2004 Speaker Presentations

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Scalable and Reliable E-mail Services

Adrian Filipi
September 28th, 2004

Abstract

Managing e-mail services has become more than tedious in recent years. With the rise in spam, viruses and and worms implementing a scalable system can be quite difficult. It must be able to quickly filter out harmful messages without interfering with legitimate user e-mail.

This talk will cover one proven configuration that uses low-error anti-spam techniques and anti-virus software. It uses sendmail's milter API with Sender Validation and Sender Profile Facility (SPF) along with Clam AntiVirus. Some discussion of each of these technologies as well as the headaches you must be prepared to accept will be discussed.

Bio:

Adrian Filipi is currently an independent consultant working under tha banner of Übergeeks Consulting. Previously he worked as the Chief Scientist for Tovaris IP, LC. There he has overseen and managed the design and implementation of both the SecureTier(tm) Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) as well as the company's primary product, an appliance called the Tovaris Secure Mail Gateway(tm).

PHP, MySQL, XML and Using Them Together

Rich Gregory
August 24th, 2004

Abstract

There is tight integration between Apache web server, PHP scripting language and the MySQL database server. This talk highlights the ability of PHP to perform a wide range of tasks on a web server. The SESSION, MySQL, and XML functions will be featured.

Bio:

For the past 6 years, I have been a computer systems engineer at the UVA Engineering School. My work involves managing web, SQL and file servers, Beowulf clusters, Linux and Windows workstations. I provide primary user support to the MAE and MSE Departments. The languages I currently use (in no particular order) are C/C++, PHP, HTML, bash, Java, and JavaScript.

I was born in Charlottesville and have a BS from Ga. Tech and a MS from UVa and have lived in Charlottesville since 1971. My first computer job started in 1980 with Academic Computing (predecessor of ITC) in the basement of Gilmer Hall at UVa. We had a CDC mainframe with four 300MB drives and 2 HP minicomputers. The CS Department had a Vax 11-780 and UVa has grown from there. My first "home computer" was a CompuPro dual CPU (8080 and 80286) machine with 2 8" floppies and a ADM5 console and no hard drive.

The presentation is available here.

July 27th, 2004
Bringing Old Hardware Back to Life as a Home Firewall
Josh Malone

Abstract

In search of a small, cool-running, robust home firewall/router, I revived a 10-year-old SPARC station by installing OpenBSD. Using OpenBSD's built-in packet filter/NAT engine, 'pf', I turned this cute little workstation into a virtually trouble-free firewall with far better security than conventional so-ho router appliances.

Come see how easy it is to set up OpenBSD on computers of yester-millennium and why OpenBSD and sun hardware is a match made in computer heaven.

Bio:

Josh Malone has been a FreeBSD and Windows system administrator for three and a half years working in development shops and hosting companies. He attended Virginia Tech's Bradley dept. of Computer Engineering and was vice president of VT's Linux user group. He currently works as a Linux engineer for an embedded systems company.

The slides are available as a PDF.

May 25th, 2004
Overview of Asterisk
Jeff Gunther

Abstract

Asterisk, a Linux-based Open Source PBX (Private Branch Exchange) and IVR (Interactive Voice Response), enables individuals and organizations an unprecedented amount of power, freedom and cost savings over traditional telephony solutions. Asterisk, distributed under the GNU GPL, is a full-featured phone system that provides caller id, voicemail, event notification, call queuing, multiple person conferencing, and other advanced management features. Asterisk supports analog services (FXO, FXS, T1, E1, PRI) and Voice-Over-IP technologies (IAX, SIP, H.323). This presentation provides an introduction to Asterisk and includes a discussion of the basic configuration files.

Bio:

Jeff Gunther is the founder of Intalgent Technologies, an emerging provider of software and managed hosting solutions based in Charlottesville. Mr. Gunther is an application and infrastructure architect with experience in architecting, designing, developing, deploying, and maintaining complex software systems. In addition to his role at Intalgent Technologies, Gunther is also the Chief Technology Officer for VOCEL, a corporation delivering category-defining applications for wireless handsets.

The slides are available as a PDF.

April 27th, 2004
Practical Cryptography
Adrian Filipi

Abstract

Adrian Filipi will speak about how cryptography works and is applied to securing digital information and communications. This talk does not get into the math of cryptography, and instead focuses on how to use cryptography meaningfully. When finished, you should understand why you should prefer not to use passwords with SSH and instead use public keys (DSA or RSA). It will also be clear why the way SSL is currently deployed by 99.9999% of the world is vulnerable to MitM (man-in-the-middle) attacks.

Bio:

Adrian Filipi is currently an independent consultant working under tha banner of Übergeeks Consulting. Previously he worked as the Chief Scientist for Tovaris IP, LC for the last three and a half years. There he has overseen and managed the design and implementation of both the SecureTier(tm) Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) as well as the company's primary product, an appliance called the Tovaris Secure Mail Gateway(tm).

The slides as well as the signatures and encryption figures are available.

March 23rd, 2004
The Q Home Accountant (QHacc)
Ryan Bobko

Abstract

Ryan Bokko, the author of QHacc, will present The Q Home Accountant (QHacc) package. It is an accounting package aimed at the home user.

QHacc is built exclusively using the Qt Toolkit, and integrates into KDE as well. It has advanced features like graphing and reporting, transaction templates, journaling, and database atomicity. He will give a brief introduction to this program, followed by a hands-on demonstration of some of its capabilities.

QHacc is hosted at Source Forge at http://qhacc.sourceforge.net.

February 24th, 2004
Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP)
Brian Sletten

Abstract

Brian will provide a high-level overview of the emerging practice of aspect-oriented programming (AOP) as a way of building modern software systems by keeping cross-cutting concerns appropriately modularized (don't worry, this mantra will be explained). AOP is an evolution from the successes of Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) and Design Patterns, not a revolution. The focus will be on AspectJ and Java-based AOP, but a quick survey of other techniques, languages and resources will be presented.

Bio:

Brian Sletten is a senior software engineer with ProLogic, Inc., a defense contracting company that specializes in geospatial-oriented visualization, simulation and knowledge management systems. He was a key architect of Parabon Computation's Internet distributed computing platform and has spoken twice at JavaOne.

The slides are available as a PDF.

Adrian Filipi-Martin