Forest BB

So, When I went to Big Blether I wasn't sure what I could talk about ... but then someone mentioned Open Source software round the camp fire, and I offered to do a talk about it. Sunday evening I spent a hour telling two newbies about it in practical and ideological terms, and trying to stop one other computer guy scaring them off ... ("You can use Zen to ..." "Um, they don't want to hear about that").

But you know, how about starting a open source lab thing in the action room? Two hours in the evening every fortnight, to give help to people and promote o.s. software? Every week some theme - Gandolf suggested this, he was there - like Gimp, video editing, Firefox and Thunderbird and PGP, CMS Websites (with the drupal guys?)

Unlike Infoseed, which arguably tried to do to much at the end, just focus on promoting the use of Open Source software. eg No hardware work. If people want Open Source on Windows, fine, but no supporting windows.

Would people be up for this?

me most certainly

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hey, if you don't like it, post on the BB (so you can ask about participating for better) | MilkMiruku

Someone on the EdLUG list has just posted about something like this. They were wondering if anyone was offering such training/advice. I'll point them in this direction.

It would be good to get something like this going. The hardest bit is making people aware that help with software can/does exist.

am willing to help on graphics side of things . gimp inkscape and scribus .

OK - we are going to take over a Tuesday evening slot in the action room.
1st & 3rd tue of each month - 6 to 8
(although chances are I can only be there at 6:10pm sometimes as I come from work.)
On the 1st Tuesday of every month there is another booking starting at 8pm, so we would have to be out sharpish.
So dates up till august with suggestions:

3rd June
Firefox and anonymous web browsing
Thunderbird and encrypted email
(Tom?)

17th June
graphics - Gimp, inkscape and scribus
(martin)

1st July
Maybe session on website software ... Drupal in particular, if The Forest is about to start using it. Could be good for forest peeps to turn up and learn a bit about it before we switch to it? (milk?)

15th July
?

I want these to be practical introduction sessions to get people into things ... not sure about the 3rd one now. Might it be to specialist and complicated? But maybe the 4th could be Ubuntu itself?

an intro to ubuntu would be useful to people .

sounds cool. as per our discussion earlier james, having live cds for people to take away to try might be an idea. kim, who was also there at the time, mentioned he'd like to escape windows and i feel there'll be others who'd like to do the same but are unaware how to.

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hey, if you don't like it, post on the BB (so you can ask about participating for better) | MilkMiruku

Ubuntu itself as the 4th workshop then.

as I said to milk last night, (lets replay the whole conversation!) I'd be happy to hand out Ubuntu CD's at a session on Ubuntu, but I wouldn't want to hand them out without telling people about it first. Don't want them to get scared off if it's all to new .....

Kim mentioned a guy who was trying to convert him .. maybe I'll ask Kim to put him in touch with me and see if he would help out.

i'm cool with that, although might it be an idea to do the ubuntu one first rather than last given that all the practical examples will be done on the ubuntu machines in the action room and that would allow people to try things out at home as soon as?

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hey, if you don't like it, post on the BB (so you can ask about participating for better) | MilkMiruku

Hi James,

Was just talking to Milk online and he pointed me to your post (thanks milk!). I'd really like to get involved in helping out with the workshops. I'm a general FLOSS/Ubuntu/Security geek and would be happy to help out at the Ubuntu workshop and the anonymous browsing/email encryption one if Tom wants an extra pair of hands.

I've also had plans in the back of my mind for a while now to do an in-depth privacy & anonymity workshop although it's something I'd expect to take up a full day rather than a few hours. I'd actually really like to get some feedback on my ideas for it if anyone has any. I'd envisioned something along the lines of the following:

A 1 day workshop focusing on privacy & anonymity that will essentially involve people bringing along their laptops/desktops and building a clean Ubuntu Hardy install with an encrypted root/swap using the alternate installer. I think ideally it would need to be done in small groups, maybe 4-5 people per workshop, and people attending would need to have a basic knowledge of Ubuntu beforehand. As an alternative perhaps we could do an Ubuntu install day (but doing an encrypted install as above), including an introduction to Ubuntu, and then having the privacy/anonymity workshop the next day so people new to Ubuntu could get involved as well.

This probably wont be for the beginner/casual user, but more geared towards activists and people who are seriously concerned about their privacy. For the workshop itself i'd really like to cover the following topics:

1) Brief discussion about Ubuntu/free software and why its virtually impossible to guarantee any degree of privacy using Windows & closed-source software. Also, a brief discussion (with examples) of why you should be concerned about your online privacy.

2) Installation of Ubuntu Hardy with encrypted root/swap partitions

3) Anonymous web browsing using Firefox/TOR/NoScript/User-agent-switcher (would possibly include creating temporary anonymous throwaway email addresses using spamavert.com as well)

4) Using PGP and encrypted email

5) Introduction to RIPA, your rights and the legal implications

6) Encryption and plausible deniability using Truecrypt

7) Wiping data securely, possibly including system/application logs on shutdown etc...

