Slashdot Mirror

doormat writes "The Las Vegas monorail is finally set to open to the public on July 15th! The project has had some problems - it was originally scheduled to open in March. The first part of the monorail, which uses Bombardier M-VI train vehicles, 'a derivative of the famous Walt Disney World Mark VI trains', is 4 miles long and connects several casinos on the east side of the Las Vegas Strip (see map, QT video), as well as the Las Vegas Convention Center (Home to CES, NAB, Networld+Interop and what was Comdex). Future phases seek to expand the monorail to downtown to the North, the west side of the strip, and eventually the University and the airport (which the taxicab and limo groups fight tooth and nail). I swear it's the strip's only choice... throw up your hands and raise your voice! Monorail, Monorail, Monorail! Mono... D'oh!"

trifster asks: "At this year's Comdex I purchased a Buslink USB 2.0 Cardbus adapter for my laptop. It was a good price and a partial impulse purchase, however it was defective out of the box. Before Christmas 2003, I set it back via Buslink's RMA process. It will be 2 months tomorrow, and I have not received my replacement nor have the 3 phone calls or 4 emails been addressed. What can one consumer do when he is on the East Coast and his hardware is held hostage on the West Coast? What have your experiences been in resolving these support SNAFUs?"

An anonymous reader writes "There is a nice presentation on the L.A.S. Linux site entitled "Managing Data Center Functions with Open Source Tools" which was presented at Comdex 2003. It covers everything from IPtables to OpenNMS. As well as covering some less known but nice tools like NeDi, which lets you easily manage Cisco routers and swiches from a web browser."

Slashback brings you updates tonight on Diebold's attempts to bring undisclosed-source, unauditable black-box voting to a ballot box near you, John Carmack's search for (rocket-fuel, not hair) peroxide, AT&T's (withdrawn) request for its customers' mail server addresses, open source goings on at Comdex, and more -- read on for the details.

Diebold Election Systems Round 2 in MD zznate writes "Looks like Diebold is not going to get off the hook so easily in Maryland after all. For anyone local, feel free to contact delegates Hixson or Hollinger to express your support. Perhaps they could even receive a copy or two (or fifty ;-) of the documents listed here."

Diebold is having an easier time at Swarthmore. yoshi_mon writes "Previously reported on /. was the Swarthmore Students Effort to keep the Diebold leaked memo's online. However that effort has been quashed by one Dean Bob Gross. To quote the dean, "We can?t get out in front in this fight against Diebold." BlackBoxVoting.com reports that '[Swarthmore College] is not willing to take a strong stand against Diebold, and is systematically disabling the network access of any student who hosts the files.'"

AT&T says Ha, just kidding! An anonymous reader writes "In an update to an earlier Slashdot article, Telco giant AT&T rushed to withdraw two notices sent to business partners and customers asking for the IP addresses of all outbound SMTP servers because of a 'human error' gaffe."

All this and cheap shrimp cocktail. blackbearnh writes "While the topic has been raised, I thought I'd mention a few other things going on at COMDEX Open-Source wise.

First off, the Open Source and Linux track has been expanded from a half-dozen sessions last year to nearly twenty this year. These will cover everything from the basics of Open Source (taught by folks like Ken Coar of Apache) to an intro to PHP led by Rasmus Lerdorf.

On the show floor, a massive 2500 sq foot Open Source Innovation Center will serve as the site for hourly talks by Open Source evangelists on business-related topics such as case studios proving the benefits of Open Source. There will also be a staffed "clinic" area where attendees can get advice on what Open Source technologies would work well in their business. There will also be install parties held at noon each day, where attendees can bring their laptops to get help installing MySQL or Debian. And lastly, a .ORG village inside the center will host representitives from more than a dozen prominent Open Source organizations, including OpenOffice and Mozilla.

Also, the COMDEX/ApacheCon exchange program continues this year. COMDEX members can get access to the ApacheCon expo floor and BOF sessions, while ApacheCon member can visit the COMDEX show floor and the Open Source keynotes. Shuttle service will link the two conventions.

