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Linux Conference Australia Write-Up
I was actually invited to come to present the hacker survey that OSDN had done in conjunction with the Boston Consulting Group. However, upon looking at the conference plans, it was quickly apparent that that would be one of the few non-technical presentations, which was a pleasant change from my normal conference regime, in which the technical stuff seems crammed into one half day. I've heard that OLS is quite similar, but have not had a chance to attend. Nonethless, obviously my work withstanding *grin* the presentations were excellent - read the program to see for yourself.
I was able to attend Tridge's keynote, having only arrived Wednesday morning, a ARQuake presentation done by Wayne Pierkarski (we've mentioned it before). The afternoon was spent at Conrad's presentation on sweep, which is a hella cool audio app. Finally, the Q&A was Rusty, BDale, Tridge and Linus. Some of the typcial questions were asked, but there were some other questions 'round about DRM, IPv6 and some of the more social questions that were interesting. I think the DRM issues is one of the areas that some people are greatly concerned about, while other people have adopted a more Pollyana approach to it.
Unfortunately, on Friday, while I was presenting, there were two other presentations that I wanted to attend, but alas, had to speak myself. Rasmus, as usual, did a number of talks, and I was able to catch part of PHP printing with PDF, which was informative. Alex Reeder, part of VA Linux Japan also did a presentation on his work with bioauthentication, and my final piece of the show was Horms' presentation on Perdition, a mail retrieval proxy he's been working on.
But presentations aside, which were as a rule exceptional, I think one of the best parts was the relaxed feel, and the amount of interchange between just about everybody here. Almost every one that you talked to was fluent in Linux, programming or what not, which made for easy conversation with everyone there. The Perthites who really managed to put this together also did an exceptional job. To be frank, this is the only show I'd ever consider travelling 13,500 miles for.
I'd encourage anyone who attended or was part of it to post below -- and here's to looking forward to next year. One of the most amusing pictures though has to be the Linus in the penguin suit. The hats are off to the organizing team for their hard work -- and the speakers who traveled afar to be part of this. And from the wonderful uses of pizza box - yet more zaniness.
You can also check out some of photo round ups from Leon, Noel, and, of course, Marc Merlin's done a great round-up, as well as group round-up and one final one.
Overall, I highly highly recommend this show -- probably one of the best on the planet -- and for those in know, 23 will fall.
I found Ablabla.org' write-up to be more informative, and less full of the typos inherent in any Slashdot article.
Sure, Perth is a nice place and all, but wouldn't it have been saner to have it somewhere like Sydney or Melbourne to make it more accessable for the general population which is centered on the east coast?
Rusty's talks were highly amusing, while still containing a technical edge. The dinner on Friday night was brilliant (300 geeks slowly getting smashed!). A T-shirt signed by all the luminaries at the kernel summit was auctioned for $AU 2100. It was quite a contest between Sun and IBM, with Sun representative Duncan Bennet making the winning bid. IIRC Bdale Garbee promised to name the next Debian release after the winning bidder, if the amount went over $AU 2000. So I guess we can all look forward to Debian Solaris!! :-)
a ^= b; b ^= a; a ^= b;
I went, and loved it. Best week I've ever spent at a Uni :)
I'm me. I think.
As in a Tesla coil?
Some one is gonna be extremely pissed!
Take the World Cup... and *have* a Linux Conference.
Ah well, I suppose I can take that while sipping a pint taking in the Americas cup.
=)
Is there some kind of unspoken rule that you must be a troll to post on Slashdot?
You know yout can *gasp* buy and number of linux distos
Huh. So Japan still has a VA operation with "Linux" in its name and selling servers? Am I understanding that correctly?
It's kind of like those celebrities who do endorsements in Japan but not at home, except sort of the opposite. Looks like they're using Excel, though.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Tell me about it, at 13 cent a megabyte for over flow, downloading RedHat 8 will either use up my entire quota and then a little more, plus updates. Or it will cost me over four hundred aussie dollars.
