Slashdot Mirror
Linux Expo Wrap Up
Rather than spending all week posting lots of little bits
about Linux Expo, I've saved them up for now:
Russ Nelson
sent us a collection of pictures,
Brian Smith
sent us his,
and our own
Justin
sent us
his collection
and a mirror,
and nicedream sent us a collection of pictures from the Debian boys.
(featuring many light saber battles and nerf wars from the Slashdot
booth)
Marc Merlin sent us linkage to a scan of the
linuxcare poster that Red Hat
got so cranky about.
He has a full report
on the show.
An anonymous reader sent us a
TechSitings Story,
Jonas Öberg
wrote in to send us Telsa (Alan Cox's wife) take on the show for
something a bit lighter.
If you'd been paying attention, you would have noticed that *this* Tux had boobs. And no, the girl leading heR around wasn't Marilyn Manson (who's a guy) but instead was one of those "I'm so pretty I have to make myself ugly so the guys don't drool on me" girls. Hey, it's either that, or walk around handing out spittle sacks.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
MRTG is your friend.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
It's a parody of the palmpilot ads. I wouldn't read any more into it than that.
Your all going to laff at me.
when Push Comes to Shove
I know I should take a cue from your web address (crynwr.com), but I was wondering how you generated that graph?
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I *knew* that was CmdrTaco taking apart his Red Hat beer mug at the table next to us! Only a geek of such epic proportions would have brough his leatherman to a party. And taken apart the light-up plastic glass to see how it ticked.
On the Planet Red Hat party - it was a blast. The music was rather retro-80s in the main, and reminded me of the mixes they played back in high school - without the slow songs. The food was eh - the Obi-Wan Canolis and the Jedi Strawberries were the best. I didn't try one of the Naboo Star Fighters (chocolate-dipped cookies), but heard they were pretty bland. The beer was good - bottled all the way! Even if they did run out.
All in all, highly impressive for a gathering of geeks. There were even people dancing - after about an hour or two. And I might have even gotten a free boxed Red Hat outa the deal. Without having to give up the O'Reilly Open Sources T-shirt I was wearing at the time.
I wouldn't base a purchase on it, but in light of the "other ad" that is going around, i find it pretty amusing.
:)
i'd actually like to get a scan of the poster even. maybe i'm just a pervert though
Now that you mention it, I remember the palm pilot ads... Still what I said goes for Palm Pilot, they didn't convince me to buy a Palm Pilot, worse, they created a campaign that I forgot about. :-)
:-)
Anyway if they wanted a good parody, how about Tux sitting in the same position as the naked woman wearing only a bra.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Mirrored here.
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~ fhsu/104_linuxcare_s.jpg
And it was a blast. You should have been there.
:-) I would have bought a couple shirts off /. to support them if I saw any, but I didn't see any. :-(
:-(
:-)
Parking couldn't be easier. Most folks there were either coming from IBM or Red Hat if they were in town. The rest were all from San Fran pretty much and took shuttles from their respective hotels. I parked just outside the building with no trouble whatsoever.
Getting to meet the big giants behind Linux like Alan Cox, David Miller, and Sam Ockman was icing on the cake.
On Friday night my wife (a complete technophobe) decided to come out to the SuSE party at the Warehouse. Of course, right off she decides she wants to meet all the people she sees me reading about. She points to a table next to the bar and says "That guy with the hair looks like someone neat to talk to. Let's go meet him." so for the next 20 minutes or so we were having drinks with Bodo Bauer. She seems to have a good eye for picking out the most interesting people to talk to in a crowded room.
You'll definitely have to make it out to the next one. Get all the handouts you can on the very first day before a Red Hat lawyer issues gets a cease-and-desist order put out.
It was really cool to go to work the next week and see so many Linux shirts (from the show of course). And of course, now I have my own Tux guarding my office from the evil AIX people when I'm not there.
Slashdot was buried back in the corner, between Gnu and Debian. Gnu was trying to sell some godawfully ugly tee shirts and to be honest I didn't see them move even a single one.
I think the Slashdot booth would have been worth visiting if they set up a few lawn chairs and a whiteboard, put a news topic up on the whiteboard, and had the people hanging out commenting to each other on the topic.
The Loki guys were there with CivCTP so of course I bought that.
Penguin Computing had the phattest single machine at the show... that eight way Xeon box we've all read about.
Caldera gave me a 2.2 CD which didn't work on my machine.
Red Hat had another booth in the back where they were selling tee shirts and beer glasses. I thought it tacky of them to push Gnome shirts while not offering any KDE shirts.
Linuxcare has the most ingenious marketing gimmicks at the show. First the posters that were more famous when they were no longer available, and then the lollipops with real crickets stuck inside (bite the bug, get a mug).
There were some folks there selling accounting software for Linux, and when talking to them they had no idea what "GPL" was, and seemed totally lacking a clue about Linux. The booth across from them was giving out Free Beer (how appropriate).
Of course there was at least one Beowulf running.
Linux Magazine hired the best looking model out of any of the exhibitors. Huff da!
I don't know which "Linux Celebrity" was easier to pick out of the crowd... John "maddog" Hall or Alan Cox. I think Cox won, only because of his bright red fedora. David Miller blended into the crowd better than any other "Linux Celeb".
I saw a kid that looked like Pugsley running around in a Tux suit. He was led around by Maralyn Manson, I believe.
You really should try to make it next year.
The big problem was most people thought that was
a Red Hat advert.
Where can I get one of these? I NEED one !
Seen here.
What a load of crap.
Notice he's carrying both an infant, as well as a laptop. Slick!
