Linux Conf 2004 Gives in Many Ways

Noddy writes "The Australian Linux Conf 2004 wrapped up today, with a few geek notables being dunked for their contributions.. to charity that is. Cystic Fibrosis benefitted from the likes of Andrew Tridgell, Damien Conway and Linus Torvalds stripping down, Linus getting into his speedos, and all getting wet. Video of the Linus dunking and a few images are available (thanks Internode). Bet the girls can't wait for the 'Geek Boys of Open Source' pinup calendar after seeing these shots of Linus. Great work guys! More conf wrap-up info also at ZDNet."

I know we'll probably have our share of gay jokes

[(1337) God]

I know we'll probably have our share of gay jokes, trolls, and comments about Linux being gay and what have you, but I ask that you avoid making fun of people who had the guts to sit nearly naked in front of hundreds of other guys just so they could do their part to put their fame to a good cause and donate a lot of money to the very worthy Cystic Fibrosis foundations.

I probably wouldn't have had the guts to be able to do something like that, but Linus and those other guys did, and I think we should praise them instead of poking fun at them like Slashdotters do all too often.

Thanks, Linus, for continuing to be a leader.

Re:I know we'll probably have our share of gay jok

[TerminaMorte]

It's more likely that quite a few /.ers will find a new side to themselves after seeing pictures of this. ;)

What do you mean?

[leonbrooks]

...an interest in exercise and real food, so that if they're ever forced to follow suit, they won't feel as embarrassed as if it happened today?

If you look closely, you'll notice that Linus and Tridge in particular, while they aren't exactly Twiggy analogues, do have a reasonable amount of muscle about them. Tridge does a fair bit of walking, and I gather that Linus has a favourite gym.

Actually, if geeks in general did take more interest in their own well-being, it'd be a good deal easier to get proper Ve

Re:I know we'll probably have our share of gay jok

[momerath2003]

Well, at least goatse.cx has been put under REGISTRY LOCK [www.nic.cx]!

Score one for non-inane posts on Slashdot.

Re:I know we'll probably have our share of gay jok

[furballphat]

Bzzzzz. Wrong.

For many people the site is already gone, but for people like you, the DNS changes haven't propegated yet

Re:I know we'll probably have our share of gay jok

[Leffe]

It's not very strange that the gay joke frequency rises through the roof anytime Linus is mentioned. I mean, he's both a geek and incredibly sexy, right ;)?

Re:I know we'll probably have our share of gay jok

[Karamchand]

I am sorry, but I would not have called that nearly naked. Yes, if you go by percentage of body surface they are nearly naked. But not every square inch is equally important. Simply said: They still had their speedos on - nothing about being gay or something like that.

Of course it is brave to do this - also because not all of them have the ideal figure..

Re:I know we'll probably have our share of gay jok

[BiggerIsBetter]

Not all of them? There's an understatement. Dude that photoshoot is my motivation to get to the gym today. No way do I wanna be looking like those fellas.

Re:I know we'll probably have our share of gay jok

[henriksh]

Why would anyone make fun of Linus naked?

I mean, he's just so HOT!!

OMG!!1, gotta go now!

/. survey says:

[Tokerat]

I'd Hit It.

heh

[ShadowRage]

at least he isnt being a shut in with no humanity or chances to be laid, ever :P

Look, God

[0x0d0a]

Linus is married to a woman. He has had several children with her. I'm not sure how much more heterosexual you get.

Oh, and forget dunking Linus. Everyone likes Linus, and he was getting up in front of a horde of his fans. You know who Linux folks would pay to dunk? McBride. You want to know what takes *balls* is standing in Speedos in front of a mass of people that hate you and saying "dunk me if you can".

jealous much?

[polished look 2]

they're a bunch of brainy guys having a good time.

Re:I know we'll probably have our share of gay jok

[netsharc]

I'm glad it's summer in Australia, better than the cold weather here.. they'll probably go out and put shrimp on the barby afterwards, man I miss Australia.

Actually...

[leonbrooks]

...I had Ravioli di Ricotta con Tricolore [fastapasta.com.au] and played some bizarre card game with ever-changing rules. That day was the coolest of the entire conf, but would still have been pretty warm for someone from a temperate climate.

Re:I know we'll probably have our share of gay jok

[moosesocks]

Or he's just very very European.

