University of Limerick Computer Society

The University of Limerick Computer Society is a student-run society under the governance of the University of Limerick Students' Union.

The Society's governance structure leaves the system administrators free to administer the machines, as the early admins feared the election by popular vote of an inexperienced president would create difficulties in keeping the servers operational. It is this separation that causes the common confusion over the name of the Society. University of Limerick Computer Society is the official name and encompasses both the social/events side of the Society and the computing resources. Skynet refers only to the computing resources. However, Skynet is commonly used in place of the official name.

Skynet currently consists of 300+ active members and offers services such as webspace, E-mail access and IRC access. Users have a shared storage Capacity of up to 2 Gigabytes.

Skynet also offers Web space (1 Gigabyte) and mailing list access to other Clubs and Societies at no cost.

History
The University of Limerick Computer Society, in its most recent incarnation, arose from the decision of student John Quinn to install Linux on his computer, beginning between 1992 and 1994, and give access to other students. These students were from both computing and non-computing disciplines. The University of Limerick Information Technology Department (ITD) were requested to allow the computer access to the Internet to allow Quinn's computer, named after the Skynet computer network from the Terminator films, to run services such as webserving. This exposed the users to new technologies such as the Apache HTTP Server. Many of these students went on to form the Irish Linux Users Group [http://www.linux.ie (ILUG)].

When it became clear that a strategy would be required for when Quinn graduated (taking his computer with him), the Students Union was approached to re-register the dormant Computer Society. Funding obtained from the Students Union assisted in procuring replacement equipment and in running tutorials for new members.

For a number of years the equipment migrated between student bedrooms and donated space in college labs. One infamous incident occurred when an administrator issued a "shutdown" command to the main server but did not specify a "restart". The problem was the only way to restart it was to unlock the room of the student where the server actually resided, a student who was nowhere to be found. Thankfully he did show up eventually and the server returned to service. With the completion of the Student Centre, the Society's equipment now has a (more or less) permanent home in the UL Students' Union building.

The Computer Society now owns several machines operating in various roles, many of them donated over the years by the University and by private companies. Recently, improved funding has allowed the purchase of new equipment to ensure the stability of Skynet.

Activities
In recent years the society has obtained sufficient funding and interest to host and partake in several social activities. These have included trips (both domestic and foreign), talks, events, and the convention SkyCon.

Trips

Boston 2006
Those attending were Cian Davis, Colm Quinn, Conal Watterson, Daniel Heffernan, Daniel Nagle, David Dolphin, Gareth Eason, Ivan Kelly, Laura Czajkowski and Stephen Shirley. All activities of the trip to Boston, including visits to MIT, Harvard and the Boston Museum of Science have been extensively chronicled on .

Talks
Talks in the past have been given by such people as Google, Intel, HEAnet and Alan Cox.

Events

SkyLan
A Lan Party organised by Cian Davis, Colm Quinn, Daniel Nagle and Stephen Shirley. took place in UL between the 10th and 11th of December 2005. Games played included Quake 4, Battlefield 2, Dawn of War, Unreal Tournament 2004 and Counter-Strike: Source.

Wavehunt
is a high-tech manhunt using a moving wireless computer network on the streets of Dublin, Ireland. The Event is hosted by DCUs Networking Society . In 2005 David Dolphin entered the Competition and .

SkyCon

, which took place from February 16, 2007 to February 18, 2007 at the University of Limerick, was the Computer Society's first major conference, dealing with many fields of computing. The event, organized to celebrate the Society's 15th birthday, was sponsored by Red Hat, , Bank of Ireland and the University of Limerick Arts and Sports Fund.[http://www.limerickpost.ie/dailynews.elive?id7617&categoryDaily-Mon] Speakers included Alan Cox, , , , , Gavin Moore - Oracle, HEAnet, Jono Bacon, , , Martin Krafft, [https://launchpad.net/~mjg59 Matthew Garrett], Matthew Revell, , , Microsoft, , , , , Simon Phipps - Sun Microsystems, Stuart Langridge, and Val Henson.

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