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
What contributions are you refrerring to?
true... it should have a "not afflilated with..."
disclaimer. also, not usung the RH box image would have been good. a generic linux item (everyone's favorite penguin) would have caused much less trouble.
Wowzers! That's one *spectacular* display of ignorance! (Snipped from http://www.techsightings.com/cgi-bin/ts_review.pl? 317)
You're a suburbanite.
i too like her writes... but what would she write about for /. ?
/.
not technical stuff, maybe psychologcal that is:
"...David Weeks' writing in the UK on eccentricity as a definable trait -- I learnt some stuff about this a few years ago, and it's amazing how many hackers share the traits he defines as shared by eccentrics."
i for one would like to know more... wonder if she reads
nmarshall
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
nmarshall
The law is that which it boldly asserted and plausibly maintained..
--Colonel Burr 1783
Eccentricity -- well, your best bet is to grab the books from www.amazon.com. The book I first got doesn't seem to be there, but the weightier tome, "Eccentrics: the scientific study" (which is what I actually ordered at my bookshop and didn't get) is there, as is a more anecdotal account (maybe mine under a new name?) Weeks saw lots of work being done on normal and decidedly not normal, but nothing on the borders, and launched a large study into the phenomenon. He identified a number of traits which he held to be shared by all or most eccentrics, and without going to my bookshelf I may get this wrong, but here goes:
Intelligence, intense curiosity, non-conformist, idealistic, not in need of social reinforcement, obsessive about a number of different (wildly different) things at once, sense of humour, poor speller...There were also differences in the way they spoke, and they tend to be off the scale in personality tests which measure the strength of different characteristics. (off the scale in either direction). Although "having eccentric relatives" is apparently common in some forms of mental illness, having mentally ill relatives didn't seem particularly common in eccentrics (about the same as "normal people").
What struck me was the "Portrait of J Random Hacker" in the back of the Jargon File, which also mentions humour, lots of wide-ranging interests, confidence that you're right, not caring what others think, and being more likely to have unusual philosophies and act on them. There seemed, as I say, to be a slight overlap :)
I just did a quick google search on "David Weeks eccentricity" and got a pile of hits: apparently he did a lot of interviews when the latest book came out. They'll give you more information and the books more yet.
I wouldn't get _too_ excited about this. I do enjoy stuff about the boundaries between normality and non-normality (don't get me onto the subject of how many people hear voices, for example :)) and it just struck me that there were similarities. I can think of one or two people who are both hackers and eccentric, but I wouldn't say it's an automatic link. On the other hand, they're both very small segments of the population, and the chances of so many (as I perceive it) overlapping must be low.
Anyway, this is too long, but those are the books you want to look at (or the interviews, but they mostly focus on the arty eccentrics rather than the scientific ones (think of Newton and his bed having to be north-south, and Franklin, and Cavendish)).
Telsa (who does read Slashdot, yes, and knows this is probably off-topic, but what the hell, someone asked :))
Yup, I was about to say this also. She gave me a much better feel for how the Linux Expo was like...or atleast her writing was entertaining to read.
So, who's got pics of the models that were kicked out early on?
the contributions of the African-American community to its cause. None of the pictures shown had any African Americans in them with the exception of one nearly bald head in a Red Hat photo and teh LHA/VA booth. This failure is both appaling and racist and shows the obvious dominance of the white race and once again its refusal to include minorities in its agenda. No doubt this post will be moderated down.
Linux Magazine had the best model. I wanted her to be my next ex-wife.
Had a rippin' time. Lotsa T-shirts, bought Civilization and Red Hat 6.0. Learned a bit and met some people. Schwingin' party the last nite. Cool Mug. ;>
Here's a picture of the slashdot effect. This is the local ISP who usually has more incoming than outgoing traffic. That is, until my pictures hit slashdot, where it suddenly reversed.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Ignoring that this was a parody...
I'd look at an ad with a motif I find sexy, and maybe even notice the name of the product. If, at a later point, I'd need to buy a product in that category, there is a slightly better chance that I'd remember the name of the product. Most likely, you would to. That is enough for the ad to work.
In fact, a parody like this works exactly the same. We will look at it and remember the name because of the humor instead of the sex.
The point is: Advetising agencies don't assume we (the consumers) act purely on a rational basis, because we don't, and they do.
The New and Observer (local newspaper) had a front page article and it was mentioned here on /. at least twice....
I found the Telsa journal to be rather amusing and well written. Wonder if she could be talked into writing opinion columns for /.
Note to Telsa: The author of Bears Discover Fire is Terry Bissom. It is both a short story (it appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine -- can't recall which issue) and a collection of short stories, in which the eponymous story is far and away the best.
--
Some keywords for the NSA in the Lord of the Rings universe: One Ring bind find Sauron quest Nazgul freedom
I live in work in Raleigh, and I can't believe that it happened here. There was no mention of it in any of the media, there were no signs, banners, or even any extra traffic. Was the Linux Expo just 10 guys getting together in somebody's basement?
So Red Hat Linux is that woman's excrement or flatuence?
I question the value of ads like that, I am a young, heterosexual male, but I've never used the amount of female flesh shown in a product or service ad as a basis on whether I buy a product. Am I the only one?
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
I remember an ad for a color printer a few months back in some computer magazine. It has a picture of a woman with a painted on bathing suit. It said something about how resolution matters...ie that a high resolution would let you see that it was painted on!
Also if you check out fashion and womens magazines, the ads show much much more flesh even though the primary target is women.
Hmm.. marc.merlins.org seems to be pretty slow right now (that's the site that the scanned parody image was on..) Anyone have a mirror?