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My user ID is an order of magnitude lower than yours. It would have been lower, but I was boycotting usernames along with JWZ and many others (anyone remember those days anymore, or did everyone finally leave for Advogato?)

Though I'm a hard core Linux advocate, even I'm beginning to tire of the extreme Linux bias here. I'd like to see something that hasn't already been hashed over two dozen times since Chips and Dips. That is part of the reason I did the Buddying up to BSD series on Linux.com. Some of us really need to get our heads out of the sand. If Microsoft had pulled this XFS thing we woulda been screaming vaporware the whole time, but mention Linux and Open Source and we roll right over.

Anyways.. goto http://download.linux.com/multimedia/cc.c and download the closed caption reader, it has builtin keyword beep but if you change line 424 to run a system() call you have it run something like 'xawtv-remote mute' and get the same effect as that hardware gizmo..

I think it would be more fun to have it search for words that are obviously censored and play an audio clip of the appropriate word.
- MbM

1. Do you have a great domain name? Before VA bought them, Linux.com's value was based entirely on the domain name.
2. Are you getting hits and more importantly, are you retaining these hits and for how long? Do they have a reason to come back regularly?
3. What kind of stats are you gathering? Are you tracking your visitors' paths through your site? Where are they coming from? Where/why are they leaving? Etoys.com tracks their users' paths through the site so they can see what people are interested in and feed them banners/links accordingly.
4. Do you have a way to gather information about your users? Do you have quality demographics? Demographics are worth money. Why do you think grocery stores give you membership cards?
5. What kinds of click-throughs can you offer your banner advertisers?

Actually, you probably don't need Miguel for that. You might want to check out the Pango, which is a project to incorporate unicode into Gtk. That is being rolled into GNOME as an intrinsic component as of (what is now being projected as) the November GNOME release, which will basically be GNOME 2.0 -- slated to come out November 2000 (hence the name). This is detailed in the O'Reilly Summary of the GUADEC conference.

Keep in mind that I don't follow it very closely, so it's possible that this doesn't actually address your question. In which case I'll shut up now :-)

--
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think you just crossed it.
- Sean

The chat log can be found at linux.com, who was responsible for hosting the chat.

Look a little less than halfway down the log...

I think more companies are trying to be open toward telecommuting, but are scared. On the other hand, those companies who already allow people to work from home are finding that the majority are getting more work done. Can't sleep? They get more work done. Need to take kids to the doctor? Don't have take off work and not get work done, they can do it when they get back home.

On a negative side, you're always at work. During dinner, you're at work. In the bathroom, you're still at work. It becomes harder to get your mind off work to relax, enjoy your family, friends, etc because everywhere you look is work. I think the only real conflict with me working from home, is by the time my husband gets off work, he wants to sit at home, and I'm ready to get out of there! :-) --Kara Pritchard kara@linux.com

I think more companies are trying to be open toward telecommuting, but are scared. On the other hand, those companies who already allow people to work from home are finding that the majority are getting more work done. Can't sleep? They get more work done. Need to take kids to the doctor? Don't have take off work and not get work done, they can do it when they get back home.

On a negative side, you're always at work. During dinner, you're at work. In the bathroom, you're still at work. It becomes harder to get your mind off work to relax, enjoy your family, friends, etc because everywhere you look is work. I think the only real conflict with me working from home, is by the time my husband gets off work, he wants to sit at home, and I'm ready to get out of there! :-) --Kara Pritchard kara@linux.com

at Linux.com/jobs. If you'd like to write an article about telecommuting, please contact me at rednix@linux.com.

at Linux.com/jobs. If you'd like to write an article about telecommuting, please contact me at rednix@linux.com.

However, at the end they recomend four job portals: Linux.com, Linux Today, User Friendly's GeekFinder and Linux.org.au. I agree with the first two, and (since I'm in North America) have no valid opinion on Linux.org.au.

