Ask a LinuxWorld Exhibitor 224
Most Slashdot readers aren't coming to the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in New York this week. If you're not coming, but you have a question you'd like to ask one of the exhibitors, please post it here. I promise to ask 10 of the highest-moderated exhibitor questions on your behalf, and I'll do my best to ask more than 10, time permitting. If you have a question for anyone who is holding a conference session or tutorial Thursday or Friday, please feel free to post it, too. I will try to ask speakers at least a few questions, but that's chancier than getting hold of exhibitors (who are in booths where they're easy to find), so no promises. One question per post, please. Hopefully, I'll have time to type up the answers over the weekend and post them Monday or Tuesday.
How do you sell to geeks? (Score:2, Interesting)
Strategies (Score:5, Interesting)
What basic strategies are you employing to better penetrate the server/appliance market with Linux systems?
Dear Redhat Software (Score:5, Interesting)
To Microsoft (Score:5, Interesting)
Dear $exhibitor (Score:4, Interesting)
What is your impression of Microsoft a) at your convention and b) Microsoft's efforts to lure Unix customers into their fold, away from Linux? Do they appear successful?
To Microsoft (Score:5, Interesting)
To Microsoft: (Score:3, Interesting)
And on a related note: if Linux on the desktop takes off, what's Plan B? Do you even know yet?
What is the best giveaway item? (Score:5, Interesting)
Conversely, what was the lamest giveaway item you were ever saddled with? Where you had to throw it at passersby, and even then they recoiled in dismay?
GNU/Linix On The Desktop (Score:5, Interesting)
To icculus.org (Score:5, Interesting)
For the Microsoft folks: (Score:5, Interesting)
You know, a nice easy question for them to handle
To Linux Software Vendors (Score:5, Interesting)
Is Mac OS X a big enough competitor (for want of a better word) to the Linux server/desktop market to warrent porting products over to either OS X or to Darwin?
This is with focus on the server side.
Re:To Microsoft (Score:2, Interesting)
Wasn't their a slashdot article about MS releasing Media Player for Linux? Otherwise, probably Linux to Win interoperability or migration tools.
Ask them if they're going to revive their Unix IE and Media Player and/or target Linux as well as Solaris, etc.
Ask Dell about forcing MS onto edu customers (Score:5, Interesting)
The Dell's online computer purchases, in the "educational" section, only offer Windows as the O.S. [Last verified - about a month ago, when my friend from an American university whose IT dept prefers Dell computers to purchase from the scientific research grants money asked me to help him select his future computer config.]
Neither the "no-OS-gimme-refund" or a prepackaged Linux option is available. How does this coincide with the present Dell attempts to position itself as a friend of Linux?
Bowling for junk (Score:3, Interesting)
Software for Children (Score:5, Interesting)
Are there any plans to offer software specifically targetted towards grade school age children? Seems like there may be an untapped market here.
To Macrovision Corp. (Score:5, Interesting)
As I understand, your main stakes are in the encoding of ntsc and pal video signals as to make them uncopyable in receiving hardware (correct me if I'm incorrect).
As that stated, why are you involved with Linux?
Are you contributing to the video section (V4L) of the Linux kernel or making user-land utilities?
In general, what are your open business plans with Linux?
Re:Yes please ask this one. (Score:1, Interesting)
The best thing I found was from http://www.sonic.net/~roelofs/reports/linux-19980
From a business-applications perspective, what can we do to get Microsoft to do native ports of Excel, Word, Powerpoint, Exchange, etc.?
Red Hat, Suse, SCO, et al. (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed, the most popular and perhaps best, integrated management system for the Linux environment appears to be Webmin which, though very good, is forced to be a kludge and still falls short of a truely integrated enterprise Linux management system. While Red Hat offers RHN and SCO offers Volution Manager neither one truely integrates the overall management of a Linux shop.
Are you, the leading commercial Linux vendors targeting the enterprise market, planning on making any efforts to integrate Linux management on an enterprise level such as Microsoft and Novell already do? If so, what are these efforts and how will they be licensed?
Acceptance of Linux in the Boardroom (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What is the best giveaway item? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm a techie, not a marketroid.
If you're in marketing, STOP READING THIS POST NOW.
I've sat through, and ignored Intel demos (because I already knew as much about Itanic^Hium as the salesdrone did) for some very cool blue-LED-illuminated pens. But at least I remembered the name of the company that gave 'em to me. Thanks, Intel!
Things with lights are popular. I have a couple of yo-yos with spring-activated switches that turn on LEDs. I also have a couple of bouncing super-balls with embedded LEDs that flash. I have some flashing LED modules on my desk, removed from various buttons and stickers. Couldn't tell you the names of the companies I got 'em from if you paid me, though.
My first-aid/emergency kit contains a few chemoluminiscent (aka glow-stick stuff ) sticker/patches from NVidia and XBox. These are great - they're about the size of the palm of your hand, stick to anything, and when activated, last for a good 4-6 hours. If there's a major disaster, they'll be able to find my body in the dark, and they'll know I was m4d g33k to the end.
My most pleasant memory was laughing throughout a sales pitch for some Linux distro vendor whose name I forgot within minutes of the presentation. He had the largest crowd I've ever seen at a trade show. The crowd was large the pitch-man was peeling off $20s and $100s and throwing them into the crowd as part of his act. (Yes, this was before the Crash, why do you ask? :-)
Other things that people will sit through demos for are stuffed penguins. One 2-foot-tall Tux can keep about 20 people glued to a chair in a stupor, eyes always on the hands of the pitch-man, for about 15 minutes in the hopes that said penguin will be thrown their way.
Like I said, I'm a techie, not a marketer. If you're a marketer, there's a lesson to be learned here, namely "Geeks like cool swag, and we hope you marketing people stopped reading this post in the first paragraph, because the cooler your swag, the more likely it is that we're only feigning interest in your product to get our hands on it."
Dear HP (Score:2, Interesting)
Take a poll. (Score:3, Interesting)
IMB's new PDA design (Score:3, Interesting)
In particular,
Looks like we'll finally get some solid competition for the Sharp Zaurus
IBM AIX 5"L" vs. PPC Linux (Score:2, Interesting)
Why is IBM continuing to promote AIX 5"L" has being a "superset" of Linux when it is missing several things that come standard with most Linux distributions (/dev/random, Pluggable Authentication Modules, ipchains/iptables host firewalling, VFS API for file system kernel modules, etc)?
When will IBM help promote the use of Linux PPC on the RS/6000 instead (make TSM backup client available, make the programming specs for SSA drivers available, etc)?
Question: How to "show" Linux ? (Score:1, Interesting)
Given that, how do you show Linux at a trade show?
hypothetical question for software industry folk (Score:4, Interesting)
Magic wand question (Score:3, Interesting)
I've found that if you can get people to answer honestly, you get some very interesting replies to this one from Linux hardware and software vendors.
RPM Hell (Score:2, Interesting)