James Turner
Co-Chair, Open Source, Fall 2003 COMDEX"

It's a crapshoot, eh. Dick Faze writes " Royal Bank of Canada is part of a $50 Million investment in SCO: Has our communist neighbor to the north finally flipped completely?" (We know Mr. Faze is being facetious, here ... don't we?) This is the same $50,000,000 investment deal in which some people suspected Microsoft's involvment.

Patent Office Cancels Swing Patent An anonymous reader writes "Remember the swing patent issued last year covering the method of swinging a swing? Well, the Patent Office must've taken offense at the amount of criticism it received over this patent. It initiated a reexam proceeding and after a year's worth of reexamination, they cancelled the patent on July 1, 2003."

But all the other patents are up to snuff, don't worry.

Carmack's Peroxide Troubles Over? Rob Jellinghaus writes "John Carmack's aerospace company has had problems getting enough concentrated 90% peroxide for their engines. So they have been working on mixed monoprop engines that would need only 50% peroxide, which would pretty much end their fuel troubles for good. They have had many failures, but they may have just succeeded. In his words: 'This is Very Good.'"

Remember, most of the world is still dial-up, at best. Anothermouse Cowered writes "It's a router, it's a firewall, it's a home gateway it's a... In another giant leap for the Open Source community, you can now hack on your own embedded Linux system for under $70. The source code for the ActionTEC Dual modem previously mentioned on Slashdot ('Hacking the Actiontec 56k Modem/Gateway') in September has now been released under the GPL. Downloads available here."

Slashback brings you updates tonight on Diebold's attempts to bring undisclosed-source, unauditable black-box voting to a ballot box near you, John Carmack's search for (rocket-fuel, not hair) peroxide, AT&T's (withdrawn) request for its customers' mail server addresses, open source goings on at Comdex, and more -- read on for the details.

Diebold Election Systems Round 2 in MD zznate writes "Looks like Diebold is not going to get off the hook so easily in Maryland after all. For anyone local, feel free to contact delegates Hixson or Hollinger to express your support. Perhaps they could even receive a copy or two (or fifty ;-) of the documents listed here."

Diebold is having an easier time at Swarthmore. yoshi_mon writes "Previously reported on /. was the Swarthmore Students Effort to keep the Diebold leaked memo's online. However that effort has been quashed by one Dean Bob Gross. To quote the dean, "We can?t get out in front in this fight against Diebold." BlackBoxVoting.com reports that '[Swarthmore College] is not willing to take a strong stand against Diebold, and is systematically disabling the network access of any student who hosts the files.'"

AT&T says Ha, just kidding! An anonymous reader writes "In an update to an earlier Slashdot article, Telco giant AT&T rushed to withdraw two notices sent to business partners and customers asking for the IP addresses of all outbound SMTP servers because of a 'human error' gaffe."

All this and cheap shrimp cocktail. blackbearnh writes "While the topic has been raised, I thought I'd mention a few other things going on at COMDEX Open-Source wise.

First off, the Open Source and Linux track has been expanded from a half-dozen sessions last year to nearly twenty this year. These will cover everything from the basics of Open Source (taught by folks like Ken Coar of Apache) to an intro to PHP led by Rasmus Lerdorf.

On the show floor, a massive 2500 sq foot Open Source Innovation Center will serve as the site for hourly talks by Open Source evangelists on business-related topics such as case studios proving the benefits of Open Source. There will also be a staffed "clinic" area where attendees can get advice on what Open Source technologies would work well in their business. There will also be install parties held at noon each day, where attendees can bring their laptops to get help installing MySQL or Debian. And lastly, a .ORG village inside the center will host representitives from more than a dozen prominent Open Source organizations, including OpenOffice and Mozilla.

Also, the COMDEX/ApacheCon exchange program continues this year. COMDEX members can get access to the ApacheCon expo floor and BOF sessions, while ApacheCon member can visit the COMDEX show floor and the Open Source keynotes. Shuttle service will link the two conventions.

