Seems like the NDP in Saskatchewan are starting to notice OSS and GNU/Linux. This newsletter contains not one or even two but three separate articles. Looks like progressive movements, which are natural allies, are noticing Linux and OSS in a more significant way. We need to start cranking up the political machine to lobby the left, disability groups, educators, civil liberties groups, and Government to make sure the attention keeps growing.

Advocacy has always been a major part of the PLUG and will continue to be in the future. However advocacy is not the only way we can contribute to the open source movement.

PLUG Flash Mob 2.0 Beta rolls into existence tomorrow night at 7:00 PM at Ridell Hall Cafeteria, Main Floor, University of Winnipeg, 515 Portage Avenue.

As an act of dictatorial defiance, I am proposing a tentative agenda...

Revolution OS will be making it's Winnipeg debut at Cinemateque from October 26-30, 2003 at 7pm daily. This film is a must see for hardcore geeks, political types and everyone interested in free communication. The film is true to the OSS/GNU Linux movement while still being accessible to the layperson. Film Threat has a review here and says "Revolution OS is a great film and an important one." PLUG is working on promoting this film and will have a table at it. Anyone able to help with photocopying, postering etc please email us ASAP at info@plug.ca

IBM has created a fantasic commercial for Linux. You can view it here. Realplayer QuickTime Mplayer

In lieu of a real meeting, I'd like to announce the creation of the world's first Linux Flash Mob, founded by PLUG. We'll be meeting tonight at 7:30 PM at the University of Winnipeg Ridell Hall Cafeteria (Main Floor, Centennial Hall (why is Ridell Hall in Centennial Hall??) west side of the building)...

Due to problems obtaining meeting space we will be looking at next week for the Monthly meeting, hope this doesn't cause any undue hardship to anyone. If you have read at another LUG's website that we are a "former" LUG that is simply not true. We just don't have backing from companies like Caldera (SCO), or Microsoft. We will post info about the next meeting as soon as we get confirmation.

While the linux on the desktop revolution is amassing troops and the code warriors are busy perfecting thier battle plan, administrators must still deal with protecting WIndows users who are being used as bullet catchers for the MicroSlave master. Doing administration with Windows in mind means protecting users from MicroSoft's inherently insecure OS.

The biggest source of risk to windows users starts at the mail server so integrating an anti-virus scanner into your mail system can save hours of grief to both users and admins. Here are the steps I went through to integrate f-prot, and mailscanner into the delivery subsystem.

Pre-orders for the OpenBSD project's latest release, 3.4, are now being taken. This release will ship around November 1st.

Significant enhancements have been made in this release, including...

If you've ever converted a Windows user to Linux, one of the questions that inevitably comes up is "How do I print mailing labels?" It is usually very easy in Windows because the Avery mailing label software is built right into Microsoft Word. Until now I've been forced to use various kinds of kludges involving creating pdfs using command line tools and shell scripts. But I finally found a great tool for creating mailing labels in Linux. Read on if you want to find out a little about it.