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LinuxWorld San Francisco Convention Report
doom writes: "Marc Merlin has written a pretty good convention report for
the LinuxWorld Convention & Expo Summer 2001." A nice long, juicy wrap-up for the convention.
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These things are like water now days, and they all seem to be the same stuff. Will they ever narrow cast down to something that means anything?
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
...are just for lucky guys like this Linux developer.
How much did it cost to get to see Linus's speech? Software for the masses, but conventions for the rich elite only? Nice consistent philosophy.
I was disapointed to see less software venders there. Last year there were pleanty of new ideas and projects started. You really noticed how the down economy has weeded out a majority of them. It was a great expo over all (a lot of hardware). To bad some of the newer up and comming software and development projects could not get a presence there. Maybe someone can start a non profit drive to sponser smaller up and comming groups?
Just an everyday guy....nothing special
Hey, did anyone heckle LinuxDA? They were supposed to be there, and they're *still* violating the GPL!
Checkout this wrapup if you're interested in the events that took place at the KDE booth. Comes with many pictures.
...or are these conferences always too expensive to attend, always in expensive cities, and always announced too soon in the future to prevent us from actually arranging time off from work, finding a good deal on a plane ticket, etc. etc.
YES YES! the NERDS win again!
i finally have my very own golden penguin!
take that Michael Tiemann!
some other show highlights:
IBM had a good showing with lots to exhibit. i wasn't sure if it was IBM or a partner, but they had a great display of a java app that checks to see if your eyes are open or closed. this would be great to incorporate it into a car.
also, check out alicebot for a good AI example of a psycho-analysis program.
I hold the patent for posting links to bbspot articles in an attempt to gain karma. In fact, I have already linked to this very article. You will be hearing from my team of lawyers.
I'm fucking pissed my posts got deleted.
/. since `97, and this latest round of behavior by the editors, particularly Michael, is intolerable. As of 5 seconds after I post, slashdot.org is going into my junkbuster block file. There's nothing for me here anymore.
I'm fucking pissed the headline and text of the Microsoft story was changed without notice, and it's still wrong and incredibly biased.
I've been reading
I live in a part of the country where plane tickets are _never_ under $300. If you live in a major city, then yeah, it's $80 coast to coast. It's actually cheaper for me to fly anywhere in Europe than most of the U.S.
But the rates for these conferences are outrageous. Lets see, attend a conference, or buy my own 8-processor RC5 box. Hmm, same price....
every flyer i get in the mail for conferences always start at several hundred just for registering, and a few hundred more if you want to do anything.
so, attend this conference? i never even looked at the price, because i've never seen a conference that i could afford. i know it costs money to rent the space, but it can't cost that much. someone's making an oversized profit.
Marc Merlin, the man with the amazing EXPRESSIONLESS FACE! ARG!
I'm just curious who these orginanizers are that they need to make $100/profit/head for every person that attends. I've organized conferences and get togethers before, and I _know_ how much good hotel space rents for. Someone's charging OPEC prices.
I don't see how people can afford going to conferences in general. The Vegas and Chicago Comdex's, or whatever the hell they are.
Someone's making a killing. Attend a conference? Never could afford it, never will afford it, and I'll never go unless someone pays for the whole damned thing for me.
When I lived out in Montana, it was $500 minimum for a ticket that left the state. At least that much just to get to Minneapolis, or Chicago, which are hubs. Only could ever afford to fly twice when I lived there.
As for conferences, I've never seriously considered one. Waaay too expensive. Someone mentions going to a conference, and my reaction is, "No thanks, I'd like to pay my rent this month." Plus the major speakers are frequently people that I don't want to hear speak.
CIO isn't an acronym for "Compellingly Interesting Orator."
Would you look at this guy??? What is it that makes him feel compelled to be the posterchild for grunge?
Crimony man, get a haircut and take a bath.
