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Linux Software

Linux Expo Wrap Up 40

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-to-read dept.
Rather than spending all week posting lots of little bits about Linux Expo, I've saved them up for now: Russ Nelson sent us a collection of pictures, Brian Smith sent us his, and our own Justin sent us his collection and a mirror, and nicedream sent us a collection of pictures from the Debian boys. (featuring many light saber battles and nerf wars from the Slashdot booth) Marc Merlin sent us linkage to a scan of the linuxcare poster that Red Hat got so cranky about. He has a full report on the show. An anonymous reader sent us a TechSitings Story, Jonas Öberg wrote in to send us Telsa (Alan Cox's wife) take on the show for something a bit lighter.
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Linux Expo Wrap Up More

Linux Expo Wrap Up

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  • If you'd been paying attention, you would have noticed that *this* Tux had boobs. And no, the girl leading heR around wasn't Marilyn Manson (who's a guy) but instead was one of those "I'm so pretty I have to make myself ugly so the guys don't drool on me" girls. Hey, it's either that, or walk around handing out spittle sacks.
    -russ
  • Mr. Taco, that wouldn't be a SNURF gun you're wielding, would it? :P

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • MRTG [mrtg.org] is your friend.
    -russ
  • It's a parody of the palmpilot ads. I wouldn't read any more into it than that.
  • Your all going to laff at me. [digivill.net]
  • I know I should take a cue from your web address (crynwr.com), but I was wondering how you generated that graph?

  • I *knew* that was CmdrTaco taking apart his Red Hat beer mug at the table next to us! Only a geek of such epic proportions would have brough his leatherman to a party. And taken apart the light-up plastic glass to see how it ticked.

    On the Planet Red Hat party - it was a blast. The music was rather retro-80s in the main, and reminded me of the mixes they played back in high school - without the slow songs. The food was eh - the Obi-Wan Canolis and the Jedi Strawberries were the best. I didn't try one of the Naboo Star Fighters (chocolate-dipped cookies), but heard they were pretty bland. The beer was good - bottled all the way! Even if they did run out.

    All in all, highly impressive for a gathering of geeks. There were even people dancing - after about an hour or two. And I might have even gotten a free boxed Red Hat outa the deal. Without having to give up the O'Reilly Open Sources T-shirt I was wearing at the time.
  • I wouldn't base a purchase on it, but in light of the "other ad" that is going around, i find it pretty amusing.

    i'd actually like to get a scan of the poster even. maybe i'm just a pervert though :)
  • Now that you mention it, I remember the palm pilot ads... Still what I said goes for Palm Pilot, they didn't convince me to buy a Palm Pilot, worse, they created a campaign that I forgot about. :-)

    Anyway if they wanted a good parody, how about Tux sitting in the same position as the naked woman wearing only a bra. :-)

  • Yes, it was in Raleigh (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    And it was a blast. You should have been there.

    Parking couldn't be easier. Most folks there were either coming from IBM or Red Hat if they were in town. The rest were all from San Fran pretty much and took shuttles from their respective hotels. I parked just outside the building with no trouble whatsoever.

    Getting to meet the big giants behind Linux like Alan Cox, David Miller, and Sam Ockman was icing on the cake.

    On Friday night my wife (a complete technophobe) decided to come out to the SuSE party at the Warehouse. Of course, right off she decides she wants to meet all the people she sees me reading about. She points to a table next to the bar and says "That guy with the hair looks like someone neat to talk to. Let's go meet him." so for the next 20 minutes or so we were having drinks with Bodo Bauer. She seems to have a good eye for picking out the most interesting people to talk to in a crowded room.

    You'll definitely have to make it out to the next one. Get all the handouts you can on the very first day before a Red Hat lawyer issues gets a cease-and-desist order put out.

    It was really cool to go to work the next week and see so many Linux shirts (from the show of course). And of course, now I have my own Tux guarding my office from the evil AIX people when I'm not there.

    Slashdot was buried back in the corner, between Gnu and Debian. Gnu was trying to sell some godawfully ugly tee shirts and to be honest I didn't see them move even a single one.

