All I Wanna Do Is Zudeo

I don't usually go out of my way to point out new fancy-shmancy Web 2.0 services, but I stumbled upon something this morning which I felt I had to make known. The good folks over at Azureus have started a new video sharing site, called Zudeo. The kickers here are that there is no flash required to view the videos (YES!!!!!!) and they actually solved the #1 problem with youTube--Zudeo supports HD!!

To my surprise, there wasn't much press coverage of this, except for this Wired story.

Word Up Magazine

More Novellgate, more Microsoft, more garbage. We all knew what the truth was, and now we have confirmation from the mouth of the ass, err, donkey. Wait, no, it is actually the ass. But I wouldn't dare paraphrase anything as good as this, you can read it yourself right here.

For those who will undoubtedly say your browser doesn't work with links, or that for some reason that link doesn't work, I'll paste the relevant lines below.

"We've had an issue, a problem that we've had to confront, which is because of the way the GPL (General Public License) works, and because open-source Linux does not come from a company -- Linux comes from the community -- the fact that that product uses our patented intellectual property is a problem for our shareholders. We spend $7 billion a year on R&D, our shareholders expect us to protect or license or get economic benefit from our patented innovations. So how do we somehow get the appropriate economic return for our patented innovation, and how do we do interoperability. The truth is, because of the complex licensing around the GPL, we actually didn't want to do one without the other."


"What we agreed, which is true, is we'll continue to try to grow Windows share at the expense of Linux. That's kind of our job. But to the degree that people are going to deploy Linux, we want Suse Linux to have the highest percent share of that, because only a customer who has Suse Linux actually has paid properly for the use of intellectual property from Microsoft. And we took a quota, you could say, to help them sell so much Suse Linux. That's part of the deal."

I don't know what else to say right now. We clearly knew all along that this is what they were getting at. Novell played right into their hands, easily. I would like to ask Ron Hovsepian what it's like to live without a soul. Did you gain the ability to fly? Can you teleport? It must be interesting.

I'm not going to take this sitting down, and surely, nobody else in the Open Source world should take this lightly. It's time to start churning the gears of war. I already have a plan. Are you with me?

Software Learnings for Make Benefit Glorious Open Source

What a glorious day for Open Source. I don't remember a day as good as this in a long while. My next post is going to include a ton of stuff from the Fedora Summit being held today, so I figured I should get to all the other great news of the day first.

First and Foremost, in what took a back seat in the news today, more than just reaction and raw emotion has started to pour out of the community regarding Novellgate. Today, the Samba Team sent Novell a big Fuck You (Sorry Kids). I'm glad to see projects becoming actively vocal about this and letting Novell know that the GPL and Open Source is not just another whore in their harem of short-term solutions to rectify their long standing history of malfeasance.

Secondly, Sun has finally acted upon their long standing promises of Open Sourcing Java. J2SE, J2ME and yes, even J2EE (read the press release) will now be offered under GPLv2. That's great news all around the table and truly a shot heard 'round the Open Source world. It's even better news for companies offering enterprise Java Application Stacks.

Jonathan Schwartz even got in on some of the Novell bashing fun. Awesome!!! So now, let's give credit where credit is due, Jonathan Schwartz, myself and freedom loving people around the world applaud you. Of course though, in traditional Sun-has-delusions-of-grandeur fashion, they decided to post this on their Open Source Java FAQ site.

"This singular act is the largest contribution ever made to the free software community, and places Sun squarely at the front of the open-source movement - as the single biggest commercial contributor."

Yeah, nice try. I think they make have gotten a little too excited. I really just posted that because I thought spot would get a kick out of reading it.

All in all, today should serve as a validation to all involved or watching the community that we are winning, we are affecting change and we will ultimately succeed in changing the world. It should also serve as a warning to all those skeptics who thought Open Source was and still is going nowhere fast (yes, I'm pointing at you guys at Gartner).

Fedora Summit - Day 1

I'm not going to go into too much detail since everyone sitting next to me is about to post in heavy detail about all that's going on. We nailed down an agenda concentrating on the key issues, started talking about defining what a Fedora "Platform" should be defined as, and got a good way through before everyone got brain dead. I blame it on the lack of caffeine here. I'll update stuff on this post as the day progresses and as time allows.

UPDATE: A one photo summary of the day's events thus far.

