Videos and Report From Embedded Linux Conference

Thomas Petazzoni writes "The fourth edition of Embedded Linux Conference was held from April 15 to 17 in Mountain View, California. With more than fifty talks and tutorials around the use of Linux in embedded devices, this conference covered a wide range of topics: power management, debugging techniques, system size reduction, flash filesystems, embedded distributions, real-time, graphics and video, security, etc. For those who could not attend the conference, Free Electrons has published under a free license videos of nineteen talks and an extensive report of them. You can for example watch Andrew Morton's keynote, Klaas van Gend's talk about the real-time version of the Linux kernel, or Mike Anderson's tutorial on the use of JTAG probes for kernel debugging."

Comments

Not a real conference?

[Martin Blank]

It can't be a real technical conference. The media isn't posted in a format locked to Windows.

what happened to the other 31+ reports?

[crazybit]

will they ever be available?

Free Electrons should free all of them... after all freedom is it's business.

Re:what happened to the other 31+ reports?

[tpetazzoni]

Yep, right. I was the only person recording talks, so I couldn't record three simultaneous talks (I also wanted to actually *listen* to the talks). So only one talk at a time has been recorded. However, at the bottom of the report, you'll find links to the slides for a number of other talks.

Slashdot gripes

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Okay, this is the third thread in a row on the front page that has been nothing more than an overblown opinion piece or random uninteresting conference coverage. I don't think anyone is really going to be disenfranchised if I take a detour from our regularly scheduled wankfest and open up the floor to Slashdot gripes.

Slashdot has changed a lot since I first logged on here so many years ago. And while I don't expect a site to be static, I do expect that it evolve to preserve the good features and remove the bad features. Slashdot has, in my opinion, done a relatively good job of retaining its "flavor", but it has done a terrible job in preserving the "Slashdot Community". I am interested in your opinion of this, as well as concrete examples of either ways Slashdot has done a good job, in your opinion, or has hurt the community through their bad decisions.

One of the biggest regressive changes was the decision to make Funny moderations worthless, thereby turning funny posts and comments into karma sinks. This has fundamentally shaped the tone of Slashdot comments into a much less humorous form. Slashdot has evolved, through this one action, into a community of sour-faced monks. Such a community makes me wonder why I want to still be a part of it.

Many other changes here at Slashdot have resulted these types of feelings, and if you have an opinion, please feel free to post it in this thread. Be aware, though, that this thread (at least this post) will be modded to -1, so if you can't spare the karma, you may want to move on quietly.

What changes have you seen to Slashdot that have diminished your enjoyment of this site?

Re:Slashdot gripes

[William Robinson]

offtopic -1

Looks like a karma burning time for me too.....

BadAnalogyGuy, I have enjoyed your posts, and, still remember funny comments by other members few months ago....something like 'I wanted to tell you how bad your analogy is, before I saw your ID'.

I do not agree with you completely. As far as, humour on Slashdot is concerned, I have thoroughly enjoyed funniest posts, one of them being part of my signature too.

Having said that, IMO, I am also waiting for some good discussion on this topic, being a solution provider using embedded Linux and FreeRTOS. I was specially interested in some discussion on Power Saving, Audio and Video services, codecs, EMI and its effects on reliability. And I am hopeful, somebody with good knowledge on this subject could post some insightful comments on this.

To answer your question, I have not enjoyed any web site more than Slashdot (pr0n excluded :-D) and I hope to see still lot better of it.

Re:Slashdot gripes

[Anonymous Coward]

What changes have you seen to Slashdot that have diminished your enjoyment of this site?

Why, the proliferation of bad analogies, of course.

Re:Slashdot gripes

[rabiddeity]

Okay, this is the third thread in a row on the front page that has been nothing more than an overblown opinion piece or random uninteresting conference coverage.

