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Regarding Linus at Fermilab Today 25

Posted by Hemos from the put-the-keys-down dept.
Dan Yocum wrote in to let us know what's going on with Linus and Fermi today. As the updates says below, the speech is not open to the public-click below for more information.

As you know, the talk is not open to the general public, otherwise I would have posted the info far and wide. This is at the request of the Comdex officials. It is only by their generosity that Linus and his family have been able to come to the Chicagoland area. They don't want people to go to the Fermi talk and skip his keynote at Comdex. This is a philosophy I must appreciate and respect. Therefore it is only for Fermi staff, family and friends.

For those of you who do not know, Linus' keynote is at 10:30 on Monday morning at Comdex, and is free to those who have registered (which is free if you do it via the net, see the Comdex Site for more details). There will also be a reception and LUG meetings which will be free later in the afternoon.

And as you all know there will be a CLC meeting on Tuesday at 5:30PM in room N133 at McCormick Place, which is open to everyone, i.e., no Comdex pass is necessary to attend. The CLC is the Chicago Linux Consortium and this is our first meeting.

Back to Linus at Fermilab: this remains to be a non-public talk, so don't think that just because you saw it on Slashdot, you're allowed to come to the talk.

I have talked to the AALUG members and Simon has talked to the CLUG people: the same information that was passed along to those people stands today.

Thank you for your support and consideration in this matter, and please re-post this message freely.

Dan "
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Regarding Linus at Fermilab Today More

Regarding Linus at Fermilab Today

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  • Uh. (Score:1)

    by khaladan ( 445 )
    What was the point of even announcing this? I guess it was to create confusion.
  • "So you wanted that the website that announced this only allowed people with passwords. What's next? See "The Right To Read", from RMS (couldn't find the URL)."


    What website? Fermilab's? I don't care what they put there, but why have it on Slashdot when it's not important enough? What's next? "Bill Gates to speak at Comdex"?
  • Posted by BrianDaMac:

    Will anyone be able to post a transcript of the speech tonight?
  • First of all, even though I was about 20 min. late, there was no topic. Linus was just up there with his sandals fielding questions. People asked about SMP (he said that it'll prolly be around 2-3 more years to *really* take advantage of SMP), the Microsoft paid for report (side note: He said that he got the report maybe 5 min. before the panel last week in atlanta where he had to defend it and he couldn't really debate it properly. He also said that a rematch will prolly happen soon),
    graphics, games and a little bit of Linux history.

    By the way, Dan is not a spook. He was pretty cool to me considering I sent CLUG an e-mail asking if there was anything going on party wise in Chicago that night. He wrote back and invited me to the talk. Damn cool, I'd say. So Dan, THANKS!
  • ...Fermi is highly regulated and guarded.
    You must be invited by someone who's an
    employee and guests are kept track of.
    Additionally, you have to be esorted by that person or another employee.
  • As a former Fermilab employee I can tell you that if you do not have a Fermilab sticker of window hanger they will not let past the gates after hours. There are guards and such at the enterences to the lab.

  • Well, I didn't see this before I hit Fermilab.

    I'd called up Fermilab just to verify that I could come. So I did.

    They really didn't need to worry. There were only about 300 or so people there with room for a couple hundred more.

    Linus was fairly personable and articulate.

    A couple of the points he raised (that were of particular interest to me).

    • File systems (both large and journaling) and SMB are fairly major issues floating around in the development kernel.
    • Linus has gotten a Quad processor system to compile it's own kernel in 73 seconds (OOOH!).
    • Linus recommends a sometimes buggy program loader called Windows for games. His recommendation says that Windows does one intelligent thing with games. It just gets out of the game's way and lets the game run itself.

      But, as he stated over and over. He's not interested in that. He just wants to hack the kernel!

    • >On the NT vs Linux file server issue. And I quote/paraphrase "A company that's know for "NT beats (name it) in this this and this" has an NT box that's been finely tuned/tweaked for running the benchmark setup that beats out a poorly tuned/tweaked Linux box that's been set up for a home user".

      He did say he received the initial report a couple weeks ago right before another of his public addresses in Atlanta. Needless to say it wasn't a pleasant Q&A session for him then.

    • Basically a lot of fun all around.
    • I'd have liked to ask one guy who got Linus' autograph on his Linux CD. "WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?" T-Shirts I can see. Books I can see. Signed Tux dolls, I can see. But a CD?



    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!
  • Actually, I've met Dan and talked to him once or twice, and he's really not a "dick" at all. There is clearly a lot of interest from non-Fermilab people to attend this talk tonight, and he's obviously concerned - with good reason - that more than the intended audience will attend.

    FWIW, after I posted a couple of comments earlier my Fermilab web site nearly got /.'d, so I wouldn't underestimate the public interest in this talk...

  • I'd have liked to ask one guy who got Linus' autograph on his Linux CD. "WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?" T-Shirts I can see. Books I can see. Signed Tux dolls, I can see. But a CD?

    I went up to shake his hand and said that I didn't have anything for him to sign. He said, "thank you, good man" (for not asking him to sign anything) and shook my hand. What a guy!

  • This is a philosophy I must appreciate and respect. Therefore it is only for Fermi staff, family and friends.
    It sounds as though Fermi itself is rather ambivalent about keeping people out - they are only sending this for the sake of Comdex. Also note that it is open to Fermi staff, family and friends. If there aren't tickets to this thing how are they going to filter people at the door - "Oh, I'm a friend of... Bob who works in... particle acceleration." - and it doesn't seem as though Fermi cares enough to bother with ticketing. This message was just to appease Comdex - I'm willing to bet that if you show up you'll get in.

    Wish I was in Chicago now (well, not really, but I wish I could go to the speeches).

  • Seeing this talk, or possibly sittting 300 miles from home with a broken down car?
    Well, I was invited - Dan gave me and a group a tour of Fermi on Friday, and when he mentioned that Linus would be there Sunday, my mouth dropped open. But, the group was leaving Chicago at 1pm Sunday. And I couldn't convince anyone to drive 14 hours round trip to attend the talk, and give me a ride back to Minnesota. Damn.
    But oh well... the tour was worth it. Fermi has an incredible amount of computer power and data storage (3 Petabytes of data, IIRC). And to re-affirm what others have said, Dan is a great guy.
  • I guess that would make it to a /. headline immediately anyway.
  • The URL given in the article is wrong. Find the actual page here [uic.edu].

  • So you wanted that the website that announced this only allowed people with passwords. What's next? See "The Right To Read", from RMS (couldn't find the URL).
  • Well... actually, in my LUGs software library we have a copy of Red Hat 2.0 autographed by Linus :P Its kinda neat.
  • It's called, "Somebody spilled the beans". It was never supposed to be announced. However, I can say it was extremely interesting.
  • Uh, wrong...

    There is a gate system, but visitors can enter and leave the site during working hours without signing in or being escorted. You just get a ticket from an automatic dispenser at the gate, and return it when you leave. At night you do need a pass that is available only to employees or scientific visitors.

    Perhaps you are confusing Fermilab with Argonne National Lab, which is also in the Chicago vicinity and does have the stricter security policy you mentioned. For a federal research facility, Fermilab is actually quite open.
  • Your welcome.

    Dan
  • Just to double-check this...

    Is Linus' LGS Keynote open to those with just a Comdex Exhibits Guest Pass but without LGS registration?

    I've looked around on the Comdex and CLUG sites without seeing a definitive answer. Comdex site's "Keynote" link points to just the big morning keynotes and the CLUG site says "should be" and not "will be." Just being anal.

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