Federation Starship USS Augusta Ada NCC-55011

she dreams of the future...

The U.S.S. Augusta Ada meets monthly!

Normal Meeting Time: Fourth Saturdays at 1 pm, all afternoon.
Location: Round Table Pizza (Richmond District)
3567 Geary Blvd   San Francisco, CA 94118   415-387-5054

Open Hailing Frequencies. On our mailing list, we discuss news of space and other sciences, as well as computing matters and occasional "Treknese in everyday life" reports.

In order to join the list, you must be spoken for by a member of the crew. This is easy to get; it's simply a deflector shield against the space dust that surrounds most MX arrays. If you have discovered us by a chance web link, simply describe where you found us, and tell us something about your interest in Star Trek, free software, and yourself. Most new members have met one of the crew at a local social event, such as one of the Linux events on BALE, one of the BSD events on BABE, or a local science fiction fannish gathering (perhaps Grand Central Starport).

	Captain:  Heather Stern	Executive Officer: Ken Parker

Rules of the list

Minimum Data Required

• One (1) working Hailing Frequency. This must be email if you want to join the Main List.
• What city you are in. This helps us plan carpools and ride sharing.
• What you want to be called.
• Your interest in Star Trek and our group.

Additional Data Requested

• Your name.
• If you have a preference, what department you would like to join.
• Additional contact information usable to get ahold of you in case your preferred communication fails.
• Anything you wish to say about your interest in computing.
• If you are a Starfleet International member, your SCC number for our records. We encourage as many members as can afford it, to join SFI and increase our visible crew size.

Hailing Frequencies

Email addresses, phone numbers, or sufficient details to make chat style contact under normal circumstances. An answering machine is ok (but getting no response doesn't update when we last saw you). We care about privacy and try not to publish these details in any public place, but the data will be shared by at minimum the Captain, Executive Officer, and Comp Ops.

The Announce List

... is not an email list. It is a paper or electronic note with Hailing Frequencies so Comp Ops can call you when the meeting is approaching, or if an Away Mission is being planned, to find out if you will be attending.

The Main List

... refers to our primary mail list "trek" at the ship's domain, trek.starshine.org. Membership is by active request only. Your request is read by someone in Ops (probably Heather), and you are subscribed by us. Our Captain, Dave Benfell, maintains a backup instance of the list in case of network outages. If you joined by some means that didn't already get you the netiquette notes below, you'll be sent a note about the nature of the list. Comp Ops will send a welcome message to the Main List about you, which you should also see now that you're aboard.
 
We have other lists for special purposes at times. To learn of them, you must be on the Main List.

lurkers

Yes, you can join the list, and not talk - hopefully you'll find it fun anyway. We support and encourage "lurkers" but hate to waste bandwidth. Leaving the list can happen by the following means:

• You request to be unsubscribed. (You might ask to be called with announces, though).
• Your mail starts bouncing. We know that ISPs sometimes suffer outages or floods, or that quotas get full, so we attempt to make out of band contact if we can. If we can't contact you within a week or two and it doesn't self correct, or the account appears to be permanently closed it will be dropped. You'll be put back on right away if you come to the next meeting.
• Nobody has heard from you for a long while (months) and you're not a Starfleet member. Starfleet members can stay lurkers as long as they continue to answer a direct hail during list cleanup phases.
• The membership of the list as a whole wants you ousted. This hasn't happened yet, but you don't want to be the first.

Acceptable conduct

• Please consider local netiquette:
  • Commercial mail gets fed to the tribble (see below).
  • We're science fiction fans and free software fans with helpful hearts (but not a lot of spare time). If it wouldn't be of interest to such people in general, it might not be suitable for our list. It is also okay to discuss what's going on in your life, but discussing it with a "treknese" feel to it amuses and brings it on topic.
  • Any FYI notes you feel like forwarding, please tell us what you think of them yourself, and trim the note to the relevant details. (Do mention where it came from, though.) URLs to more complete articles are good.
  • Remember IDIC: Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations. We are all different, but our difference combined make us interesting people and allow us to learn new things.
  • If what you're posting is likely to cause controversy, please investigate whether it is rumor, opinion, scientific studies in progress, apparently facts, or a hoax. Don't post hoaxes; otherwise, knowing the status of your tricorder readings up front will help set the tone properly for the discussion.
• Respond to the Roster Calls for upcoming meetings. We like to know who can make it or not. Let us know if you need a ride or special directions; someone in the crew can probably help.
• Last but not least: the point here is to have fun.

How much mail is this going to be?

Well, we're a small ship as yet, and not everybody is active on the mail list. Mail gets bursty around the week before the Fourth Saturday, as the XO or Captain post the agenda and people start chiming in. Particularly juicy notes might start a conversation going too, but the mail is not in the hundreds by any means, and on any given day, you might actually get nothing. So most people would consider that pretty low traffic.

Announce list calls are made as often as Roster Calls are made on the main list. You may request to be called more frequently to keep up on ship matters, if you have no email address and want to stay involved this way, but such calls are limited by the free time available to Comp Ops.

Still interested?

Good! Send email to Comp Ops (Ancilla Allsman) and describe your interest in the club. We look forward to seeing you at meetings in upcoming months, if you can make it. And it's always handy if you find us interesting enough to join Starfleet too.

Interested in Star Trek but not this software stuff?

No problem. Not all of us are nearly techie enough to scare everybody; the usual mail traffic is mildly techie, but not heavily and we'd be glad to help run the Universal Translator. Still, if it's just not for you, we can connect you up with other ships in our Starfleet region, or (maybe) other fannish groups in the area, that might suit you better.

Interested in Free and Open Source Software, but not this 24th century "trekkie" stuff?

No problem. You're welcome to attend our meetings anyway -- nobody makes you dress up for this. But you might want to seek other User Groups in the area. BALE is a Bay Area Linux Events listing, and there are also BSD events listed there.

(Sigh. We OPT OUT. Do not send us junkmail. We're hardly worth your while anyway - we have no latinum, gold-pressed or otherwise.)

We have aboard the vessel, a tribble who is a veteran of the Station Incident. While she recovered from the poisoned quadrotriticale, she can't split. She also doesn't purr much anymore, though (logically enough) a Vulcan can often improve her mood. She can, however, eat spam, a process which at least makes her fat and cheers everyone else up a bit. Spam about how to spam, and banner ad offers, makes her burp.

To get added to our antispam filters (eventually...) contact the tribble@trek.starshine.org.

Gold pips stay onsite Gold half-pips lead off-site, to crew maintained pages Silver pips lead off-site Silver half-pips title local content   Trouble with this page, or any comments: Contact Comp Ops. Location in Subspace: http://trek.starshine.org/ Hosted at: Starshine Technical Services

Copyrights and/or Trademarks
Star Trek and numerous references to persons or things within its universe are trademark or copyright of Viacom/Paramount.
Linux is trademark of Linus Torvalds.
The BSD daemon is copyright 1988 Marshall Kirk McKusick, All Rights Reserved.
Tux the Penguin was drawn by Larry Ewing using the GIMP.
Of these and possibly other marks or items under copyright, no infringement is intended; only fun and fair use.