11–20 of 80 posts
Back when running Linux on the desktop was a full time job, it was really cool to have an in person network to talk to when your latest kernel compilation bricked your system or whatever. It was also cool since RedHat is based in the Triangle we'd get people from RedHat coming to the user group all the time and could get all the dirt on them.
It was under his tutelage I first installed RedHat linux, and he would have us do things like CTF's with each of our issued routers/laptops to teach us practical security.
Most of our events we organized ended up being basically LAN gaming parties, but back in that day gaming required you to know some basic networking stuff so it was also used to hone those skills. Once a month we would do all friday night lock in's, mostly playing Half-Life, Team-Fortress, Quake, Counter-Strike, or Unreal Tournament, and sometimes Starcraft/Warcraft. Lots of Jolt soda, mountain dew, and Bawls combined with pizza.
Some really good times that I look back on fondly, and I often wonder what all the guys are up to these days. I'm sure almost all of them ended up in some facet of the industry, but it was quite fun to teach me that you can't judge a book by it's cover. We had jocks playing football and the rest of the time in the computer center with us. We had stoners. We had a handful of girls. It was a very diverse group that broke the sterotype and I loved it.
I really am thankful to that man for bringing the future to my high-school so that many of us had a headstart in the industry ourselves.
It was a group of squatters, hackers, anti authoritarians, non-conformists and anarchists. They proselytised Linux and GNU software. I only visited some of their courses, pretty basic stuff where they would teach about Linux usage, HTML & CSS, some basic programming, etc. The audience was always a motley of social classes and skill sets. The actual members seemed mostly Italian and German (pretty strongly represented in the Amsterdam squatting scene, as I understand it). They were real deal squatters, evac fights with SWAT teams and all. Big fans of XS4ALL (the first dutch consumer ISP, and legendary for its true hacker spirit).
The workshops would always be in these random squats. You'd have to knock on some nondescript reinforced steel door, say a password, walk through 3 floors of rubble, to emerge in a ramshackle room somewhere and learn about memory management in C for 2 hours. It was quite an experience.
I thought these guys were the "real deal" hackers, though looking back it was perhaps a bit form over function. But their dedication to individual agency and resisting authority is something I will never forget.
They shut down in 2006, apparently. RIP.
The nice thing about our user’s group is that it drew both students and faculties, NeXT building fairly powerful workstations.
My primary role was to be the “crazy NeXT rumors guy” before John Moltz made that an internet thing. I would spend five or ten minutes every meeting providing comedic relief, talking about funny things NeXT would never ever do (warp drive, Bill Gates Terminator drones) plus one thing that I knew fairly certainly that they were actually doing. I would make members guess which rumor was actually true (which wasn’t all that hard).
Not club related, but I also got a talking to when I printed a 300 page book on the laser printer when printing on a single page was more than 50 cents. And then there was the time I crashed the lab because all of the journalism class students were logged in with the teacher's creds and I decided to see what would happy when I changed her password.
I attended a PC users group at Stanford during the late 1980's. Mostly product announcements and demos. A lot of I did this, you can do it too! People selling shareware software on 5 1/4 inch floppies for a dollar: text editors, simple databases, games. People were welcoming to newcomers, and helpful. IBM clone PC computers cost over a thousand dollars without hard disks.
I also attended a couple of meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club at SLAC. Mostly ego boasting. I missed Woz showing the Apple I.
Some of the BMUG CD roms and a huge batch of user group newsletters are on archive.org.
If you are in Silicon Valley, there is a Vintage Computer Faire West on August 1-2, 2020 at the Computer History Museum. Lots of personal collections on display, and CHM has lots of unique stuff. Demos of operational DEC-1 (Space War!) and IBM 1401s (card readers, line printers, tape drives from 1959). http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-west...
Can quote: Randall
I was the in the "Computer Club" in highschool, in the late 90's early 00's. In retrospect it was quite amazing that we lucked out, because what happened was a guy who had been working in the industry decided he wanted to bring computing to his hometown, and so left the industry and used his contacts to push for a top-notch tech center in the high-school. It was one of the very first high schools to have the Cisco Ne…
It’s still around in a way: https://www.awug.org/
To be a member one had to own a computer and a motorbike.
It was a small group of very diverse folks, really a fun time while it lasted.
The monthly Paul Revere rides were the most fun, we'd meet around 10 PM at a Denny's somewhere and ride all night during the Full Moon, ending at a Denny's somewhere else around 5 or 6 AM, then home to sleep.
Wonder what happened to them all, great folks!