2018 06 Accessibility

Posted on 11 June 2018 by Marc

Location:  First United Church, 16 William St W, Waterloo, ON N2L 1J3 (enter from church back parking lot door, follow the signs to the “Chapel” —  https://osm.org/go/ZXna93PBA)

Date: Monday, June 11, 2018
Time: 7:00-9:00PM

Is your Non-Profit organization accessible? Can your website contents be read by a text-to-speech synthesizer? By a Braille reader? With a screen magnifier? Without Javascript? In a text-only browser? Does it pass the WAVE Web Accessibility Tool validator? Does your podcast have a text transcription? Is your video described? What other accessibility tools does a SysAdmin need to manage? What legal requirements for accessibility are there?

Join other Kitchener-Waterloo Non-Profit System Administrators for examples, demonstrations and our usual round-table discussion, and perhaps a guest presentation! Everyone is welcome, you don’t have to be a Non-Profit System Administrator to attend.

–Bob Jonkman & Marc Paré

Resources

Meeting Notes

Introductions
  • Everyone introduced themselves
    • Marc Paré says LibreOffice group is happening; there is money to hold a hackfest
    • Also planning a campaign for LibreOffice, not much awareness in North America
    • LO has maybe 160 million users
AODA
  • Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act
  • 2/3 way into the mandate
    • But not even 1/3 of the way there
    • McGuinty govt in 1999 claimed that we would be fully accessible by 2025
    • But not enough attention or funding supplied
    • Only recourse is Human Rights claims
  • Applies to
    • Customer service (people providing cust serv must have dignity, independence, integration, &c.)
    • Information and Communications (eg. web sites)
    • Transportation (eg. transit)
      • TTC is under fire for transgressions
  • Many accessibility features are put in place that don’t provide accessibility (eg. new door requires automatic opener, but still has a step up and no ramp)
  • These are “minimum” standards,
    • eg. Elections Ontario required polling stations to exceed minimum standards, recognizing that the standards aren’t adequate
    • Will these standards improve by 2025, or will these inadequacies continue to exist.
Discussion
  • The initial AODA standards were applied to government regulated organizations
    • eg. banks were amongst the first employers to apply accessibility standards
    • But the problem is that disabilities were self-declared, and so
    • Some disabilities do not require accommodation, so some people may have been hired in preference to some people that did require accommodation (cheaper to provide minimal accommodation). But the stats show that an equal number of people with disabilities were accommodated, no matter how slight or severe.
  • “People aren’t against being accessible, they’re against the cost of being accessible.”
  • eg. accessible restaurant with accessible washroom, but no way to get from restaurant to washroom.
    • Some buildings cannot be modified to have elevators
    • Buildings with historical or heritage designation are exempt
  • Some standards apply to the customers of the establishment, not the employees or employers (might be individual accommodation for employee)
    • this is why internal websites don’t have to be accessible
  • Government should be giving us tools to test websites
    • There are 109 tools listed on https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/
    • It should be easier to make an accessible website without Javascript
      • But it is possible to make an entirely inaccessible website without Javascript
  • Javascript reduces the load on the server, by performing data validation on entry, rather than on submission
    • Javascript is an opensource library
      • But there are many proprietary libraries that aren’t accessible, and many opensource libraries that are modified making them inaccessible
    • How many coders can be hired to write accessible code? Cheaper to use a Javascript library than hire coders or buy servers
  • A website has four layers of functionality, the first needs to be present before the second, &c.
    • Content, semantics, layout & presentation, behaviour
    • Javascript implements website behaviour, but sometimes is used to generate content (making the page inaccessible)
  • Javascript makes response faster, but sometimes inaccessible
    • People don’t want to wait for form completion (eg. loan approvals), or error responses
    • Complex websites can have many different parts,
    • The counterpart, many websites load so many libraries that it takes too long to load.
      • “Lazy loading” makes content available only when the page scrolls there
        • eg. the new CBC website (unusable on older browsers or slower computers)
  • LibreOffice has very few accessibility programmers, nobody wants to work on accessiblity issues
    • So can LO be used in an environment where accessibility is required?
  • The Assistive Devices Program only allows refresh of assistive devices once every five years
    • 5 year old technology doesn’t work with slick, dynamic websites
    • Only covers 75% of the cost for the minimum device, anything fancier than minimum needs to be fully paid for
  • Is there funding to become compliant with AODA? Needs to be done within 7 years (2025)
    • Some funding for private homes (but only the front door, even if the side door is more practical)
    • Don’t know if funding is available for technology
  • People who need accommodation tend to be lower income, and the good jobs are not available to those who need more accommodation than others.
  • Worried about the new provincial government; will the dream of a fully accessible Ontario be realized by 2025? Probably not.
  • Are there fines? Only through human rights complaints. There is no “accessibility police” to quickly levy a fine.
    • Human Rights can require compliance, but there may not be much adherence.
    • At the start (2000?) there were ethical organizations that made themselves compliant; now, not so much.
    • Some organizations/businesses rent their facilities, so who is responsible for accessibility? Owner or renter?
  • Wheelchair users and Self-serve gas stations: AODA compliance says you can call 24hrs in advance to have someone pump your gas.
    • That may be compliant, but it’s not practical
  • For tech sites, will it be like GDPR? (General Data Protection Regulation (European Union))
    • Will sites go out of business rather than become compliant with AODA?
    • Will all sites have a popup disclaimer saying they’re compliant?
    • How about other international sites? Maybe having international laws will force Ontario to be accessible faster than the AODA
    • There needs to be some international framework to standardize
      • AODA may have come from a UN standard
    • British Columbia is far more accessible (through advocacy from Rick Hansen)
  • As people age into disability, there will be more pressure to achieve accessibility
  • The pressure right now is to make services cheap;
    • Pressure to get products out before the competition means that accessibility corners are cut, possibly in violation of standards and laws
  • Universal design principles
    • Visitability for physical access isn’t enough, but it’s a step in the right direction.
    • There is a market for accessible homes, higher resale value for accessible homes
    • But there is no resale market for digital properties
      • But there is value in EPUB books, because the standards allow portability and derivative works; more likely to be useful in future version of the text
      • Sometimes there is just convenience in adding some accessibility, but accessibility is not an end goal
Sample sites
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2018 05 Productivity Tools

