ALUG Meeting for March 2012

[The Doctor]

Our next meeting has been scheduled for March 19th.

I believe we were still planning to have a demonstration on WEP Cracking.

We were also planning a general Q & A session for those members new to Linux who might need some help getting up-to-speed.

Let us know if you have any other ideas.

[The Doctor]

We'll be there.

[EarlInLevelland]

I'm in.

[The Doctor]

Fun meeting tonight!

Even without a topic, we still managed to cover quite a variety of topics.

Thanks to everyone who could make it!

[The Doctor]

One of the topics discussed at the meeting:

NetZero Returns with Semi-Free Mobile Broadband Service

Ah, NetZero, now there's a name we haven't heard in awhile. If you've been riding the Internet wave long enough, you'll recall NetZero used to offer free dial-up service in the late 1990s to anyone willing to put up with a persistent banner ad. It didn't work out so well and NetZero eventually switched to a paid model like everyone else, but kept its name. Well, NetZero is at it again, this time teaming up with ClearWire to offer free 4G mobile broadband. Sort of.

NetZero 4G Mobile Broadband data plans actually start at $10/month, and each plan delivers download speeds of up to 10Mbps and uploads speeds of up to 1.5Mbps. There are no contracts to sign and you can upgrade your service at any time. And to get you hooked, NetZero says you're welcome to the try the service for free for a full year.

There are hardware costs involved. All data plans (and yes, that includes the free one), requires the purchase of the NetZero 4G HotSpot ($100) and NetZero 4G Stick ($50), so your upfront investment is $150 total, "much less than the cost of most comparable contract-free devices available today," NetZero points out.

The free service is capped at 200MB, and once your free year is up, you have to subscribe to one of the data plans. $10/month gets you 500MB, $20/month for 1GB, $35/month for 2GB, and $50/month for 4GB. There are no overage fees; if you hit your limit, you can buy extra data, upgrade to a higher capacity plan, or simply hang tight until next month.

No word yet on whether this device will work on Linux.

See also:
Free ISP NetZero Goes Wireless

and

NetZero Launches 'Free' Wireless Broadband

__________

The Raspberry Pi was also mentioned at the meeting.  We have full discussion started here.

[The Doctor]

The new social media "darling" Pinterest also came up in discussions.  Here's just a few little morsels I found about this site:

Symantec: Pinterest scam hooks users

Pinterest may have set the media abuzz at an interactive entertainment conference earlier this month, but according to online security firm, Symantec, scammers are also targeting the service to hook unsuspecting users with a survey based scam that could trick the unwary into giving out passwords, financial accounts and other sensitive details as well as installing malware on their PCs.

According to John McDonald, the Operations Manager of the Symantec Security Response team, the scam works by placing links in forums, article comment sections and on social networks to entice the unsuspecting to complete surveys by promising items such as gift cards or big ticket electronics.

See also:
Pinterest Is Fertile Ground for Online Scams

Pinterest Scams: Free Starbucks, Red Velvet Cake Photos, and More

and:

Pinterest’s Terms of Service, Word by Terrifying Word

...Pinterest’s terms of service have been garnering a lot of criticism for stating in no uncertain terms that anything you “pin” to their site belongs to them. Completely. Wholly. Forever and for always. Here’s the offending paragraph:

    By making available any Member Content through the Site, Application or Services, you hereby grant to Cold Brew Labs a worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free license, with the right to sublicense, to use, copy, adapt, modify, distribute, license, sell, transfer, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, stream, broadcast, access, view, and otherwise exploit such Member Content only on, through or by means of the Site, Application or Services.

See also:
Pinterest’s Terms of Service Screws Its Users… Or Maybe It’s Just Like Every Other Social Networking Site

and this little amusing story of Poetic Justice:

Teen sends prank dead body text to police officer

A teen thinks it will be funny to send a text saying she's hidden a body to a completely random number. The number happens to belong to a police detective. The teen says she got the idea from Pinterest.

Yep.  This is what happens when no one moderates a website.