Mirror of the pics here:

[Anonymous Coward]

http://saintaardvarkthecarpeted.com/slash_mirror" [saintaardv...rpeted.com]

Re:Mirror of the pics here:

[gen2002]

I hope that his wife (Tove) won't see those pictures. It's should be only Tove's right to look at linus in such state

And a Mirror of the Video Here

[gerf]

http://homepages.udayton.edu/~utendodj/linus-dunke d-small.avi" [udayton.edu]

P.S. I really wanna see if this university's pipe can take it :D

Re:And a Mirror of the Video Here

[dtfinch]

Thanks.

Linux Pr0n?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Linus Torvalds stripping down, Linus getting into his speedos, and all getting wet"

Only 9.95/hour!

Re:Linux Pr0n?

[catch23]

I didn't see anything in any of the articles or comments that explain how people get dunked. I saw in the video people were watching someone else in a distance doing something. Did someone have to throw darts or something and make a bullseye before linus on the platform would be dunked?

Re:Linux Pr0n?

[sysop]

The privelidge of dunking Linus was auctioned off at Dinner the night before. Linus offered to do the dunking in speedos if the price went over $2500. Rusty Russell helped the bidding by promising to do the dunking in a g-string (thong) if the bidding didn't go over $1500.

Tim Hockin was instrumental in making a mockery of the auction process and having most of the crowd chip in $A50 each to meet the price. This resulted in conference organiser Michael Davies throwing the balls that hit the target and acti

Linus in a speedo...

[Anonymous Coward]

...Phew! good thing stallman wasnt invited>;)

Re:Linus in a speedo...

[probbka]

I think I would have paid *more* to see RMS get splashed...

But if they *really* wanted to make money, why didn't they invite Darl so Linux users could dunk him? Make a f'ckin fortune!!

Re:Linus in a speedo...

[rat7307]

I think I would have paid *more* to see RMS get splashed...

Imagine the ring around the tub!!!

Boiling oil was out...

[leonbrooks]

...it's against health regs and the Uni's insurance wouldn't cover it.

Re:Linus in a speedo...

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on whether or not there was soap too...

First Bill Gates mod!

[fredrikj]

First Bill Gates Photoshop mod! [telia.com]

Re:First Bill Gates mod!

[nandhp]

Nice! But do tell me it was GIMP not photoshop?

Re:First Bill Gates mod!

[parksie]

They must have done it in Photoshop, because they weren't able to put all that cash flying around Bill's person in...

Re:First Bill Gates mod!

[Oestergaard]

Come on, that's blasphemy.

AVI

[digime]

Is it just me or is there something blasphemous about a video of Linus in MS-Video format?

Re:AVI

[pantherace]

Heh, you mean the .avi container format?

Seriously this is mpeg4-type (divx) & pcm in avi, produced by "Software: MEncoder 0.90-3.2.3" (using most likely libavcodec which mplayer shares with almost anything on linux that wants to support a lot of formats.)

I fail to see your complaint.

Re:AVI

[digime]

Still, the AVI mime types are video/msvideo, video/x-msvideo, video/avi. AVI was developed by Microsoft to add multimedia capabilities to Windows. When I see the extension "avi" I think Microsoft, regardless of what platform it was encoded on or how it was encoded.

Re:AVI

[Anonymous Coward]

Your thoughts are not our responsibility. Retard.

Re:AVI

[Webmonger]

Well, AVI is an implementation of RIFF, and that didn't come from MS.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Can we guess that RIFF...

[leonbrooks]

...really stood for Reversed IFF?

Re:AVI

[Tyrdium]

AVI is just a container format; you're thinking of WMV. For example, every DivX and XviD file I've seen has a .avi extension.

Re:AVI

[slittle]

There's .OGM too, but few use that format (except me it would seem, since oggmux gets audio/video in sync without me having to fuck with the offsets like in VirtualDub).

Re:AVI

[advocate_one]

"There's .OGM too,"

nearly lost my coffee over the keyboard there... misread it as "There's .OMG too"... thought someone had had a sense of humour in picking a filetype extension...

Re:AVI

[slittle]

Maybe the authors are somethingaweful fans?

OGM! Sifn't teh uber fromat!

speedos?

[fred87]

who wears speedos nowadays anyway...

Re:speedos?

[Karamchand]

Right. Thongs in fashion now!

Re:speedos?

[StringBlade]

As I gather, nearly everyone outside the United States. When I was in Germany for a few weeks I went to a nearby swimming pool with my German friend (their swimming pools beat the crap out of most U.S. swimming pools by the way!). I'm quite sure every other man except myself and one other American was wearing speedos. My German friend thought my swimming trunks looked funny.