I attended this conference and I generally had a good time but there is one point I must address, and this is not exclusive to just this linux conference.
Many companies attend these conferences to learn about the latest in linux technology and possibly invest in some of it. It is important at any conference to be professional and polite, but also to be well put together. I noticed many of the linux 'tech' guys were extremely ill dressed, including unwashed flannel sweaters and dirty hiking boots (worn indoors!). Aside from other journalists and a few company representatives, I did not see any dress shoes or ties in site. I mean, this isn't the same thing as lounging around one's apartment eating cheetoes and coding, this is supposed to be a professional conference! I dearly hope that linux guys will take note of this and possible dress more respectfully at the next event. Take a word of advice from a professional journalist: dress to impress.
Stanley Feinbaum, professional journalist and master debater! God bless the USA!
AH HA! we have found the one good use for getting your adsl with telstra...All the main linux distros get mirrored on their servers, so for telstra customers, it doesnt go towards their cap.
Nobody panic, ALS Scan is still up.
As far as I know, most, if not all, of the Cable/DSL providers here in the land of OZ mirror things like Linux distro's (and tucows, downloads.com etc. etc.) Thus they can provide all these downloads at blazing speed, and without counting toward your "qutoa"
My first conference, mainly because I'm a Perth native. The atmosphere and level of information presented was excellent, and I'll most probably end up heading to Adelaide next year :)
I tested at MS for 6 mos before I got a real job. For the most part, everyone there had the blank, affectless vibe of Stepford Wives. There were a number of heavy folks, but mostly it was empty folks- basically sociopaths. Even the HR boothbabe equivalents they hired didn't seem to have any blood in their veins, and I suspect they were no more anatomically correct than Barbie.
Profoundly unattractive.
I even hear that rather odd fellow should up in a, get this, penguin costume! What a total embarrassment!
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
true geeks don't workout, they live off a diet of Mt dew,coffee, beer and junkfood.
j/k dont hurt me!!
I guess those "I'd like to mount your hard drive baby, hyuk, hyuk" lines got you nowhere with the booth babes, huh ?
[x] auto-moderate all posts by this user as insightful
You know, that is a about right. I am just realizing that myself...
Sign up with a decent ISP
Internode has nationwide access and a flatrate plan with a dynamic QoS system that works rather sweetly. I clocked 45GB down in my first month on that. If RedHat tops that out on their next release, I'll eat my modem.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Is there some kind of unspoken rule that you must be a troll to post on Slashdot? No.
Indeed, last I heard, it was invented somewhere in Queensland, not Perth.
read this snoopy http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/02/04/10443 18595263.html
Australia is the country most in favour of military action against Iraq, an international poll of 39 countries has found.
It is called the World outside of the USA.
Not everyone:
1. Owns a gun
2. Drives on the wrong side of the road
3. Enjoys being sued everyday of the week
4. Likes to misspell words such as colour
5. Wants to occupy every "terrorist" country
6. Goes on and on about Free Speech
7. Enjoys McDonalds
How about the coverage from ZDNet Australia. http://www.zdnet.com.au/builder/program/unix/story /0,2000034968,20271425,00.htm
I went to a Linuxcon... so let me first tell you about my flight, my husband, my meals, my struggles with OpenOffice... oh, were there actually talks? Hey... where did all the readers go?
100%
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
yes!
I guess those "I'd like to mount your hard drive baby, hyuk, hyuk" lines got you nowhere with the booth babes, huh ?
who cares, they are fun as hell. I do wish they were more geeky girls out there. And thoose fashion loving, emo wearing, whiney little bitchs with their iMacs and basic IRC or web admistraion knowlege/formal training, DO NOT COUNT.
By geek, I meen hobyist, chicks that do it for the love of the machines, WHO ARE ACTUALLY SMART, not the so called sub-culture everyone seems to associate with "geek" culture
never read any country's press to determine what the rest of the world thinks.
