At Saturday Dec 5th 2009 we received the confirmation for a booth at the FOSDEM 2010 6-7 Feb 2010, Brussels Belgium. (FOSDEM Event Organisation)
and at Tuesday 15th, 2009 we also received the confirmation for a booth at the CEBIT 2010. CAcert get this sponsored booth from the Linux New Media (Cebit Open Source) (CEBIT Event Organisation)
In the last few weeks, our one Support Engineer (Werner, working mostly alone) has processed 65 support requests, 40 in the last week. Each case generates 5 mails. At the moment, the SE works with an absence of system, on a clunky silly mailing list, so there is no workflow assistance available to him. He has to remember each of those cases over the days-cycle time, and relate them to all the other emails.
Errors are inevitable. I’ve so far seen and counted 3 errors or blunders. Which means we’re talking around a 5% error rate. That’s to be expected when building a new system, working with fresh people, with minimal historical help, and working through a flood of a backlog with crappy technical support and poor information. Also known as, drowning.
(Obviously, in time, we want to reduce that to around 1-2%. When I did my 5-10 cases a month back, I generated at least one error. I’m not good enough for Support, I’m up in the 10-20% range.)
You can help us by pointing out the errors, directly, and suggesting what it is you would rather have seen. Positive suggestions are always appreciated.
The Triage team — Wolfgang, Martin, Michael, Joost — have to this point worked through outstanding emails back to July this year. See the attached for a picture of today’s Inbox. *Yes, it’s more or less empty!* They got there last night, and have reached the target I set them, to get back to July.
That means a human has processed every one of approximately one thousand support emails received over the last 5 months. There’s probably dozens of errors in their processing, but that misses the point.
In the next month or so, some or all of the Triage people above will get through their ABCs and become SEs or Support Engineers. At that point Werner will have help. At that point, we’ll be able to improve our systems. And, we’ll need more Triage people!
You can help us by signing up to Triage. Let me know if you fit the profile: Assurer, great with mail / MUA, etc, time to handle lots of little, quick tasks, good with English reading (other languages an advantage), and you grok the community (CCA, DRP and you want to know more about Security Policy but were always afraid to ask…). IRC.
We need people outside the European evening slot…
iang,
interim, temporary, impatient Support t/l,
looking for any excuse to get sacked!
CAcert Assurer Training Event Göteborg
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Much has happened during the past year. A list of up till now mostly “orally transmitted” rules have been cast in policies. New procedures (e.g. the Assurer Challenge) and obligations (e.g. in the CAcert Community Agreement) have been decided. The Assurer Training Events try to bring all this informations to “the people”:
– To what, does the CCA protect every CAcert-Community-Member and as such also you?
– Can you recount the 5 statements of the “Purpose of Assurance”?
– Can you at least recount 10 security marks of the Swedish passport?
Answers to these and following questions are given at the Assurer Training Events (ATE’s).
Participation in the events is free, Contributions are however appreciated.
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CAcert ist auf dem diesjährigen Brandenburger Linux-Infotag (BLIT) am 21. November 2009 vertreten.
Dr. Thomas Bremer wird einen Vortrag zum Thema “Freie Zertifikate für Schulen und Hochschulen” halten und ebenfalls Informationen zur Verwendung von Zertifikaten geben. Dem Vortrag könnt ihr im Hörsaal 3 von ca 14:00 – 15:00 Uhr beiwohnen.
Der BLIT findet in Potsdam (Griebnitzsee) im Haus 6 des Instituts für Informatik der Universität Potsdam statt.
Für die Anfahrt mit dem öffentlichen Nahverkehr bietet sich die S-Bahn Linie 7 an, alternativ verkehrt die Regionalbahn mit der Linie RB 21.
Solltet ihr mit dem Auto anreisen, so sucht in eurem Navi – sofern vorhanden, die “Prof. Dr. Helmert Straße” in 14482 Potsdam. Eine Wegbeschreibung sowie weitere Informationen zur Anfahrt findet ihr auf der Seite des Brandenburger Linux-Infotages unter BLIT – Anfahrt.