I held my tounge.

Re:speedos?

[JPriest]

I hate having to get out of my pool durring parties to inflate it again. No really, maybe their swimming pools are better becaue they don't pay a 30% income tax. Maybe I should just start a "dorky americans for swimming pools" foundation and picket the whitehouse. I could buy all my friends a pool with the 5 million I'd get.

Re:speedos?

[fred87]

no one in UK does...

Re:speedos?

[listen]

Except people who actually want to swim.

Re:speedos?

[arcanumas]

They used to be extremely popular here in Greece as well but the disadvantages are many.
The strongest one is that while on the beach , there are many pretty women ,some of which are topless. And some things are uncontrollable, if you know what i mean. Whith speedos the problem becomes very big (pun intended)

Are you bragging again...

[leonbrooks]

...elephant man? <g/d/r>

Re:speedos?

[tangledweb]

Who wears speedos?

In this case, a man who was attending an auction for the right to dunk him. When it looked like the auction was going to stall at about $1500 he piped up that if the bidding went over $2500 he would not only be dunked, but be dunked wearing speedos.

I am pretty sure that they are not his normal work wear, and I have no idea if he swims often enough to have "normal" swim wear.

If you want to mock his attire, he routinely wears socks and sandals, but the speedos were a brave, charitable mo

OMG

[Complicity]

[Video of] Linus getting into his speedos, and all getting wet.

Fastest. Slashdotting. Ever.

(put your pants back on, nerds!)

waaah! danger, danger will robinson

[Anonymous Coward]

holy crap, there should be a warning on those images! Almost lost my lunch over that. *shudder*

Pinup Calendar

[endeitzslash]

Bet the girls can't wait for the 'Geek Boys of Open Source' pinup calendar after seeing these shots of Linus.


I bet more straight geek guys would buy that calendar than girls.

Re:Pinup Calendar

[JPriest]

In others news: Every geek girl in the world buys Open Source calendar raising upwards of $70 for the FSF.

OMG...I was installing Linux on my laptop.

[Androgynous Coward]

I was installing Gentoo on my old thinkpad and almost "rm -Rf"'ed it when I came upon the shot of Linus in Speedos. I feel dirty...must shower.

Re:OMG...I was installing Linux on my laptop.

[Otter]

Well, you've definitely wrapped up the award for Most Off-topic Piece of Gentoo Cheerleading for the week! Congratulations, it's a pretty competitive category!

could have been slashdotted a lot quicker.........

[keyshawn632]

Why weren't The linux chix [linuxchix.net] invited ?!?!?! They could have raised much more money..... :D

Great. That's all I needed to see...

[ImTwoSlick]

Linus in Speedos.

Geek notaries?

[isomeme]

Unless these guys specialize in validating identity on signed code escrow documents or something, I imagine the desired term was notables.

We did have a keysigning...

[leonbrooks]

...two days before. "Notaries" may well be accurate. (-:

However, yes, I favour "notables" or "of notoriety".

Mirror of the video

[Jeedo]

Main site is mighty-lagged Click [simnet.is]

Say what you want

[andih8u]

but it takes a lot of guts (I'll refrain from saying a big set of balls from all the jokes that would lead to) to do that. Especially given the leadership role he has in the open source world. I don't think you'd find many CEO's of major companies willing to humiliate themselves in that way for charity.

Re:Say what you want

[Sargerion]

completely agreed. not like you'd ever see Billy out there doing that, the pompus ass

Re:Say what you want

[yomegaman]

First of all, Linus is hardly equivalent to a CEO, more like the president of the Slashdot Teenage Fanclub. Second, unless Linus raised a billion dollars getting dunked then he's still far far behind Bill Gates as far as charitable donations go.

Percentagewise...

[leonbrooks]

...I'd say Linus was pretty competitive. If Linus' real worth was worth $1M and he gave $10,000 this way every year, that's 1% of his worth; presume that William Henry "Trey" Gates III, son and grandson of rich lawyers, is really worth $100G and he has to donate $1G every year to match that proportionally.

If you disallow donations which feed straight back into his own company (e.g. here is a donation for software but it must all be Microsoft; here is a donation for scholarships but the beneficiaries must u

Bill's misanthropy, in some detail

[leonbrooks]

You are so blinded by hero-worship that you somehow overlook the big slab of his "charity" spending which is just self-serving financial masturbation, and account it as altruism as pure as the driven snow.