All you'll get reading the Age is what Australian's (southern Australians at that) think the world is thinking.
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
Hello,
I was unfortunate enough to get an invitation for this conferance. Maybe I should give a little background on myself without giving my identity (I'm a german citizen with a Austrian and Egyptian parent) thus I have ended up with a Muslim last name. I'm not fantical or anything, I'm just an opensource developer and I work for a major project.
We were not officially funded by the organizers as Alan was, so we had to come up with sponsors. Lucky for us we had few in the wings (certain companies that would never die). There were 3 of us in our group.
My trip to Australia was uneventful. The real shit started happening the momentment I was asked my name at the immigration desk.
The clerk in question (from the badge it said Andrew M*), pointed out my last name and asked me what my relation was to Islam. Even though I am not very religious, I do not go around saying what I am not, thus I told them that I'm a muslim and been so since birth. At this point Andrew M* told me to wait, then he disappeared into the Quantas counter and came out with a tall fellow named Ben C*. Ben C* waved my other companians away and told me to follow him.
I followed him to the office inside where he told me to sit down and tell him about my visit to Australia. I told him everthing about Linux and KDE and what I am here for. I even took out my laptop and showed him Linux (he had never seen Linux and was quite interested).. anyway Ben C* was pretty pleasent. A few mins later there was a knock on the door and an uniformed officer appeared.
The office told me to follow him (I did not have time to ask or look at his name). I followed him to offices upstairs. In this office there were two other men waiting for us, they were not wearing any uniforms, but they informed me that they were Australia police. I was asked to sit down at a table and tell them who I was. I did this once again, and explained about Linux and KDE, they were not interested (also being German my spoken English is not as good as my written English).
The two officers who did not introduce themselves (Officer X and Y), then asked me a series of questions regarding various global stuff. I answered negativly to all of them, and at this point I pointed out to them that I am a german citizen and if I was under arrest or not, if so if I could contact any of my travelling party or my embassy here.
When I prostested again why I was being held, Office X grabbed hold of my shirt ripped two of buttons from the top. He then pointed his other hand at my eyes and told me that I have no right to talk that I only answer their questions and if I say anything more I would not like the end effect.
Being non-aggrassive, I nodded in aggrement, he got his hold of me and moved to the end of the room and Officer Y came towards me and asked me questions similar to the first list he asked, I once again denied anything. He said I was not German that my passport was manifactured in India and so on.
I have Asthma and at this point I started to feel a mild attack, I told Office Y about it and he started going through my bag looking for my medicial box, at this point I had difficulty breathing but he was going through it slowly. Officer Y took the box out and my respirator and gave it to Officer X. I looked at him and pushed the respirator at my face, I started to inhale on it then he pulled out immeditaly. He asked me to answer their questions or else they would not give me the medicine. I pleaded with him and told him I had no idea what he was saying that I was just a software engineer.
After a while he gave me the device and I used it to help myself. He dragged me up again by my shirt and this time he hit me. When I woke up I was no longer with them and my companions were with me also a Deutsch representitive was with them. My face hurt and I had blood on my shirt. They put me in a car and took me to the hospital where I had a broken nose and fractured rib, I did not know what they had done while I was passed away.
Our representitve got a police highup to come and take my complaint, but the police said they had no say that it was not their branch that I could lodge a complaint but if I didn't know the names of my aslaints I did not have any chance of success. I asked Ben C* about the officers, but he said they were not the usual ones that they just came when they heard about my name.
