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Miscellaneous LinuxWorld Tidbits
The excitement of the LinuxWorld Expo simply cannot be expressed in words. We already mentioned that Mandrake and HP are working on Linux on the desktop (warning, manager-speak). The Open Source Development Lab is expanding its focus through the creation of a working group on "carrier grade Linux" for the telecommunications market. CNET has several LinuxWorld stories up. And let's throw in one more, only tangentially related: IBM has settled with San Francisco for spray-painting their sidewalks.
This is like MacWorld, but free entry?
Mandrake and HP are doing something involving Linux on the desktop
So what happened to Bruce Peren's involvement with HP and their Linux efforts? Why no Debian on their desktops? Perhaps a tacit admission that Debian might be a little...inappropriate for their regular desktop customers but Mandrake isn't?
We already mentioned that Mandrake and HP are working on Linux on the desktop...
Finally! You know, we really need to talk about this issue more.
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Damn... i didn't know about this... i wish they did this right in front of my house... you can be damn sure about me guarding it against city cleaners with my bare hands.....
To think of it that this is coming from a respectable company as IBM.. Thumbs up all the way for them...
HP would be well-advised to switch to the
free source FreeBSD operating system if it
wants to break into the telecommunications
business.
IBM broke the law ... and guess what? We're talking about IBM
OK, let's think about the target audience with this campaign. In my opinion IBM comes away with two victories here: not only did they paint cool little adverts all over the city, they also got in trouble with the law in an insignificant (to IBM $110k is nothing) way which in turn will up their status with the people who are likely to buy linux servers.
Of course that could be just the way I see things, but my liking of IBM has gone up 2 points because of that. I like the ads, I think they're funny, and they're not hurting anything. I also like the fact that they got in trouble for doing it, it makes the company as a whole seem like the same kind of carefree jokesters that my freinds and I tend to be. Anyway, that's my $0.02
~ now you know
Announced at Linux World HP has inked a deal with Dreamworks to replace their remaining SGI Irix machines with Linux.
Dreamworks has also announced Shrek 2, maybe there will be a penguin in it
http://www.kubuntu.org/
Anyone nabbed a spray-painted piece of history? Talk about your conversation piece? It would be cool to have a chunk of concrete in the computer room. I haven't seen anything on e-bay but give it time...
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
Don't make me laugh...
There's an article about a talk at LinuxWorld by Jay Beale (of Bastille Linux) concerning the security risks of an out-of-the box linux distro here . M
ain thrust of the article is that, even if you don't think your computer is a target, it's still in jeopardy.
Yes, and I'd be honored to take the place of the soon-retiring Tux the Penguin.
If I weren't nailed to the penis, I'd be pushing up the daisies!
Yeah, that must be why I've seen all those folks walking around and pissing their pants - it's too exciting for words.
How about a little perspective here? I know this is Slashdot, but slow down, take a deep breath, and try to keep the breathless prose under wraps. You'll use it all up, and there won't be any left for the next Jon Katz article.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
Im sorry but I really dont wan't Linux on every computer. I can hardly get my mother to understand how to double click much less run Linux
Support Texas Troops use TXGoogle
When all they talk about is GNU/Linux.
Free Software Development Labs would be a more accurate name.
To be inclusive of Open Source, they'd have to include BSD. And, well, No BSD.
yeah they got their guerilla marketing points...
... no mcdonalds there, no starbucks there, but oh, IBM graffiti...
but SF is already a dirty dirty town (grime-wise). corporate graffiti doesn't help matters at all. i felt violated when i saw it the first time on my block.
Last night I thought about submitting the bit about IBM reviving the mainframe and, through the z Series, recovering their $1B investment in Linux and 12% growth in sales as companies consolidate server functions back to these babies, but figure it'd get canned, like the submission of the San Fran sidewalk advert bit. Nice return on $100,000 when you think about how much press and video it got in the Bay Area.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
So, WRT the OSDN "Carrier Grade Linux" thread, I work for one of those companies that has 'Other' in there. Here are the some of the main things that general-purpose OS's tend to lack:
1. Redundant processors -- there are always two processors running. When one fails, control switches to the other processor. Meanwhile, the failed processor (actually, the entire board) can be replaced and brought back to life. Without affecting any application running on the system, heck typically without their even being aware.
