Association Newsletter - April 24, 2002 edition IN THIS EDITION: 1. Board Business 2. We Are Always Looking For New Members 3. Tru64 UNIX Patch 4. Things on the Go from OpenVMS 5. Visit Our New Web Site! 6. Membership Survey 7. HP-Compaq Merger 8. Technical Seminar 9. Self Maintainers SIG 10. On-line Advocacy 11. OpenVMS Hobbyist License 12. Programmer War Stories 13. EARLUG (Edmonton and Area Local Users Group) 14. ITUG/DECUS 2002 Joint European Conference 15. ITUG Summit 2002 16. CETS 2002 1. BOARD BUSINESS RESIGNATION OF AL DUNBAR FROM THE BOARD It is with regret that I announce the resignation of Al Dunbar from the Board of Directors. Al served on the Association Board as Director of Membership since last December and is unable to continue due to time constraints and personal reasons. Al will remain involved as a member of the Association and with EARLUG, the local user group in Edmonton. On behalf of the Board of Directors and members of the Association, I would like to extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to Al for his long-time support and interest in the Association. David J. Wilson, President Canadian Association of Compaq Users ARE YOU INTERERSTED IN SHAPING THE FUTURE OF THE ASSOCIATION? Due to the resignation of Al Dunbar, there is an open position on the Board of Directors. This appointment will complete Al Dunbar's term which will end on December 31, 2003. The vacant portfolio is membeship, but we can be flexible to best use your talents. If you have two to three hours a week, would like to complement your skills with new experiences and to work with interesting people, both within the user group community and with Compaq, then please contact me at inquire@canacu.org. I will contact you to discuss the role and responsibilities and answer any questions you may have. I look forward to working with you. David J. Wilson, President Canadian Association of Compaq Users 2. WE ARE ALWAYS LOOKING FOR NEW MEMBERS Please send us the e-mail addresses of anyone you know who might be interested in joining our Association. We'll send them an e-mail outlining who we are and what the benefits of membership are. Remember, membership is open to everyone who uses Compaq products, there is no charge and we provide a decent amount of Compaq-related information on a timely basis. 3. Tru64 UNIX PATCH A number of potential security vulnerabilities have recently been reported for CDE, libc, and NFS released with Tru64 UNIX V4.0F,V4.0G, V5.0A, V5.1 and V5.1A, where under certain circumstances, system integrity may be compromised by a malicious user. For more information, visit http://ftp.support.compaq.com/patches/.new/html/SSRT-541.shtml 4. THINGS ON THE GO FROM OpenVMS First and foremost, the OpenVMS Primer for System Managers is now ready for the general public to be taking. This can be found at http://www.openvms.compaq.com/training.html. Second, we can no longer say that engineers are all boring.. They have come up with a contest for guessing the boot time of OpenVMS on Itanium. The web site states: "OpenVMS is in the process of porting to the Itanium processor. There is alot of excitement in engineering about this port and we want to share some of that excitement with you. Hence, we are opening a 'guess the boot date' contest. This boot contest is a fun way for you to forecast the exact time that OpenVMS will first boot on the Itanium processor (boot is considered when OpenVMS boots; a user logs in and does a directory command without crashing the system)." More info can be found at http://www.compaq.com/hps/ipfenterprise/openvms_contest.html I'm not sure what the prize is going to be, but you can be assured, it will be "Cool". Third, the long awaited Marvel announcement was released to the world on April 2nd. You can read all about it here: http://www.compaq.com/hps/announce/apr_02.html. And lastly for this edition - Please visit the soon-to-be world renowned OpenVMS site http://www.vmsone.com/. It is run by several OpenVMS Ambassadors and, as well, is part of the OpenVMS Web Ring. The Web ring is an awesome way as well to see what is out there and what some "Real" enthusiasts are up to. I mean I thought I was nuts with having a fully functional and running 6 node Cluster running in my basement! You should see some of this stuff out there on the web! 5. VISIT OUR NEW WEB SITE! Visit our new web site at www.canacu.org. The site has been redesigned and expanded to serve you better and to provide an online presence for the Association. You can now sign up for membership on-line. We will be rolling out additional content and services over the coming months so keep checking back for more! 6. MEMBERSHIP SURVEY We were surprised and delighted by the response to our membership survey. Thank you to everyone who responded. Look at the summary of the results at www.canacu.org/surveyresults. 