[clue-tech] Additional study groups and/or topics?

[David L. Anselmi]

I guess the point of the below is that I've never found trouble learning 
anything where there is sufficient interest.  So if people are 
interested but need some help I'm more than happy to do what I can.

Collins Richey wrote:
> I'm just curious to know if there are others who might be interested
> in get-togethers outside of the CLUE once-a-month meeting and
> Installfests for the purpose of establishing / extending one or more
> study groups for Linux and Linux-related topics?
[...]

I've always been interested in teaching the topics that interest me to 
others.  I've been thinking for a while about doing a class based on 
RUTE.  If 3 people asked me to do it and would commit the time it would 
happen (it's 3hr/wk for 12 weeks).

I'm also thinking about putting together a class on DNS (it could be 
suitable for a CLUE presentation but I haven't worked on it enough to know).

> Ubuntu - particularly Xubuntu - and Debian topics in general
> CentOS and other Red Hat related topics

Distros seem very uninteresting to me, though I'd enjoy an in depth 
discussion with a RH person, to confirm that it's really as unsuitable 
as I've always found it. (Yes, that's a troll. ;-)

> The free version of Oracle
[...]
> Linux advocacy and winning new users

Interesting.  I'd say Linux advocacy should be related to Free Software 
advocacy.  But Oracle isn't Free...

> Networking and Security for the home user

I'm always surprised by people who find networking a mystery.  They're 
everywhere--programmers, sysadmins, network admins.  (Yes, seriously. 
Network admins who don't understand networking.  It's really sad.)

Books I can recommend on networking:

TCP/IP Illustrated, vol. 1, by Stevens

Computer Networks by Tanenbaum

These are both textbooks.  I guess that means that it takes a certain 
amount of study to learn networking.  But really, the interesting things 
happening with computers today have a lot to do with networking so I 
think it's worth learning.  If you want an easier way to learn it I'd be 
happy to help look for one.

Security is a little more mysterious, I guess--it's much more general 
and pervasive.  But there's a lot of fuzzy usage of terms out there. 
"Fundamentals of Computer Security" by Amoroso really does cover the 
fundamentals, though I think most would find it pretty obscure (even 
security types).  But really, it's the fundamentals that you need to 
talk about security intelligently.

"Security Engineering" by Ross Anderson is also good.  It bridges the 
concepts in Amoroso to the practice of system design and makes the case 
that security is a system-wide discipline.

Schneier's "Applied Cryptography" is good for understanding the role of 
cryptography in security, and the ways cryptography breaks.  You can 
skip over most of the math.  There are lots of other resources that are 
more general than this, but you have to be careful you're getting the 
straight scoop--there's a lot of misunderstanding here too.

Those are the high level angle on security.  If you want to look at the 
low level I'd be happy to take you through Aleph One's stack smashing 
paper.  He talks in assembly language, so it isn't exactly trivial.  But 
assembly language can teach you a lot about how programming works.

Dave
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