Don't Upset the Kernel Hacker!!

Listen All Of Y'all It's A Sabotage

Based on Jesse's request for a more eloquent scathing. Directed at all Novell Linux-centric Employees:

[For those who like song]
[To the tune of Beastie Boys' Sabotage]

I Can't Stand It, It Seems They Plan It,
But I'm Gonna Set It Straight, This Novell-Gate.
I Can't Stand Hacking When I'm In Here,
Because Your Commitment to Freedom Ain't So Crystal Clear.
So While You Sit Back And Wonder Why,
I Got This [censored for the kids] Thorn In My Side.
Make No Mistakes, This Is Not A Mirage,
I'm Tellin' All of Y'all It's Sabotage!

[For those who like prose]

I don't know how they do it in other places, but in New York, we throw down. That's right. We're not afraid to issue challenges, question mediocrity, expose improbity and when it comes down to it, just down right fight. The Free and Open Source and Free Culture movements are unabashedly and intensely committed to upholding the noble principles we hold so dear: Freedom, Liberty, Choice, Transparency, Candor, Responsibility and Value. What's more is that we always exhibit constancy of commitment towards those principles. In the battle we fight, perfidiousness is not an option.

So this is my challenge to all the Novell employees who are involved in Free and Open Source software in any way shape or form, from the lowliest hacker to directors, managers, VPs, former Ximian Employees, etc. Now that it is blatantly obvious that your corporation's commitment to these values is nothing more than a brief interlude on an infinitely unsuccessful and fruitless path, and if you yourselves are truly committed to the aforementioned values, pack up and leave. You heard me right--QUIT!

"Dems be big words from a small man," many of you might say. Yes, that might be true; I am a little on the short side. Last time I checked though, the minds and hearts of men are what truly define them. Those words are at least as big as my thoughts. That you're continued commitment to Novell, and this evil indenture, at this point and forever forward, constitutes nothing more than a concordat on your own parts to conspicuously taint the Open Source community, imperil the future of the movement and jeopardize your fellow hackers.

Those who feel threatened by Free and Open Source will always be lurking, waiting and eager to sink their loathsome claws into the next unassuming piece of prey, to attempt to hinder freedom and progress and delay their own inevitable fate. The only way to ensure that your life's work remain salubrious to the Open Source movement is to disassociate yourselves from these entities. You needn't fret about your livelihood either; there are many benevolent entities seeking hackers of your magnitude, which would warmly embrace your arrival.

All legal assurances and PR jabberwocky aside, you know in your hearts what is true and just and prudent and brave. Do it now so that come impending times you won't be unwillingly trapped, fighting for the enemy. You must escape with your conscience and souls while you can.

It Rains on Our Parade

The Mets were just eliminated from the postseason. I am deeply saddened by this fact. The team with the best record in baseball was just beaten by the team with the least wins coming into the postseason. It's a terrible tragedy and its very fitting and tragic that it was raining throughout most of the game while the Mets were experiencing an offensive drought.

You're not going to win games when you let key opportunities slip through your grip. Teams without good starting pitching will never win, even if those who fill in are successful in that role. Leaving 11 men on base, while your worst pitcher is 1 hitting the other team, is no recipe for success. As good as the Mets bullpen was all season, they gave up the game, but I don't blame them. I don't fault Aaron Heilman for giving up the home run.

The blame is all Willie Randolph's. He has made some horrible mistakes managing the team throughout this series. The most blatant being letting Oliver Perez continue to pitch, although he is bouncing pitches in the dirt, to pitch to Scott Rolen. Thank God for Endy Chavez and his Spiderman like leaping ability. Letting Cliff Floyd swing away in the bottom of the 9th. Also, why let Heilman continue to pitch the 9th when in the same situation he brought in Wagner in Game 2 (a game in which the Mets also had the lead 3 times and gave it up).

All in all it was an excellent, but the bitter taste in Mets' fans mouths will not be washed away quickly.

Revelations

Here comes the bombshell. After much introspection and after conferring with many hundreds of people, and one in particular just a few hours ago, I have decided that it would be prudent and wise to run for public office. It's the only way that certain goals can realistically be accomplished. I'm not talking about my own selfish, albeit important, goals. Although those would be nice. I am thinking of more noble ideals; which I am not going to spell out right now. I don't want to ascribe to any specific platforms right now--except for one. Things suck and I can, and will, make them better.