Posted on 14 May 2018 by Marc

Location: “Parlour Room”, First United Church, 16 William St W, Waterloo, ON N2L 1J3 (enter from church back parking lot door, follow the signs — https://osm.org/go/ZXna93PBA)

Date: Monday, May 14, 2018
Time: 7:00-9:00PM

How do SysAdmins get any work done? What software makes your life better? Which tools do you use every day? How do you use common utilities? What custom configurations do you have? Is there an application specific to your Non-Profit organization? Have you written a script to make work easier? What’s your favourite productivity tool?

In concert with other NetSquared groups across the globe we’re going to share tips and tricks with each other. Bring your laptop, notebook, tablet or phone, and take five minutes to show and tell us one thing — anything at all!

–Marc Paré & Bob Jonkman

Meeting Notes

Panel discussion with attending KWNPSA members making reference to some of their most used productivity tools

  • Google Drive and GMail
    • discussion of the merits of the use of Google Drive in a working non-profit group
      • organization’s GDrive is organized is group agreed-to folder hierarchy
      • documents are worked on in a collaborative format where members may work simultaneously on documents or alternatively
      • there are questions as to the efficacy of this format, where the usual format is that of having one person in charge of the document write-up while others send in their edits for discussion/debate or in a meeting setting
      • there is talk of varied results where some members have found the collaborative method as resulting in time-savings all-round with good results, while others have found it preferable to maintain file integrity without the use of collaborative tools but rather edits through correspondence with the main editor of the document
  • search options
    • discussion of the use of the “search” option ensued from a robust talk of file organization
    • for some, the organization of files in a sensible structure is paramount to organizations’ electronic data (email or other data) integrity. The ease of finding information is dramatically increased if organizational skill-sets from employees/volunteers is reinforced through on-the-job training with regards to file structure/nomenclature
    • for others, some note the recent emergence of powerful “search” engines/utilities that negate the need to organize files in a systematic/sensible structure. For example, one large “received mail” without any type of indexing may be easily tapped by the use of most email software search utilities. The same may be said for files on a hardrive that follows no real structural index and where all is stored on the disc. Most searches will now return quick and accurate results.
    • discussions also centered on the need to instruct/teach/inform newly engaged employees/volunteers on the organization’s prescribed file storage nomenclature. However, it is also noted that, despite all good intentions of informing employees of file structure, some develop their own structure that may not marry well into the company file structure organization.
  • cygwin [1]
    • set of Unix tools for Windows
    • still actively maintained and used for decades
    • good set of packages
    • well used by sys admins
  • MKS Toolkit [2]
    • originally built for DOS boxes
    • more Unix for Dos
    • is now maintained by PTC with latest version being released in 2017
    • not as elegant as cygwin
  • Canva [3]
    • design site for misc. projects, presentation, banners etc.
    • free for non-profits — 1 team of up to 10 persons
    • widely used by non-profits and for-profits alike
    • style is recognizable to those who are familiar with Canva, however not so much with people unfamiliar with the Canva templates/styles
  • Nirsoft.net [4]
    • set of utility soft., scripts
    • all stored on site
  • virustotal.com [5]
    • good to check files
    • checks agains its signature database
    • owned by Google
  • Screen and Tmux — terminal multiplexer apps
    • virtual terminal
    • terminal tabs
    • hold different terminal sessions at the same time
    • similar to Konsole (KDE) tabs, although the sessions are kept live when changing from one workstation to the next
    • does not survive a server re-boot
  • powershells
    • task automation and configuration management infrastructure for Windows
    • all used at the command prompt, Windows and Linux
    • powershell scripts are collected from various locations on the web
    • can use multiple powershells alongside each other
  • command prompt
    • still considered most useful and time-saving approach to work at command prompt
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2018 04 Dark Web Hidden Services

Posted on 16 April 2018 by Marc

Location: Upper Boardroom, First United Church, 16 William St W, Waterloo, ON N2L 1J3 (enter from church back parking lot door, upper boardroom is next to the entrance to the church sanctuary, upstairs https://osm.org/go/ZXna93PBA)
Date: Monday, April 16, 2018
Time: 7:00-9:00PM

What is the Dark Web? Is it full of bad guys? What are Hidden Services? Aren’t those illegal? Why would a Non-Profit organization want to use the Dark Web? Why should a Non-Profit organization make their online services available as Hidden Services? What software can we use to access the Dark Web and create Hidden Services?

We’ll have a demonstration of Tor (https://www.torproject.org/) and I2P (https://geti2p.net/en/), and have a round-table discussion of the benefits and pitfalls of using them.

–Bob Jonkman & Marc Paré

Resources

Meeting Notes

  • In attendance were 14 members out of 39 signed up for the meeting.
  • Laurel video recorded session for Bob
  • Most people at the meeting are also Meetup members
  • The intent was to present both Tor as well as I2P, however, the Tor demonstration and background information took longer than expected. There will be a follow-up meeting covering I2P in August 2018.