2. Ability to add and remove peripheral cards in a running system -- so, you have a system that has a card with 8 T1 lines going into it, and you want to add another card -- just stick it in, configure it, and away you go.
3. Redundant links -- things like "If one lan interface drops, I'll switch to the other one and keep any connections up." (this requires support from your network), etc....
4. Seamless software upgrade -- if you have two processors, you run the current software on one, get the new software running on the other one, sync them up and then the new software takes control and doesn't lose track of what was going on.
5. Related to #4, above -- "Cutover". If you're running on system 'A' that's obsolete, you need to be able to switch over to using newer system 'B' and not lose anything that's going on. This isn't necessarily an OS thing.
All these requirements come from age-old regulatory requirements that said that ma bell could set her rates based on the quality of service that it provides, and which forced the bell companies to keep extensive records of outages and downtimes. So, not only were there the above software requirements, but there are also a bunch of hardware requirements (boards have to be hot-swappable, for example), and power requirements as well -- telephony companies have multiple connections to the power grid with battery backup and generators, and so on...
With all that in place, it's amazing that they still bury the redundant cable right next to the primary cable so some yutz on a backhoe can come along and take out the phone system.
So, a city gets angry and threatens suit when advertisements take the form of vandalism. What about when advertisements take the form of littering, like flyers spread out over cars in a parking lot? What about advertisements that constitute harassment, like saturation junk mailers who won't take your address off their mailing list (for long) or email spammers? When is the government going to take serious action against these people?
Has anyone seen this on a Tshirt?
I swear, it was like driving south on I-95, reading the "South of the Border" billboards every 50, 20, 10 and finally every 5 miles!
"Only ten days left to the show! Register now!"
Look, if I wanted to go, I'd have registered by now. Take your show, and your SPAM... And shove it, mmmkay?
OTOH, i'm pretty sure IBM wasn't sitting around smoking big cigars and saying:
"Hahahaha! We will paint their sidewalks with our mark, and when they complain, buy them off with our pocket-change!" (all raise glasses of cognac in the air) "Gentlemen, a toast. To evil!"
None the less, I hope that if any other company tries this stunt, they get fined more than 100k.
> The excitement of the LinuxWorld Expo simply
> cannot be expressed in words.
Looks like the things that were introduced last year and passed off as extremely boring took a while to sink in. Telecommuniations, business mergers, storage software, and women in taylored tweed was all extremely boring last year but after a year of heavy economic reality, consumers have finally dropped their obsession with e-commerce and softened to the next big thing. Maybe this means stocks will go up again.
Cooperated with the Nazis? Please, tell us more!
~ now you know
@ 8pm CEST? your place?
"This alliance is a testament to HP's strong commitment in Linux market," says Eric Rueda, Software Marketing Manager, HP Business Desktops division.
"We are told not to disclose any information about the proprietary protocol we use to operate our scanners" says the HP scanner support staff.
About a month ago, I wanted to buy a decent HP scanner, which of course had to work with GNU/Linux, that is, with SANE. I went to the next dealer and asked about the possibitily of returning it in case it doesn't work with GNU/Linux and SANE. Of course I could return it within two weeks no matter of the reason, I've been told.
I got a HP ScanJet 2200C USB and took it home. New kernel, recent SANE distribution. After RTFMing a bit, I read that a special SANE plugin would be needed for the scanner to operate, and it would barely get anything but 100dpi b/w out of it.
All I got was one poor scan with the image barely to be recognizable. What is more, the USB host driver in 2.4.17 is unstable. Scan once, boot once. "usb-uhci.o" would get a kernel oops immediately, and "uhci.o" at least stands one scan. Wisefully I'm running a dedicated USB box which can be rebooted within two minutes without anything else to be disturbed.
After fiddling with the kernel, SANE and the special plugin I decided to return the scanner and get a different one. No problem, and a HP ScanJet 4470C was available which is supposed to run better.
Back at home with the 4470C. It didn't run at all. Nothing. Niente. After RTFMing a bit deeper, what I found was not a description about how to make it work, but some Web page (sorry don't remember the link any more) telling that HP reorganized its scanner development lab and refuses to disclose any information about the proprietary protocol, so HP scanners won't any longer work with non-MS operating systems.