I left Australia as soon as I could I would never return to that place again.
http://216.239.53.100/search?q=cache:wYNZBOCHIuYC: www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/YHBT.html+yh bt&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
I was there, the whole thing was impeccably organised and executed. Congrats to the organisers and presenters. For someone who is used to commercial conferences with their "Managing Your Server-side OLTP Business Process Modelling with [Acronym / Buzzword of the Month]" - style marketing presentations, this was a breath of fresh air. The technical knowledge present was immense, every person there was enthusiastic, and I left feeling inspired and motivated. One of the greatest moments for me was watching the reaction of Linus, Tridge and Bdale to one of the "How do you think Linux will bring about World Peace" style questions. Tridge's answer: "Just don't think about it too much." That really illustrated for me the whole mood of the conference - technical people doing what they love doing, with no (or little) politics and no marketing crap. And Rusty - the man is not just a genius. In fact he's definitely not a genius. But he sure can take the piss! ;P
I wasn't that suave! I also wasn't interested enough to try for the booth babe headhuntresses/marketroids - success struck me as too close to a love doll experience. Yuck! I just can't see falling in love, or even lust, with people who use "partner" as a verb.
/browses for waffle-knit thermal tops for wife
There was a contract tester (like me) I courted - she favored wearing waffle-knit thermal tops and that just kills me! Alas, I think she wanted someone a little more into her flavor of religious experience.
Perhaps you're not familiar with Australia's weather: it was hot. There's no sense in dressing up to the hilt in suit and tie when it's 37 degrees centigrade outside. Did you want attendees dropping like flies as they walked across the lawns from one conference room to another?
LCA is a technical conference, held in a relaxed country, attended by friendly, informal people whose work attire generally consists of jeans and t-shirts. We weren't there to peddle our wares to big business, and if big business wanted to be there, then they'll have to damned well accept us on our terms.
If you want suit and tie, go to a stuffy US business expo.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
Say what you will about my the US, but we are in the majority as far as driving on the correct side of the road.
did any of the delegates take the opportunity to visit host campus UWA's University Computer Club? I was a member as a fresher back in '96 and although I never actually made it to the club (I was that shy and reclusive back then) I did enjoy very much reading the fresher guide. heh.
Does the coke machine still run?
I never thought I would see the day when I would be ashamed of my fellow Australians. The recent election campaign was the most disgusting display of bigotry and intolerance I have ever seen. I used to think this was the best country in the world but no more. The best country in the world would be full of decent, tolerant, caring people not the raving xenephobics we seem to be in Australia at the moment.
It wasn't always like this. I remember the seventies when we had numerous boatloads of "reffoes" from south east asia, and although we made fun of them and called them names we still accepted them happily and they have on the whole made our country a much better place to live, much more diverse,interesting and I think, until recently, content society. What happened to us??
What is wrong with Australia??
How many refugees are we talking about here 20,000? 50,000? 100,000?
NO!!! Less than 10,000!!!!!
And here we all are freaking out that we are being overrun and taken over by illegal refugees. WHAT UTTER CRAP!!!
So after a marathon journey with no possessions and no real idea where they will end up what do we do to these people? Us wonderful , kind , caring Aussies?
We send in armed troops and forcibly transport them to some speck of bird shit in the middle of the Pacific!!!
How kind and compassionate of us!!!
Australia's newly re-elected government is racist and divisive and has used the Tampa crisis, and the september 11 terrorist attacks to scare and divide an ignorant public in a sleazy and patronising manner. As a re-election ploy it will have to go down in history as one of the most evil of them all. The right wing coalition have once again shown their true colours of intolerance and bigotry and how antisocial they really are. They don't care about people. All they care about is power and money and greed. To use these sad, downcast people to scare the Australian population into thinking that there was an invasion in progress just shows how easy they find it to lie and cheat the Australian public. And just how gullible and ignorant are Australians really?? What other bullshit are we capable of swallowing? If they do this now what is next????
If this is the way most Australians want to be then it is no wonder other countries see us as backward yokels who live thirty or forty years behind the rest of the world. All Australians should hang their heads in shame and it will be no suprise if our neighbors in Asia shun us for the way we have acted and the mean and nasty attitude we show towards our fellow human beings.