8) Sending anonymous email using Mixminion

9) Secure/deniable IM sessions using Pidgin and the OTR (off the record) plugin

10) Setting up a wifi pre-up macchanger script to randomise your MAC address when connecting to wireless networks

I'm sure i'll think of other stuff, but don't want to fry people's brains and want it all to fit into one day. Any ideas/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Dave

Hello friends,

I'd like to be involved in this thing. I know lots of criminals^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hactivists who would love a workshop on encryption

Milk,
I'd rather do Ubuntu last. If you do it first, its just an abstract thing that people might not see the benefit of. If you do it last, people will have seen the great things OS can do and will be more open to it.

Honestly, most people don't care about the OS anymore. I found my sister looking paralysed with confusion in front of my dual-head Ubuntu setup last month. I pointed out the FireFox icon and she was instantly happy.

I think all the other software we have talked about runs on windows, so people can start getting into things gently. Its far easier and less scary to install Firefox than Ubuntu. And people who aren't ready/can't make the switch away from Windows won't feel the earlier ones aren't for them.

Dave,
that does sound like a full day .... maybe we could try to do a 2 hour one for people to learn about the topics? that might get more people. People might find committing their own laptops to it before they really know about it scary. then we could lead into a full day one and hopefully get more numbers.

Welcome, Tom.

I'm glad this is generating some interest - 2 virgin posts in this thread.

I'd go for Ubuntu/Linux last too. Assuming the same people come to the others first, they will be more familiar with things, and we can then do a bit more than explain what the Gnome equivalent of the Start menu is. We'll have people customising their PS1s in no time!

Another workshop i'd be really interested in running would be one on information and intelligence gathering using a program called Maltego.

Maltego is a really cool app that can search a huge range of sources for whoever or whatever you're looking for and display the links between that information visually. Its kinda hard to explain, you really need to try it to understand what it does, but the description from the website helps a little:

Maltego is a program that can be used to determine the relationships and real world links between:
* People
* Groups of people (social networks)
* Companies
* Organizations
* Web sites
* Internet infrastructure such as:
o Domains
o DNS names
o Netblocks
o IP addresses
* Phrases
* Affiliations
* Documents and files

If anyone's interested the site is at: http://www.paterva.com/web2/maltego/maltego-2.html

Ignore Maltego V2, as its the newly released commercial version and costs big £££, its the open-source JS1 release you'll want.

To get a better idea of how it looks there's a couple of screenshots here:
http://www.paterva.com/web2/maltego/mal ... shots.html

...and a couple of videos here:
http://www.paterva.com/web2/maltego/maltego-video.html

I'd imagine many activists would be quite interested in this, although it should be useful to anyone doing any sort of research. Frankly its pretty easy for anyone to get sucked in and waste many many hours just playing with it, as i've done many times in the past

I think an intro to this could easily be done in a 2 hour evening session if anyone thinks people might be interested...

Cheers,
Dave

Agreed. I'd be happy to condense those topics into a short workshop/discussion to make people aware of the issues and the possible ways to address them, perhaps with quick demonstrations of some of the stuff I talked about above e.g. 'Here's what your IM conversation looks like in a packet sniffer before & after using encryption etc'. Then the people who are still interested in coming to the full day workshop can do so.

I think this would be great. i'd love to know more about all this Open source stuff as im sure many others would. it's all a bit over my head though and i don't want to learn how to code or anything like that, but practical based talks and shows would be excellent, and Opensource is very in keeping with the Forests ethos. Still struggling to find a decent Open source video editing suite! You boffins should unite and come up with something.

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It's like God's vagina!

Hey Gandhi,

Have you tried Avidemux? I haven't tried it myself but it might be worth a look:

http://avidemux.sourceforge.net/index.html

Also if you're interested in trying more open source software a good place to start might be the open source alternative website: http://www.osalt.com As the name suggests it will help you find open-source alternatives to common commercial software, might be worth a look

Oh, and let us know how you get on if you try Avidemux.

thank you very much. I'll definately take a look at that.

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It's like God's vagina!

great place to get open source software for your mac:
http://www.opensourcemac.org/

Right.
Have PM'd and emailed people to get confirmation that they will lead things with my help
(btw, the reason I'm doing this is because I don't consider myself proficient in a lot of this - some of this is also for me
Do we know anyone good who does open source sound and video editing? Would love to have that as 3rd one.
4th one - ubuntu,should include Open Office.
Will draw up an advert email soon.
Name? Something like "The Forest Introduces Open Source" or better? Like most computer people, names were never my strong point. Unless you'll let me call it Bob. Or Jeff. Or something. Probably best not to.

one on office software would be really handy , i am currently learning to use gnu cash looks a really good program .

am waiting for swithun to get back to me about this tuesday and sound editing ...
someone from glasgow wants to come to Ubuntu on the 15th, so that's definitely on

I can show people how to do a few things with Audacity on Tuesday. I've used it for removing vocals from tracks, recording stuff and editing things. I wouldn't say I'm an expert, but it is the kind of program where you can figure out how to do things once you know the basics.