[sf-lug] invitation for the next SF-LUG meeting

[vincent polite]

My two cents. It seems these email exchanges devolve into hardware and heavy duty geek talk. What about bringing the topic for Sameer's class to something more practical that they can be used in everyday life. For instance, for lack of a better symbol, an open source mp3 player. The benefits of using open source in business. I brought up a topic a month ago that fell flat. But, it will change the way movies are made, and thusly business opportunities. A lot of virtual effects production companies are going to open source for there software because software companies can't respond to there needs fast enough. Or, they have to buy more then the need, in both hardware and software. Some thoughts

Sameer Verma <sverma at sfsu.edu> wrote: jim stockford wrote:
> [snipped...]   As to the topic, I don't see VoIP as having much to
> offer--I have it and use it. Got it from SpeakEasy, paid
> money, they sent a box. I plugged the VoIP box into
> the DSL box, plugged the phone into the VoIP box,
> and voila--i can call France for $0.08 per minute,
> long as I make the monthly (about $30) payments.
>    I.e. VoIP seems not to present user issues of much
> interest. There's no Linux component per se. I'd love
> to hear different.
VoIP and Linux go hand in hand really well. Of course, the topic will
not include the likes of Vonage as those are consumer services. I have
no idea what they use in the back. For VoIP, I would look along the
lines of building an Asterisk PBX server (http://www.asterisk.org/) for
personal/small business use. Two projects come to mind.

1) Trixbox [http://www.trixbox.org/]: A CentOS based VoIP PBX that will
work with hardware such as the TDM400P
(http://www.digium.com/en/products/hardware/tdm400p.php)...I happen to
have one :-)

2) AstLinux [http://www.astlinux.org/]: A small (32MB) Linux-based VoIP
distro that can run off a CD or a CF Card. Has a web-based interface and
can do IP to IP calls in a few minutes! The CF card is designed to run
off of a Soekris box [http://www.soekris.com/net4801.htm], which I can
arrange for.

Anyone interested?
>    Can we also include other topics? 
Absolutely.
> Maybe how come
> you use linux? which community efforts appeal? Do
> you value open source? what are your favorite
> programs? what's the job market for linux, for open
> source.... which linux distro(s) do you prefer?
>
>
Excellent questions. We can plan on meeting in a week or two, depending
on scheduling at SF State. I'll keep the list posted.

Sameer

-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/

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