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Linuxworld Fun

Posted by michael on from the give-Cmdrtaco-a-wedgie-for-extra-karma dept.

The Linuxworld Expo is now in full swing, and there's a variety of news. The BBC has an overview. Microsoft has a booth at the Expo in the section intended for "new, up-and-coming companies". Sun is rolling out servers running Linux. And VA Software - Slashdot's owner - is moving Sourceforge.net to IBM's database software.

19 of 370 comments (clear)

  1. I'm just waiting... by arkham6 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm just waiting for someone to start defacing the Microsoft booth. This will make us look REALLLY good to the corporate world.

  2. Wow, go LNUX! by Otter · · Score: 4, Funny
    And VA Software - Slashdot's owner - is moving Sourceforge.net to IBM's database software.

    Damn, I never thought I'd see this graph go upwards again!

    --
    What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
  3. I can just see it now... by yeoua · · Score: 5, Funny

    At some point... every single linux geek in the entire place is going to collectively turn to and point at the Microsoft booth, and then in unison, laugh their asses off, when one of the machines bsod's.

  4. Yes, but why does Microsoft need a stand... by altgrr · · Score: 5, Funny

    when all the people at the show know about Microsoft software, and that's why they're running Linux?

    --


    Like car accidents, most hardware problems are due to driver error.
    1. Re:Yes, but why does Microsoft need a stand... by rhadc · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I don't mean to burst your bubble, but Microsoft knows everything it needs to know to "offer ways for both systems to peacefully coexist."

      On the technology front, the source for anything linux is there. But why would they need that? They have been involved with writing UNIX programs for quite a while. Its code is in SCO unixware. Hell, they wrote Xenix, their own UNIX operating system!

      Peacefully coexist!? They could start by NOT building anti-GPL verbage into their license agreements.

      Look, the bottom line is that Microsoft wants to destroy this open source community.

      rhadc

  5. Linux world and Linux land by brejc8 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Doesnt Linux-world bring images of children going on rides with huge fluffy penguins.
    And wearing penguin ears? hmm maybe not penguin ears.

    --
    Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
    1. Re:Linux world and Linux land by Maran · · Score: 5, Funny

      Maybe there's an "educational" area where kids can watch fuzzy animatronic characters giving a glossed-over demonstration of how to recompile your kernel.

      And there's people dressed up as all the "old favourite" distros. But they've got their networking disabled, so they just move around a lot and pose, but can't say anything.

      And there's a shop selling lots of ThinkGeek gear, that's a real laugh in the park itself, but wearing it in the outside world results in people giving you strange looks.

      Maran

  6. Gotta love those final comments by MarvinMouse · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Tell us what we are doing right and what we are doing wrong"

    Well.. this is going to take a while.

    --
    ~ kjrose
  7. Perhaps they got something right! by Corporate+Troll · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Microsoft is still less than convinced that flexibility is what most people want.

    Now, I'm no real Microsoft Affectionado, but this is probably the single most insightful thing I ever heard from a Microsoft representative. People don't want to fiddle with anything on their computers, just use the standard apps. Heck, most users don't even change their background nor their colours (God help them, the day they get XP!).
    I know this is going straight against the mantra on slashdot "choice-is-good", but normal users have no base on what to make a "choice", and there inflexibility is good: it makes the normal user feel "good" about his (non)choice. How many times have I told people to switch from Lookout Express to a better email client (especially when they just got infected by the virus/worm of the day), but it doesn't help: they are familiar with it, it comes with the computer and everyone uses it. That's infexibility, and the users are inflexible, hence they need inflexible software. Sad but true.

  8. nice BBC article by Clover_Kicker · · Score: 5, Funny

    From the linked BBC article:

    >Linux is gaining corporate fans is because it is
    >cheap, easy to maintain and much more secure than
    >Microsoft software.

    You can't buy advertising like that.

