[Ubuntu-US-CA] Project: Letters to our Representatives

[Jason Brooks]

On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 2:00 PM, George Mulak
<George at americanfinancialtax.com> wrote:
> Thank you Peter for chiming in.  What you say makes a lot of sense.  Nathan,
> as always, has been patient and helpful in the Ubuntu hours and is much
> appreciated.
>
>
>
> I agree with both of you, end-user events are best.  I would, however, love
> to let our legislature know that there are competitive products out there
> making a difference in people’s lives.  Software that is empowering them,
> and not hobbling them.

It might be worth contacting these folks: http://opensourceforamerica.org/

>
>
>
> Sincerely,
>
> George Mulak
>
>
>
> From: ubuntu-us-ca-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com
> [mailto:ubuntu-us-ca-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com] On Behalf Of Peter Sullivan
> Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2013 12:44 PM
> To: Ubuntu US California
>
>
> Subject: Re: [Ubuntu-US-CA] Project: Letters to our Representatives
>
>
>
> Hi All,
>
>
>
> Although I am new to this group - not new to Linux or Ubuntu - I feel I must
> chime in at this time.  While raising awareness of the benefits of
> FOSS/Ubuntu is laudable and likely could save the CA gov't boatloads of
> cash, the UDS is hardly the venue to promote awareness.  Talks about upstart
> vs system.d, SELinux implementation, APIs and system calls etc will only
> have non-tech folk looking at their watches very, very quickly.  I agree w/
> the previous statement that an invitation to a user-focused (don't care for
> the term 'consumer' much) event/forum holds a greater probability for
> success in raising awareness and generating interest.  This is our aim, yes?
> Then let's not shoot ourselves in the foot by boring them to tears first.
>
> A practical example: Today US-CERT listed (I'm on their list) the following
> rather extreme warning re UPnP (link vetted):
> http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/922681 which in essence means shutting down
> at the router level all UDP traffic on port 1900.  Now to us this is a
> simple task.  How many of our elected representatives would have a clue?
> Not many I assure you, though the page above does contain a link to Rapid7
> that has issued a Windoze tool for determining said vulnerability along w/
> remediation.  My question stands: how many would know to go into their...
> disable port 1900 across their LAN/WLAN?  So if that is 'voodoo' for them, a
> developer (the key word some are overlooking here) summit is way out of
> their league.  As a 'proof' I would offer that former Congresswoman Jane
> Harman who was a ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee had her
> home network (my best friend was her aid) set up as WEP speaks volumes.
>
> Bests,
>
> Peter
>
> On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 11:57 AM, Nathan Haines <nhaines at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>
> On 01/29/2013 11:36 AM, George Mulak wrote:
>
> These are true and good ideas Nathan.  No one wants to hurt Ubuntu or UDS in
> any way that I know of.  Would you help us develop this or give us
> direction?
>
>
>
> Well, as I stated before I think it's a harmful idea, so no, I could not
> ethically help develop the plan unless someone had a convincing argument
> that inviting policymakers to UDS would be helpful to policymakers and not
> harmful to UDS.  My only suggestion until then is to start by collaborating
> on a justification for the plan.
>
> While I am ready to be convinced, my recommendation would be to abandon this
> idea and instead focus policymakers at end-user oriented events.
>
>
>
> --
> Nathan Haines
> Ubuntu - http://www.ubuntu.com/
>
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