Tor Browser – getting down and dirty with Tor – the basics

  • Bob’s Tor slideshow presentation will be made available on KWNPSA Wiki site (coming soon)
  • this presentation of the Tor browser is aimed to admins who would consider the use of Tor beneficial to their organization and members
  • Tor still needs mode of authentification
  • best practices — use Tor as is from the official Tor website and keep it updated, Avoid any use of pre-modified Tor clients from any other sites.
  • Tor is basically a hardened version of Firefox
  • DO NOT USE BitTorrent (any client) inside of the Tor browser as the BitTorrent identifies IP addresses
    • BitTorrent does not work well on Tor
    • Q/ Can you use ghosting? A/ Not sure, but if tunnelling, will reveal your ghosting IP address but bittorent will still show data
  • Tor tends to be slow and laggy
  • The use of Tor may harm your reputation if you are found to use Tor with certain ISP’s! Your IP may become exposed/found out if you make use of the wrong exit node. Some ISP’s or sites may may try to ban you from any future connection, or, worse case scenario, In certain cases, there may be possibility of having your own ISP blacklisted by using Tor.
      • Using Tor may raise suspicion by legit sites, where they may wonder why the use of Tor is needed to visit their site (What do you have to hide?)
    • if you make use of some poorly chosen Tor exit nodes, they may be connected/linked to other nefarious sites.
    • Tekksavvy is good at providing Tor exit nodes, most ISP’s are not relatively warm to the idea of the use of Tor
  • see slides re: Tor failure modes
    • note that CAPTCHA is hardened and will reveal your identity
  • The concept behind the Tor browser was initially conceived by the US defence project

Question (members) & Answer (Bob)

  • Why make use of a good and legit exit node? — Helps protect your identity and also helps harden Tor for its use in countries where rights abuse is pervasive.
  • Is Tor easy to configure? — Tor is easy to misconfigure.
  • How active is Tor’s development? — Patches are constant and often.
  • Tor breach? — If in jurisdiction where Tor is monitored, some nefarious entry nodes could be made available through Tor traffic and may make that entry node vulnerable. German nodes (entry and exit) are popular.
  • Is there encryption node-to-node? — Tor is onion routed and encrypted multiple times … see slide “How Tor Works: 2”
    • The nodes (onion peels) are known only by certain devices, but not all in the nodal chains.
  • How many node layers are there? — You may configure Tor to use as many layers as you need but 3 layers are really all you need as more layers add to latency. With the arrival of Quantum decryption, it may become easier to decrypt the Tor nodal routes, but hopefully there will be an equivalent Quantum solution for an updated Tor browser.
  • 80% of net is encrypted (https) — However that is only for 1 layer; under Tor, layers are more numerous. Under https, we still see some list of certificate authorities that are unusual (Turkey, Tawain Telephone Service etc.), there are still some bogus certificates. The use of Tor makes it more difficult for bogus authorities to have any influence over your browsing.
  • Do we know the number of compromised exit nodes? The number of compromised exit nodes are still unknown but research on such is being done, some research, for example, is being doen at UW.
  • Can an exit node be a relay node? — Yes. however it is not recommended to run an exit node, running a relay node is most likely safe enough.
  • is it possible to set up your exit node but only for individuals that you wish to use that particular exit node? — Not sure. Member suggests that you could possibly use a pre-configured Tor rc file. But you would have to carry the exit node detail on some physical device and be possibly stopped at borders. Bob usually recommends using off-the-shelf hardware bought in destination country to avoid being stopped at the border.
  • Can blockchain technology be used for Tor? — Not sure.
  • How many Tor devs? — Tor is developed by many, some at institutions such as universities.
  • What is the adoption rate? — Not really sure, however, making use of VPN’s is popular, Tor could also be configured to do the same; therefore Tor is seeing much more takeup in some business models.
  • Does it work on cellphones? — ORBOT, but it is extremely slow compared to Tor
  • Can we use it with VPN? — Yes, a little more complexity is involved, but yes they do work well together.
  • Are there frequent improvements and updates of the project? — Yes, There are hopes that perhaps streaming will work well later, but browsing websites is still a little painful.

Tor installation

  • Download from site is easy
  • Do not change the default settings, even screen size may be tracked.
    • to add a server, must add a few line to the Tor .rc file “torrc”

Round-table discussion

  • What would you use this for?
  • Use for human rights organizations, to communicate with members or view pertinent websites that are blocked in certain countries.
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2018-03 File Formats

Posted on 12 March 2018 by Marc

Location: Upper Boardroom, First United Church, 16 William St W, Waterloo, ON N2L 1J3 (enter from church parking lot door, upper boardroom is next to the entrance to the church sanctuary, upstairs https://osm.org/go/ZXna93PBA)
Date: Monday, March 12, 2018
Time: 7:00-9:00PM

What file formats do your documents, images, spreadsheets use? Can you exchange your files with people using Macs? Linux? VMS? Will your documents survive an upgrade of your application software? Can you switch to another word processor? Image editor? Spreadsheet app? Can you still read the files from backups created years ago with different software? Can you choose the file format your application uses?

In the month of Document Freedom Day (http://www.documentfreedom.org/about) we’ll look at the importance of open, well-known file formats, and compare it to closed, proprietary formats that are so prevalent today.

–Marc Paré & Bob Jonkman

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2018-02 Corporate Surveillance

Posted on 12 February 2018 by Marc

Location: Upper Boardroom, First United Church, 16 William St W, Waterloo, ON N2L 1J3 (enter from parking lot door, upper boardroom is next to the entrance to the church sanctuary, upstairs https://osm.org/go/ZXna93PBA)

Date: Monday, February 12, 2018
Time: 7:00-9:00PM

How do we keep our workplaces secure? Does your organization use cameras? Does it filter web content? Check for document exfiltration? Inspect e-mail? Monitor keystrokes? Is this sneaky, underhanded spying, or merely good business practice? What are the ethics of corporate surveillance for System Administrators?

