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Linus and Bill at Comdex 96

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-to-read dept.
i0n wrote in to send us a Chicago Tribune article about Linus and Bill at Comdex. Has anyone rummaged up transcripts of either speech? I've seen several articles on each, but no transcripts. Update: 04/20 02:07 by CT : Knish sent us a PC Week Story on the keynotes. Update: 04/20 03:17 by CT : Ign0rance sent us Bill's Speech. Update: 04/20 03:34 by CT : BitMan sent us an MSNBC article.
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Linus and Bill at Comdex More

Linus and Bill at Comdex

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  • A question -- have Gates and Torvalds ever been on the same stage together?


    --
  • When the lights temporarily went out, Torvalds wondered aloud, "What's going on in this place? The whole show floor is controlled by Microsoft."

    That was great. Much more better than the "duh" reaction Microsoft gave off when they BSOD'ed last year. Not many speakers can improvise in a moment's notice in front of 600+ people.

  • Till now, he has not really been spreading much FUD about Microsoft, leaving that to the rest of us. His tongue-in-cheek comments are usually to the effect of "world domination. fast." not referring to M$ at all.
    "MS probably controls the floor"? That makes him sound more like RMS or some paranoid nut than who we've seen in the past 7 years.
    He's suddenly become much more vocal in the press about his dislike of MS and Bill in general. Any idea why this is happening?
  • Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:

    ...or someone will ask you how long it takes to get a working web browser when you start with a working web browser.
  • Posted by Briney:

    i thought it was all great fun. remember Linus said it was all tongue in cheek. anyhow i'd didn't see any rudeness alluded to earlier nor did i feel there was excessive microsoft (gates) bashing. i thought Linus's humor was rather self effacing.

    ps i looked for Rob but didn't see anyone with wooden shoes.

    b.

  • We all know Mrs. Torvalds would not have any problems with Mrs. Gates.

    I suspect the same for Linus.
    ^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~~^ ~
  • Linus is mad...

    Someone shouldn't have shown him that Mindcraft study.
    ^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~~^ ~
  • I went to the speach.. It was GREAT! Linus was an excellent speaker....
    It was basicly a 1 hr microsoft bashing event..

    He made a reference that star office looked so much like the microsoft suite, confused people actually save their documents before they print..

    It was very cool

    ChiefArcher
  • The bashing.. it really wasn't bashing at all... It was more at takeing hits at microsoft itself..
    He was saying that they make glityz programs.. but that doesn't cut it.

    He went over to say that their programs are buggy because they don't have the love that linux programmers do for their kernel and user space. He was pointing out people need to care...

    I dunno... I thought it was great.

    ChiefArcher

  • maybe. (Score:1)

    by mattdm ( 1931 )
    I'd like to see the transcript. I think it was likely a case of the reporter picking up on one or two comments and making a big deal of it.

    A key is "Torvalds' speech was very informal and
    tongue-in-cheek." Another article I read (somewhere; sorry I forget) explained the lights thing more -- apparently the joke started from an audience-members comment and was sorta ongoing as the lights kept going out.

    --

  • For more articles on Comdex, go to the Comdex website [comdex.com].


    There is a lot of coverage about Linux there today.

  • I too found his comments on Java, detailed in VNU.net [vnunet.com] to be off base. Call Java what you want, the fact is that it is very hot and a large part of the developer community is behind the momentum.
  • Actually, I would point out that the personalities of these two leaders are in many ways the *source* of the differences between the two technologies. No, Linus did not invent UNIX, but he's got the UNIX mindframe. His instigation of Linux and his choice to make it open-source are derived from who he is, what makes him tick. IE, his personality. He could have easily have been able to get together with some friends, build Linux without newsgroup help, incorporate, and sell proprietary binaries of Linux cheap, just like Bill did with BASIC for the Altair in 1975. It is concievable such could have happened without open source, or perhaps some open-source variation on that theme. The bottom line is, it was Linus' personality which largely influenced the nature of Linux culture, and continues to today.

    The same goes for Windows. Highly proprietary means the owner has *complete* control. If you learn or know anything about Bill's history, you'll see he was brought up to be intensely competitive. He seems to have an adolescent need to dominate. This is doubtlessly what made him into the huge business success he is, and why he wants every PC on every desktop to be running only his (thus Microsoft's) software, from operating system to userland programs.

    The same arguments could be extended to Apple and Steve Jobs, but I won't go into that here. Anyone who knows the history of the two entities, the man and the company (and products), will see that my arguments apply here.