So fsck the scanner, I returned it and got my money back, as the targetted Epson 1240U hasn't been available.
Some weeks later at the company I work for, my colleague had to write a driver for a newer HP SCSI scanner to work with HP-UX, so he would need some documentation about the protocol. It took him about three days on the telephone, with everyone telling him that the management forbids any disclosure of proprietary protocols regarding HP scanners, no matter if it should run with HP-UX or anything else. It took our boss several days to kick HP's ass long enough for them to agree releasing the documentation under a strict NDA. I wonder what can be such a valuable secret on a scanner protocol.
And exactly the same company would have a "strong commitment in [the] Linux market" being so hostile to GNU/Linux (even their own Unix variant) in a different division? Exactly the same company which tries to ensure their scanners won't ever work with GNU/Linux tries to get GNU/Linux onto the desktop?
I hope Bruce Perens or someone else of HP can comment on this before I'll have bought an Epson scanner which is known to work with SANE.
I was there yesterday... very disappointing. It was about half the size of last year's expo, and no really 'cool' stuff there. Last year, Slashdot had a booth, ThinkGeek was there selling there wares, and UserFriendly had a really cool 'find the puzzle pieces' game. Sure, I went to find out all the lastest news, gadgets, and information, but hell, I want to have some fun too! About the only thing that I enjoyed spending some time talking about was the PS2 to Linux box conversion for $199. Oh, the IBM mainframe was pretty neat too, especially being able to hold the processor *drool*.
wolfman
It was, http://logosite.services.ibm.com/cgi-bin/ncommerce 3/ExecMacro/product/item.d2w/report?prmenbr=762&pr rfnbr=529841&cat=&ugp=g
He is primarily a BBQ joint, so for his grand opening got a giant floating (ballon) Pig.
Well, it violated zoning, so he got a stiff $500 fine...and a full color picture of the offending Pig right on the front page of the local newspaper...with about 1000 words!
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
I worked for Broadwing, and though we had some Linux for internal work, we ran Solaris for the machines in the POPs. Also, if HP were going to switch they would use their own HPUX.
It was a blast. So many nerds in so small a space.
The irrefutible corporate might was a bit staggering at first. HP, Compaq, IBM, Sun, Intel, AMD, etc. all had huge booths extolling how much each of them loves the Linux community. General impressions:
Sun had TV-style ads running constantly in between presentations on Sun/Linux-happy technology. The iPlanet guys gave a really unnerving speech about how they were serious and want to be taken seriously and that they were "Sun's Children" or something. They were creeping me (and everyone else) out.
The guy pimping Intel's ultra-reet compiler was pretty excited about it. Showing a demo of the new SIMD optimizations versus without. Yay, 8x performance increase in a cpu-intensive demo. He wasn't much interested in discussing how this worked with me though--it took him 10 minutes, gladly accepting interruptions, to just say that it was using SIMD stuff to optimize loops.
Compaq was truly everywhere in that show. They had a lot of fun stuff available, including a play area (complete with bean bag couches and video games). I believe Compaq also provided all of the public terminals for checking email/ssh'ing to boxes, etc. If you were there, you also rolled your eyes when you walked past their gameshow/advertisement setup though (hosted by "Dave LinuxMan").
IBM was there, but didn't do much to catch your eye. If you were looking for them, you found them and hung out with them. Otherwise they were all kind of chill and laid back. Same goes for HP really.
The suits were thoroughly awestruck at the Ximian booth (complete with Jungle motif). Good for them.
I'm not sure what Computer Associates thought it was doing there.
AMD had some engineers there--I wasn't nearly competent enough with CPU architecture to have a good talk with them. AMD was definitely trying hard to get over the myth that their processors were incompatible/unreliable, and had a lot of partners there with them to show confidence in AMD. I wish them the best of luck, they were all very cool.
Red Hat's booth was pretty standard. They were showing an interest in embedded and high-end servers. Plenty of competent people there ready to walk the talk.
Despite the sheer eyecandy factor/booth size of the corporate forces at LinuxWorld, the real heart of the show was actually all of the booths lining the edges run by hacker groups, independent projects, charities, etc. That's mostly where the quality conversation happened.