Join Kitchener-Waterloo Non-Profit System Administrators at our monthly round table meeting for a technical, philosophical and moral discussion.

–Bob Jonkman & Marc Paré

Resources

Office Audit and Control Management Server | TechSoup Canada

Meeting Notes

Notes taken by Bob Jonkman

What is Corporate Surveillance
  • Most corporate management is meant to ensure computers aren’t altered, no viruses are introduced
    • Bob has worked in a place that checks all outbound e-mail for keywords, looking for data exfiltration.
    • Some exfiltration data is monitored for employees’ protection, also video camera footage, so if theft occurs employees are not falsely accused
    • Some places archive e-mail for several months
      • Data retention required for legislative purposes, but can be used for forensics and surveillance
  • Is employee monitoring legal? Yes, employees sign contracts allowing this to take place, and that all data belongs to the corporation
    • Including “shower ideas”, that are developed outside of company time
  • Some places allow “reasonable use” of telephone, internet.
Ethics
  • Do employees even know they’re being monitored?
    • There may be pop-up messages indicating that USB-drives are inserted, &c.
    • Sometimes you see evidence of SysAdmins taking remote control
  • But would you still want to work in a place like that?
    • Very stressful to work in a place like that.
    • Washroom breaks being logged!!
    • Creepy for those being surveilled
    • Maybe employees need a guaranteed that the data will not be retained, and is secure from data theft
    • Need a union to protect the employees
      • Even when it’s obvious that data on the computer is being logged and monitored
      • Is that common sense?
    • Some SysAdmins do not want to do forensics against their co-workers
      • Or even SysAdmins doing forensics against managers
      • Refusal to perform surveillance against co-workers can result in dismissal
      • Sometimes the stuff unearthed is disturbing (pornography? worse?)
  • We can all make reasonable arguments in favour of surveillance
    • But big companies have shown time and time again that they can’t be trusted with the data
    • And we can’t opt out
    • Data correlation can identify individuals in millions of records based on only three data points
  • Definitely unethical to sell my data collected through browsing
    • But it’s OK if one company shows their products based on data they’ve collected previously
Internet Surveillance

Internet Surveillance Companies (ISC) provide services at no cost to the user, but their business model is based on selling those users’ data

  • Google is providing a service that predicts your “needs and wants” based on analysis of big data
    • Selling it advertisers, insurance agencies, potential employers
      • “Minority Report”, “Thoughtcrime”
  • The “free services” are monetized by the sale of personal data
    • Most people don’t know how much, how detailed it is
  • You’re constantly being given things you want to see, you want to hear
    • But it’s nothing that grates you, nothing that you don’t want to see
    • So your online experience is shaped in a pleasant way,
    • For someone who wants something different, the experience is not in that model
      • It’s more insidious — you’re being tempted to have greater desires

Your desires are being shaped, not reflected by the collection of big data– Steve Izma

“5 things about TV” (get actual title from Steve Izma)

  • Subliminal advertising, designed to hit your subconscious
    • Outlawed on TV
  • There is similarity between what anti-spam laws prohibit and what ISC are doing
  • Reddit: Kids know that laws are weaker in US, consider Canada more favourable for keeping privacy
  • As a SysAdmin, if you collect data on employees, what stops ISC from gathering that data?
    • try to safeguard your employees, your company, your employers.
    • Not just stealing stored data, but data from streaming services (search, video, forums)
    • Google acts like an independent nation
    • Needs legislation; corporations will kill people for profit if not prevented by law
  • Internet Surveillance Companies give us what we want, but are they reshaping our values?
    • Culture is important, will surveillance companies change your culture?
    • People rooted in culture are more difficult to move
    • We need legislation to preserve culture; we can trust our politicians to look out for us (???)
  • (Side conversation on government subsidising Canadian culture)
    • Good: Preserves our culture
    • Bad: The good culture just moves offshore, only the mediocre Canadian stuff stays behind
      • Some producers will create anything just to attract grant money
      • Canadian funded productions are made to look like American productions; no cultural benefit to Canadians
  • Canadians need to support Canadian businesses
    • If Blackberry had been a US company, would they have been successful?
    • Lots of loyalty — Microsoft failed in the mobile market
    • Nortel failed not because they were Canadian, but because they made poor choices
  • 19yr old believes Canada has a better grip on surveillance legislation
    • He gets a wider point of view, not just from one source
  • Regulations?
    • Canada has lots of regulations to keep data private
      • PIPEDA (Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act)
      • MFIPPA (Ontario’s Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act)
      • PHIPA (Ontario’s Personal Health Information Protection Act)
    • In the US much data privacy data is pushed by FBI; Canada’s equivalent is RCMP
      • Is the funding and capability in Canada equivalent? (10% tax base of US)
      • “Five Eyes”, mutual spying on each other
  • Bell has a proposal to throttle and turn off sites they find offensive
    • Done through an “independent body”; keep our content we’ve paid for out of pirates’ hands
    • Who will monitor the Canadian web? The CRTC? Who enforces the regulations?
    • Yet another attempt by Big Media to provide services in the old model
  • Blackberry’s encryption may be good, but they’ve still compromised themselves for large markets
Protection
  • How can we protect ourselves?
    • Don’t use the main services like Google (use SearchX) or Twitter (use GNUsocial or Mastodon)
    • Use proxy services like Tor and I2P (the Dark Web)
    • Use VPN services (but how can you trust the VPN provider?)
    • Trying to do black-box analysis of “protection” sites may be hazaradous
  • As bad as our loss of privacy is, other countries have their entire access blocked (and surveilled)
  • Corporate profits always take priority over ethics
    • Not a sustainable model in many cases
    • Staff is hired to find loopholes in contracts to maximize profits
    • Corporations that go out of business are cannibalized to create new markets, improve
    • Venture Capitalists will also undermine ethics
    • Tim Wu, “The Master Switch”, on how corporations shape the legislation that controls them, and how independent service providers get displaced by monopolies
  • Privately held companies (and non-profits) can still uphold their ethics