Where is the Australian spirit of giving everyone a fair go? Where is the good old Aussie "mateship"? How did we let Johnny Howard steal them from us? How can we let him turn us into bigots like him? Come on Australia! We can do better. We can set an example for the world. We don't have to be like the rest of the western countries. Corrupt and uncaring about anything but our own interests. We have always been well liked by every country and race around the world. Do we want to lose that?? We will very soon if we act like all the other repressive overbearing western countries do towards poverty stricken people from other parts of the world. We should help people if we can and we should share what we have. We should be friends with our neighbors not have the state of antagonism this government seems to deliberately aim for.
We are still a very lucky country and by trying to be elitist and exclusive will only show the rest of the world that we are immature and nasty people who havn't learned the basics of human decency and civility. If we keep going in the same direction of ignorance and intolerance then I can see a day when Australia will have race riots and maybe even civil war. Already we are seeing a rise in crime amongst young people belonging to ethnic minorities due to the lack of integration into the community and because the community treats them as second class citizens and subjects them to racist treatment and attitudes.
COME ON Australia!!!! Think about how we want to be.
A happy, inclusive, friendly sort of a place or a nasty, fortress, restrictive sort of a place??? If people around the world like and respect Australia and its people then wouldn't that make us more secure than anything else??? On the other hand if we antagonise and dislike our neighbors dosn't that put us in more danger than we have ever been before??????
(from google)
Gimme a fucking break.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Now we just have to see if Hobart will get it in 2005 or not! I don't know how likely it is - TasLUG isn't dead, but it's not massively active.
However we are getting the Annual SAGE-AU Conference this year (it took us until year number 11!).
- Chuq
Not if you take a world view you are not.
It sucks big time that I have to post this as an AC. But its just too risky to do other wise. Howard has hijacked the national psyche ... and that includes many ethnic groups .. this racism is with the support of many different races ... really not so much racist as religious intolerance ... directed against Islam.
Howard will go down in history the same way as McCarthy did in the US, except McCarthy had less influence.
Most Australians .. like most of any nation are sheep. The big flaw in democracy sadly. When they wake up from this there is going to be a mighty retribution.
Anyway ... my 2 cents. Gees I'm pissed off!
From an organisers perspective, I think linux.conf.au went off really well.
The only disappointing thing from my corner of the conference was that I didn't get a chance to see a lot of talks.
If you're really interested in coming to linux.conf.au next year (there isn't a URL yet afaik), then why not come join us on IRC. The channel for the conference past is #lca2003, and the channel in creation is #linux.conf.au, both of these on freenode (irc.freenode.net).
http://www.asio.gov.au/Review/comp.htm
KFG
It's great to see all the Linux coverage, especially from media sources that are general interest in nature rather than exclusively technical.
However, there is one interesting side effect that Linux advocates should keep a watchful eye for. With the increase in publicity also comes the increas in misinformation. It isn't always intentional (such as FUD from Microsoft that is so often complained about on Slashdot), but it can be annoying (or worde, damaging) nonetheless.
Take for example, the article from "The Age" mentioned above. This is a minor example, but illustrates my point well:
Rather than copyrighting the Linux code, Torvalds published it on the Internet and invited others to offer improvements.
Sure, Linus freely distribtued the code to his Linux project on the internet, however the code to Linus REMAINS COPYRIGHTED. This mis-statement was not meant to damage the Linux cause--but it doesn't help the general public understand the concept of "Free" software versus free (as in beer), and that Free Software doesn't mean anti-copyright.
In fact, copyright is the very thing that keeps the source to Linux truly Free. Without the power of copyright the owners of Free source code would have no way of defending the GPL. Conversely, developers couldn't choose to distribute their works in traditional closed-source fashion. Although copyright law has been perverted and abused in recent years, copyright in its truest sense is a fundamental right in the protection of "free speech" (not only should citizens enjoy reasonalbe protection to express their thoughts as they wish to--be it the spoken or written word, music, film or even computer programming--they should also have some right to control how that expression is used). It's a tough balancing act of course--the DMCA extends much to far into the realm or IP protection, allowing the owner of copyrighted work so much unchecked power that it stifles freedom of expression.