The Window Maker guys put on an asskicking booth despite no significant corporate backing or flashy handouts. They must've had 8 or 9 boxes/laptops running a wide range of UNIXen all sporting wmaker. Their little ibook was even blasting 80s-cheese metal the entire show. They had a friendly rivalry with the GNOME crowd going.
Some NetBSD dudes were there sporting NetBSD on all kinds of hardware. No FreeBSD/OpenBSD people (er, except for BSDMall?). It was nice to see the FSF and EFF there receiving donations.
Only Covalent was giving out T-shirts this year, and you had to sit through a presentation on Apache 2.0 (put on by ryan@covalent, who did a great job), fill out a form, and swipe your card before they give it to you. At least it's comfy.
The Linux on Playstation 2 booth put on by Sony was gnarly. Some Sony rep even interviewed me and I babbled something about how I was insulted that the dev kit cost $200, but then I was less insulted when I realized the dev kit came with a hard disk and ethernet card and other goodies.
Apple who? Didn't see them anywhere.
Fun show. Highly recommended. I'm going to miss all those guys.
The excitement of the LinuxWorld Expo simply cannot be expressed in words.
So instead, Michael will be expressing it in mime.
"But why Dorking?"
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
MS breaks the law in a way that hurts me. I wish them dismembered and cast to the four winds (unless they are willing to make just recompense ... fat chance of that!).
IBM breaks the law in a way that is annoying. I hope that they got a fine that would more than cover the cleanup. But it harmed me less than the billboards that the bought on the sides of the buses (I had to look at those).
I don't see any hypocricy. I'd really like the people who post on billboards to have to pay for disfiguring the environment, and it would cost a lot more than cleaning up some graffiti would. And I'l like all monopolists to be dinged for the full costs of their degradation of the rights of the individuals in the civilization. Full. That would put nearly all of them out of business, I admit, but perhaps the costs could be staggered over a decade or so. That would allow reasonable competition to grow up in the area that they had shaded.
.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I remember the old computerworld shows. The small companies were where it was at. Some of the best (and worst, of course) products came out of them. They were the most innovative, the most...
As more big companies came, they were more and more squeezed out. Prices went up. etc.
I remember the first MacWorlds. There was a lot of life in the small booths. Apple dominated, of course, but the small booths was where the innovation was. The last time I went to one, several years ago, I couldn't find many small companies, and the show felt dead.
Now LinuxWorld is starting to be dominated by large companies. Take warning. There needs to be some location that the small companies can gather and show, or the (commercial) innovation dies.
I understand why LinuxWorld is happy for the large companies to show up. They are more profitable. As long as the show remains lively, and keeps attracting "customers". But if care isn't taken, this show, too, can die from "environmental degradation". With proper care it can probably remain the kind of show that a maker of, say, computer controlled knitting machines (for home use) can exhibit at. But it will take a lot of care.
If not, perhaps one of the other shows will start to attract the small companies? One can only hope.
.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
already exists. It's called FreeBSD!
yes I agree with you about the sun iplanet speech. It was not an iplanet speech it was like a sermon, and man it did give me the willies. Funny, if they actually told me what iplanet was and why I should use it... I noticed as well as compared to last year that this is now dominated by 'enterprise solutions' in direction from HUGE companies. Yeah, no perl monks, fewer small tables with flip-flop wearing ('best episode ever') geeks who will chew your ear off about multi-threading. Although, I did get a little of that from a company called 'inferno' (operating system for network application development) which was cool, and KDE booth and japan linux booth... So yeah, most people in the linux community (whatever that means really) have wanted linux to be more dominant and for buziness to realize how good it is... well, guess what, they have -- from the IBM ads on TV now to HP's big push, if you want linux expo to be purely a geek expo you're gonna have to start your own now. Can slashdot start a Geek Expo?
Flamesuit on.
Fine, maybe I'm a cynical corporate guy, but I'm pretty UNIMPRESSED with linux world as a whole. Linux on the mainframe = z/OS and nothing more. And that's all we're hearing! All day everyday, linux on the mainframe. Huge sections of the floor are curtained off, most of the sessions are half full. I'm sorry, but I'm more depressed than when I came here.
Except for the golden penguin, which was truly a nerd's delight, this doesn't bode well. It's all basically OEMs (where are the ISVs?!?) moving from HPUX/AIX/etc to Linux... which means forking and proprietary code soon enough.
I don't understand. Where are they going?