Future topics

  • Fallout from data breaches Equifax, Yahoo
    • How do these companies work? “reputation management companies”
    • Do these companies operate?
      • You can get your own data from them, legally mandated
      • There are Meta-access services that get info from all services
Posted in Corporate Surveillance, Past Meetings | Leave a comment

2018-01 Fundraising

Posted on 15 January 2018 by Marc

Location: Upper Boardroom, First United Church, 16 William St W, Waterloo, ON N2L 1J3 (enter from parking lot door, upper boardroom is next to the entrance to the church sanctuary, upstairs https://osm.org/go/ZXna93PBA)
Date: Monday, January 15, 2018
Time: 7:00-9:00 PM

From our discussion on Monetization we learned about software for fundraising. Does your organization need to raise funds? What tools are available? Desktop applications? Cloud solutions? Outsourced? Does your fundraising software integrate with your other financial software? Will it provide reminders? Follow-ups? Is it automated?

Join Non-Profit System Administrators from Waterloo Region for the first round table discussion of the new year. Everyone is welcome, you don’t need to be a professional SysAdmin to join us.

–Marc Paré & Bob Jonkman

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KWNPSA Social Night, 6pm Mon 18 Dec 2017 at Abe Erb in Kitchener

Posted on 18 December 2017 by BobJonkman
Abe Erb entrance

Abe Erb, Kitchener

Hi everyone! As Non-Profit System Administrators, we get to take off Monday, 18 December 2017 for good behaviour! Instead of having a meeting talking about technical things we’re having a social night to celebrate the holiday season. I’m sure we’ll talk tech, but the purpose of the evening is to eat satisfyingly good food, drink refreshingly good beverages, and have an amazingly good time.

Everyone is invited! Bring your spouses, partners, POSSLQs, friends, co-workers, and anyone else you’d like to socialize with! You don’t have to be a professional SysAdmin at a Non-Profit to be social!

What: KWNPSA Social Night
When: Monday, 18 December 2017 from 6:00pm to 9:00pm (or later)
Where: Abe Erb Restaurant and Brewery
Location: 151 Charles Street West, Kitchener, Ontario Map
Meetup: Social Night | NetSquared Kitchener/Waterloo

Note that we’re starting an hour earlier than ususal (at 6:00pm), in order to optimize the amount of socializing we can fit in. But get there when you get there, there’s no deadline.

If you can, register at Meetup.com; if you can’t, then just show up anyway.

Hope to see you there!

–Marc Paré & Bob Jonkman

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2017-11 Document Storage

Posted on 13 November 2017 by Marc

Location: Queen Street Commons Cafe, 43 Queen Street South, Kitchener, Ontario Map
Date: Monday, November 13, 2017
Time: 7:00-9:00PM

How do you store your documents? Where do you store them? What software creates your documents? What software stores it? What software retrieves it? What about document indexing and searching? How do you deal with non-textual documents? What document file format do you use? Is parchment and goose-quill still best?

This month there’ll be a shooting match between the Well-Known Format SysAdmins and the OpenStandards SysAdmins. But it’ll be a polite shooting match at our round table discussion, with SysAdmins relating their own practices, learning new ones, and telling tall tales.

–Bob Jonkman & Marc Paré

Future Venues

  • Communitech has indicated we can no longer use the Jellybean Room on Mondays
    • but the room is available on Wednesdays
      • but it’s only available until 8:00pm
      • do we want to switch meeting days?
    • Marc will check if there’s any availability on Mondays
      • but the cost will probably be higher ($15/hr now)
  • Other possible venues:
    • Old school board building (Marc has contacts, will investigate)
    • Downtown Community Centre Map
      • but they require all KWNPSA attendees to purchase memberships at $15/year
      • Paul Nijjar investigated for KWLUG; it was deemed unsuitable for a non-profit group
      • Bob’s notes indicate there are also meeting room fees, insurance costs, and participants under 18 years old are not allowed.
    • Descendants Beer & Beverage Co. apparently has meeting facilities. Kirk will investigate. Map