James Turner
Co-Chair, Open Source, Fall 2003 COMDEX"

It's a crapshoot, eh. Dick Faze writes " Royal Bank of Canada is part of a $50 Million investment in SCO: Has our communist neighbor to the north finally flipped completely?" (We know Mr. Faze is being facetious, here ... don't we?) This is the same $50,000,000 investment deal in which some people suspected Microsoft's involvment.

Patent Office Cancels Swing Patent An anonymous reader writes "Remember the swing patent issued last year covering the method of swinging a swing? Well, the Patent Office must've taken offense at the amount of criticism it received over this patent. It initiated a reexam proceeding and after a year's worth of reexamination, they cancelled the patent on July 1, 2003."

But all the other patents are up to snuff, don't worry.

Carmack's Peroxide Troubles Over? Rob Jellinghaus writes "John Carmack's aerospace company has had problems getting enough concentrated 90% peroxide for their engines. So they have been working on mixed monoprop engines that would need only 50% peroxide, which would pretty much end their fuel troubles for good. They have had many failures, but they may have just succeeded. In his words: 'This is Very Good.'"

Remember, most of the world is still dial-up, at best. Anothermouse Cowered writes "It's a router, it's a firewall, it's a home gateway it's a... In another giant leap for the Open Source community, you can now hack on your own embedded Linux system for under $70. The source code for the ActionTEC Dual modem previously mentioned on Slashdot ('Hacking the Actiontec 56k Modem/Gateway') in September has now been released under the GPL. Downloads available here."

chromatic writes "O'Reilly & Associates is working with COMDEX to create an Open Source Innovation Area. We've nominated 21 important, interesting, and useful applications. Here's your chance to vote on the six most deserving applications. Steve Mallet has more details in his weblog." There's lots of good choices for applications on the list as well. Chances are that you've used one of them at least once.

XarsonX writes "Infoworld has an article talking about some of the changes coming to Comdex this year. Amongst other things, a $50 price tag for uninvited attendants, and less free gear handed out. Is it still possible to get enough free vendor-wear to fill your entire wardrobe?"

linuxwrangler writes "Key3Media Group Inc. which produces the Comdex trade show may be unable to make it's debt payments and could declare bankruptcy. No decision will be made until after Fall Comdex opening on Monday. More info is available at Google News."

Once a year, would-be cyborgs and their creators congregate for a few days of catching up with each other and the state of the art at the International Symposium on Wearable Computers's conference, sponsored by the IEEE and corporate sponsors like Microsoft and Compaq. Ever-lighter and more colorful head-mounted displays, innovative input devices and boundary-stretching ideas on human/machine interaction conspire to attract strange looks from startled pedestrians or frank admiration from fellow participants. When ISWC2000 began Monday in Atlanta. it marked the fourth such gathering -- the event has been held in San Francisco, Pittsburgh, and Cambridge, Mass. ISWC is about equal parts trade show, academic conference, and family reunion for a visibly different kind of family. Since ALS had ended just one day before, I stayed in the Peachtree state an extra few days to check it out. Read on to see what I found.

Excuse me, is that a StrongArm? A survey of the show floor reveals that wearable computing in the year 2000 is still a small, specialized field. Despite cyberpunk literature, Max Headroom, AT&T "You Will" commercials and cell-phones equipped with earbud mics to get us used to the idea, the cost and discomfort of wearing one's own computer still makes it anything but mainstream. Input devices are awkward, displays are expensive and for the most part too obtrusive for casual use. The interface discomfort is more than just physical, too -- it's semantic. Many of the computers demonstrated at ISWC 2000 will run the same applications as your desktop PC (since they're based on shrunken X86 hardware), but simply aren't built for it when it comes to interface. Typing a letter is still easier at a standard keyboard and a conventional monitor than with a forearm keyboard and a monochrome eyepiece, in part because "typing a letter" is something we're much comfortable with in another setting. The niche that wearables will fill is still being hewn -- by the people at ISWC, in fact.

