Slashdot COMDEX Pregame Show

So as many of you know, COMDEX is in vegas next week, and for the first time, I'm actually going. Andover.Net will have a booth in the Linux Pavilion, and Hemos, CowboyNeal, Scoop, and myself will be consuming oxygen there for most of next week. So if you're going, stop in and say hi. We're going to be having a little contest (a Linux install race) and the winners will get fabulous prizes. Its going to be BYOD (Bring your own distribution) so we'll see who comes out on top. We'll have machines for people to get their news fix. We're gonna try to broadcast Geeks in Space segments live. And if any open source developers want to run BOF sessions or something about their projects, contact Josh and try to schedule some time (this is gonna be real informal). Also, if any of the distributions wanna have a rep play in the install contest, let him know too (I've already got a Sucke- I mean Vict- I mean Volunteer from Debian: Hi Shaleh..)

Comments

Do I Win the Contest...

[Unknwn]

if I boot with tomsrtbt? :)

--
Jeremy Katz

New Comdex /. Game!

[Greyfox]

Ok everybody! There's some REALLY NEAT STUFF at the Intel booth! Everyone go to the Intel booth! (Watch as 15,000 people surge to the Intel Booth, causing it to be trampled into the ground.)

Ok Everybody! There's someone spreading FUD in the Ziff Davis booth! Everyone go to the Ziff Davis Booth! (Watch as 15,000 people surge to the Ziff Davis booth, causing it to be trampled into the ground.)

Repeat for the entire week.

Hey, it could make Comdex fun again!

Re:New Comdex /. Game!

[Kintanon]

Ok everybody! There's some REALLY NEAT STUFF at the Intel booth! Everyone go to the Intel booth! (Watch as 15,000 people surge to the Intel Booth, causing it to be trampled into the ground.)
Ok Everybody! There's someone spreading FUD in the Ziff Davis booth! Everyone go to the Ziff Davis Booth! (Watch as 15,000 people surge to the Ziff Davis booth, causing it to be trampled into the ground.)

Repeat for the entire week.

Hey, it could make Comdex fun again!



Woohoo! Slashdot the booths! Hehehe, I can just picture someone asking
'What happened to the Transmeta booth?'
'They got slashdotted.'
'What do you mean slashdotted? They are a booth!'
'Well, that giant crowd of guys in slashdot t-shirts charged over and trampled the booth seconds after they announced that specs on their processor were available.'


Kintanon

Re:New Comdex /. Game!

[Kilzall]

Lets make it even more realistic by having everyone at the /. booth stop responding several times a day.
"Hey Rob, can I get an autograph?. Rob. ROB!"
"Give up, man, he slashdotted himself again."
--

Interesting competition.... but the rules...

[mosch]

I love the Linux install race, but my questions are:

1. What qualifies as a Linux install?
2. Will there be advance notice of what the hardware is?
3. and most importantly, can you get Andover to buy everybody copious quantities of quality beer?

See ya guys there!

Re:Interesting competition.... but the rules...

[timothy]

mosch's #1 question was:

1.What qualifies as a Linux install?

This is important. There seem to be quite a few linux-on-a-floppy distributions. I have not used any of them, but I would imagine that at least a few are similar in intent to the QNX demo where there is a small QNX system, dialer, broswer all on one floppy.

So would it count to slip one in the floppy drive, toggle the power switch, and say "done!"? That might sound finegally / like cheating (since the contestant wouldn't have "really" installed Linux on the computer as in put it on the hard drive), but it would create a system that was re-bootable into the GNU/Linux system as often as desired, since it's on the floppy. Just like more traditional Linux system which rely on a boot floppy.

(I'm sure someone will correct my if I'm relying on false assumptions ...)

So, further, What will the exact rules be?

Will each competitor have to cWill the competitor have to connect to an ethernet network? Demonstrate the compilation of a kernel? start a game of nethack?

I ask not as a potential competitor, but because I find the design of contests / competitions an interesting topic to me as a professional picker of nits.

I certainly hope the results will become a feature here on /.! (Not just the results, of course, but the dynamics of the contest; who wins *offically,* who wins trickily, what clever hacks were used to create a fast install, which mainstream distribution goes on quickest in a reasonable / normal total install, which distribution's installer ...

This is an important issue (ease-of-install) for any operating system, and one in which Linux still has percieved weaknesses. (I disagree with this perception, I'm just saying it's there.)

This should be a good read!

timothy

Re:>18?

[revnight]

i don't believe they are allowing minors into the show. it's possible they've changed their policy since the article about the teenaged executive which appeared here a few weeks ago, but the last i'd heard, they made a 'one time' exception for this fellow.

you might check back through the archives.

Re:Debian debian debian...

[Yarn]

They're working on it.

There are a couple of ways of doing it. One is apt-get install [list of packages], but this asks questions for each package. When debconf is more developed it will be able to answer the questions for you.

Party on Wednesday the 17

[starlady]

Linuxfund.org is throwing a party Wednesday November 17 at COMDEX (Zone C-8) for all interested. Drop by the linuxfund booth (624E, just around the corner from Andover) for details.