    So when you get down to it, the OS cultures that exist today are, in many ways, cults of personality. Each and everyone of us gravitates to the OS and culture which we feel most comfortable with. It is very important, however, to recognize that these cultures originate from a single, strong personality who drove the software creation and led the development community early on, and typically still do today.
  • I know they had people in their main booth, but their Linux Pavillion spot was empty except for some 17" (or so) monitor sitting there (apparently not connected to anything). That's all. It would have been nice for a 'big name' outside the traditional Linux community to have hung out there.

    "The Constitution admittedly has a few defects and blemishes, but it still seems a hell of a lot better than the system we have now."

  • I have to disagree with some of the postings here - I didn't come away with the impression that I had witnessed an hour-long M$ bashing speech. Yes, he had some excellent quips here and there that were anti-M$, but for the most part is was very Linux-centric.

    Though, notably, I guess one could construe a lot of the speech to be anti-M$, simply because Linux is intrinsically anti-M$ (in that, Linux is all the Windoze is not).

    Overall, my main impression is that Linus is an excellent speaker. I would not have needed to whisper much to my mom, were she to have attended, but I wasn't bored on the geek end of things, either. He did a great job of speaking to both the Linux-curious, as well as those of use infiltrating corporate america with our renegade Linux boxes that secretly hold the company together. It was a fine speech.

    As for the rest of COMDEX - I was relatively un-entertained by the majority of the booths. I think that the auto-login (via a card-swipe) terminals provided by Novell were very nice. And there were enough that there weren't lines longer than one person behind another person. (and even that was rare). The Linux Pavillion was good-looking and conspicuously placed (near-ish the entrance, right past the APC area). Everyone was polite and helpful, there. They had a little projection-screen area where they were demo-ing various Linux distros and products. I got distro CDs from RedHat, SuSE, and Caldera for free, and I even got a Beta of SuSE's Alpha-AXP distro (I had to ask, and they produced it from a secret cache) for my Alphastation.

    Sadly, Compaq didn't show for their Linux Pavillion booth, at least not by midday Monday.

    "The Constitution admittedly has a few defects and blemishes, but it still seems a hell of a lot better than the system we have now."

  • Linus has always been a very easy-going, approachable, humble person. These qualities, and others, have helped him work with the large number of Linux contributors, and avoid being too much of a Cult of Personality, and for a long time he deliberately avoided conflict or even the appearance of arrogance or superiority. The Comdex speech had me ROFL, because I think Linus is finally confident enough to be more obviously tongue-in-cheek. The comments regarding non-coders and business types are so obvious that anyone taking them seriously should have their head surgically removed, since it isn't doing them any good. Linus is relaxed enough to let it all hang out. We got the guns, AND we got the numbers! Who wouldn't be as smug as a penguin (or a daemon) about now?
  • That would make for a great 3 way fight. Hehehehehe.
    "Okay. I want a good clean fight."
    "Windows Everywhere!" bang smack crash... "No no no, its GNU/Linux!" smash crack "Microsoft Sucks!" ....

    Hehehehe.
  • Paul Allen hasn't had any involvement with M$ (outside of being a shareholder) for years.

    In addition, Paul and Billy G. never have seen eye to eye on technical matters. Allen is a MUCH sharper techie.
  • I just spent most of the last two days at Comdex and the "Linux Global Summit" and I too saw Linus speak. I do not know how anyone could come away with the notion that he spent an hour bashing Microsoft. Apart from a few well-timed and humorous off-the-cuff quips regarding Microsoft's notorious lack of reliability, his entire speach was focused on where Linux is and where it is going, not on what Microsoft is doing. Frankly, if it had been otherwise I (and I think many others) would have been disappointed, since as non-users of Microsoft we don't really care where they are going today, tommorow, next week, or next year.

    The newspapaer article was completely off base, exaggerated, and out of context. Sadly, this is nothing new when it comes to reporting computer-related issues.
  • Paul Allen, the self-proclaimed father of the backslash.
    --

  • The guy does have a certain point. I saw the first USB ports in 1996 or so, covered with a "Pending Software Support" sticker. It's only been within the last few months (since the iMac and Win98 came out) that USB has been everywhere.

    So, I wouldn't say that the iMac created USB support, but having a USB-only computer certainly helped.
    --
  • ... keep being very negative. I know Sun is no saint, but a strong java vm could only help Linux and not hurt it. Specially considering that the current fastest java platform is a PC running Windows.

