gave me 
a nightmare journey of the type which will give me a long-term aversion to 
travelling that route.  I really like Poland, but the travel was awful.

Polish food is great.  The hotel food very good (including many traditional 
Polish dishes) and the one time I got out to a good Polish restaurant it was 
even better.  One Polish speciality that I tried was beer with jam.  To make 
it fill a large beer glass to 2/3 and put a few spoonfuls of jam in it.  Heat 
it in a microwave oven until it's at a temperature you might use for hot 
chocolate (not as hot as coffee).  Top it up and then heat it again before 
serving.  I suggest filling it 2/3 for the first heat to stop the head from 
overflowing and making a mess of the microwave oven.  The jam should dissolve 
by itself without needing to be stirred.  Try and avoid jam that has chunks 
of fruit unless you want a little snack at the bottom of your glass.  The 
Polish use a white/pale beer that is not really bitter.  I imagine that you 
could try different types of beer for different results.  Maybe a bitter beer 
with marmalade or a dark beer with fig jam.  But the traditional recipe 
involves white/pale beer with red fruit jam (strawberry or raspberry - they 
taste much the same when mixed with beer).

Polish milk tastes much different from milk in other countries.  I asked some 
Poles about this and they said that the milk flavor depends on what the cow 
eats.  If this is the case then I have to conclude that Polish cows eat very 
differently from cows in Australia, the US, the UK, and the Netherlands 
(those four countries have milk that tastes much the same).  After returning 
home the Australian milk tastes poor in comparison, I wish I could get milk 
that tastes like the Polish milk.  In Poland coffee is served with hot milk. 
This was good, as I don't like coffee I just drank all the hot milk and asked 
the hotel staff to bring more.  ;)

-- 
http://www.coker.com.au/selinux/   My NSA Security Enhanced Linux packages
http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/  Bonnie++ hard drive benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/postal/    Postal SMTP/POP benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/~russell/  My home page

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Re: conferences

[Shyaam Sundhar Rajamadam Srinivasan]

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Hi,
Is there a possibility that we can maintain a site for a list of activities.
Some site where information about,
- Comferences
- Local meetings(Local Chapters)
- New arivals
- new projects
- Employment for SELinux
- Research & Development
Kindly, let me know if there is a site existing for these activities.
Thank you in advance for your time and consideration.
Yours Sincerely,
R.S.Shyaam Sundhar

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On Sun, Mar 06, 2005 at 05:41:43PM +1100, Russell Coker wrote:
> Last week was the SE Linux Symposium: http://www.selinux-symposium.com/

Bad timing. I was in DC on a job for much of February;
I will be back for half of May and perhaps even in
April. 

I'd have loved to see the light side of SeLinux admin :-)

-- 
------------------------------------------------------
   Dale Amon     amon@islandone.org    +44-7802-188325
       International linux systems consultancy
     Hardware & software system design, security
    and networking, systems programming and Admin
	      "Have Laptop, Will Travel"
------------------------------------------------------

Re: conferences

[Stephen Smalley]

On Sun, 2005-03-06 at 21:03 -0500, Shyaam Sundhar Rajamadam Srinivasan
wrote:
> Hi,
> Is there a possibility that we can maintain a site for a list of activities.
> Some site where information about,
> - Comferences
> - Local meetings(Local Chapters)
> - New arivals
> - new projects
> - Employment for SELinux
> - Research & Development

Not sure about this entire list, but some of this information could be
kept on the sourceforge site, http://selinux.sf.net.

-- 
Stephen Smalley <sds@tycho.nsa.gov>
National Security Agency


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