Such a simple mis-statement and it warrants an entire article on its own. To assist the press in accurate coverage, perhaps the organisers of Linux conferences should put together press kits that place a lot of emphasis on the concept of Free Software and background on Linux that extends beyond pure technical information. Of course one cannot be sure writers would read the material, however ditribution of such information would make it easier to respond to widely published factual errors
Perhaps some letters to the editor praising the positive coverage, and at the same time correcting misinformation would do a lot of good for the Linux community...
A "Quantas" desk at customs? A "victim" being handed back to his pals and a German representative in a bloodied and beaten state? No corroborating evidence in an airport lined with cameras? In the unlikely situation that the police did say bugger off lawyers would be climbing all over each other to get their opportunistic heads on TV crying racism. International diplomatic incidents such as the one described do not just disappear, particularly in a country where the media loves to find a racial aspect on any news item. I'll believe it when I hear about it somewhere with more credibility than an AC on slashdot.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Mind you, apart from the reliability of statistics, there are a couple of other things to consider:
:) That extra 5-7% or so would almost certainly push some other countries (the US at least) higher.
- only 12% would consider it without UN agreement. That figure is much higher elsewhere (33% in the US).
- the remoteness of Australia means a higher feeling of safety & detachment, so maybe people felt they were commenting on "someone else" having the war.
- our "don't know" figures were pretty low. So maybe culturally we're more definite about things
Still seems a rather high figure, but "would you support a war that the majority of the world agreed was necessary?" will give very different results to "would you support a war if the US decided it was necessary?"
Here's a take on linux.conf.au which has been missed
(as are a great many other things) by Slashdot.
That article was rather badly written with the apparent intent of making the facts look worse than they really are. "The Gallup International survey, released today, found 68 per cent of Australians backed military action against Iraq, with 56 per cent in favour only if the United Nations supported it." "In Australia, levels of support for war outstripped even the US, where the poll showed 67 per cent supported military action." Wooo 1% more than the US. Thats really statistically significant that is. Pillocks.
Is it funny because it doesn't make sense?
He's anonymous. The customs officers have their names inexplicably obscured and the one person who could presumably be contacted for more info who'd be outside any potential "cover up theory" is the German official who is inexplicably not named. No mention of what airport. No mention of what hospital. Not a single verifiable fact in the entire post.
People seem to think tha professional politicians are the only people capable of lying to you for subversive purposes, sadly there's plenty of amateur reality spinners out there.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
In Adelaide and some regional centres in South Australia you can contact other Linux users and get burned CDs of almost any distro for a couple of bucks;
http://www.csdn.auug.org.au
if you are not from Adelaide then start one of these amongst yourselves.
and yes, Perth LCA 2003 rocked and so will LCA 2004 in Adelaide!
No dude , there out there, you just gotta look above the chest line and LISTEN to realise that.
I know many, extremely geeky perl coding lego loving beowulf loving lasses. Many are just too busy working on kernel patches to socialise.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Unfortunately, I've heard stories of some US citizens trying to enforce their particular view of which side of the road is correct in countries other than their own ... and unfortunately, they died. ...
Perhaps there's a lesson in there somewhere
Telsa makes a point of mentioning Tim Tams (the Antipodean equivalent of Penguins, but much nicer), which are almost worth going to Australia for alone. (You can get them in NZ too - try the caramel ones.) Also, Cadburys chocolate tastes different, and much better, than the same brand in the UK.
/
On the other hand, Wales has Tregroes Waffles...