The problem with Geek Finder is that it is really just a front for Dice.com. Unlike all the other resources mentioned, dice.com charges employers for listings, instead of being community-based and advertiser-supported.

Instead, I would recomend the following additional job portals, where I have actually posted jobs:

• Superexpert.com: not great, but it does host linux jobs.
• JustLinux: a smaller Linux portal, with a nice jobs page.
• Free Software Jobs Page: This is the GNU jobs page. It is strictly for free software jobs, so only hard-core open source jobs get posted there.

Crispin
-----
Crispin Cowan, CTO, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Free Hardened Linux Distribution
Jobs!

But NT is what the kids are going to use in the Real World.

Heh, that's exactly what my dad said when I told him I wanted to install Linux on our PC. I eventually got him to let me, but he was very steadfast in his belief that the linux skills I would gain by using Linux would have no use later on in life. Of course, to help solve this particular problem, you could should them all the Linux Jobs avaliable, plus the fact that Linux also gives valuable UNIX experiance which will also come in handy for a lot of jobs.

Linux.com happens to be running this article on music creation software under Linux. It mentions projects such as gAlan, a project to create an application for electronic music generation, FreeBirth, an attempt at a ReBirth clone, SoundTracker, Brahms, a MIDI sequencer, and aRts, a analog synthesizer application.
----

Linux.com happens to be running this article on music creation software under Linux. It mentions projects such as gAlan, a project to create an application for electronic music generation, FreeBirth, an attempt at a ReBirth clone, SoundTracker, Brahms, a MIDI sequencer, and aRts, a analog synthesizer application.
----

I/O at 0xd800 [0xd801]
I/O at 0xdc00 [0xdc01]
I/O at 0xe000 [0xe001]

ide0=A,B+2 (in the above example, this would be "ide0=0xd800,0xdc02")

The second is that long ago, I received a request from people at Stanford to use Bochs for free for "educational" use. Given that I like to help out educational causes, I of course obliged. Check out where VMWare got its start. Enough said.

If anyone has seen Mendel Rosenblum's (main guy behind VMWare and also a Stanford grad) Stanford lecture on VMWare you'd have to agree that he acted little like a scrouge. He wouldn't even answer some simple questions by saying: "Ooooo... I can't tell you that... we spent a lot of time thinking about that and I don't wanna give it away" etc...

In any case... FreeMWare (now Plex86) will rock.. I tried some dev code and it's a great start. Give it another 6-8 months and it'll be competitive with VMWare.

--
GroundAndPound.com News and info for martial artists of all styles.

The name change seems to be intended to differentiate itself from VMware. FreeMWare is just too close and sounds like the cheap ripoff of a better product.

See the linux.com interview for more on the topic.

I was just reading this arti cle over at O'Reilly.Linux.com.
ESR says that he has "inside information" from MS about a port of MS Office to Linux. Hmmmmm.... the plot thickens.
Here's the quote: "Raymond: That is not something I feel like I have a good answer to. I am fairly sure that there is already, however, a Linux-portable Office. I have some intelligence from inside Microsoft that strongly suggests that, and it also makes sense for that to exist already if the people at Microsoft are smart enough to see that there's a wreck coming in their operating systems business -- and I think they are that smart."



kuro5hin.org

I was just reading this arti cle over at O'Reilly.Linux.com.
ESR says that he has "inside information" from MS about a port of MS Office to Linux. Hmmmmm.... the plot thickens.
Here's the quote: "Raymond: That is not something I feel like I have a good answer to. I am fairly sure that there is already, however, a Linux-portable Office. I have some intelligence from inside Microsoft that strongly suggests that, and it also makes sense for that to exist already if the people at Microsoft are smart enough to see that there's a wreck coming in their operating systems business -- and I think they are that smart."



kuro5hin.org

This article provides an interesting insight into Dave's achievements. --Marius.