Unlike Comdex, CES, or even Linux World, there are no hordes rushing the door seeking T-shirts and yo-yos. The attendees mostly seem focused on the technology at hand, and catching up with what their academic colleages or business competition are doing. As you might expect, that means improving battery life, devising and improving useful applications, tweaking both input and output devices to be more intuitive, and making the actual hardware of wearable computing more comfortable.

Three basic groups come to strut their stuff at this kind of event: Systems vendors, component manufacturers, and academics. In a field as technical and experimental as wearable computing, rigidly separating the three is difficult sometimes. Besides which, some of the companies which could be selling wearables are at present still circling the outskirts before entering the field outright (like IBM, whose Linux-equipped wristwatches were demonstrated to oohs and aahs, and Compaq, whose iPaq is belt-mountable and capable, but not a "wearable computer"), and some former industry bigwigs have returned to academia, like Steven Schwartz, who headed research for Xybernaut before migrating to his current position at the MIT Media Lab.

The few true systems vendors tend to be focused on industrial and government applications, the kind of roles that can justify the latest, most capable hardware even if pricey: that means their market is focused on high-margin sales and hardware which doesn't much see the shy side of $3,000, but which is polished and presentable with ergonomics, true wearability and niceties like voice recognition and wireless communication present and accounted for.

The component vendors, on the other hand, span a huge range -- everything from budget displays (like the $500 M1 from Tek Gear) to materials which could serve as the infrastructure for future wearable systems, like the high-tech fabrics developed by Bekaert -- Bekaert's Douglas Watson showed me spool of thread I assumed was some sort of fortified cotton, or perhaps silk, but which turned out to be stainless steel. "It turns out that steel ends up having many of the same characteristics and flexibility as cotton or polyesther, when you get to the same filament diameter, he said. And at a company called Foster-Miller, Senior Engineer of Materials Technology Brian Farrel showed off the items on a table display which included military-stength cloth straps through which are woven nearly any kind of data cable, from USB to fiber-optics, or in some cases electical power connections. Foster-Miller also had vests stuffed full of haptic sensors, developed as part of a program to help fight spatial disorientation among pilots. (A gentle nudge from one of the sensors helps orient pilots who may have briefly lost their true orientation.)

Companies specializing in nothing but display systems, like MicroOptical and Liteye wowed visitors with their latest displays as well. The most-worn displays among the wearable-equipped, though, seems to be the lightweight Micro-Optical.

And probably most important in the long term, there are academic groups -- research groups from CMU, Columbia, MIT, and GA Tech are all represented. Xybernaut and VIA may sell complete systems to industrial users and the military, but universities are still the biggest source of design ideas and basic research in everything from software to analysing the potential of wearable hardware to cause musculoskeletal distress. (More about academic types on Friday.)

Established players If you're looking to buy a wearable system outright (or have a few pitched to you), ISWC is one of the few opportunities to try on a range of devices and actually play with wearable computing outside of the design studios and graduate labs of elite universities, and without forking over thousands of dollars.

There are relatively few companies who've been around long enough or sold enough computers to call major players in the wearables market, but two old names in the young field are VIA and Xybernaut, both of which had booths on hand to demonstrate their latest machines and give hints about future models.

Xybernaut, perhaps the best recognized name among wearable manufacturers, demonstrated several variations on their XXXX. While it's hard to not call many of the devices around the floor "futuristic," Xybernaut's sleek machines practically define the term.

VIA (from high-tech Minnesota) showed their devices, too: their current model, the VIA II, is about the size of two very fat wallets, and flexes to allows the sides to fit comfortably against the body. Plans are also in the works for a model integrating a low-power 600Mhz chip and 128MB of RAM. (Now from where does that sound familiar?) The folks at VIA promise an announcement about that new model at Comdex, but there aren't that many lines to read between here.

Not-so-established players Tiqit, a commerical offshoot of work at Stanford's Wearable Computing Laboratory, demonstrated their "matchbook sized" machine (I say more like a pack of cigarettes), which they claim is the world's smallest complete x86 PC, and that it is shipping now. Unusual in that it relies on a 486 chip rather than the ARM, StrongARM and low-power 586s which seem to dominate the show, the Tiqt instead favors sheer tininess over computing power. It still has enough muscle to serve web pages, edit text, and do most of the functions that wearables are called on to do at present, with the exception of processor-intensive chores like speech recognition.