If you want more information, please email me. If you have money and would like to see it wisely appropriated (yes you, Mark Shuttleworth,) email me. If you think I'm crazy, email me.

While you won't be seeing me on any ballots on November 7th, 2006, know my friends that the day is not far away. Incumbents watch your backs.

Summer Has Come and Gone

Okay, so Summer is pretty much officially over here in New York. The last couple of days we've had 60 degree weather with cold winds. It just happened way to fast. Literally in the span of 3 days. Saturday was really nice and then on Sunday I needed to break out the jacket and jeans. Looks like its going be a long cold winter, which sucks. The upside though is that it means much more time indoors, thinking, writing, planning and working on cool things. Especially in a new environment there are many opportunities to exploit. Let's see what develops.

Jack

OSCON Day 0 - Freedom 2.0

So after 14 hours in the airport, I finally made it to Portland, got some rest, woke up right on time to head into the Conference Center for the O'Reilly Executive Briefing session, starring none other than our own Michael Tiemann. I wouldn't normally write about something like this, except that there was an interesting point made by Tim O'Reilly which was expanded upon by Michael.

A question was posed to the panel about what they thought the next big thing in technology will be? Obvious answers, such as virtualization, VoIP, "the ubiquitous network," faster and flashier toys, came pouring out rapidly. Then with a bit of a pause, Tim O'Reilly offered up an answer. "We seem to be heading towards a Cassandra complex." The unfortunate truth is, we have become so good at "doing tech", we are able to foresee and predict disasters and societal impediments, but we are still slow as ever to act, and sometimes it stems from just disbelief, or more likely just not being brave enough to face the future.

Michael expanded on this by relating a story of how while working with NOAA, they successfully rolled out a new platform which allowed them to track weather changes and patterns for windows as small as five minutes. The severity and likely damages of Hurricane Katrina were predicted two weeks in advance and we still failed miserably on the most important level of the game. A few hours later, irrelatively, Spot mentioned how odd it was to watch on television how the hotel which had just hosted the first Red Hat Summit in New Orleans, where an award was given out for Open Source Crisis Management Software, was being used as a triage center for Katrina victims.

Michael closed the talk by revising his earlier answer. The next big thing in technology will be when we can effectively democratize action based on the information which we have become so adept at processing. This is the true promise of a technologically advanced society.

Dean Raymond von Dran, of the Syracuse University School of Information Management related that many of society's most pressing issues are fundamentally, information problems. Whether it be faulty intelligence in a war or a certain Senator rambling on about the Internet being a series of tubes (I'm sure the intern feeding him information was fired), many of our modern dilemmas exist because of inability or callous reluctance to react to information.

Linux and Open Source have now grown up and matured past the point of arcane popsicle stick and glue black magic and Fantasia-like wizardry concocted with crude tools. Face it. We aren't alternative anymore, we ARE mainstream. The greatest contribution of the movement has been a truly viable and robust platform for processing all the world's information. We are now at a critical juncture where we must step back and face the future. If we cannot grow up and, as Michael said, enable the evolution of societal ripostes to our most critical contexts, what have we really accomplished? Have we really accomplished anything?

Everything seems to be 2.0 these days. We, as a community say we stand for freedom and rights. My dear friends, code for code's sake is fun, but now it's time to work towards Freedom 2.0.

Intending to Burn

This is primarily a test post, so you can go ahead and ignore it. I wanted to test out the new automatic feed translation that I enabled on my feed. I would prefer to publish in Atom, but of course not every reader (including Planet) likes parsing Atom feeds, so I had resorted to manually doing the Atom -> RSS 2.0 conversion. Theoretically, this should allow automatic detection of the client's capabilities and give it the right version of the feed. If things look messed up to someone, or if your client is choking and/or is spewing garbage please email me and let me know.

Fedora in Israel פדורה בישראל

Slow rolling clouds exhale warm winds along the picture perfect Eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. The water glistens, as if unsullied from creation, and soaring palm trees dot the landscape. The remainder of the scenery, green all over with abundant fruit trees, would seem a bit embellished, as if to indicate you've stumbled upon paradise. For me, it's a pleasant departure from the usual gray, washed out, maneuver your way through the multitude, concrete streets of New York City. So where am I, and what am I doing here?