Ade_
(Professor of Chocology)
Big Bubbles (no troubles) - what sucks, who sucks and you suck
No, I think it's more a KDE/GNOME thing. :)
There are a few providers that provide mirrors of linux software...
and some of these provide this software free, or rather it doesn't count towards the download quota.
However one can see that the providers in Australia are now slowly starting to shift away from the circa 13c/meg exceess download rates.
A few have started offering plans that slow down once you reach your cap.(Netspace)
One provider (Internode) even has a new flat rate sort of plan in which there are no download 'limits' or caps as such but rather a priority list, and peoples place on the priority list is based on how much they download...
then in times of congestion those on the bottom of the priority list slow down a lot, those in the middle slow down a little, and those on the top dont slow down.
Then when it gets uncongested again, everyone downloads fast...
So I think theres some good Broadband plans out there now in Australia, the biggest problem in relation to Oz Broadband is Telstra... they have monopolised literally the whole broadband market and they are pretty much the sole reason why the uptake of broadband in Australia has been so slow.
A good place to check out the Broadband scene in Australia is Whirlpool
And quite wrong,
> 75% against war w/o UN support
In fact I haven't met anybody who actually supports the invasion of Iraq yet. Wonder where they are?
...and I think it just proves that there are shitheads of all sizes, colours and creeds in every society.
My apologies to you. I am Australian, and I think I know something about how you feel.
Some years ago, a computer shop I worked for was broken into, a few weeks after I stopped living on the premises. They used, would you believe, a circular saw on the lock of the (Al and glass) front door. A simple screwdriver or pry-bar would have forced any of the other windows or doors in the place almost silently, including ones opening on the side driveway, coneniently shielded from most prying eyes by a tall, opaque "super six" fence at the time. They stole a lot of old, non-moving stock, and a very few new computers (next shipment due soon).
Anyway, the CIB (sort-of the local FBI equivalent) came knocking at the door of the house I was sharing, scared the daylights out of the girl I was sharing it with, forced their way in and searched my room. Lo and behold, lots of boxes marked Apple (I'd used them to stack my gear in for the move), so they got all excited, opened and upended everything looking for the missing computers. Not having any luck, they shot through.
Some hours later, I came home to find my room a complete shambles. As I started tidying everything away again, the CIB dudes returned, knocked, asked me if I knew anything about it, and while I was answering (no) basically gathered around and forced me out to their car. They sped (illegal in Oz unless car has lights, siren and proximate cause) back to their office, locked me up in an interview room, and left me for an hour.
They came back in en masse, one carrying a wire coathanger, and started asking me questions while they did stuff like whack the coathanger down hard on a book, then tap me with it. They started shoving me around, and threatened to do stuff like wrap me in a blanket (showed me the blanket) and then kick me at random spots through a 'phone book (so it would hurt like hell but leave no bruises).
Instead of having the desired effect (cowing me), it made me really, really angry, and it became obvious to the leader (the only guy with any brains) that (1) I wasn't guilty; and (2) if they didn't stop, I was going to start hitting people really hard and bugger the consequences. So he called it quits and they drove me home. This made the rest of the thugs very angry.
The only feature of your story that's missing from mine is that I wasn't a long way from home.
The airport security at Perth is a joke. I strongly recommend that you don't, but if you wanted to blow up the Domestic terminal, you would just drive an old Tojo loaded with explosives, carefully but quickly, through the rent-a-car area on the north end of the terminal, through a pair of ordinary glass doors there, and you'd be right in the middle of the check-in queues. Blow your truck up there and you're assured of at least 400 deaths if there's a few flights due out. Same story at International, but it's the arrivals (East) end you'd be hitting - or you could make a smart left with same Tojo through the glass at the front. Even if those weaknesses were fixed, fly a light 'plane from Jandakot in low over the suburbs, pick a window, and fly through it - or play chicken with an inbound or outbound jetliner. There is nothing security could do about it.
