EFF-Austin

The University of Texas’ student newspaper, The Daily Texan, covered last night’s panel on the 20th anniversary of the Secret Service raid at Steve Jackson Games.

“I got a phone call one morning saying, ‘Steve, the office is full of Secret Service agents, and they’re not letting anyone in,” Jackson said. “They were chasing a demon that wasn’t there. They were on the trail on the notorious 911 document. The whole thing was a comedy of errors.”

Video of the event will be online soon; we’ll post the link when it’s available.

jonl Uncategorized

NOTE: Live streaming at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/effaustin!

Austin was a hotbed of pioneering Internet activity in the early 1990s, and one event that put us on the Internet map was the March 1, 1990 Secret Service raid at Steve Jackson Games, an Austin company that produced role playing games with science fiction themes. All the company’s computers were confiscated, and as a result Steve Jackson sued the U.S. Secret Service, and won. The raid and court case made Steve a focus of the nascent cyber liberties movement - it was the first major case for the national Electronic Frontier Foundation, and subject of a bestselling book by Bruce Sterling, called _Hacker Crackdown_.

Why did the Secret Service raid Steve Jackson Games? Why did Steve retaliate with a law suit, and how did he win a case against the U.S. government? On this 20th anniversary of the raid, EFF-Austin invites you to gather at Independence Brewing in Austin to get the answers. We’ll have a rousing panel discussion of the case, and its place in history, featuring Steve Jackson, Bruce Sterling, and attorney Pete Kennedy. You can also sample locally-brewed Independence beer!

Please consider making a donation to EFF-Austin when you attend (or via the Paypal link on this site).

Sponsored by EFF-Austin and Plutopia Productions. This event is FREE (as in beer), but we strongly encourage donations to EFF-Austin.

jonl Uncategorized

Austin Non Profit Camp is a free, facilitated and participant driven conference that will be the place in Austin for non profits to learn and troubleshoot their technology problems in a supportive, collaborative setting.

http://npocamp.eventbrite.com/

Austin Non Profit Camp is being spearheaded by David J. Neff, Jon Lebkowsky, Maggie Duval and Matt Glazer. Their goal is to take the successful Bar Camp model and apply it to expand understanding and awareness of free and Open Source technology within the non-profit community in Central Texas.

How It Works

Non profits and technology folks come together to have conversations about the issues that they face in a no sales, no cost environment. We bring tech experts together with nonprofits in a context that will facilitate mutual understanding.

In addition to scheduled speakers, attendees will have the option to sign up to speak about issues and solutions they know best.

Nonprofit attendees collaboratively problem solve issues they face with running and promoting their organizations, workshopping with local technologists about the latest and most effective technologies and methodologies. These conversations will help nonprofits filter what’s useful from what’s not and keep their organizations humming and on track.

Topics

Google Apps, Data Exchange/Salesforce, Google Grants, Social Media, Marketing, Cloud Computing, Email Marketing, Fundraising in Social Media, ZERO COST Infrastructure, ROI of The Cloud

Event Details

Date: November 14th
Time: 10:00 a.m. - :00 p.m.
Location: ACC Eastview Campus
3401 Webberville Road

Keynote Delivered by: Holly Ross from NTEN

http://npocamp.eventbrite.com/

Austin Non Profit Camp is sponsored by: EFF-Austin, NTEN, 501 Tech Club, Plutopia Productions, Austin Social Media Club, 501derful.org, Social Web Strategies, GNI Strategies, Lights.Camera.Help. and Soma Vida. A special thank you/shout out to the Center for Community Based & Nonprofit Organizations at Austin Community College for providing the incredible space.

jonl Events

EFF-Austin is coordinating One Web Day Austin, September 22 at Austin Centre, 5pm-9pm. Download the event flyer (pdf). | Learn more about One Web Day.

jonl Free Software, Uncategorized

EFF-Austin invites you to a talk by the Free Software Foundation Activist - Richard Stallman on 23rd April 2009.

• Location: National Instruments, 11500 N MO Pac Expy, Austin, TX 78759
• Time: 6PM - 8PM
• Entry: Free, but registration required due to limited seating. Register here.
• Refreshments provided.

Talk Abstract:
Richard Stallman wrote the first GNU General Public License in 1989, and version 3 which was completed in 2007. He will discuss the philosophy of the GNU GPL, the changes made in version 3, and the reasons for those changes.

A must attend for software enthusiasts, developers, entrepreneurs, managers, and students. There is limited seating at the venue: first come, first served registration will apply.

Speaker Bio:
Richard Stallman launched the development of the GNU operating system (see www.gnu.org) in 1984. GNU is free software: everyone has the freedom to copy it and redistribute it, as well as to make changes either large or small. The GNU/Linux system, basically the GNU operating system with Linux added, is used on tens of millions of computers today. Stallman has received the ACM Grace Hopper Award, a MacArthur Foundation fellowship,the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer award, and the the Takeda Award for Social/Economic Betterment, as well as several honorary doctorates.

Thanks to Saurabh Sureka (sab at ieee.org) for coordinating the presentation.

jonl Copy Left, Events, Free Software

whurley, Don Jarrell, Chris Boyd

EFF-Austin sponsored a successful panel, Cloud Computing: Threat, or Menace, on March 3. Thanks to all who joined us!

Audio

Speakers:
W. Scott McCollough, Telecommunications and ISP Law Specialist, McCollough|Henry, PC
Chris Boyd, Midas Networks
whurley, BMC Software, Inc.
Andrew Donoho, Strategist
Don Jarrell, Digital Thinking, Inc.
Moderator: Michael Hathaway, Pico Innovations

Play audio below:

Download Audio File

jonl Events, Privacy, Technology