Don't tell me that _all_ of them are going
out of business?
but it wasn't like last year.
I was there wednesday and i was very sad. I can't believe how small it was. People were very nice and helpefull, blah blah blah but it wasn't as fun as last year.
After thinking about it for a day I guess it was cool and I met cool people and i am going back tomorrow with alot of people who couldn't go yesterday.
i shouldn't say this but if you go friday look for blue hair again. thats your only hint.
This time I'm going to find you slashdot posters.
Ferna of the Fern people.
NM
If the show is actually smaller this year than last, Linux may be saturating its existing markets.
;-)
Computer hobbyists who love a platform where everything is open for experimentation are a small (and fun) market that has mostly been reached already.
Entrepreneurs who are starting out with more brains than cash have found Linux (and *BSD) to be a wonderful platform -- if their business model puts a lot of weight on server-side computing.
Those businesses were once growing like weeds, but after too many years searching in vain for profits, they are now vanishing like the morning frost.
Those two markets are nearly saturated now, though they'll continue to grow over time, especially in less-developed economies.
For Linux shows to continue to grow, Linux will need to become extremely attractive to much larger markets that get attention from end users. Embedded markets can be huge, but the Linux part would be invisible and wouldn't be of much interest to the end user.
Otherwise, these shows will end up sharing venues with Science Fiction conventions.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
. . . . And it needs better commercial support (I have a plan). Bruce
So Bruce, what is your plan for Debian support? Enquiring minds want to know . . .
It depends on what you went to find. If you wanted fun, excitment, games, and ABOVE ALL, free tshirts... then you could have played SOF at AMD's booth. But that's it. Tshirst are fewer this year as Linux companies find that they need money to keep the cycle going. Although not as good as last years, It was fun trying out the new Sharp palm, Alias | Wavefront's Maya, and Linux for PS2 and Dreamcast.
Then again, it did make up at the end during the Penguin Bowl (my favorite part). I met Taco, ESR, and other Linux geeks, as well as helping the nerds win the Golden Penguin!
Da comp cant tell u da emotional story.It can give u da exact mathematical design,but whatz missin is da eyebrows. -FZ
I will be going tommorow and I was wondering if anyone knows if there are 802.11b access points in the exhibit hall.
:)
Also, any booths anyone reccomends checking out?
The Edge Report has posted a series of pictures from the event. Every day until our 100+ pictures are exhausted, we will be posting a new set. Check out the first one at:
http://www.edgereport.com/article.php?sid=123
Stay tuned for more.
The Edge Report has posted a new crop of pictures from the event. Here's a list of all three sets.
Set One
Set Two
Set Three
More sets to come after our photography from today and Friday is processed.
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I really like how their hardware always speaks weird proprietory languages that makes use with Linux next to impossible.
I hope this means that HP will start to support their entire hardware line for the Linux kernel.
I'm not likely to ever buy an HP computer, but if they would see their way to writing a few drivers I might start buying their peripherals again.
HEY TACO! - How about hooking this thing up to ispell? Any idea how difficult it is to spell "peripherals"?
The Edge Report has a new batch of pictures from LinuxWorld Expo in New York City. Set 4 - NuSphere, IBM, Caldera, Dice.com, Sony; Set 5 - Veritas, Sharp, Sun, O'Reilly, and Compaq's Game Show.
.orgs, Compaq, fsf, Sun.
The last series were: Set 1 - Walking in, CA, AMD, Red Hat; Set 2 - Ximian, IBM, Games, "The Tattoo Guy", MandrakeSoft; Set 3 -
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Here's The Edge Report's last batch of pictures from LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in New York City. Set 6 - Veritas, Intel, hancom (they really like Commander Taco); Set 7 - AMD, Inferno, Linuxfund, Entertainment; Set 8 - Miscellaneous; Set 9 - Miscellaneous, Booth Babes, and New York City.
.orgs, Compaq, fsf, Sun; Set 4 - NuSphere, IBM, Caldera, Dice.com, Sony; Set 5 - Veritas, Sharp, Sun, O'Reilly, and Compaq's Game Show.
Older sets include: Set 1 - Walking in, CA, AMD, Red Hat; Set 2 - Ximian, IBM, Games, "The Tattoo Guy", MandrakeSoft; Set 3 -
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