Linux is not hard to install at all. Many of the latest versions now include graphic installers to walk you through it step by step. Some of the ones that come to mind are Redhat and Mandrake. It will most likely run fine on your Compaq. To be sure you can check out the hardware section on Linux.com. Linuxnewbie.org helped me quite a bit in getting it installed and configured correctly.

Linux Advocacy Mini-HOWTO

http://linux.com/howto/mini/Advocacy.html

What busy people should read is the Coles Notes version of Section 6, the Canons of Conduct:

As a representative of the Linux community, participate in mailing list and newsgroup discussions in a professional manner. Refrain from name-calling and use of vulgar language. Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with Mr. Torvalds as your Chief Executive Officer. Your words will either enhance or degrade the image the reader has of the Linux community.

and

Always remember that if you insult or are disrespectful to someone, their negative experience may be shared with many others. If you do offend someone, please try to make amends.

Linux Advocacy Mini-HOWTO

http://linux.com/howto/mini/Advocacy.html

What busy people should read is the Coles Notes version of Section 6, the Canons of Conduct:

As a representative of the Linux community, participate in mailing list and newsgroup discussions in a professional manner. Refrain from name-calling and use of vulgar language. Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with Mr. Torvalds as your Chief Executive Officer. Your words will either enhance or degrade the image the reader has of the Linux community.

and

Always remember that if you insult or are disrespectful to someone, their negative experience may be shared with many others. If you do offend someone, please try to make amends.

This actually brings Slashdot closer to its worst enemy, Segfault.org. (Just kidding Rob, we love you really! :)

Segfault has been assisted by VA for quite some time now. When I left my last company Segfault nearly went homeless, and VA came to the rescue, securing us a machine to use, paying for it to be hosted in the states etc.

Hell, they even payed the cost of a transatlantic plane ticket to bring me to LinuxWorld Expo last year.

Even Slashdot received help from VA in the early days.

VA has a long history of helping the Open Source community and working with it the best they can. Their own portal site, linux.com is pretty unbiased and SourceForge is a huge benefit to the community.

I really don't think VA are stupid enough to mess about with Slashdot, they are well aware of the value it has to the Open Source community if its left as it is.

Just my two cents, I'm gonna go and hide now and hope nobody caught me reading Slashdot :)

probably not for long.
Nice, no?

Hi Guys....

LinuxApps is not owned by VA. This is just a simple link exchange. Trae McCombs had asked for the 'linux.com partner' link, in exchange for the button ads placed on the linux.com site.

Matthew

A lot better

Note that not every Microsoft security vulnerability out there is listed, either. Do a search on vunlerabilities by vendor for Microsoft at Security Focus, which is at http://www.securityfocus.com to see all 235 vulnerabilities listed, most of which Slashdot missed.

Good resources for Linux security news, specifically, are Linux Weekly News at http://lwn.net/ and its continually updated Daily Edition at http://lwn.net/daily/ For additional resources you can visit Linux.Com's security section at http://www.linux.com/security

I've put a mirror up at http://shiftq.linux.com/~mmichie.

Enjoy. After all, I'd hate to see Slashdot get Slashdotted (I need to feed my addiction dammit)! :)

How many people will see this article two days from now, after it has faded into the archives of "old slashdot news"? I suspect that there will be a bombardment of comments to the copyright office today that will trickle off as we near the deadline.

I propose that an ad banner should be created, pointing to a central source for advocacy, (http://www.opendvd.org maybe?) ... Containing by then a copy of this story, an advocacy mini-howto, and a link to the copyright office comment box. If this ad were to run on the Andover network of sites (and maybe also be picked up by traffic-heavy sites with opendvd-friendly admins as well... linux.com?), we might get more thurough feedback on this important issue, even after the slashdot effect dies away.

What do you think?

-Mike

Wasn't there like this dispute over www.linux.com. That Fred van Kempen (was it him, some Dutch guy?) eventually sold this domain for a lot of money.

And, if I remember right, there was quite a big difference between the amount he could have got and the amount he actually got.

--
See you at the LinuxWorld Expo!

