Officially Google Hangouts doesn't support Slackware Linux, limiting support to "Ubuntu and other Debian based Linux distributions". Realistically, what one is after is the Google Video and Talk plugin, but this also isn't strictly available for Slackware. Of course Google, being a little more evil that they think they are, does not release the source code for this enviable technology. What is a poor Slacker to do?

On Sunday, October 27th 2013 a post was made on the Linux Australia mailing list concerning an offer the GNOME Foundation in association with several FOSS provided for a three-month internship for women, specifically "to get more women involved in FOSS". On Tuesday, a poster (perhaps inspired by Sunday's post) argued against "special programmes to address an imbalance between the sexes", suggesting that such programmes are harmful, that merit "shines through inner strength", and that sex-specific programmes should be replaced with programmes for "'incompetent women in IT,' or at least to widen eligibility to include hamsters and fish."

There was, unsurprisingly, a small storm of discussion that resulted which can be mostly be broken up into two perspectives. The first were those who agreed, more or less, with the original poster with the suggestion that any gender disparity in IT may actually simply be "just how it is", that employers are almost always gender-neutral, and that any gender-specific programmes should be abolished. The second group agreed that employment should be gender neutral, but in wasn't, and there were a variety of causes (conscious and unconscious discrimination) for the disparity that justified the existence of such programmes.

MATLAB (registered trademark implied in this post) is a popular closed-source graphical product for matrix mathematics. Whilst I certainly prefer in most cases the extremely compatible open-source competitor Octave for all the well-founded usual reasons, MATLAB does have a small mountain of libraries and a small fortune backing it, both of which aren't quite always available to the GNU Octave people. So in some cases, based invariably on user requests, some dealings with MATLAB is sometimes required.

EFY Times, a technology website from India, often provides some interesting Linux and open source news and advice. But sometimes that advice really needs to be taken with a grain of salt. An example, is 10 Basic Linux Commands for Beginners.

Recently I had the experience of encountering antireligious bigotry by a free software advocate. I will not mention the person by name, but I will describe their attitudes and the effects, and by the way of elaboration on why all forms of prejudiced discrimination is not just morally wrong, but damaging to free software as a movement. The experience occurred just prior to Software Freedom Day among the organising committee.

Jeff Carl
Secretariat Advisory Council on Intellectual Property
PO Box 200 Woden ACT 2606
mail.acip@ipaustralia.gov.au

Dear Mr. Carl,

The following is the submission by Linux Users Victoria, Inc., on the Options Paper for the Review of the Innovation Patent System.

Previous posts have described the installation of R, and even installing some of its less than simple packages. But what do you do when a library appears to be installed by one of the normal methods and declares itself as such - until it is actually requested? In other words, a false positive, one of the most frightening creatures known in the world (although fortunately in this case trivial in damage).

Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) is a computational fluid dynamics model of fire-driven fluid flow. The software solves numerically a form of the Navier-Stokes equations appropriate for low-speed, thermally-driven flow, with an emphasis on smoke and heat transport from fires. It is also slightly unpleasant to install, but the following notes should make it somewhat easier.

Agile Project Management was born from the experience that highly prescriptive, planned-based approaches to project management simply weren't working in some contexts. In response the Agile Manifesto and Declaration of Interdependence statements were issued which, on the face of it, argue for flexibility in planning, an emphasis on customer-value, teamwork, and a welcoming attitude towards change.

This has been a very good year for Linux Users of Victoria, Inc. By all major metrics, we have improved. Our membership has increased, the attendance at our main meetings and beginners workshops have improved, and we are in a better financial state that we were last year. We held an excellent Software Freedom Day last year with larger attendance and international, and a very successful annual picnic.