Well, let's see, this was a conference about using Linux in embedded systems. As Slashdot is a tech site with heavy emphasis on open source software, and embedded systems are a huge area of modern computing (if unglamorous), this story is certainly worthy of the front page. Now I haven't been able to access TFA because it's been slashdotted, but from the article description it sounds like it might be a rather informative and interesting set of talks. One more thing: if your router or video camera is running Linux it means you can hack it. If that isn't interesting to you, maybe you're spending your time on the wrong site.

One of the biggest regressive changes was the decision to make Funny moderations worthless, thereby turning funny posts and comments into karma sinks.

Much better than people karma whoring with stale memes. It was getting to the point where finding actual unique comments involved digging through piles of robotic Natalie Portman overlord "jokes". They may have been funny a couple years ago but they were getting out of hand. Nowadays you can still be clever with a witty comment and not be modded down, but if you aren't REALLY funny you'll probably take a karma hit or two. This keeps us on topic, and means the comments and debate at +3 are often more interesting to read than the article itself. If I were to change one thing, yeah, it might be nice if "-1 Overrated" didn't knock comments into negative karma. But that's a pretty minor nitpick on a generally good rating system.

Re:Slashdot gripes

[doomy]

WTS 4 digit account.

Excellent karama. Never posted against the establishment, always on topic, always for Linux always against Microsoft.

Branded by Scientologist as Evil! Censored but still posting.

Predicted everything to do with the Bush administration and won an academy award for forum trolling.

Account comes as is and is guaranteed usable until the epoch on 19 Jan 2038.

Re:Slashdot gripes

[madboson]

Okay, this is the third thread in a row on the front page that has been nothing more than an overblown opinion piece or random uninteresting conference coverage.

This does not strike me as a overblown or random uninteresting conference. As others have said, the site was slashdotted quite quickly so no actual FTFA comments but embedded Linux systems? How is that a random uninteresting conference. If your not interested in that kind of thing, a) you might be in the wrong place b) don't start complaining because you clicked a link on slashdot that happened to be uninteresting to you.

One of the biggest regressive changes was the decision to make Funny moderations worthless, thereby turning funny posts and comments into karma sinks. This has fundamentally shaped the tone of Slashdot comments into a much less humorous form. Slashdot has evolved, through this one action, into a community of sour-faced monks. Such a community makes me wonder why I want to still be a part of it.

I personally like the fact I do not have to trudge through worthless "funny" comments to get to some thing interesting. If there is a truly witty and interesting comment it will get modded accordingly, but why should one get posting karma just for being funny. We want intelligent and insightful comments here, not brainless crap (yeah yeah, its /. why am I saying we have intelligent and insightful comments I do not know). Any way, what is the old adage, "vote with your feet." That might work if truly its as bad as you say.

Re:Slashdot gripes

[BadAnalogyGuy]

I believe there is a huge undercurrent here which desires a more free exchange of ideas. It isn't the members of the Slashdot community that I think are at fault but the badly formulated rewards system that shapes the communication into a very specific pattern.

Posts like my original one are an anomaly and express what many people feel, so it gets modded up. But if you were watching my karma, you'd see that it dropped from Excellent to Positive due to the moderations on this post. What looks like positive (+4 Informative!) moderation is actually negatively affecting my karma, and thus my ability to post (when the moderations reach a certain threshold).

It's the attempt to shape the posts that I think really hurts the "Slashdot experience" and gives outsiders the not-so-incorrect stereotype of the angry Linux system administrator Slashbot. The stereotype's been around a long time, but it has really taken hold as reality (at least as posts go) since the introduction of the new moderation point rules.

Countdown: 3.....2.....1.....

[rts008]

How long until some overzealous miscreant posts:
"But does it run on Linux?"

When it happens, I propose that he should be tarred_n_featherd, then chained to a sweat-shop assembly line 'embedding' Linux into chipsets while surrounded by life-size posters of RMS in a speedo.

Okay, well that's MY recurring nightmare!

How about some more free talks?

[Myself]

All archived Notacon talks are available for free. Fetch 'em via HTTP or .torrent.

Talks given by Blockparty speakers are included. Enjoy!