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.

Comments

Weeks and eccentricity

[Telsa]

Thanks for the kind words. Gosh, it's amazing what offhand comments can stir up. (Five people letting me know who wrote "Bears find fire", for a start :)).

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 :))

Picture of the slashdot effect!

[Russ Nelson]

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

Telsa Talkshow Wanted :)

[ravenskana]

I found the Telsa journal to be rather amusing and well written. Wonder if she could be talked into writing opinion columns for /.