    I think the Slashdot booth would have been worth visiting if they set up a few lawn chairs and a whiteboard, put a news topic up on the whiteboard, and had the people hanging out commenting to each other on the topic. :-) I would have bought a couple shirts off /. to support them if I saw any, but I didn't see any. :-(

    The Loki guys were there with CivCTP so of course I bought that.

    Penguin Computing had the phattest single machine at the show... that eight way Xeon box we've all read about.

    Caldera gave me a 2.2 CD which didn't work on my machine. :-(

    Red Hat had another booth in the back where they were selling tee shirts and beer glasses. I thought it tacky of them to push Gnome shirts while not offering any KDE shirts.

    Linuxcare has the most ingenious marketing gimmicks at the show. First the posters that were more famous when they were no longer available, and then the lollipops with real crickets stuck inside (bite the bug, get a mug).

    There were some folks there selling accounting software for Linux, and when talking to them they had no idea what "GPL" was, and seemed totally lacking a clue about Linux. The booth across from them was giving out Free Beer (how appropriate).

    Of course there was at least one Beowulf running.

    Linux Magazine hired the best looking model out of any of the exhibitors. Huff da!

    I don't know which "Linux Celebrity" was easier to pick out of the crowd... John "maddog" Hall or Alan Cox. I think Cox won, only because of his bright red fedora. David Miller blended into the crowd better than any other "Linux Celeb".

    I saw a kid that looked like Pugsley running around in a Tux suit. He was led around by Maralyn Manson, I believe.

    You really should try to make it next year. :-)
  • The big problem was most people thought that was
    a Red Hat advert.
  • Where can I get one of these? I NEED one !

    Seen here [crynwr.com].
  • See: Picture [shadoweb.net]
    Notice he's carrying both an infant, as well as a laptop. Slick!

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • true... it should have a "not afflilated with..."
    disclaimer. also, not usung the RH box image would have been good. a generic linux item (everyone's favorite penguin) would have caused much less trouble.
  • It's amazing how many inept people get to write for a living. This little snippet is a gem:

    ... several celebrated free software programmers and hackers, up to and including the infamous Trey, who created the Eggdrop program used by software pirates to send large .ftp files through IRC chat channels.

    Wowzers! That's one *spectacular* display of ignorance! (Snipped from http://www.techsightings.com/cgi-bin/ts_review.pl? 317)

  • i too like her writes... but what would she write about for /. ?
    not technical stuff, maybe psychologcal that is:

    "...David Weeks' writing in the UK on eccentricity as a definable trait -- I learnt some stuff about this a few years ago, and it's amazing how many hackers share the traits he defines as shared by eccentrics."

    i for one would like to know more... wonder if she reads /.

    nmarshall
    #include "standard_disclaimer.h"
    R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE

  • Weeks and eccentricity (Score:5)

    by Telsa ( 29774 ) on Thursday May 27, 1999 @01:18PM (#1877040) Homepage
    Thanks for the kind words. Gosh, it's amazing what offhand comments can stir up. (Five people letting me know who wrote "Bears find fire", for a start :)).

    Eccentricity -- well, your best bet is to grab the books from www.amazon.com. The book I first got doesn't seem to be there, but the weightier tome, "Eccentrics: the scientific study" (which is what I actually ordered at my bookshop and didn't get) is there, as is a more anecdotal account (maybe mine under a new name?) Weeks saw lots of work being done on normal and decidedly not normal, but nothing on the borders, and launched a large study into the phenomenon. He identified a number of traits which he held to be shared by all or most eccentrics, and without going to my bookshelf I may get this wrong, but here goes:

    Intelligence, intense curiosity, non-conformist, idealistic, not in need of social reinforcement, obsessive about a number of different (wildly different) things at once, sense of humour, poor speller...There were also differences in the way they spoke, and they tend to be off the scale in personality tests which measure the strength of different characteristics. (off the scale in either direction). Although "having eccentric relatives" is apparently common in some forms of mental illness, having mentally ill relatives didn't seem particularly common in eccentrics (about the same as "normal people").