Another academic offshoot, this one from Georgia Tech's famed wearables program with Thad Starner is called Charmed Technologies (about which more in the second installment) -- but check out their site for plans free for your use to build your own wearable computer case, fitting standard PC104 board, before it gets slashdotted.

... but then I'd have to kill you.

John Murray, Director of Software Engineering for Pacific Consultants LLC, was showing off something a bit more exotic than even the other complete wearable systems: field-computers that PCLLC is building in limited quantities for the U.S. Army, having beaten out giants like Raytheon to build for the Army the ruggedized wearable system known as Land Warrior.

The system is built for abuse -- connections are all military-grade and waterproofed. This all comes at a weight cost that probably puts military-spec wearables off most people's list: around 16 pounds worth of electronics, batteries and cabling is joined by an external antenna the diameter of a gun barrel, a shoulder-mounted GPS receiver, a small flat-panel display and a full-color 640x480 prism display manufactured by NAME. The processing unit (a 166MHz Pentium processor on a PC104 board, mated to 800MB of flash disk and 64MB of RAM) is carried separately from the radio-spectrum communications module, which contains a standard 802.11 card.

Ron Hill, a retired Army Sergeant (first class), and now with the Omega Training Group, was in full camo dress and wearing the system. Murray pointed out that the cable connecting the wireless module to the CPU (worn around Hill's back) is actually a USB connection, finegled into military-style cable and connectors. Other than such specialized connections, though, the componenents themselves are fairly standard, just ruggedized.

If the weight wasn't enough to dissuade you, though, this might be: all told, Murray says the system costs ten to twelve thousand dollars per person. "But we're still early on. Those costs should drop considerably as we increase the numbers. That cost is with each system being built one at a time, and we're a small shop."

Right now, the system is running windows 2000; part of that was expediency, because we only had 9 months to develop the thing, and part of that was because the military wanted it to run with certain pre-existing pieces of software." Murray admitted interest in switching to a real-time OS such as QNX, or perhaps a Linux-based real-time system.

Try this on for size Not everyone fits into one of the neat categories of vendor or academic, though, and not all of the wearables at the show look like bladerunner props, either. Jonny Farringdon, Senior Scientist in Wearable Technologies at Philips' UK Research Laboratories, held forth in a booth festooned with heat-sensing bras, gloves which measure sexual arousal (well, galvanic skin conduction), and other oddities which might not seem odd for long. Specifically, two of the jackets on display at the booth went on sale this month in Europe as part of Levi's Industrial Clothing Division line.

"4 of the jackets [in that line] contain fully-integrated electronics," he says, pointing to a khaki parka, as he begins unfolding and peeling the velcro around a multitude of pockets and flaps to reveal the inventory of a small electronics store scattered through its folds, and headphones which snake through the fabric. "Microphone in the collar, GSM mobile phone, MP3 player, remote control. All hidden and discrete -- it looks like you're wearing a jacket."

He demonstrates the system integration built into the jacket/system with a sample phone call. "Let's say some one rings you up It knows, it switches the music off, it patches the phone call through the same headphones, you talk -- not into the collar, you just talk -- and when you're done, it hangs up and switches the music back on." And it works the other way, too. "If I want to make a call, I dial by saying your name, it looks at your number, connects the call, switches the music off. If the call is taking a long time to connect -- as GSM calls tend to do -- it plays me music in the background, then when the call connects it switches the music off. I can play you my MP3s through my phone."

Check back Friday for more on the academic aspects of the ISWC2000 in Take 2: Vested Interests.

One of the really cool things I saw at Comdex was a very cool MP3 Jukebox that Y2Brand was showing. The system allows for sharing throughout a network, but the other cool feature is that if you assign your box an IP, it shares with all other boxes that have IPs - kinda of a hardware Napster type thing. Expected ship date is 1/15/00 - click below to get some more details. Press Release from Y2MP#

Y2Brand announces they are accepting pre orders for Y2MP3, The Worlds first MP3 Community JukeBoX Server.