Crashing the W2K release should not be about bashing Microsoft. It should be about promoting GNU/Linux as an alternative. If you are unclear about how to go about that, please read the Linux Advocacy Mini How-To.

For information about the Microsoft W2K release hoopla, check out Microsoft's Event Page.

Hey, there's nothing wrong with Linux (in fact,
I run RedHat 6.1 on my Ultra 1/170E, and will
be playing with Debian on an Ultra 1/200E), but
the last thing the world needs is YET ANOTHER
self-masturbatory-look-at-me-mom-i-run-Linux
web page.

There's a large community of Sun/Solaris users
out there, and they are whom sunhelp.org is meant
for. If you dont like it, go visit linux.com.

Its people that say "Linux rules! other OSes
Suck!" that give Linux a bad name. What more
Linux fanatics need to realize is that there
are good uses for EVERY operating system out
there. I run Linux on my desktop at work,
but for some of our critical servers, I wouldnt
think of using anything but Solaris. It depends
upon the intended use and expected load of the
machine.

As for me being a "fat fuck", well, if you want
to be juvenile enough to call names, feel free.
I could care less. I've been called worse names
by people much sexier than you.

Bill

IBM has chosen Linux as a corporate-wide standard. This consolidation is intended to simplify and streamline operations. But this move can't hurt OS/2. It opens up the possibility that parts of OS/2 source code can be released. However, the main obstacle there is that various copyrights which don't belong to IBM. Those non-IBM copyrights on OS/2 essetially belong to Microsoft.

Take a look at The Dos to Linux HOWTO

It should be what you're looking for.

1. A lightweight operating system. Of course, that means running PalmOS. Sad to say, Linux doesn't have the applications for this kind of situation (yet?).
2. Cryptofinancial Privacy. Use iButton(s) to store things like private keys and other cryptofinancial information. For now, I'll have to be content with GNU Keyring on my Palm IIIx. Confinitiy's PayPal gets a poke in the eye until they get their act together and make a Linux installer for their Palm software.
   
   

   Regarding PayPal: I encourage everyone to open an account (it's free unless you want to use it, then you will have to put some money in it-- personally, I won't be putting any money into it until I can put the PayPal software into my Palm from my Linux box.) and then dropping them a note saying that you would like a Linux installer for the Palm software.

3. Real Style. Not look like something from Logan's Run. Technology is at its best when its subtle and unnoticable. A Palm device in your pocket or purse is pretty unnoticable (until you start using it, then the Unknowing clamor about it 'Ooh, what is that?')
4. Cesium-133 Timepeice Accuracy. It should know how to set its time/date from the Atomic Clock in Fort Collins, CO.
5. Where are ya?. If you're going to put in any kind of radio receiver, you might as well throw a GPS receiver in it so you don't get lost. Or, at the least, be really annoying when you can say "If we keep walking at this rate, we'll get to Fargo in 345 days, 6 minutes, 35 seconds!"
6. Remote control. A really strong IR transceiver for remote control applications. It would be really nice if I didn't have to get up off the couch to grab a remote. Cripes, I've got like 10 of them on the coffee table.

Otherwise, I think the show was mostly an opportunity to show off sexy-sexy models wearing either Goretex or shiny black vinyl. :)
_______
computers://use.urls. People use Networds.

Even if Red Hat goes bankrupt tomorrow, all their code will be around for anyone to use. And just as importantly, their code will not be used in a way that is harmful to the Open Source communitiy, such as in a closed source distro by Microsoft or another giant corporation. Why? Because of the GPL.

The commercial BSD vendor, Berkeley Software Design, Inc., and Eric Allman's companym, Sendmail, Inc., share several characterics. (Note: I may be wrong about some of the following. Corrections welcome) They both started with free software. They both added proprietary enhancements. The both sell their value-added product as a revenue source. Both give you source code to the product you bought. And both forbid you from redistributing that source or changes to it to those who don't hold a licence.