Taco is gonna have to mod everything down to -1 real soon. People want to know what the hell is going on with Slashdot lately. It used to be Slashdot would post stories about their own network or server problems. I guess since this is a code update Slashcode 2.001 (pre-alpha??) they take the problems much more personally. Also slashdot has always promoted that mySQL is the best DB out there. Maybe its time they open up their minds and consider other posibilities. If they must stay open-source they could always take a look at Postges but that would required actually changing their opinions of software.
And if you work for BigCorp, they not only pay your way but write it off their taxes. But the tech slump has cut into that gravy train big time.
Certe, Toto, sentio nos in Kansate non iam adesse.
A strange yellow field emanated in a 5-mile radius around the Convention, a horrible force that kind of reminded me of the Instrumentality thing in Evangelion. It inspired interest in Open Source software and Star Wars movies to anyone who encountered it. Decades from now the area where the field stood will be avoided by local residents, and it will be referred to in horror as the place where no one ever has sex.
I posted a brief note about Linuxworld on my own site a couple of days ago. The things that caught my eye?
Great presenters, interesting products, and a great looking booth. Impressed me enough that I built a new system just to play around with the Ximian desktop. The Linux desktop lives!
The folks from LNX-BBC.org put on a great session about bootable Linux CDs in general and their impressive LNX-BBC in particular.
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
One thing that was great was that SAIR was giving away free tests for certs. I got my LCP for free. Pretty nice, but does it even matter?
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
Don't want content downloaded and stored? Then don't make it publicly available on the Internet. If you'd like a closed network for timed viewing of your precious content, get out your checkbook and build your own.
i'm tired of the fundamentalist linux/microsoft is "GOD" freaks...
i'm a user of both linux and microsoft operating systems and honestly, i'm not very happy with either of them. linux makes a wonderful server system that never crashes, however, when i try to use it as a functional desktop workstation - it blows. there's nothing that i find useful for linux. there's no professional quality audio editing software, there's no excellent selection of games, there's no easily-compatible way to network it to an NT lan without having to learn samba (this kind of thing should be natively supported by now damnit.)
but at least linux is stable as a rock.
hoo-f-ing ray... i can stare at linux all day and it'll never crash no matter what i do! shame i have nothing i want to do on it!
then we turn the page to microsoft...
who has lost compatibility, increased required resources, and generally pissed off a lot of people most of the time. i'm still using windows 98... i won't use ME because it crashes -really- often for me... i won't use windows 2k because it can't run old dos software (although 2k is a very nice set of server software, not quite linux, but nice) and i'm avoiding XP like the plague. windows crashes and is really buggy (so is a lot of linux stuff, most of it in fact - it's all beta!)...
but at least i can attempt to use a bunch of different software on windows! *crash*
there's no right choice...
*(BIG IMPORTANT PART)*
i see the linux community... and it's beginning to make me somewhat sick...
there's a ton of amazingly brilliant resource in the linux community, but it's so divided and disconnected and unorganized that it's almost worthless. each distribution team has their heads up their asses and decides not to look at what needs to be done to actually make an operating system worth looking at.
dear linux developers... write something worth writing... what we need is something that outdates microsoft's plans five years from now to be released -now-...
we need stability, speed, functionality, software to go with it - something useful for everybody, compatibility with the rest of the world, ease of use for the stupid people who work in the offices... all in a small tight clean package that can be manipulated, upgraded, undone, and transformed with ease...
if that doesn't get created by linux developers working together (as they should be in the first place but seem to fail to do) then there will be no viable future for linux as -the- operating system.
it's sad to see such potential being wasted... apple took freebsd and made ultra-eyecandy out of it... why is it taking the linux developers to come anywhere near that for the gui? on top of that, linux, even for an experienced computer user, is -damned- frustrating to use when you haven't used it before... wheras windows is easy enough for a child to figure out in a day...
so what can the linux community do? unless they regroup and rethink their strategy, they're not going anywhere.
'nuff said.
[)(]subliminal labs[)(]
Linux continues to grow.
what if it ran on solaris? what about openbsd? ibm hardware/software? oracle instead of mysql? there are a LOT of better alternatives than linux and mysql, a LOT.