• The Y2MP3 JukeBoX MP3 server is a turnkey solution for groups that want to share their favorite music. Y2MP3 JukeBoX allows listeners to add their favorite music via a web page interface served from the Y2MP3 system. The web interface extends the system to allow songs to be added to a que, display latest additions to the database, or see the top 10 requested songs. Everything is administrated from a browser over the LAN.
  
  
• Sharing is a key feature of Y2MP3. For systems that have their own IP address, users will be able to turn on JukeBoX Sharing. Jukeboxes that have sharing enabled will be able to download music from all other Y2MP3 systems online, much like Napster or Mp3 Fury.
  
  
• Users with administration privileges can add and remove songs from the database, stop the current songs playback, and change volume via web page. Y2MP3 stores an amazing 100 CDs worth of music (average based on mp3s encoded 128 kbps, 44 kHz), all in a system that weighs only four pounds. An optional 10 GB second hard drive adds an additional 166 hours of playback for a nonstop weeks worth of music.
  
  
• Setting up Y2MP3 is a snap, simply plug audio out from Y2MP3 into a stereo or PA system, and plug a network cable into your LAN.
  
  
• For areas larger than an office, an optional low power FM transmitter turns Y2MP3 into a radio station! This "Internet radio station" turns the current model inside out, instead of just playing commercial radio stations on the Internet, now the Internet and the Y2MP3 server becomes an automated radio station with studio, record player, and interactive talk show host applications built in and automated. Users on the Internet can gather the content from people around the world, and then post it to the local radio server which then rebroadcasts that server content via radio to those people that are not connected to the Internet but do have radios.
  
  
• The Y2MP3 JukeBoX system is designed to be small and portable yet provide superior quality. It is also designed to be very easy to install and operate. With options the Y2MP3 JukeBoX gets mobile - take it with you on the road.
  
  
  
  Y2MP3 is Powered by Linux, Apache, & MySQL
  

Hardware: Base MP3 JukeboX (AMD K-6 266 MHz CPU, 32 MB RAM, 4.3 GB Hard Disk, Full Duplex Audio, Internal Speakers) AC Power Supply (battery option for UPS) PCMCIA Network Adapter

Options Include: NiMH Battery - Car adapter Removable 2nd 2.5" IDE hard drive up to 10GB (Provides an extra 166 hours of playback) FM transmitter Keyboard / mouse / video display Carrying case

Expected shipping date is 1-15-00

In this week's episode, we talk about tanning, the Microsoft trial, and many things we probably shouldn't. Many thanks to TheSync for hosting this for us. Also, if everything goes well, we should be broadcasting next week from COMDEX, which should be interesting, to say the least.

Doug Muth shares an "article in Wired News about the CTO of a company, Matrixcubed, who is being denied admission to Comdex - because he is 17 and you must be 18 to attend. This is really sad that Comdex is ignoring the realities of the IT industry like this." The profitable company was founded, by the now-17-year-old CTO, three years ago.

Update: 10/22 14:00 by michael : eswierk writes "After reading the Wired article about Mike Lavers being too young for Comdex, I immediately dashed off a email to Comdex imploring them to stop being a Big Dumb Corporation and admit the kid. Who knew I'd get a reply from the VP. I don't normally distribute personal email, but this seems like one worth repeating to those foaming at the mouth.

Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 08:56:40 -0400
From: Bill Sell
Subject: Re: Mike Lavers too young for Comdex

Ed, as far as I can tell, Mike never asked anyone in management about attending. This is a case of the Internet gone amok again with a fable and fiction, not fact. Too bad.

Bill Sell
Vice President & General Manager, COMDEX"

I'm not sure I see the foaming, however. According to the original Wired article, COMDEX was contacted and refused to make an exception for their policy, then refused to comment to Wired News. And of course, Sell still hasn't offered to actually let Lavers or any other under-agers attend. Where's the fiction, where's the fable? More than likely, COMDEX's insurance coverage is based upon only adults being present, and would be difficult to change at this late date, which is why they don't want to change their policy now; but that's no excuse for not having anticipated younger attendees in the first place, or for trying to spin it after the fact as an internet fable. COMDEX might do better to solve the problem instead of spinning it.

