Linus at Fermi National Accelerator Lab

A regular reader wrote in with this bit: "Linus Torvalds will be the speaker at Fermilab in Batavia, IL, 30 miles west of Chicago, on Sunday, April 18, at 5:30 pm. He will talk on Penguins & Computer Chips with a special introduction by John maddog Hall. Fermilab is open to the public during the day. " Wish I could be there :) Anyway, I remember reading something about Fermilab building a big cluster with Red Hat. Anyone care to refresh my memory? Update: 04/18 01:31 by H : Note: This is not open to the public. The lab is, but the speech is not...so, put your keys back on the counter, and think jealous thoughts.

Comments

Names, Geography and History

[Crysgem]

'T'is interesting to consider the arraying of names and geography and history, the small-detail underpinnings of any such meeting. But those three factors are functions of one another to extent varying, non? Enrico Fermi, Chicago, Illinois, Manhattan Project, the great scientific - burst *irony intended* - that was the 20th century. Will our memetic descendants one day study/innovate at, or revere a "Torvalds Institute"? And what repututation would it bear? Would it spawn rebels such as Berkeley, ideologues as did MIT? *Chuckles* Interesting that the BSD kids "sold out", and the North-Easters remained committed. So much for West-Coast culture.
And more interestingly, where would such a facility be based? Within Helsinki environs, or in California? That's fascinating to consider, yes, citizens? Here again with Torvalds the international infusion to American science, ergo American wealth and power. Will we now witness a shift, the onset of a balance, where Europe and other non-American spheres create equal or even competing streams to the American information structure, which in honest recollection was largely the cradle of much of our now-used network technology? And would these alternate spheres (I am considering Western Europe, possibly India) create network/information regimes that reflect their own societies, their own unique differences... or would they apishly reflect the American capital technocracy that seemingly is unconsciously imparted to any users (and managers) of these our tools?
I am uncertain if Fermilab was so titled after the great Italian's death, or before. Perhaps it would inform these thoughts...
I know comparitively little of Jon "maddog" Hall... if I retrieve and parse correctly, he is of the American '70s Unix generation, nearly following the Progenitors, Thompson, Ritchie and Kernighan. What will this generation, these individuals, pass on to our future? What influence or guidance, if any (in the social/power sense)? Will institutions bear their name? Will they remain relatively unrecognized and uncredited in "the Real World", as I seem to believe Postel is? It seems to me that, like the Americans and, aye, Europeans, who made their wealth and changed the world from the base of America in the first half of this century (A. Einstein, consider his pacifism), they've a responsibility to speak and think on the implications of their wizardcraft. A strict engineering mentality ("I'm not political") should be discouraged by these people... else that American example will be passed to the world, which (as I, a Canadian, know well) questions not American ways enough. Heh, well... I suppose 't'is difficult to be an icon... and I *would* prefer Linus to devote himself in this still-early time in largest part to kernel oversight... until our World Domination.