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LinuxWorld Highlights
Jan Stafford writes "Bernard Golden over at SearchEnterpriseLinux was wowed by the many hardware and software products on display at LinuxWorld. Among the highlights include Blackdog, a complete Linux server the size of a deck of playing cards and Astaro a bundled security suite designed for corporations. He also outlines the good, bad and funny trends of the convention."
What about the toaster powered by netBSD that was shown at LinuxWorld?
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
Really, it seems that the event itself was just as boring as the writeup. I would have at least expected a description of the (rumored) fistfight between Linus Torvalds and Bruce Perens over (and in) the patent pool.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
So how is it a complete server if it requires another PC to operate?
Yeah, a lack of any pictures is suprising, especially as he makes such a big deal about all the hardware at the show.
And where are our gratuitous "Male booth dolly" cheesecake shots!?
Xbox reviews.. We think they're funny.
from the article:
"I knew that vendors hired attractive women to staff their booths, hoping to attract the mostly-male attendees of technical conferences, but I had no idea that the subterfuge extended to the other half of the species. Live and learn!"
Or maybe they're just extending to the other *tenth* of the species, if you catch my drift.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, as Seinfeld would say.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
That Blackdog is amazing for just $200. I want one!
seems like the last one he was at was '00 in san jose. now THAT was a party. ever since has been drab, and this one was just about as average as the rest of the west coast/bay area ones since.
.org pavilion being relocated to the mezzanine was lame - but it was still good to be able to walk up to the folks at gentoo, kde, moz and eff and give them the props they deserved.
although, yeah,
~A
Linux, Vai, Satch and Guitars.. that is the life ICQ# 7357858
The 256 MB model is $199 and the 512 MB model is $239.
Yes, i'm a Karma Whore
maybe i'll order one myself. They ought to put up some demo's there. ;-)
Java Oracle Linux Enthusiast
Looking at the website, I don't think it's really intended to be used as a server - at least not primarily. It is, however, an amazingly cool little portable PC - powered over another PC's USB, steals the host's input/output devices - how cool is that! I'm quite tempted to buy one myself. Just a pity that it only has 64Mb onboard RAM....
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
That sounds ominous, don't think I'll bother grepping for the patent app, my next bout of depression isn't scheduled until the next software/biz method patent story hits slashdot.
More concerning, the shopping cart requires javascript and the contact link requires javascript. Here's a fucking clue for these pupps: javascript is blocked by our corporate firewall for security reasons, if a company wants to interest me in a server app with integrated (biometric) security they need to make sure their website works for people who work in locked-down labs. Here's another clue, this oversite (sic) casts major doubts in my mind about the security of the device itself. biometrics of any kind.
After my latest experience with tech support for a major hardware vendor, I'm convinced that the male booth dolly is just as knowledgable as the tech support guys. Of course he's better looking and smells better.
IntelliToast
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And here the first thought that came to my mind when the "tenth" reference was made was that a tenth of the participants of LinuxWorld are female!
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Seems like I've seen a similiar specification for the Blackdog somewhere before.
What I don't understand is why the MMC card on these devices is limited to 512mb. Sandisk and others already offer 1, 2, and 4GB high-speed CF cards. Is it an issue of pre-formatting, the software driver, or something else I'm missing? It would be kind of cool to have an external RAID device consisting of multiple CF cards plugged into a "CF bus."
Mentioning the fact that mambo (open source) actually beat Firefox 1.0.5, Linux Terminal Server Project and IBM's Derby 10.1 to the Best Open Source Solution award would have made this review slightly less incomplete.
Perens talking animatedly about software patents and saying that he had "cast a little a doom and gloom on this whole great show" by raising the issue of the dertrimental effect of software patnts on open source.
And here the first thought that came to my mind when the "tenth" reference was made was that a tenth of the participants of LinuxWorld are female!
And I though it a reference to One in Ten and about unemployed Geeks.
I still don't get why would I want one of these. I already have a PC with i/o devices, display and power. This portable thing doesn't work on its own. If it's about synchronizing files - I can carry a USB memory stick with me and keep my $HOME there.
Could someone elighten me?
From TFA:
"I was also impressed by Coraid, maker of ATA-over-Ethernet (AoE), hardware. The AoE protocol allows Ethernet-connected hard drives. What's so great about that? It offers the ability to build SANs without the cost and complexity of fibre channel or iSCSI. "
Wow, wow, wow! Hold it right there!
