Newsletter for 25 April 2006

Tue 25 Apr 2006 Newsletter

Newsletter

Contents

LAN party

The sign-ups for our next LAN party, which takes place at the end of week 4, go live;

While we appreciate this will land at an inconvenient time for some members, due to exams, there really is no time this term where it would not clash with someone’s exams.

On the topic of LANs, do not forget the BFL at the end of term, a week long LAN lasting all of week 10! Sign-ups for that go live;

It was fantastic fun last year and should be again this year.

Exec meetings

The new Exec have decided to move the start time of the weekly Exec meetings from 7pm on Fridays to 7:30pm on Fridays. They will still be held in a meeting room in Union North (usually MR6). This extra 30minutes allows people extra time to get to the meeting, and also means that it should finish just in time to go straight to the pre-gaming social in the bar.

All members a reminded that they are welcome to turn up and listen in to the Exec meetings. This is a great way of finding out more about how the Society is run, as well as a good idea if you are thinking about running for an Exec position next year.

New IRC Policy

As members who regularly visit the #compsoc channel on our IRC network will no doubt have already noticed, the new Exec voted on Friday to give all current Exec members operator privileges in the channel. A number of members had expressed concern over the fact that the friendly environment provided by the channel was being damages by flame-wars, heated arguments and offensive web-links.

The introduction of permanent operator status to the current Exec was deemed to be the best approach at combating those concerns. The operators will kick people from the channel if they are abusive, or link to offensive or obscene material without specifying it as potentially offensive or obscene.

If you do get kicked from the channel, your should not feel that we are expelling you from it, instead re-join and take it as a warning that you have crossed the line between good-natured humour and maliciousness. Repeated and deliberate malicious behaviour will, however, get you banned from the channel for a period of time. If you are kicked and are unsure why you should ask the person who kicked you. If you feel you were kicked unfairly you should email the Exec attaching the relevant text, including the line which says who you were kicked by.

Gaming Sessions

Gaming will be happening as usual this Friday and Saturday from 10pm - 4am in the ITS Rooms along the physics concourse (just after the two sets of automatic doors over the library bridge). Remember to bring headphones, and if a game you want to be played isn’t being played (and it is available to install) just come along and suggest it!

Socials

The pre-gaming social on Friday starts at 8:30pm in Rootes Reception/The Bar until 10pm when we all head over to gaming for the evening/morning :). If you’ve not been along before, we normally sit down on the chairs in Rootes Reception as a group, just come and introduce yourself, grab some food/drink, even if you don’t want to go gaming.

There will also be a pub crawl this week, see above for more details.

Linux User Group

Linux User Group meeting, as always, is on Wednesdays, so head along to Union North to Xanana’s Lounge or MR6 (They will be in one of the two rooms) between 7 and 10pm. As always if you have any trouble using/installing/fixing Linux on your machine there are plenty of people willing to help.

Internet Relay Chat

You can talk to most regular compsoc members, and all of the exec via compsoc’s irc server. The connection settings are:

A windows irc client is available from: http://www.silverex.org/download/

Cable / Web Hosting

Compsoc provides many services to it’s members including the sale of Ethernet RJ45 cable, and a shell account and webspace on a Compsoc server.

Base charge for a cable is 40p plus 20p per metre. So,

Very reasonably priced, and a lot cheaper than a certain reptilian sounding shop near costcutters.

The shell account on our server Molotov is free, and comes with 20MB of storage and is accessible from the url: http://.uwcs.co.uk . Extra quota is only &£2.50 for an extra 500MB, far cheaper than any hosting provider you’re likely to find. The server is on campus so uploading to it from the residential network/campus machines will be at LAN speeds. More information about our Web Hosting here: http://www.uwcs.co.uk/services/hosting/member