Meeting Notes

Cloud Storage
  • Microsoft Office 365
    • Lots of KWNPSA members use Office 365
    • Default installation moves documents to US servers
    • Microsoft will move documents to Canadian servers on request
      • but this may take up to seven years
    • Microsoft OneDrive was automatically installed at one organization
    • Business version of Skype can’t be turned off, once it’s installed!
      • It is difficult to use Business Skype with non-business instances of Skype
      • But there is finally a good GNU/Linux client for Skype, works with multiple video streams
  • Google G Suite (Google Docs)
    • Used by political organizations
      • This seems like a bad idea; want to keep political affiliations and activity away from prying eyes
    • Google Drive storage
      • Some SysAdmins have seen identical filenames in folders
        • Perhaps the User Interface hides extensions or filename suffixes
      • Maybe Google Drive uses links or pointers?
        • People move files, but they still exist in orginal locations
        • Google Mail uses flat storage of all messages, tags on each message are displayed in UI as though it is a folder structure
  • Cloud horror stories:
    • Company advertising genetic testing services stored data in the cloud
      • then sold people’s personal genetic data to a pharmaceutical or insurance company
    • Genealogy company acquired data stored “freely available” from individuals’ web sites
      • Now sells this data, and it is not available to the original authors
      • Suggestion: “Poison the well” by creating a “Fake Uncle Ralph” to prove authorship (see Wikipedia:Trap street)
  • Security risks
    • Commercial cloud providers will hand over customer data to authorities
      • National Security Letters — Cloud providers may be compelled to keep this data access from their customers
    • Ensure you have a contract with a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that specifies where servers are stored (Canada? US?), how data is routed
      • Even if source and destination are both in Canada, traffic may still be routed through US and subject to snooping; Canadian data has no protection when routed through US
    • Technical means: Source Routing can specify how a packet is sent through the network (Internet)
Encrypted File Storage
  • Use VPNs to keep remote sites within your own network
  • Encrypted tunnels, eg. Secure Shell (sshfs)
  • Encrypted file systems
    • eg. Nextcloud, ownCloud
    • Must ensure that encrypted file system is not mounted on remote, unsecured server
  • Encrypted containers
  • For any corporate encryption, Additional Decryption Keys are needed
    • Any user-encrypted files or containers can be decrypted by the organization’s ADK; ensures data is not lost when user forgets password or leaves the organization
  • Office 365 encryption
    • The culture for Microsoft products is less concerned with encryption (poor adoption of encrypted technologies?)
  • Encrypted Backups?
    • For backups in the cloud, or on local storage
    • Encrypted backups can become un-restorable with minor errors
      • Bob recommends making unencrypted backups, then saving them in an encrypted container; even better to keep unencrypted backups physically secure
Sharing Files
  • File permissions
    • Staff doesn’t know how to use filesystem permissions, makes all files globally read/writeable
  • Use a Document Management System to assign authorization to documents
    • Access control with a DMS can be more finely tuned
    • DMS also provides benefits such as metadata and search/indexing
    • but it needs the skills of a librarian to properly catalogue documents
    • and a DMS adds another layer of abstraction; more work for the SysAdmin, more to go wrong
  • Physical file systems (file cabinets, folders) were treated better by staff than digital file systems
  • Using Roaming Profiles for shared file access
    • SysAdmin can force desktop computers to put “My Documents”, “My Pictures” &c. on the server for shared and secure storage
      • Doesn’t work for Windows’ “My Desktop”; that folder appears to have special privileges, but we don’t know how
      • Can “My Desktop” or “My Documents” be made read-only to force staff to use server storage? Doubtful
    • Thin clients don’t store data locally
    • Use the Browser Local Storage? (please, no)
    • “Libraries” feature in Windows can combine several folders (from different sources) into one
  • Commercial applications for managing roaming profiles: Micro Focus ZENworks (formerly NAL, Novell Application Launcer); Intel LANdesk Manager, Computer Associates
  • Staff gets easily confused with shared filesystems
    • Folder tree changes, filename and foldername changes
Storing Binary Files
  • Music Files, photos, video, CAD drawings, &c.
  • Using Google Drive is not efficient for binary files, better to keep on local (non-cloud) storage
    • Post-production for music can’t be done online
  • Cloud services need cloud-based client software to manage binary files
    • Google Docs does not have a good music client to manage music file for an orchestra
    • But Google Docs has good photo apps
USB Sticks or Thumbdrives
  • How to prevent the use of USB drives?
    • Physically hotglue the USB ports on organizations’ computers
    • Pop up a warning to the user when USB device is inserted
    • Lock the computer when a USB device is inserted
  • Worried about “Parking Lot USBs” (USB drives found in the parking lot, may contain malicious payload)
    • Physical attacks through high-voltage discharges (see https://usbkill.com/ )
    • The only protection against physical attacks is physical protection

Future Topics

  • Document Management: There are specialized software tools to manage your documents, provide version control, allow staff to checkout documents for exclusive access, and to provide indexing and search tools. What do you use?
  • Encryption How do encrypted file systems work? Demonstration/Workshop on creating encrypted file containers.
  • Microsoft Evening (do they still provide sponsorship? Marc will check with Eli)

 

Posted in Document Storage, Past Meetings | Leave a comment

2017-10 Markup Languages and Note Taking

Posted on 16 October 2017 by Marc

Location: Communitech Jelly Bean Room 1st Floor, 151 Charles Street West, Kitchener, ON (Look for the building with the Communitech, Google, and Desire To Learn logos, enter at the glass doors.)
Date: Monday, October 16, 2017
Time: 7:00-9:00PM

Event Announcement: https://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/243068343/

How do you take notes? What software exists for note taking? What markup language is best for taking notes? Are your notes available on your phone or tablet? How do you synchronize them? How do you publish your notes online? When is it better to use a Note Taking application rather than a proper Word Processor?

This month we invite all the devotees of MarkDown, WikiText, MoinMoin and LaTeX to contribute to the discussion at our round table.

–Marc Paré & Bob Jonkman

  • Markup Languages and Note Taking/Meeting Notes 2017-10-16

Resources

Note-taking applications
Markup Languages
Markup Editors

On creating a standard Markup Language:

Meeting Notes

Practices
  • Bob edits notes directly into MediaWiki (but only at KWNPSA)
    • Has tried Sticky Notes, Xpad, not suitable
    • mounts website locally, edits with his text editor, saves directly to website
    • Writes notes in notebook, transcribes to wiki, then copies generated HTML source to destination website
  • Steve’s practice is to separate content from form
    • Create content first, but in a way that it’s easy to add formatting stuff later on
      • WordProcessing doesn’t do that, tries to do them both
      • WP tries to be an operating system
      • On all principles, WP are bad
      • But LibreOffice tries to fix that, its internal format is not proprietary
      • Valuable for
    • When writing, be concerned primarily with content, secondarily with syntax, format
      • Can always add typographical content (the markup) afterwards
    • eg. Wordcount isn’t really needed, can’t do it accurately by examining marked-up text
    • Steve uses his own markup, similar to Markdown, related to groff
      • Only worries about paragraph breaks and lists, maybe section headers
      • Does not want ML to interpret line breaks, unless there’s two in a row
      • Always works in Linux, so LF only
    • Steve uses AWK script to render text,
      • But how to apply markup to a previous line?
    • Uses VIMperator in Firefox to edit online content
  • Kirk managed documentation in SGML using James Clark’s DSSSL processor called “Jade” to generate RTF, TeX, PDF(?)
    • DSSSL == Wikipedia:Document Style Semantics and Specification Language
    • James Clark also wrote groff, modelled on SoftQuad troff
    • Schema for SGML was DocBook
    • None of which gave the results, so he used
    • DocBook in XML
    • Kirk wrote a stylesheet in XSLT to turn DocBook into XML for LibreOffice
      • “compiled” documentation, literally using “make”
    • XML provides rigid consistency, important to typographers
    • Also created WinHelp files with DSSSL
      • Also tried to create TeX files
    • The important part is that a single source document created multiple output file formats
  • Nick
    • Taking notes for school,
      • OneNote can be handy, good for finding notes and subcategories
    • Adapting different note taking for different purposes, even sticky notes
    • Different apps are suitable to different purposes
    • Short term is good with StickyNotes or Xpad
      • Version of StickyNotes with Win10 is colourizable
    • November is NaNoWriMo month,
      • Use OneNote is nice because it organizes a lot of notes, eg research, character development
      • But not for the actual manuscript, use a WP for that
    • There’s a StickyNotes app for Android: Search F-Droid for “Sticky Notes”
    • Different situatation: Academic, professional, hobby — all have different requirements, different needs
    • How to do the website?
      • Not his website, done on webs.com
      • Needed to directly edit HTML in webs.com, no feature to FTP content
      • The webs.com HTML viewer is not so great, uses his browser to download source, converts to PDF for a rough idea, then copy’n’paste back into the site
    • Notepad++ has nice indenting
    • Nick’s site is largely static, but needs to update meeting events
      • Gets content from HTML e-mail, imports to Word, saves as HTML, then massages by hand (Word generates very verbose HTML)
      • this is a pretty common technique with other SysAdmins
  • Raymond
    • Casual note taking (temporary), eg library cards
      • Needs to do it on the cellphone
      • Notetaker on iPhone
      • Google Keep on Android —
        • Has checklists! Good feature!
        • Google Notebook was good, no longer exists
      • Uses computer to enter content for reading on cell phone
    • For serious notetaking
      • Started with text files, but that’s a problem, eg. need diagrams, searching
      • Searchable is a top requirement
      • Offline use is important
        • Bob has horror story: taking notes at KWNPSA directly into wiki, closed laptop, needed to recover document from browser cache
      • Organization is important,
      • Re-ordering, re-sorting
    • Javascript, programming
    • Using Evernote for a long time
      • Has a limit on the traffic, now restricted to two devices (annoying with Macbook, cell phone, office desktop)
      • Can search, even text in pictures.
      • Free (as in gratis)
      • Crossplatform
      • Evernote and StickyNote can synchronize!
    • Tried OneNote years ago, didn’t work well
      • Formatting or search ability wasn’t good enough
  • Mojtaba is not a heavy note taker
    • Tried OneNote
    • gedit and vim on the desktop
    • Google Notes on the phone
    • Plain text!
    • Does programming with vim
      • just search through directories with egrep
General Musings
  • Raymond has used Atom.io competitor Sublime Text
  • Mojtaba has used vundle (package manager for vim)
  • People using online apps to synchronize between devices
  • OneNote does not have an import/export function
    • Raymond can set up a channel ifttt (If This Then That)
    • But OneNote is too proprietary to get stuff out (export)
  • Steve: Organize stuff in a file system to make it easy to find
    • Doc files in one subdir, PDF in another, then create a “logfile” to locate stuff
    • Keep notes organized by project, more concerned with content
Tech stuff
  • How is a “schema” different from the ML?
    • SGML and XML are serialization formats, taking data and turning it into one long stream of characters
    • DocBook and DITA are schemas that specify the allowable data elements eg, a DTD in HTML or SGML
    • XSLTProc using DocBook stylesheets to render HTML
  • LaTeX is a superset for Tex
    • Much more structured
    • But easier to use
    • And probably faster to describe things like formulas
    • groff is pretty much the same syntax for marking up math
    • Every computer science and math student needs to know TeX
    • Built-in font is “Computer Modern”
      • But there are commands to change to any other font for better legibility
    • Donald Knuth wrote “metafont” to create fonts, TeX to do page layout
    • Tex is primarily layout and presentation, LaTeX adds semantics
      • Steve gives a brief overview of LaTeX document structure, logical and strict
  • In typesetting
    • Authors are just concerned about appearance
    • Typesetters want more document structure
    • groff is a typesetting language
    • runoff for running online printers in the 1960s
    • Bell Labs operating system created to generate output
      • “We’ll write you a typesetting language”, just need an OS so they created Unix
      • troff was the result “typeset and runoff”
        • Author died suddenly, Brian Kernighan needed to reverse-engineer the code, rewrote in C
      • SoftQuad got rights to the troff code, developed it before “SGML handbook”, HoTMetaL
        • Tied to Coach House Press
  • Reminiscing about the old days when you could still talk to people in charge of major industries
    • Phototypesetting: Steve gives a brief history
  • Mindmapping tools
    • Freeplane:
      • Lots of features
      • Non-linear editing
      • decorate with icons
      • Lua scripting language
    • Freemind is another
      • Both Java applications, for platform independence?
      • Mindmanager is a commercial version for Windows
    • Similar to WP outlining feature
      • But you need to scroll up and down to find things
  • Spectrum of file formats
    • From binary data with human read-only output
    • to readable input formats
    • eg. JSON format is not a good human-readable language
    • eg. YAML is for machine readable, not human
    • XML is not as human-readable as Markdown either
    • Markdown is an incomplete language, can’t deal with some formatting issues
      • Lists are a problem (but there is the pipe character
    • Makes sense for XML to be more strict
      • Machine needs to read the DOM
  • Sometimes meaning of document structure disappears for human readers when a stylesheet is applied that alters appearance
  • Typographic needs a structure like XML
    • Can contain markup content that is not rendered, but gives typographic instructions
      • eg. command to kern a paragraph
    • Steve uses attributes as non-content typographic instructions
    • If you need to pass structural data use XML
    • Markup languages can target either humans or machines
    • The more complicated the document structure, the more you need a non-human-readable format like XML
  • Books with indices lend themselves to XML
    • also bibliographies, very strict for punctuation and capitalization
    • Steve can apply scripts to a document to apply structure, strip out what the author has done
      • Generate Tables fo Content from marked up content, don’t cut’n’paste
      • DRY – Don’t Repeat Yourself
  • What is the format that uses separate lines for markup, eg.
Heading
=======

