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Unisys Smoking Hot Demo at Linux World Boston
This year's LinuxWorld Boston started off with a bang...and a fair amount of smoke. Unisys apparently had a few problems launching their first demo, as our own Robin "Roblimo" Miller reports over at Newsforge (also owned by VA Software). From the article: "Less than an hour after the show floor opened at the 2006 edition of the Boston LinuxWorld Expo today, fire alarms went off and a plume of smoke arose from the server cabinet in the Unisys display. "I knew we had a magician scheduled," said one rattled Unisys employee,"but this isn't what I expected." Indeed, this was an unexpected event. It was a real fire -- or at least a considerable smolder, complete with firemen, evacuation orders (soon rescinded), and other hoopla. Photos and a video clip included."
Someone forgot to include a link to TFA.
t id=2&tid=18&tid=3
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Luckily Google News came to the rescue
http://os.newsforge.com/os/06/04/04/169215.shtml?
Link to video:
http://www.newsforge.com/blob.pl?id=02083954d3d50
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Really. Just shows some light smoke coming from behind a wall. And there is a loud beeping in the background which likely comes from a fire detector. Neither flames nor servers visible and although the video is 3MB large it is only 18 seconds long.
...when I was in the Coast Guard. I was demo'ing some shiny new bar coding equipment, plugged in the barcode printer, and smoke rose and sparks flew. That kind of squelched the demo.
The Coast Guard was a big Unisys customer for a while - lots of workstations running the Convergent Technology Operating System (CTOS). I'll bet that even here on Slashdot no one's heard of CTOS...
The Army reading list
The lower couple of rack spaces seem to be used up by a distro box - I've seen similar types of multipin connectors used for both audio snakes and lighting. You can also make out some twist-lock power connectors and what look like BNC connectors (possibly wireless mic antenna).
The previous post is right, the road case in question is a lighting dimmer rack, the socopex connectors are attached to the dimmmers for three-phase power. The boxes above are a vga switcher, RGBS video distribution amplifier and an audio amp. This was a rack from the A/V company... hopefully my old employers, the cheap bastards. however, you can still blame it on Unysis if you have too. :)
Less than three, to be exact. Is your memory that bad that you can't remember something that happened 3 years ago?
Unisys' actions drove up the cost of software by demanding payments from developers who made GIF creation software. In the open source world, because of the patent issue, the GD library could not legally create GIFs until a year later in 2004. GIMP would not open or save GIFs also because of Unisys' actions.
So, our commerical software was more expensive, and our open source software was crippled because of this company. Unisys has given nothing back or made ammends. Yet, you're willing to let by gones be by gones so easily?
Tell me something, are you going to go out and buy a SCO license a couple of months after they get asses handed to them?
The demo gremlins got us! Actually, the smoldering was in the electrical distribution box housing the lighting, not the Unisys server. The Unisys server itself did not burn or smoke. The Unisys booth was out of commission for only 45 minutes, and is now up and running. We encourage LinuxWorld attendees to come by!
CNET correctly reports that it was faulty convention wiring and not a Unisys server.