  9. Pirates of Silicon Valley? by MarvinMouse · · Score: 4, Funny

    Anyone remember that scene from the movie "Pirates of Silicon Valley" where there was an Apple booth and the company MS worked with at the expo. Everyone ignored the other booth and went over to the Apple booth. When Bill tried to talk with any of the Apple reps, he was ignored.

    wouldn't that be great if that happened here. The entire MS booth is barren while everyone is busy doing what they came to a _Linux_ expo for. To look at _Linux_ products, not Windows products.

    just a thought. :-)

    --
    ~ kjrose
  10. What's up with this? by un4given · · Score: 5, Interesting

    From Netcraft:

    The site www.linuxworldexpo.com is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4/Windows 98.

  11. M$ Schwag? by smartin · · Score: 4, Funny

    What are they giving out? I like to give any Microsoft T-shirts i get to homeless people. Puts them to a good cause :)

    --
    The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
  12. Time to move to Savannah by Phil+Hands · · Score: 4, Informative

    For those of you that use sourceforge for their free software projects, it looks like it's time to move to savannah.gnu.org.

    In case you're wondering, the gnu.org in there does not imply that your project needs to be under the GPL/LGPL --- any Free Software projects are welcome.

    Why would you want to move? Well, from what I hear, extracting some of your meta-data is already hard/imposible from Sourceforge --- this seems like a trend that is likely to continue, so perhaps you should get out while you still can.

    At least you can be sure that the Free Software Foundation won't pull any similar tricks.

    --

    Debian: GNU/Linux done the Linux way
    1. Re:Time to move to Savannah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      http://savannah.gnu.org/phpsysinfo/

      OK EVERYONE move all their projects from VA's 8+ high end servers and bandwidth with a compile farm attached, to the 1 server (with ide drives) that savannah has. I'm sure savannah can take the load. look their system has 20 gigs of space to use (not in the audio-video dir), don't you think that it can hold all the worthwhile free software? Come on everyone! grab your files and GOOOO sf is obviously sucky now since they are going to use... *GASP* a paid for program.

      I mean seriously guys.. no one else can replace what sf.net does for our community so SHUT THE FUCK UP unless you have a good pipe, a pile of servers, and some time to take the sf.net code base and modify it to your microcosm of a vision for how it SHOULD be done.

    2. Re:Time to move to Savannah by FreeUser · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I have two projects on SourceForge. Please tell me when exactly should I expect problems. I hadn't single SourceForge problem yet.

      Not exactly into being proactive, are we.

      The concerns are (a) difficulty to extract meta-data from SF (already mentioned), (b) the uncertainty of whether or not the free (beer) SF service will be around for the forseeable future, even for non-commercial, free projects, and (c) the uncertainly as to whether or not VA will be around to offer the service, in any form, for the forseeable future.

      Contrast this with the FSF, which is a charity that has been around since the eighties (at least), isn't going to 'go under' like the rest of the dot bomb anytime soon, if ever, and will never pull the kinds of stunts SF does to make obtaining and extracting one's information more difficult over time, or to change the conditions of use.

      It isn't about predicting trouble with certainty, it is about recognizing a vulnerability and doing something about it before the problem can arise.

      But it is your project, so if you prefer to wait until trouble actually arises, that is your perogative, and in the end, your fault.

      --
      The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
  13. Slashdot to change? Not likely by Frothy+Walrus · · Score: 5, Informative

    Despite the immediate speed increase which could come from migrating to a real database which supports grown-up DB features like subselects, etc, I don't see it happening on Slashdot anytime soon.

    Not to flamebait here, but if you've gone through Slashcode source, you know that it's a pile of spaghetti. It doesn't lend itself to a redesign of the database access methods to take advantage of an industry-quality DB's featureset, at least not without redesigning much of Slashcode itself.

    The resulting weblog software could be really badass, but seeing as this site's gone since 1998 without a significant redesign (Slash 2 is Slash 1 with lipstick on), I don't see it suddenly happening now.

  14. Re:Slashdot to change? by r00tarded · · Score: 4, Insightful

    quite simply, VA is preparing to be bought out by IBM.

    --


    four-oh-four
  15. sourceforge moves off of free software. by r00tarded · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And VA Software - Slashdot's owner - is moving Sourceforge.net to IBM's database software.
    I think this is a much bigger story then linux kernel 2.34.56 is released, yet its a one liner? Next time you wanna bury a story throw it into a slashback or a jon katz story.

    --


    four-oh-four