Subheading
----------
Requirements
  • SGML and HTML and XML aren’t meant for writing, but for semantic meaning
    • More of an interchange format
    • Editors need to be for getting content into the editor quickly
    • Choose an editor or Markup Language for “pretty”, how it appears
    • or choose an editor/ML for semantic meaning

Future topics

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2017-09 Project Management

Posted on 18 September 2017 by Marc

What is Project Management? How do SysAdmins provide support to Project Managers? What kind of projects directly affect SysAdmins? Do Non-Profit SysAdmins manage projects? What tools are available for project management? What server-based software exists for project management? Who provides outsourced project management? What standards exist for project management? What certification?

Let’s bring together SysAdmins and Project Managers to discuss the state of the art. As always, we’ll have round table discussion to ask questions, provide expertise, and share stories of past experiences.

–Bob Jonkman & Marc Paré

  • Project Management/Meeting Notes 2017-09-18

Resources

Project Management | Techsoup Canada

The Project Management Association of Canada

Canada’s Technology Triangle Chapter | PMI | Project Management Institute

Wikipedia:Project Management

(unrelated) https://www.adminadminpodcast.co.uk/

These guys talk about being an IT administrator, whether that's a local
desktop engineer, a cloud-native specialist deploying to cloud hosting
platforms running Linux, or an enterprise Windows admin...

Meeting Notes

  • Sponsorships
    • We like NetSquared and TechSoup, but don’t want the KWNPSA direction dictated by the sponsors
    • Stickers were distributed!
  • NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month – good tie-in with Document Storage
    • Discussing backups and formatting and document semantics
  • File Formats — tie-in with Document Freedom Day in March
  • Introductions – SysAdmins, Typesetters, Software Testers, Software Developers, Teachers
    • Not a single Project Manager, but all these projects!
What is Project Management?
  • What is a project?
    • Has a start and deadline, must have a goal, and measure of success
    • Certain kinds of reports, eg. financial statistics, not part of the normal booking routine, eg. grant proposal, eg. special audit
    • Contrast with regular operations, which may still have a continuous improvement goal
  • Always implies collaboration, eg. a book
  • Tasks of project management
    • Eliminate redundancies
    • Optimizing the whole project, costs, resources,
    • Set constraints and scope of the project
    • Scheduling
    • Distributing the responsibilities of labour and resources
SysAdmin role in Project Management
  • Sometimes SysAdmin is the Project Manager
  • Some projects start internally, others are imposed externally
    • Server upgrades, reports and time estimates for operations
  • Small companies may not have large project teams, people wear many hats
  • Sometimes no diff between PM, Team Leader, Department Head
    • Who are the “boots on the ground”?
    • Again, communication flows are important, making sure it happens smootly.
    • Avoid animosity by keeping communications open. There’s not software for that
    • Even software like Slack doesn’t achieve this, needs people-to-people communication. Needs change, software doesn’t keep up.
  • Time estimates are horrible to figure out in IT
    • Need buffer time,
    • SysAdmin will have a good idea of time needed to perform tasks.
Software
  • Manual techniques like sticky notes and whiteboards
    • Gets transferred to software
    • Requires stakeholders in a meeting, maybe video conference, not asynchronous tools like e-mail
      • But getting contributions in a live meeting may be tough. After the meeting people finally got involved by sending e-mail
      • Keeping the tone collegial is everyone’s task, but bridge-building is definitely a skill for PMs
  • Concurrence: Multiple people may need to access (Read/Write) the project data
    • Is concurrence necessarily the best data management practice?
      • We had vigorous discussion on the merits of document concurrency
        • Good for managing sub-tasks, not good for overall project coherence
    • Lose focus of the project with too many simultaneous changes
  • Software licencing can be onerous — cost of software, seat licenses, and audits
Specific apps
  • Symantec Timeline circa 1998.
  • Microsoft Project
  • Project Libre
    • Open Source has XML data format, anyone can read the data without having the software
Project Management Standards and Certification
Stories
  • Management dictates timelines, despite project management best practices
  • Management dictates “buy from the lowest bidder”, not based on project requirements
  • Management dictates “Put the dev stuff into production”, not following proper dev-test-prod protocols
  • There is a gap for project managers that have one foot in the software dev world and another foot in the communications field
    • PMs spend a lot of time speaking to both developers and management
    • Need to teach better communication skills to developers to speak to Management
      • although Management may not have the communications skills to listen to developers
  • Discussion on the “Mythical Man Month”, the book of project management gotchas
    • Skunkworks may be more efficient and effective than following the full Project Management procedures
Posted in Past Meetings, Project Management | Leave a comment