    The theory that running Linux on multiple hardware is "cross platform" is not as good as running cross-hardware , cross-OS, like Java promises to do.

    Anyways, the article comments on the "splitering" of Java which is really a bunch of FUD and I'm surprised Linus mentions this. C'mon , one of the "splinters" listed is *IBM*. Now when did they release an incompatible VM ???

  • Yeah, I remember reading one conference report noting that he said this few times (news.com or zdnet, I forget). I found it surprising myself, in that it seemed particularly unclassy. It made me wonder if some recent incident sent him over the edge, because I agree that it didn't sound like him. Unfortunately, the article didn't place the quotes in any sort of context, and it doesn't seem like anyone's transcribed his keynote yet, so I'll just have to wait.

    I'm sure all the kids in the audience loved it, but it's not going to win him any style points, and I've come to expect better from Linus.

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • Dang! I saw the headline and was hoping for Celebrity Deathmatch!
  • Anyone else read Bill's address? he is so full of it he doesn't know what 2 believe... it was pathetic... chalked full of sucking up and gay comments... this is pathetic


  • morals (Score:1)

    by Th0th ( 15289 )
    Amen
  • I've seen a couple of very sketchy reports that Linus said "Windows Sucks" at some point during his speech. This seems so out of character for him that I'd really like to know the context. I could see Linus making a more specific statement about some specific aspect of Windows that sucks, but find a blanket condemnation of Windows unlikely. In several interviews I've seen, Linus expresses a fairly balanced opinion of Windows, praising some aspects and condemning others.
  • According to an interview in the Linux Magazine I read a few days ago, Microsoft has never offered Linus a job. Linus implied that if he were to receive such an offer, he wouldn't be offended, just that he wouldn't find it technically interesting.
  • The room's capacity is +800. There was SRO and ppl spilled out all the doors. I thnk the number of ppl there was closer to 1000.
  • > Its a pain in the ass to change IRQ's and addresses in MAC OS

    I don't have any IRQ's in a 2.5 year old PowerTower, so what are you talking about??!

    FWIW, changing networking services ie, AppleTalk to TCP/IP, or changing IP addresses is easy as pie in Open Transport. (MacOS 7.5.3 or later)

    Dave
  • Did they try it live this year? I thought one of the articles I read said they just showed a "video simulation" of the grand event.
  • I remeber hearing somewhere that MS is an investor in Linus's company. I'm probably confused but...
  • Sorry, I seem to miss you insight... he's a great speaker because he bashes microsoft?

    sustainable success cannot be achieved by defining what you are as "not microsoft". Focus on the proven benefits that Linux brings to market to meet the requirements of the target.

    Hubris can come back to haunt you, just ask Andreeson.
  • and I'm sure that everyone on /. is perfectly content to share the pie with Microsoft.

    Bill alone did not build Microsoft, the entire ecosystem was responsible. The Linux community is motivated in a similar manner, to grow market share at a rate faster than the rate the market grows at, which implicitly means taking someone else's share away, in this case Microsoft.

    I agree that organizational personality eminates from the top, but competitiveness is the nature of business. You can't become a market leader by accident.
  • Absolutely agree with you on this point.

  • Compaq/DEC WAS there...Jon "maddog" Hall can do everything he does for the community because Compaq/DEC pays him to help evangelize the Linux O/S...as Linus discussed in his speech, the Linux O/S has been '64-bit' for quite some time now...Linus spoke to this at some length during his keynote...Jon gets to do what he does (Chairman of Linux International, "the entire office staff," and 'Chief Defender of the Faith) because management at Compaq allows him to and, in addition, pays him for his not-inconsiderable skills as a *nix engineer and sysadmin...this, even tho they have a competing 64-bit *nix O/S (True64)...also Compaq was in the MS solutions booth and sponsored much of the 'behind the scenes' of the 1st Annual Linux Global Summit...some of the buzz at the show vis-a-vis the Alpha was VERY interesting and may have a tremendous impact on Linux' penetration into the corporate Data Center...don't fault Compaq, they have bigger things to pay attention to right now...
  • I like to bust on Bill as much as anyone, but I wonder how wise it is to take the advocacy wars to a Linus vs. Bill level. It seems to me that the emphasis should be on the technology, rather than the personalities involved.

    I realize it's easier for media types to grasp on the obvious difference in personal style between Linus and Bill, but understanding the technical issues is a lot more important.
  • I'm not saying that the personalities don't have an effect on what comes out of them, I'm saying I don't necessarily think it's a good idea to focus on personalities in advocacy.