And look at that! I made my point without a single expletive! It really is possible!

If you expect me to accept Trey as a knight in shining armour, given his atrocious history (e.g. until he was worth well into the billions, his philanthropy - even including masturbatory tax rorts - was proportionally far

It's too late, you're already reading it...

[leonbrooks]

...and so are others.

You really cannot be serious.

I most certainly can. Consequently, I don't appreciate you mischaracterising what I've said, or skipping over many of the important bits.

Bill Gates is solely responsible for Draconian international patent laws?

No, and nowhere did I claim he was. But Bill is using those laws, and he is lobbying in their support, and to have them extended.

overcharging them for an AIDS vaccine which doesn't yet exist?

No. He is overcharging them for his version of th

Re:Say what you want

[yomegaman]

No, it was 6 billion actual dollars. Why are you all such haters? Is it just jealousy or what?

Re:Say what you want

[fredrik70]

go to gatesfoundation [gatesfoundation.org] and look for yourself. Yes, I disagree alot with what MS does. But that doesn't make Billie boy and wife all bad.

visual appearance geek qualification

[big!theory]

i've never been to a linux con, so i've never seen so many linux geeks in one place.

but are there no chicks in geekland? is every geek guy out of shape?

i look at the pics and think for the first time that , hey, i look pretty good!

but now comes selfdoubt! maybe if you spent an hour in a gym once, you can't be a true geek.

help me, i'm having an identity crisis! my mother doesn't buy my clothes. am i really a geek?

LCA2004 had about 30-40 sheilas out of about 500

[leonbrooks]

An inordinate proportion of those were geniuses or stunners or in influential positions, too. It's a significant improvement over last year in terms of quantity, and I think the quality has remained high.

We also got to meet a few wives ("Mrs Davies", "Mrs Russell" and so on). Wives-of-geeks tend to be painfully shy, but the few I've met also tend to be good-natured, helpful and friendly. At least one is a stark, stark contrast to her husband in terms of social skills.

Pia Smith is one "notary" <g/d/r

There were girls there?

[The I Shing]

That reminds me of the segment on Conan outside of the opening of Attack of the Clones where Triumph the Insult Comic Dog goes up to a young woman he finds and exclaims, "Incredible, among all the nerds I've found an actual girl here... you can choose from all kinds of guys who have no idea how to please you!"

Speedos??

[damacer]

Hmm...I'm thinking just normal bathing suits probably would have been sufficient. I mean 99.999% of the population doesn't look too good in speedos. And, I doubt that geeks are much of an exception to this (/exception to this in a good way)

But, I guess 'geeks-in-speedos' probably did make the event way more humorous.

That calendar that was mentioned...

[Anise]

Personally, I think they SHOULD create an "Open Source Geeks of 2004" calendar (or whatever that idea was called; it's been a long week.) *I'll* buy it, anyway. :) Anise

Re:That calendar that was mentioned...

[dotwaffle]

Tell you, what, i made one for my Uni wall... Just uploaded it to my website (I love the smell of slashdot in the morning...) if you fancy a peek. It's at http://www.walster.org/Calendar.pdf

Just one thing, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, if you like it, either send a donation to a local charity that is worth giving to, like in the UK, we have the British Heart Foundation. Either that or gimme loads of paypal donations ;)

Feedback to bfg [at] amigascne [dot [org].
Thanks! Enjoy!

Linus the Leader

[Eberlin]

Once again, Linus shatters previous misconceptions...Geeks do bathe!!!

It shows how these great OSS community leaders have a great sense of humor and humility to put themselves in this situation for worthwhile causes.

I know the great Gates donates money left and right and gets good press for it. Getting dunked gives you more PR goodwill (whether or not that's what these folks wanted) because of the rather personal involvement to the cause.

These are the sorts of people you'd want to be associated with. N

Can anybody please set up a bittorrent?

[MoobY]

There. That needed to be said. Maybe somebody managed to download the file before the /. crowd came in. It could be appreciated by a couple of people in here.

You have been warned...

[Aggrajag]

That's what Open Source does to you, it will make you fat! Just look at RMS and where he is now and he's been in the Open Source business more than ten years longer than Linus. So my prediction is that ten years from now, Linus looks like an exact copy of RMS (without the beard). Stay away from Open Source!

Beards!

[Skiron]

WHERE ARE ALL THE BEARDS???

I am glad I can't grow one now...

Nick

Re:Beards!

