On Thu, Jul 12, 2007 at 04:15:47PM -0400, Justin Fear wrote:
> Hey all, I am new to the University of Florida [...] 

Heya Justin! Welcome to UF :).

> [...] and was wondering if there was any one place that there is a
> list of services provided by the university that might be of interest
> to linux/computer users.

It seems like you're mostly interested in technology services, but since
GatorLUG and GatorJUG have been mentioned, I'll go ahead and point out
Alacloud.net and Florida Free Culture.

Alacloud.net is a wireless meshing project that's aiming to bring a free
ad-hoc wireless cloud to Gainesville. It's based on off-the-shelf wifi
routers flashed with Linux firmware. There are already a few nodes up
and running throughout Gainesville. Very cool stuff if you're interested
in community wifi and Linux taking over the world. If you're interested,
talk to Hendrik: [log in to unmask]
http://alacloud.net/

Florida Free Culture is a student group on campus that's involved in
intellectual property and cultural participation. We have speakers and
events on related issues and do a lot of tabling to talk to people on
campus about things like copyright, peer-to-peer, patents (software and
non-software), DRM, open data formats and protocols, and free software.
We've teamed up with GatorLUG a few times to promote free software with
Linux Installfests and events like Software Freedom Day and Free Your
PC. We also brought Jimbo Wales (founder of Wikipedia) to UF a few
semesters ago.

For other events we've done, check out this page on our wiki:
http://uf.freeculture.org/wiki/Who_We_Are
http://uf.freeculture.org/


GatorLUG, Alacloud.net, and Florida Free Culture all have IRC channels
on Freenode, as well: #gatorlug, #alacloud.net, and #freeculture on
irc.freenode.net. There are a bunch of people who hang out there, so
definitely stop by.


> On a related note does any know if UFL has a site license to O'Reilly's
> Safari Books Online?

I have never heard about anything like that, so I would assume “no”. The
university does have various kooky agreements with Microsoft, though - if
you're in the college of engineering, you get to download Vista for
free! ;)


Cheers!
Nile
President, Florida Free Culture


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