    Linux vs. Windows != Linus vs. Bill. That's all. I'm not saying they're not related, but to the extent that Linus vs. Bill becomes a media proxy for Linux vs. Windows, that's the wrong game to be playing.
  • As far as I remember it, Linus said "Windows sucks" when answering a question about MS Office for Linux/WINE/StarOffice. This isn't the exact quote, but it was to the effect of "If you want to use MS Office, use MS Office and overlook the fact that Windows sucks." It wasn't mean spirited. He was joking around the whole time.

    I thought that the best part was when he admitted that the "world domination" was tongue in cheek and detailed where he wants Linux to be in 3 to 5 years. He wasn't too serious, though. He did say the phrase "brain implants for dogs".

    For all the media hype, the mainstream computer industry still underestimates Linux. Linus was moved to a bigger room at the last minute and I still had to stand in the back.

    -Ralph Wiggam

  • Oh please, I've been using USB stuff on my computer (Windows) for over a year, with the old Win 95 OSR 2.5 release, and never had any problems. Oh, I forgot, Apple "invented" everything, like the GUI....
  • Does anyone know if Linus's speech is archived anywhere in its original format? A small crisis at work kept me from tuning in. A MP3 would work well too.
  • I would have to agree with you. Room was way too small. I was standing in one of the rear doorways and saw people come and go throughout the speech.
  • Read the three articles about the two keynote speaches. Notice that two are very positive toward Linus, while one goes out of it's way to use highly out of context remarks to make Linus look like some bitter Microsoft basher. It also mentions how Bill didn't mention Linux, sort of insinuating that he 'Stayed above the frey'. Hmm... Perhaps it is the fact that the third article is from MS-NBC. I really don't like being paranoid, but the spin seems SO blatent. Just thought I'd point that out, since my own first reaction on reading the MS-NBC article was 'DOH, Linus is making himself look like an idiot'. However I realized afer looking into in more detail that the reality was probably much closer to 'Linus looked good, MS-NBC is spinning his words to make him look like an idiot'. I hate it when the news is owned by everone's favorite monopoly.
  • IIRC, Paul Allen (a cofounder and major shareholder of Microsoft) is an investor in Transmeta. As I understand it, he has no involvement at Microsoft, and nowadays spends most of his time investing VC in a ton of new companies.
  • I want to chime in with you and Javel's reply. I don't think Linus has the hostility towards Java that MS has shown, but I do think he pooh-poohs it a little bit.

    Granted, Java has been overhyped. It's interesting to me, though, that the people who seem the most disdainful of Java are highly-skilled C and C++ programmers.

    As far as good VMs for Java, I think there are several. Blackdown comes to mind immediately, but I know there are more.

    I don't know why an OS advocate would resist Java. It seems to me that Java allows an OS to compete on its own merits, rather than on application availability. Personally, lack of Java support is what keeps me from trying BeOS.
  • Not only did he mention Linux's stability as a reason to switch from Microsoft, he mentioned that many people switch for "moral reasons". I like Linux just because it is a change from one person being in control of what my computer looks like. That is a good enough reason to try Linux.

    I'd like to find some transcripts of that speech.
    I'm sure both of them had some good stuff to say. I think I'm kinda tired of hearing Bill's "Windows Everywhere" saying though...
  • What did the computers at comdex with Linux look like? Did they make a good showing?

    Anyone see Win2000 there?
  • That's a scary prospect. I think it would work good only if they used alot of WINE.

  • .. but Linux can stand on its own two feet!

    I really don't think that the Linux community should (or needs to) push forth this idea that people use Linux exclusively to get away from Windows and to "boycott M$". Sure, many people do, but that's not the only reason that it has enjoyed its recent successes. Linux is where it's at today because it's a fundamentally great operating system.

    What we need to do, IMHO, is stop portraying Linux (and Linux users) in terms of Microsoft. Articles that use words like "rogue" and "subversive" to describe this "exciting operating system", even in Linux-friendly publications, don't do us any favors. These terms seem to confirm the image that Microsoft wants Linux users to have: rebellious teenagers with black leather jackets and nose rings. Similarily, this imagery is backed up by claims that people should be using Linux for "moral reasons", and that a choice to install Linux indicates that you are somehow taking the moral high ground, compared to the nameless millions stuck in the depravity of Windows.