Let remind ourselves here that he uses the word "SAN" in a very loose sense.
There's a heaven-and-sky difference between this and good old fibre channel SAN.
I don't know who this pal is, but I figure were he familiar with the traditional SANs, he wouldn't have toss out the SAN word just like that.
Then he sez:
"Essentially, this allows machines to write data via a low-level Ethernet protocol using a machine's standard NIC card. To me, this offers the potential to allow SMBs to get access to SAN functionality previously unaffordable to them."
About "previously unaffordable". It can't be more affordable than iSCSI (as the network and the adapters used are the same), so except for the novel (read: niche, unsupported, unreliable and most likely untested - especially when compared to the industry-standard and well-tested iSCSI protocol) protocol, I don't see how this can be attractive to any company, including the suicidal SMBs (SMEs).
I mean, what would you use this kind of "SAN" for? ERP? Oracle? Mail? Never.
It's too bad that he missed to call any of that stuff "mission-critical".
Oh, well - typical Linux enthusiast attitude that makes IT people laugh. Then again, it's in line with what we usually get to read here.
I still don't get why would I want one of these. I already have a PC with i/o devices, display and power. This portable thing doesn't work on its own. If it's about synchronizing files - I can carry a USB memory stick with me and keep my $HOME there.
Hence the reason for the contest they are running for people to come up with the killer app for the hardware. One would think before going to the R&D cost of building such a device they would already have the 'killer app'.
That said with its biometric device it could be the worlds largest high security key for your desktop. Or possibly a great transport for injecting that worm into any pc you run accross.....
Sick of stupidity? http://www.patentlystupid.com
In unrelated news Bicycle Company, Inc., announced a new rack-mountable version of its popular Deck of Playing Cards.
-Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
Almost any processor in any device can make a really small server. Heck, with enough time, I can probably convert my vacuum's embedded chip into a small server.
Slashdot misses the point, as usual. Nobody wants or needs a small server. The entire point of a server is you stick it in some remote location, where it SERVES. You don't care how big it is AT ALL.
A small 'desktop' computer? Now that's news.
For $50,000, I hope someone will come up with a good use for it.
Wouldn't it be better to boot with a live linux distro such as knoppix and save your session to a reasonable sized USB memory stick? You would be using a much more powerful computer and it would cost about one sixth the price.
Yeah, true, but don't forget the 'cool' factor. Also, the Blackdog device boots in 2 seconds! That's almost as fast as a ZX Spectrum!
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I was hoping that my isp would generously give everyone of it's customers a terabyte hard drive. This hard drive would by read only though. The isp would than have a server within one mile of all its customers. This server than would have access to all of those hard drives or ten's of thousand of Terabytes of hard drive space. It would use this huge amount of space as a local cache for the internet. With that much storage it could transmit all the television or movies that people would desire. Than that spectrum of frequency could be used for other purposes.
Look at Kinsey's methodology. His sample was anything by random and it is difficult to argue that his sample is really representative of the US population at large. It is hard to escape the conclusion that Kinsey had an axe to grind and sensationalized his work in order to use it as a catalyst for the changes that he wanted to see in society.
Most modern studies put the percentage of gays in the general population at somewhere between 1 in 20 and 1 in 100. The last time I looked into the research (some five years ago) there wasn't any well accepted figure. Things may have changed since then.
[
> The 256 MB model is $199 and the 512 MB model is $239.
Right, so basically I can carry around almost one CD's worth of data, except not really, because you presumably have to subtract whatever space the OS and applications take up. So it's like Knoppix with a USB key (or MandrakeMove), except it costs more and you don't have to reboot the host PC before and after each use -- oh, and you don't have to run netcardconfig to get on the network. Oh, and it's worthless as a rescue system because the host OS has to be running.
What am I missing?
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
at the booth
The prestigious "Best Database Solution" award went to EnterpriseDB this year. The press release is here.
EnterpriseDB is built upon the PostgreSQL database, and contributes what they create back to PostgreSQL (often immediately). One of the improvements they made to PostgreSQL is an Oracle compatibility layer.
They competed against MySQL, Oracle, and IBM DB2.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
Tell ya what...in San Fran, this might have been a good thing. I saw at least TWO guys wearing skirts. Not kilts mind you, but SKIRTS! Was the BoothBob there by mistake...or was it planned to attract the diversity that makes San Fran so cool. Not that there is anything wrong with that...