Two critical questions are:

1. What's the current technology transfer? To what extend do corporate BSDI enhancements return to the free BSD distributions?
2. If these companies go down, what happens to their code? Licence holders still have the source, but so what? Is it dead?

To add one more pair of companies to the stack, consider John Ousterhout's TCL-based Scriptics company, or the Canadian Perl-related firm, ActiveState. My understanding is that there's more technology transfer between these two companies and their core free software roots than might be immediately obvious with the previous pair. I cannot really speak of the TCL world, but in the case of the Perl one, that firm funds not only the salary of the Perl release manager, they also fund development for porting to non-free systems. For example, they've made Perl's fork() call work "right" on Microsoft systems (actually, Microsoft paid for that work!) and have immediately returned those corporately funded enhancements back to the world of free software.

Yes, that means that the current developer release of Perl, version 5.005_63, supports fork(2) with Unix semantics even on Microsoft. Hurray!

If you want other mixed-mode business models, think about Alladin Ghostscript. The interesting issue of licensing is covered in the FAQ. There's also Sleepycat Software, whose database product, Berkeley DB, was used in Netscape with neither credit nor compensation, thus triggering a good bit of bad blood on the authors' parts because of lack of public recognition and appreciate for their work. The resulting `poison pill' licence seeks to avoid a repeat of this unpleasantry.

Now, we have in contrast to those situations, look at companies that are making a business, or trying to make a business, out of GPL'd software. The two most obvious examples, RHAT and LNUX, are hardly typical cases due to their current market valuations, which are obviously astronomically overvalued. But even in their cases, you'll find things that aren't what you would call "free software". In fact, they aren't even open source; look at the way Redhat ships "demo versions" of things without source. Now, I would be willing to argue that this is in fact a good thing because it shows people that Redhat's operating system is a viable platform for traditional licensed software. Others, however, dispute this, pointing out that that software would be orphaned if the company who produces it were to die.

My point is that I believe we now have a sufficiently long list of corporate endeavours which are based, at least with respect to some definitions of the term, free software. That means we have actual cases to look at, not hypothetical cases. I'm sure I've only named a couple of them here. What about other companies? I'm not talking about simple packagers and distributors. I mean firms that do serious development work based on free software. (I would mention Cygnus, but they've recently become an acquisition by Redhat.)

Do we have examples of companies that have died or otherwise abandoned their work in these areas? The university Ingress experience and Britten-Lee? Can we come up with other examples to look at? What has happened to the product of their work? Has it truly gone the way of all things, or did humanity derive some benefit from it?

The liberal adherence to, and application of, the Linux Advocacy HOWTO. Know it Live it Love it And you'll see more positive results like this.

As for the BSD license, there is a fair amount of software out there under the BSD license, but there isn't really a whole lot to discuss, since there isn't really a whole lot to violate.

The artistic license isn't used much, so it isn't discussed much.

Why don't slashdotters like BSD? BSD licenses allow code that you write to come under the control of other people, and you can't stop them. You can't even stop them from putting out full page ads saying that their version of your code is better than theirs. Then there's the possibility that your code will become embrace and extendified by some greedy individual, as seems to be happening to kerberos.

As far as problems with the Artistic License, take a look at the OSD as commented by Bruce Perens for some gripes.

Look at the interview with Kevin Lawton at Linux.com, a page on the freeMWare home page. In one of the questions Lawton specifically says that freeMWare has almost nothing to do with VMWare, short of the name. It's something completely different.

In fact, as for your "great commercial idea," he also explains in the interview that they have been tossing the idea of freeMWare for a long time. So, you're slandering some developers that are getting around to something that they have been thinking about already. Just because a company is ahead of them in development doesn't mean that they are "ripping" that company off.

Your attitude is the same ignorant one that a lot of people seem to have about the GNU/OSS world.