    How about focusing on what Linux can give people instead of what it takes them away from? In the midst firing off anti-Microsoft flames, it seems to be pretty easy to forget that Linux has a helluva lot going for it. If we want to win over the masses, shouldn't we be concentrating on getting the word out in a positive, constructive manner, instead of centering around a "we're-gonna-git-you-sucka" message aimed squarely at Redmond? I'm not saying that there isn't a time and a place for some good ole Microsoft bashing; I'm just saying that Linux advocacy needn't be centered on it.
  • I have to agree with Augusto.

    Mr. Torvald's comments about Java seem to be for the most time a little uninformed. Considering the moves that are happening in the enterprise, and how deeply Java has pawed its way into those systems, it makes a huge difference for Linux to have a strong Java support if it wants to be the OS of choice for the enterprise.

    I wonder how much of Linus's negative comments are just the old, natural resistance of change. Seems to me if you hack C and are good at it, it may not seem important to have some OO-hyped interpretted language succeed, but one must understand the need the enterprises have, and that Java has set out to offer solutions to those needs, and undermining Java by just categorizing it as hype won't help Linux much.

    So how about offering those solutions instead?


    The theory that running Linux on multiple hardware is "cross platform" is not as good as running cross-hardware , cross-OS, like Java promises to do.

    Funny, that kind of attitude kind of reminds me of the Microsoft attitude of "Only write for Windows, because Windows is everywhere! ".

    -- Jay
  • I was able to be there, and see both Bill, ad Linus speak. Bill was there to show off Win2k and a very cool new mouse (no moving parts!)
    All in all a pretty good presentation (my humble oppinion).

    Torvalds' did anything he could to get the crowd going. His speech was not well prepared, so to keep people excited he resorted to the typical MS bashing.(I had kinda hoped that he was above that level).
    He later appeared at the Linux Pavillion to give away some free stuff, and do more MS bashing, to a roaring crowd.

    Just goes to show that just because a guy has great ideas for software, it dosn't mean that he is any more mature than the next guy.(too bad)
  • As a strong supporter of Linux, I felt very lucky that I just happened to be standing outside the confence room that they moved him too at the last sec. I was able to get a great seat within the first 5 rows. I thought that he was going to make a great presentation, and really get people hyped up about Linux.

    However, I must admit that I was disappointed in him. His MS bashing was almost childish(my oppinion) and while this did get the crowd excited, there are better was that he could have done it.

    ps Bill's presentation was actually pretty good
  • I agree that Linus should have gotten to use the theater as well.
    And yes, from what I heard from co-workers who arived late to COMDEX, people were standing on one another to see Bill. The theater was filled(myself included) and they filled 6 confrence rooms (standing room only) to watch him on bigscreen TV's.
  • So, with Windows 2000 Professional, we've created a new directory called My Pictures underneath My Documents. So this is just a place for us to store graphics files so we can basically manipulate these files a little bit easier.

    Amazing what a group of PhDs can come up with when you put them together in one room and throw money and stock options at them.... I would never have thought of doing this!
  • Hah. Look at my product crash last year.

    We fixed that bug.

    See? I didn't fire the guy who was standing next to me when it happened.

    Our new mouse has four buttons and a wheel.

    Someone finally told us about optical mice. We will not mention that optical mice have been around for many, many years. We will act like we invented them. (c.f. IBM PS/2 and the 3 1/2" disk)

    Hopefully somebody will solve the current bandwidth problems so that I can sell more stuff.

    All versions of Windows 2000 should contain approximately the same bugs.

    Our server products have a long way to go in the area of reliability.

    Our early decision to try and force a proprietary communications model on the world has cost us a great deal of money since it has not been universally adopted, and we must now develop patches to allow for interoperability on many of our applications.

    We have finally added something not unlike file permissions. We will not mention that this has been present in unix-like operating systems all along. We will act like we invented it.

    We have finally created something like a real client-server operating system. We will not mention that other operating systems have had real client-server architecture for years. We will act like we invented it.

    We will now allow you to prioritize network traffic.

    We're still keeping the silly and outmoded distinction between a networked filesystem and a local filesystem. We're also still sorting stuff by which device it's on. Bill likes that.

    We made a new folder under My Documents called My s because people were getting confused by the word "Document" and we try and appeal to the lowest common denominator of intelligence exclusively.

    Windows 2000 has cost us a bunch to develop and right now we're betting our asses on it. If it doesn't catch on (if it is, for instance, another Windows 98) I may have to start selling Linux.