7. HP-COMPAQ MERGER The independent organization tallying the votes has made a preliminary announcement that HP has a slim majority (45 million out of a total of 1.5 billion). Essentially, it is a done deal. 8. TECHNICAL SEMINAR Planning for Fall 2002 -- One-day Technical Seminar Event We have started discussions with Compaq Canada and Compaq Corporation regarding hosting a technical seminar series that will target the High Performance Systems environment. Since this event will be for the benefit of our user group members, we invite you to participate in the early stages of our event planning process. We will be introducing a brief questionnaire to collect your feedback to help us determine the kind of event you would like to see. We will be making the questionnaire available in the events section of the Association web site at http://www.canacu.org. Please stay tuned, the questionnaire will be available in late April. 9. SELF MAINTAINERS SIG There has been interest in a new SIG for Compaq Self Maintainers. As you may know, a self maintainer is a firm that does not have a direct service level agreement with Compaq and is therefore responsible for supporting their own hardware and software. The purpose for this new SIG would be for members to exchange information regarding issues pertaining to those self maintainers that specifically deal with internal customers. This is an exciting opportunity to exchange ideas, concerns and questions for those members that do not have specific relationships with Compaq. In addition, the Association can serve as a conduit to Compaq, providing a way for self maintainers to more effectively service their users. If you are a Compaq Self Maintainer, and are interested in participating in this SIG, please let us know at 'inquire@canacu.org'. 10. ON-LINE ADVOCACY Have issues for Compaq? Share your thoughts! Reach Compaq through the "Local Voices...Global Reach" Online Advocacy Program. Your opinions count, so visit today to submit issues or participate in the latest Insta-poll question. If you have issues specific to Compaq Canada that you think are not appropriate for the Online Advocacy Program, feel free to forward them to advocacy@canacu.org, and the Association board will present it to the Canadian Management Committee through our Compaq Delegate, Matthew MacFarlane. 11. OPENVMS HOBBYIST LICENSE You can order the OpenVMS Hobbyist License through your membership in the Association. Here are the instructions: - The complete transaction takes place on the OpenVMS site - Go to - Go to the link "License Register". This will take you to a license registration page where you will be required to complete a form - Enter your Association membership number on the ordering form - If you do not know your membership number, or you are not a member of the Association, send an e-mail message to inquire@canacu.org. The license is free of charge. There is a charge of $30.00 USF if you want to receive the software on CD media. 12. PROGRAMMER WAR STORIES Christopher Duncan, author of "The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics for an Imperfect World" (Apress), is compiling a book of war stories from those of you who have been out there dealing with all the insanity that Corporate America has to offer. None of his books are tied to a particular programming language, operating system or platform, so it doesn't matter what kind of coding you do. He'll paraphrase the stories, and of course he won't use any real names (personal or company). He'll be happy to include your name in the Acknowledgements, but of course will omit it if you prefer your story to be anonymous. If you've got a good war story about programming in Corporate America, he'd love to hear it. Go to www.ShowProgramming.com/TheCareerProgrammer.asp and look for the link on War Stories. 13. EARLUG (Edmonton and Area Local Users Group) EARLUG has their regular meetings on the third Wednesday of the month at The Druid at 5 p.m. - 116 St. & Jasper Ave. For further information, contact Dave Richardson DRichardson@interbaun.com) at (780)420-9084. EARLUG has been meeting continuously for more than 20 years. 14. ITUG/DECUS 2002 JOINT EUROPEAN CONFERENCE The pre-conference seminars are on May 11-12 2002. The conference & exhibition are on May 13-15. The event is being held in Lyon, France. The CCUG (Confederation of Compaq User Groups) and CUG, Americas Council meetings are to be held in conjunction with the conference. 15. ITUG SUMMIT 2002 The conference is on October 27-31 2002. The exhibition is on October 28-30, 2002. The event is being held in San Jose, California. For more information or to register go to . 16. CETS 2002 The Compaq Enterprise Technical Symposium 2002 (CETS 2002) will take place October 6-11, 2002 at the Cervantes Convention Center in St. Louis, Missouri. For more information or to register go to . So far, the website contains minimal information. ==================================================================== WE LIKE TO HEAR FROM YOU! We want you to tell us what you think of this newsletter. Your feedback and suggestions are most welcome. Please send your comments and articles to inquire@canacu.org. WE ARE LOOKING FOR A FEW, GOOD REPORTERS Here's your chance to report the news instead of just reading it! We are looking for users from each of Compaq's product lines to keep their ear to the ground and bring us their 'front line' reports. 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