I take exception to people thinking that FreeMWare is riding on the backs of VMWare for two reasons. The first being that the Bochs team has talked about this well before VMWare formed their company. The second is that long ago, I received a request from people at Stanford to use Bochs for free for "educational" use. Given that I like to help out educational causes, I of course obliged. Check out where VMWare got its start. Enough said.

Without knowing the circumstances and amount of truth behind that statement I can't really comment further. What I can say is, I have used bochs before (for an OS design assignment) and while slow and difficult to configure, it is quite versatile and usable - Windows 3.1 runs usably under Alpha, for example. But I wonder how much of bochs is directly applicable to the problem of virtualisation?

Daniel.

Many people who were saying the DoJ should force microsoft to open the source code were not looking at the long term. We all realize the value of opensource but allowing the government to force a company to release its intellectual property like that sets a dangerous precedent. Forcing an opening of file format standards would be ok but not all the source. I have a feeling that the route to break them up would be the best thing for the consumer.

shameless plug

Here is my original take on the whole thing.
/shameless plug


Breaking them up into an operating systems group and an applications group would be the best IMHO.

This of course would require a reevaluation in the future as the landscape of computing changes but for now it is the best solution. Fines don't mean jack shit to MS.

However, on the off chance that you're serious, try looking at Linux.com's Page of Window Manager Choices.

Someone registered it, tried to milk the copyright and then experienced the fury of the community. Finally, he donated it to Linus.

See http://www.linuxmall.com/news/ announce/lxtm.001.html for a bit of legal speak about the story.



------------------

If I can ever find an Amiga, I'll have to check it out. Until then, I think I'll run my Linux on hardware I can buy.

Yes, that is the beauty of Linux. You can run it on the hardware of your choice. For example, a poor man can go to the thrift shop and buy a Linux computer. He will be able to run the exact same operating system that powers the world's fastest computers costing thousands of times more than his modest ``thrift-box''. This is why the experts now say that Linux is the OS for the next millennium. The power, flexibility, and support of Linux is unmatched, from clusters of multi-processor scientific behemoths, to the young school girl's modest hand-me-down 386. The power of Linux is there for all to enjoy.

[space considerations preclude listing all the myriad of companies raking in the bucks by using embedded Linux, the mp3 appliance market is a prime example]

This is an excerpt from an article about microsoft.

Companies that use the Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 operating system may experience an internet connection slow down in the next few months. Without telling anyone Microsoft Corp. added in something new to their latest Service Pack. It's called 'please_god_we_need_public_support_on_this_one.exe '. What is does is, it finds internet polls such as the CNN one and many "slashdot" polls and votes pro micrsoft over and over again. It also has a patch to find servers that let users post comments by creating very irritating "first post" comments that are meant to drive people away from anti-microsoft websites. Apparently Microsoft was fearing the worst in the DOJ Anti-Trust case, and needs all the PR support it can get. It also has a feature built in where if the poll records the IP of the voter the program BSOD's the computer forcing a reboot therefore a different IP (for you DHCP users). It runs as an NT service, and you can download the patch to get rid of it here.

An interview with Bowie J. Poag just went up today on linux.com. Here's an excerpt:

linux.com: What's System 12 all about?

Bowie J. Poag: System 12 will be a resource stockpile for Linux application developers. For lack of a better buzzword, we don't really know what to call it yet, but the basic premise is this: System 12 (hopefully) will do for Linux application development what Themes.org did for windowmanagers. We're going to be offering a series of free "component toolkits" for developers to include in their own work. In exchange for using our work, we will be offering them free hosting space on our server so they can showcase their work to the community.

Visit the System 12 site if you're anxious.

• Gimp - need I say more? Check out Linux.com to see what can be done in this excellent piece of software (blatent plug) also check out tigert.gimp.org
  
• StarOffice, WordPerfect, etc.
  
• Netscape, Mutt, and others...
  
• Loki, id, EpicGames, and more.
  