[greenrd]

Why not? You've had a sex change? Caught an obscure disease? What?

Re:Beards!

[Anonymous Coward]

BTW, is anyone intelligent enough to tell when the beard should start growing wildly? I'm 30 years old man and I have just a little beardgrowing. It's really small I could never grow a beard like Stallman has. Not yet anyway. What is the average age men start to have really wild beard growing?

Re:Beards!

[craigmarshall]

This would make a good "Ask Slashdot".

I have to admit, I'll a little peeved at not being able to grow a full beard yet. I'm 21 years old and have about 70% coverage at the moment, but I've known 15 year olds with 100% coverage and 30 year olds with 25% coverage. Does anyone actually know the science behind this? Does this mean I'm probably lacking in little tadpole thingies too?

Craig

Re:Beards!

[Skiron]

Exactly! I am 44, yet any growth (no matter how many days) makes me look like a parky wino - yet my Dad could grow a full set ala RMS in about 4 days.

Nick

forgotten pole options

[LordMyren]

i'm not even sure what it is, but it defiantely has something to do with this...

[biggest failure as nerd]

the benefits of exercise

[InternationalCow]

When looking at the various open source heroes, I cannot help thinking that the average geek ought to exercise a little more. I mean, look at all that flab! NOT healthy at all. Mens sana in corpore sano and all that :)

we are one of the groups that benefitted!

[timelady]

On behalf of ITShare/Computerbank Sth Australia [linunix.com], we would like to thank the organisers of LinuxConfAu...We are an Open Source Non Profit group, who take donated hardware, refurbish it, put Linux on, and donate it to low income groups and individuals.

We received AU$3600 towards a van, and also Linus sweetened the pot by adding the rights to having your name on the next kernel release.....

People also donated AU$2000+ in cash on the night. Incredible generosity!

Great People!

[laptop006]

I know several of the CBSA people, and they are great to deal with.
If your in Australia and have old PC's to get rid of you should contact these guys (or one of their sister orgs around australia).

Mod parent up, +1 Useful

[leonbrooks]

Nice people to deal with, too. Hand out training, and follow up properly, the works.

It's pity that the Computer Angels [computerangels.org.au] people were all tied down in Perth this year. I understand that many such groups in Oz are yakking about a coordinated national effort as I type.

What did Linus yell?

[borwells]

The audio is a little fuzzy for me. But did Linus yell "You throw like McBride"?

Cool, I was taught by Damien Conway

[spoco2]

Hey, how cool is that? I had no idea Damien Conway was that big in the Open Source world! I had him for a computer science subject in University (Monash) and just remember him being a superb teacher, very engaging... but had no idea he was 'famous' in such circles.

Yeay!

Beer

[mcbridematt]

Did Linus get hold of our precious golden liquid resource? I can't imagine what would happen if he did.....

New Marketing Targets?

[FreemanPatrickHenry]

Linus getting into his speedos, and all getting wet.

So, now we're marketing Linux to the sexually repressed teenager crowd? :-)

Hmm...

[FreemanPatrickHenry]

Linus getting into his speedos, and all getting wet.

Slashdot. News for pervs. Stuff that matters.

The new kernel name

[rkaa]

Zdnet.au mention a bidding round for the new kernel name. Seems it'll land on "Wallaby". Being a little foreign and all, I looked the word up on Google - to see a picture of such an animal. And wouldn't you know... one of the first to turn up was this snoopy fellow. [bell-labs.com]
I'm pretty sure it proves something!

Man Boobs A-Plenty!!

[rat7307]

Man, where's Darl and a tub of carbonite when you need it.
Wish I was there...had to work. :-(

*smitten*

[pjack76]

http://www.users.on.net/hyadsl1/linux/Linus.jpg [on.net]

My new desktop wallpaper!!! *swoon*

Re:Fat-so

[The I Shing]

He doesn't look to me like he's out of shape. He's got a decent set of pecs on him, and there's definition in his calf muscles. That man does exercise, by the looks of him. I bet he runs and lifts weights.

Fat-so-what?

[MsGeek]

To quote the great Captain Beefheart: "Better a big waist than a big waste." So he's still got the "incipient paunch." Big fsckn deal. So he won't win Mr. Universe. Again, big fsckn deal. I don't think many of you all reading this site can boast of being physically fit. I'm not. So what?

If the "Guys of Open Source" calendar was for a good cause, like this dunk tank party was, then dammit, I'd buy it. Even if the centerfold was RMS. ^_^