    What struck me was the "Portrait of J Random Hacker" in the back of the Jargon File, which also mentions humour, lots of wide-ranging interests, confidence that you're right, not caring what others think, and being more likely to have unusual philosophies and act on them. There seemed, as I say, to be a slight overlap :)

    I just did a quick google search on "David Weeks eccentricity" and got a pile of hits: apparently he did a lot of interviews when the latest book came out. They'll give you more information and the books more yet.

    I wouldn't get _too_ excited about this. I do enjoy stuff about the boundaries between normality and non-normality (don't get me onto the subject of how many people hear voices, for example :)) and it just struck me that there were similarities. I can think of one or two people who are both hackers and eccentric, but I wouldn't say it's an automatic link. On the other hand, they're both very small segments of the population, and the chances of so many (as I perceive it) overlapping must be low.

    Anyway, this is too long, but those are the books you want to look at (or the interviews, but they mostly focus on the arty eccentrics rather than the scientific ones (think of Newton and his bed having to be north-south, and Franklin, and Cavendish)).

    Telsa (who does read Slashdot, yes, and knows this is probably off-topic, but what the hell, someone asked :))

  • Not really a pretty graph but geeze the bandwith
    it represents..
    here [mci.net] When can I hook one of these babies up at my house!
  • So, who's got pics of the models that were kicked out early on?
  • I'd probably be persuaded to get rid of mine for a price (or in trade for a nice light up Debian mug)... maybe I'll post it on ebay and see how much I can get for it

    .Laz

    --
    My car is orange, my sig is not.
  • Here's a picture of the slashdot effect [northweb.com]. This is the local ISP who usually has more incoming than outgoing traffic. That is, until my pictures hit slashdot, where it suddenly reversed.
    -russ
  • You know, I wonder what type of person would put Sam Ockman on the same line as say... Alan Cox or David Miller... and then also continue to plug everything else that Penguin Computing put on at the show. Now, I'll be the first to admit that the girl in the tux suit was pretty cool (it was), but the 8way we've all saw in march at the VA booth. anyways... Hi Sam :)
    --
    Geoff Harrison (http://mandrake.net)
    Senior Software Engineer - VA Linux Labs (http://www.valinux.com)
  • Ignoring that this was a parody...

    I'd look at an ad with a motif I find sexy, and maybe even notice the name of the product. If, at a later point, I'd need to buy a product in that category, there is a slightly better chance that I'd remember the name of the product. Most likely, you would to. That is enough for the ad to work.

    In fact, a parody like this works exactly the same. We will look at it and remember the name because of the humor instead of the sex.

    The point is: Advetising agencies don't assume we (the consumers) act purely on a rational basis, because we don't, and they do.

  • It looks rather like he uses MRTG ( Multi Router Traffic Grapher [ee-staff.ethz.ch]). It's a tool for tracking router usage.

    I like his weekly graph [northweb.com]. Older data is on the right, and you can see normal traffic (green is in, blue is out) and compare to the slashdot effect beginning mid-Thursday.



    --Phil (I like MRTG. Pretty graphs are fun...)

  • Telsa Talkshow Wanted :) (Score:4)

    by ravenskana ( 30506 ) on Thursday May 27, 1999 @05:37AM (#1877055) Homepage
    I found the Telsa journal to be rather amusing and well written. Wonder if she could be talked into writing opinion columns for /.

  • Note to Telsa: The author of Bears Discover Fire is Terry Bissom. It is both a short story (it appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine -- can't recall which issue) and a collection of short stories, in which the eponymous story is far and away the best.



    --
  • So Red Hat Linux is that woman's excrement or flatuence?

    I question the value of ads like that, I am a young, heterosexual male, but I've never used the amount of female flesh shown in a product or service ad as a basis on whether I buy a product. Am I the only one?

  • This type of ads are not new (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I remember an ad for a color printer a few months back in some computer magazine. It has a picture of a woman with a painted on bathing suit. It said something about how resolution matters...ie that a high resolution would let you see that it was painted on!

    Also if you check out fashion and womens magazines, the ads show much much more flesh even though the primary target is women.
  • Hmm.. marc.merlins.org seems to be pretty slow right now (that's the site that the scanned parody image was on..) Anyone have a mirror?

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