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
I feel like this article missed a ton of other items that were at the show. Yeah, okay, ATAoE is cool, but there was way more there.
The NetBSD toaster has already been mentioned, but what he neglected to discuss were some of the other offerings:
- Splunk (www.splunk.com) an amazingly cool log searching system, which is basically google for system logs
- The large number of companies offering huge disk arrays (19TB+) that ran directly on Linux. (Aberdeen and Pogo to name two)
- The companies (communigate, others) who were actually offering systems to kill M$ Exchange
- ActiveGrid, a GUI system for developing LAMP Applications. Very slick, easy interface.
- Lots of companies offering embedded linux products and small form factor linux servers. "Linux Everywhere" seemed to be a common theme.
Studies suggest that children raised by gay parents only have only a marginally increased likelihood of being gay when compared to children raised by straight parents. Given that children tend to adopt the beliefs and convictions of their parents with regards to politics and religion, even in environments where society is hostile to those beliefs and convictions, I would expect the numbers to be far higher rather than only marginally higher /if/ being raised in an environment that is supportive of being gay is a /significant/ contributing factor to being gay.
I do think that we need to be wary of hidden biases. Self-description as a measurement is prone to societal bias. Like you pointed out, people may not be fully revealing to survey takers. This could be for any number of reasons. That said, societal bias is certainly changing in most of the US. If you're remembering the 2% figure correctly, and assuming that the studies you're remembering had a valid methodology, I would be surprised if the real number were any higher than 3 or 4%.
Cue Elvis - "As the snow flies,On a cold and gray chicago mornin',A poor little baby child is born,
:) Firefox, KDE, Gnome, Xorg all up there and did not seem to be missing the happenings downstairs.
In the ghetto"
Ahem... I happened to make it up there only because I am a Mepis user, and was told that I could donate up there(and possibly meet Warren, Hi Warren)... Interesting. I did not not seeing FreeBSD up there, but i made the rounds to all the booths; Frightened some young EFFer by walking at him with a $20 dollar bill and just handing it to him.
Of note also, the Asian Distros/companies were up there also... hmmmmm.... Sun Wah Linux is a Chinese debian based distro looked quite impressive.
I have been going to LWC since 1999 and when we first got the IBM and Novell glitz there is kind of fun, now it is just I don't know... DIRTY.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
The .org pavilion was banished to an upstairs mezzanine. This caused many attendees to miss it. I felt that it sent a message that the .orgs are unimportant.
I worked at the KDE booth. We were remarking on the steady but someone slow traffic. Then I went downstairs (for my turn at snagging swag and Redhat chocolate bars) and discovered where all the people were. Just a tenth of those people upstairs would have been cool. Oh well.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
But with this you also have /usr. Carrying around my home directory is only useful if I know I'll have a Linux box on which to read it. Carrying around all my data plus the applications and being able to access it on anyone's Windoze machine is completely different.
Carrying this could replace lugging around a 10 lb laptop.
The numbers I have seen based on self-reported behavior of men over a period of 3 years prior to the survey (IIRC) showed about 3% exclusively homosexual, 6% primarily homosexual and 20% had had some homosexual experience during that time. The numbers were much lower for Blacks. That was a recent study with several thousand participants.
Curiously, the percentage of men who have a greater erectile response to child porn than to adult female porn is also about 20%, and the percentage of male college students who say they would have sex with a prepubescent child if they knew they would not get caught is over 6%. These were two single studies by reputable academics with on the close order of 100 subjects each.
"Normal" and "deviant" are social judgements which vary considerably between cultures and eras, but balls and brains often don't take notice.
I just don't think that the consequences of a different environment would be a difference on an order of magnitude. I also think you paint a bleaker picture of US society than really exists. Certainly, there are areas of the US that are extremely hostile to gays and lesbians. But there also also large swaths of the US where gays and lesbian lifestyles are accepted as being perfectly normal.
As someone who just blundered past one morning on the way to work with an exibit only pass, I didn't have a clue there were community groups on the second floor.
I was wondering where the locals and nonprofits went. Not that there were all that many of them in previous years, but I always found at least a few interesting conversations on the floor. Guess not bothering to pick up a conference guide book was a mistake.
I've got nothing against big-money IT-centric vendors. Hell, it's more than that. I'm very glad they exist. As the most mainstream, lucrative, and visible aspect of FOSS in general and Linux in particular, they do a lot of good for the community. But, they sure do make for a boring floor show.