I think at some level the security people are aware of the pointlessness of what they are doing, and the dickheads among them react as those who dealt with you did: by trying really hard to make enemies for Australia where none existed before.
If for any reason you need to come to Australia again, email ahead. One of our members is a lawyer who would gladly go through the rituals ahead of time for him to be there to escort you through Customs.
Oh, and contact the LCA people about a refund on your conference fee (I'm one of the lesser helpers). Once we know who you are so we can be certain you're not a hoaxer, we might also post a story (without your name) on our pages and do whatever following up we can do, locally.
Even if the police do nothing, we can hound politicians, tourism people and others until something positive gets done.
<rant>I personally am sick to the eyeballs of the stuffing around of peoples' lives that has happened since 911. The - well, I don't have a bad enough word to use - things that organised that little atrocity are winning. They've degraded life in Western countries, and degraded life for "their own" people as well. They've given a lot of previously underemployed mentally ill bullies an excuse to hurt people, and the USA has been pretty close to completely ineffective against them.
One has to wonder why. One has to wonder who in this tired old world would benefit from practically everyone else's misery.
Most of the major events in this world, pain suffering and death brought to millions, have been caused by political intrigue, by greedy people who sought to rule the world, thought they could do things better than everyone else, and always, always, "know" how to manage other people, what's good for those others, what sacrifices their subjects should make, but they think themselves different, aloof, special, exempt.
They are not special. And the day of reckoning will come, no matter what they do, no matter what I do.</rant>
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Things like this make me ashamed to be Australian. Australia is rapidly becoming the South Africa of the 21st century, a rough redneck cowboy state. Australians have acquired a reputation for bigotry and violence which is (for most of them) not deserved; if an Australian in London or New York makes a racist statement (as throwaway pop star Dannii Minogue did some months ago), people excuse them because, well, they're Australian. If you're Australian, people expect you to be a bigoted redneck arsehole, and probably spit on the floor as well; all thanks to our cowboy Prime Minister, who's still overjoyed at the nice shiny deputy's badge George W. Bush gave him.
Fifteen of these recently brutalised some guards; six of those vanished through the fence into the underworld. The very six Australia least needs, methinks.
I know lots of delightful New Australians, but the ones who do that kind of thing, and stuff like sewing their kids' lips together, worry me. I don't want to import nasty culture and criminals along with nice people.
Again, I think that these actions, and the incident at the top of this comment tree proves that there are dickheads in every country and culture. The trick is not to leave the dickheads in positions of power.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I read the comment several times, and every time it lead to "Huh?"
Not if you take a world view you are not.
r iv e_which_side.html
http://www.travel-library.com/general/driving/d
According to this link, I absolutely am correct. 66% of the worlds population drives on the Right side of the road, while only 34% drives on the Left.
So I cooked up this logo for my local linux users group, and they nominated me for Sun's regional delegate program. Wow! Being flown across Australia to attend LCA2003, what a blast.
...everyone knows linux, conversations start from that point,
...Saying hi to 5 people before my first coffee of the day;
...the kernel, is it too big? Can these guys pull it off?
...Where are the gcc people? Is this the GNU/Linux divide? It seems the kernel is in bed with GCC.
...Okay, some things are simpler in 2.5, phew!
...Another nametag, another famous person, another nerd, another one i've seen on my favourite mail list.
...in a room with 200 others (blechh) going over the SMP scheduler with Rusty... Do these people really know what this is about, or are they just groupies?
...Finding Linus and fam at a cafe; like royalty...
...So, GUI toolchain hackers get all the babes... i'm workin on it, i am. yes.
...Being heard, asking questions, we all geeky here, no need to be shy
...Meeting sun guy in toilet, thankyou thankyou, yes send more people next year!
<impressions>
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If you're reading your thread, get in touch. There's a really, really simple solution to this: sic the media on the *named* officials concerned. As someone pointed out in another comment, they'll be all over it.
haha