Dan Yocum wrote in to let us know what's going on with Linus and Fermi today. As the updates says below, the speech is not open to the public-click below for more information.

As you know, the talk is not open to the general public, otherwise I would have posted the info far and wide. This is at the request of the Comdex officials. It is only by their generosity that Linus and his family have been able to come to the Chicagoland area. They don't want people to go to the Fermi talk and skip his keynote at Comdex. This is a philosophy I must appreciate and respect. Therefore it is only for Fermi staff, family and friends.

For those of you who do not know, Linus' keynote is at 10:30 on Monday morning at Comdex, and is free to those who have registered (which is free if you do it via the net, see the Comdex Site for more details). There will also be a reception and LUG meetings which will be free later in the afternoon.

And as you all know there will be a CLC meeting on Tuesday at 5:30PM in room N133 at McCormick Place, which is open to everyone, i.e., no Comdex pass is necessary to attend. The CLC is the Chicago Linux Consortium and this is our first meeting.

Back to Linus at Fermilab: this remains to be a non-public talk, so don't think that just because you saw it on Slashdot, you're allowed to come to the talk.

I have talked to the AALUG members and Simon has talked to the CLUG people: the same information that was passed along to those people stands today.

Thank you for your support and consideration in this matter, and please re-post this message freely.

Dan "

The folks over at COMDEX have sent me a release, (click below to read it) regarding the pricing for LUGs at COMDEX/Linux Global Summit. Long story short: Cheaper. We like cheap. LINUX Global Summit at COMDEX/Spring & Windows World 99 Special Invitation to Chicago Area LINUX User Groups

In cooperation with LINUX International and the LINUX Journal, COMDEX/Spring will feature the LINUX Global Summit, with a kick-off keynote by Linus Torvalds.

As you may know the COMDEX/Spring & Windows World event is a show for IT and business professionals seeking to deploy technology solutions. The LINUX Global Summit at COMDEX/Spring has been carefully designed to help educate Business and IT professionals on the potential of the LINUX operating system.

The LINUX Global Summit is a comprehensive two-day educational and exposition event that will begin with a keynote from LINUX founder Linus Torvalds. Admission to the educational portion of the event is $195, but we would like to make a special offer to all LINUX User Group members to register at a discount.

We would like to make a special invitation to members of the LINUX User Groups who make up the heart and soul of the LINUX community. By following this link under the COMDEX/Spring 99 event, you can find out more about the LINUX Global Summit and register at a special price of $150, a 25% discount, plus complimentary admission to the exhibits at COMDEX/Spring.

When registering please use the following code, LXC to ensure that you receive the discounted price of $150 and your complimentary show admission. The conference program is filling up fast, so please register now to ensure your seat at the LINUX Global Summit conference. (Seating for the Keynote will be first-come, first-served.)

Thank you

Jeff Sudbey
Conference Director
COMDEX/Spring

If you ever questioned if Linux was going to hit the mainstream or not, this proves it. Linus will be giving a keynote at the April 19th COMDEX in Chicago. Hrm. Only 3 hours from home. Practically a stones throw from here. Wonder if I should crash. Update: 02/17 01:15 by CT : This is actually the Linux Pavillion Keynote at COMDEX. Not quite the whole deal. I said "a" keynote, not "the" keynote *grin*.

With yet another update from Comdex, Pater: Even though not listed in the directory Sun is here, albeit on PC. It's kinda odd to see PCs running Solaris and OpenWindows in the middle of a primarily Win32 convention. The Linux pavillion was also quite crowded, featuring S.u.S.E., Red Hat, and Caldera. Linux Journal is there as well. Most of the atttendees here have no idea that another OS exists besides Win 95/NT. My personal favorite product is InstantBasic for Java by Halcyon Software. This program, touted by Sun, transforms Visual Basic code into Java, making it platform independent!