Dear %Field:Title% %LastName%,

Happy New Year and best wishes for 2007 from BCS Oxfordshire Branch.
We do hope you will be able to join us for our January lecture on the ever topical subject of viruses and malware. No need to register - just turn up.

Our January speaker, Stuart Taylor, is ideally placed to give us the very latest information on the subject.

As manager of SophosLabsTM UK, Stuart is at the forefront of the fight against about 5,000 new threats a month.

To handle these threats and proactively lead the fight against viruses, spyware, spam and phishing, SophosLabs has grown from a few people in the UK to a 24 x 7 x 365 operation over 3 continents.

Stuart will describe the rapid rise and changing nature of threats to IT security.
He will also discuss the various issues which businesses face in protecting themselves, and the reality of providing a rapid response against unknown threats.

Sophos, one of the world's leading threat management companies, has its global HQ in Abingdon.

Please check the branch website for the latest on parking.

The 9th Annual Turing Lecture on at 6:30pm on 25 January, at the IET in Savoy Place, London WC2R 0BL, should be a real treat.
The speaker is Grady Booch, recognised internationally for his innovative work on software architecture, software engineering, and modelling.

With the London venue all but sold out, you can still take part in the lecture in real time or watch it later on IET.tv. A link will be available at http://www.theiet.org/events/turing/.

Dr Andrew Simpson, Director of Studies for the Software Engineering Programme at Oxford University, will start with an overview of the activities of the group.

In recent years these have included climateprediction.net, CancerGrid, Integrative Biology, and e-DiaMoND.
The main topic of his talk is the current DTI-funded GIMI (Generic Infrastructure for Medical Informatics) project which is developing software to allow secure and ethical aggregation of data whose uses will include support for patients suffering from long-term conditions such as diabetes and asthma.

January 2007: this letter is being sent to all schools in the county to remind them to sign up for this year's competition if they want to have a chance of winning a prize.
See the link for details.

Want to know more about this newsletter? There's an article on the branch wiki.

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If so, reply to this email and let us know. If there's a demand, we'll start up a list of text-only subscribers for the next issue.