    I like the word "empowerment." One of my employees used it and it impressed me, so I'm going to use it (because people who attend Bill speeches aren't, by and large, computer people at heart, and respond to such gibberish).

    **************

    Y'know, it's not that Bill doesn't "get it," it's that Bill gets something else entirely. And what he gets is wrong.

    Doktormel@yahoo.com
  • Usually, companies like Microsoft give out transcriptions of the keynotes. The whole thing's written ahead of time anyway (Bill just reads it off the teleprompter), so this is quite easily done. Plus, it helps MS get press coverage even from reporters who didn't attend.

    So, my guess is that ZD just copied the transcription provided by MS and didn't have a similar document from Linus.

    I wasn't at the speech, but i agree that the press quotes of Linus seem exaggerated and out of context. I think a lot of reporters don't get his sense of humor; they're also anxious to include the anti-Microsoft angle for added tension.
  • Interesting... In the ZDTV archive of Gates' keynote, there's a six minute cut - from 27:30 to 33:30 - where they display the message "Due to the proprietary nature of the information contained in this video segment, we must temporarily suspend the video and audio portion of this broadcast. Normal program will resume in a moment." This is after Gates is talking about asking normal people what they're looking for in computers, and comes back with loud applause... Does anyone know what was covered in this section?
  • Email zd at feedback@zdtv.com. Ask them nicely if they would post the archive of Linus' speech. I have laready done so, and have not received a response as yet.

  • They now have on the page about Linus' keynote the following message: "Note: Due to technical difficulties, the archived video of Torvald's {sic} keynote is not yet available. We apologize for the delay, and will post it as soon as possible."

    From earlier today, it would have appeared that they weren't even planning on posting it...

  • This Comdex was a major disappointment in many ways, and missing Linus was just the start of it.

    First, the place he was going to be speaking was very well hidden. It was a tiny room, about the right size for 30 or 40 people. So we were directed to another larger but still too-damn-small room that was filled to overflowing. Every door to the room was surrounded by a mob of people straining to hear.

    Ziff-Davis seriously underestimated the popularity of this event, and didn't take it seriously. They didn't arrange for overflow, either via video or even with extra speakers in the hall.

    Bill's speech (which I didn't bother to attend) was in the large theater in McCormick Place...but I kinda doubt people were practically standing on each other to hear it.

    "Where Do You Want To Go Today" - indeed!

  • That would be HURD, the long-delayed GNU kernel. Use it if you think it's better, or if it's politics are more congruent with your own, or if you think RMS is a cooler dude than Linux, or whatever. Linus gave the only reasonable answer: Use what you want. It's all about choice.

  • We got there about 2 hours before the speech to get coveted front-row seats and a surprise meeting with "Mad Dog". The speech was absolutely incredible, I thought... Being able to initiate a "wave" before the show and seeing a buch of IT people dressed in suits jumping up and cheering really showed the excitement in the audience. I thought there was a lot of Microsoft bashing, but it was all in good taste and humorous. The speech was informal, yet informative. There was a lot of audience participation throughout the speech that really added to the whole thing.

    Furthermore, the Linux pavilion was packed after the speech, and I thought it was actually attracting more people than M$'s exhibits. I had a hard time getting to the Linux displays with so many people trying to check them out.

    As far as Linux free stuff goes, VA Research's YoYos were a great steal, as well as posters, t-shirts, and CDs from SuSE. I also picked up a few bumper stickers from Red Hat and a copy of the Linux Journal.

    Compared to last year, the Linux section of COMDEX was MUCH larger, and the M$ display was quite a bit smaller.

    A day well spent in my opinion... I hope to see a transcript or audio/video recording of the speech in the near future!
  • I was there too, and nothing Linus said could be construed as M$ bashing. The remark ha had made about Microsoft controlling that floor of McCormick Place was b/c he had just stated that Linux is in use at nuclear power plants, and then the lights went out. I thought Linus' presentation was much better than Bill's. I kept falling asleep during Gates presentation except for the video of Gates and Ballmer as the Roxbury brothers from SNL. It was shame that they had Linus speak in such a small room. Many people who wanted to listen had to give up b/c they couldn't see or hear Linus.
  • i have a recorded version of linus' speech that was sold at comdex. if anyone would like a copy let me know.

    joykohl@yahoo.com
  • I missed the streaming audio that went out yesterday (4/19) and would love to hear what Linus had to say without all the middle-man interpretations of the attending media.

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