Weitere Informationen zum BLIT findet ihr unter:
http://www.blit.org/2009/
(EN)
Please note, that all thawte points tansfers must be started before 16th november 2009. After this date we can´t check your status at thawte.
If you have 0 points at CAcert, you get can up to 150 pts.
Please click here for details: http://wiki.cacert.org/ThawteNotary
Interface for thawte transfer:
https://tverify.cacert.org
If you need help, you can also write to our mailinglists – details:
https://lists.cacert.org/wws/arc/cacert-support (EN)
https://lists.cacert.org/wws/arc/cacert-support (DE)
https://lists.cacert.org/wws/arc/cacert-es (ES)
https://lists.cacert.org/wws/arc/cacert-br (BR)
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(DE)
Bitte beachtet, dass ein Transfer der Punkte aus dem Thawte WoT nur noch bis zum 16. November 2009 möglich ist. Wir haben danach keine Möglichkeit mehr, eure Daten zu verifizieren und können daher keine Punkte mehr transferieren.
Wenn ihr aktuell 0 Punkte bei CAcert auf dem Konto habt, so könnt ihr dies über den Transfer auf bis zu 150 Punkte aufstocken.
Für Details einfach hier klicken: http://wiki.cacert.org/ThawteNotary
Das Interface für den Transfer findet ihr unter:
https://tverify.cacert.org
Wenn ihr Hilfe benötigt, so könnt ihr uns auch über die Mailinglisten kontaktieren:
https://lists.cacert.org/wws/arc/cacert-support (Englisch)
https://lists.cacert.org/wws/arc/cacert-de (Deutsch)
https://lists.cacert.org/wws/arc/cacert-es (Spanisch)
https://lists.cacert.org/wws/arc/cacert-br ((brasilianisches) Portugiesisch)
Thawte’s Web Of Trust is to be Terminated by 16th November
Therefore the board is planning to run the Tverify program until that time, then terminate it completely (as the information will no longer be available).
Then, members who have come in via Tverify will have a year to get assured by other means. This includes members who have obtained points from Tverify in the past.
Tverify is now operating under the authority of board motion m20090928.1 and under the Assurance Policy. This latter means no issues of points over 50, and the earlier includes some restrictions.
However, note that all Tverify points (including ones previously obtained), will be deleted late 2010, so it is best to get assured by CAcert assurers anyway. If you can reach a few of them it may be easier all round if you do that instead of using the Tverify process.
See http://wiki.cacert.org/ThawteNotary for more details. (Disclaimer: that wiki page is not an official statement of the committee)
For the committee of management (board) of CAcert Incorporated,
Nicholas E. Bebout
President
CAcert Incorporated
The CAcert-Blog is now fully X509 enabled.
From never visited the site before and using a named certificate you can, with one click (log in), register for the site and have author status ready to write your own contribution.
If you only have a WoT unnamed certificate you can write your article and it will be spam controlled by the PR people (aka editors).
If you had a contributor account and haven’t posted anything yet you have been downgraded to a subscriber (no comment or write a post access) with all the other spammers. The good news is once you log in with a certificate you get upgraded to the correct status just as if you’d registered.
There is no password authentication any more. The time taken to make sure both behaved reliably was not possible in the time the admins had available.
Please ignore the big blog upgrade notice – we are using Debian security maintained packages and don’t need a WordPress upgrade.
So get to it – write something interesting.
[Edits thanks to Henrik Heigl]
CAcert wird auf der 1. IT & Business Messe Stuttgart vom 6. bis 8. Oktober 2009 mit einem Demo Point Neue Messe Stuttgart (Flughafen), Halle/Stand: 1H12-3 im Themenpark “Open Source Business Solutions” vertreten sein.
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On Oct 29, 2009 the NLUUG will keep its Fall Conference – The Open Web.
One of the speakers, Henk Klöpping, will mention CAcert in his talk The Shameless Plug.
As it is custom CAcert wil have a boot there.
If you want to help and have successfully passed the Assurer Challenge pleace add your name on the list at the CAcert wiki.