• DVD is starting to work in Linux (and there are DVD players for TVs btw)
  
• USB mice work in 2.2.x, 2.3.x has much better USB support
  
• Cut and paste works great here w/ all apps... select w/ left mouse button and paste w/ the middle one
  
• Red Hat and others have great installers, Debian has an excellent thing called "apt" to install programs and more after initial installation (and you can even upgrade your whole system in place)
  
• IBM has ViaVoice ported to Linux, and typing is still faster. *g*
  

THE GOOD

• LinuxCare's little bootable Linux recovery CD kicks ass. No bigger than a business card, it fits in the 3" diameter groove in CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drive trays and has the potential to save your butt when lilo eats itself. They also had some Linux stickers that now adorn the case of my 386... (Yes, it runs Linux.)
• IBM had a presence. Although certainly not the largest or flashiest booth in the show, Quake 3 on a rather large plasma display attracted lots of attention. Dual PII-400 Intellistation + Voodoo 3 3000 + large plasma display. Mmmmmm. Thanks to the guys there for letting me get some game time on that mammoth thang...
• O'Reilly also had a presence, and their trade show pricing kicks much booty. Picked up a few books for 20% off list and got a shirt to boot...
• Mad props to VA Linux Systems for not only having a cool booth and giving away lots of stuff but for supplying the machines used for public Internet access. Their Debian boxed set is pretty cool and sports Learning Debian GNU/Linux from O'Reilly. (Yes, I was one of the people who stood around in line for ten or fifteen minutes to win this...)
• Thanks to the Sun and Rave Systems folks for all the free stuff. Learn to play Quake 2 without cheating before next year's show... :-) (Now where's my complimentary Sparc 5?)

THE BAD

• None of the shirts I got fit. None. Zero. Zip. Zilch. I'm 6-foot-3-inches tall and weigh 295 pounds. Show me the big-assed shirts!
• The IBM guys told me that the Showcase had a T-1 connection to the 'Net. I couldn't verify -- the packet loss and latency was horrible on the connection. I'm hoping this is only because lots of geeks were pounding on the connection like a pack of wild monkeys...
• Food choices were few, and lines were long. Within the Galleria, your choices were Subway, some cafe whose name I don't remember, Ruby Tuesday's, and Chick-Fil-A. If you were bold, you could go to the movie theater downstairs and buy a big tub of popcorn. The group I was with walked across the street to another mall and ate at Arby's. Yum... I think.

THE UGLY

• Where the hell were the Slackware people? I wanted Slackware apparel... Hmmph.
• Linux merchandise places came out of the woodworks to hock their goods. Yay capitalism...
• Don't eat at Shoney's. Our group waited over an hour for food before giving up and leaving.

THE REST

• The andover.net/freshmeat.net/slashdot.org booth was smack dab next to the linux.com booth. Taken together, it looked like one big congregation of slackers with laptops. All things considered, however, I wouldn't have minded flopping down on the couch for a rest after walking around for a few hours...
• I will seek revenge against the guy in the Debian shirt who shot me in the arm with a Nerf dart... muahahahaha
• The Debian folks had a Sun Ultra 5 running XaoS, Netscape, and some Tetris clone in separate windows. Just for kicks, I maximized the XaoS window. Can we say slideshow?
• I had nothing interesting enough to trade with the lady at the VA Linux booth, so I didn't get one of those nifty enlightenment shirts. Dammit.
• NetBSD was there. Go figure.

Overall, it was a pretty cool show, but I wish I didn't have the 2-1/2 hour drive. It was put on very professionally and appeared to be very well organized. I was only slightly disappointed that the show wasn't any bigger... The nifty canvas bag attendees got and the included CD made up for that, though.

Many of these attacks are based on benchmarks from companies that clearly have no idea how to tune linux. Linux.com has created a section known as tuneup that aims to collect ideas on how to tune your system or just make it run better. I'd welcome any help to make this a one stop site for for all preformance related tweaks, maybe then we won't have to deal with these attacks.

I apologize for plugging a site I'm responsibe for, but I do think something needs to be done.
- MbM