It is far from a pristine paradise undiscovered by humanity. In fact, just a few meters from the shoreline you will find the same hustle and bustle of New York City and one hell of a falafel, too. A short cab ride through the streets miraculously unveils some of the world's oldest standing structures juxtaposed against a flurry of billboards bearing its newest names: Oracle, Intel, IBM, HP and yes, even Novell has a couple. Quite an amazing and amusing site the first time you see it. In the middle of this desert oasis you will find tech's second coming.

I am on a quest to seek out Fedora community members half a world away. The community needs strengthening and one of our weakest links is in a country which is a tech powerhouse and yet often neglected by geekdom at large--Israel.

That is quite unfortunate though, because there is a tremendous amount of interest and involvement in technology around here--especially around Linux. Somewhere along the last 15 years, Linux became related to business. I'm sure many geeks are still scratching their heads, but the courting is being played out all over again on this side of the globe. Linux runs rampant throughout the university system, so students are introduced to it fairly early. The economy is experiencing a boom similar to the one the U.S. had, although it is more tempered and as a result, businesses are looking to modernize, extended their presences and improve processes. Additionally, startups, in every sector, are abundant and each must look for cost-effective means to break into their respective markets. Many have gravitated towards Linux due to previous exposure and for the obvious advantages it provides. While the people have struggled to build a country, their geeks certainly are not afraid of building a kernel.

Of course the big boys have set up shop as well. Anyone who owns an Intel Centrino laptop must thank Intel's Israel R&D, almost all of the latest microprocessors have been designed here (and named after rivers near the Intel HQ). IBM, whose outlandish, CRT shaped, spherical Petach Tikva HQ has become an icon in the country, has a massive presence here as well. Oracle must be making a killing here; it has bought up the ad space on literally every other billboard throughout the country. Google is coming too. It all stems from a government which is very pro-tech and has passed much legislation to subsidize high tech, in both education and industry. Now I hav come to find the geeks and rally them.

So I have come to seek out members of our Fedora community sporting an essentials-filled backpack, a water canteen, sunscreen and a 103 degree fever (39 degrees in Celsius) which I picked up somewhere along the way. I knew we had a Fedora Ambassador here, Moshe Roffe, whom I have now spoken to on several occasions, but judging by the otherwise initially lukewarm communication efforts with groups around here, I almost drew the conclusion that the Israeli Linux scene was either deep underground or dead, as in BSD. ;)(Come on, I just style="font-style:italic;">had to). I am glad to say I was easily proven wrong.

It is much easier to win a battle when you are on the ground and combat ready and I did what I have been trained to do, "find your friends." So I first emailed Moshe Bar whom I met a while back in New York City. I knew he often hung around these parts. Moshe is a true champion of Open Source, being the founder of some great projects such as OpenMosix and of course co-founding XenSource. Luckily enough, Moshe was in the country and we decided to meet up the next day. After some nice chit chat I got to take a tour of the offices of Moshe's new venture (it's super secret) and talk with some of the guys. The whole office runs on RHEL on the backend with Fedora on the frontend, which is a good sign! We had a nice site down with about 5-6 people from his staff who had many questions about Fedora. The whole RHL -> Fedora progeny, how to get things into extras, the QA process, what other projects we have up our sleeves. It was quite interesting conversation, with much learned on both ends.

Next, I got to stop by Intel and chat with some of the engineers in their Haifa center. The people over at Intel are very smart. I know this because all the engineers have standardized their desktop platform on Fedora. If you are running a Core Duo chip, odds are that it was designed on Fedora Core 2. It was kind of nice to see people who actually Get It(tm). There weren't too many questions. Some people asked me some RHEL5 and Xen questions, and I responded with what I knew and pointed them to where they could get more info. One of the managers there asked me something about Red Hat opening an office in Israel. I told him I will get right to work on it, that it was priority A1. He liked my response and laughed me all the way out the security gates. (Just Kidding).

A couple of days later, I finally coerced someone I know into setting up a visit for me at the IBM HQ here. IBM is all about their services division lately, which has netted them great growth. It was no surprise to learn that more than half the IBM employees here work outside of the office. The visit was real brief, but I got to see some nifty projects they are working on and then went out to eat with a few of the software engineers at the end of the day. IBM's role here has been has been pretty much the same as their role everywhere--design a custom software solution and then convince the customer to deploy it on IBM's hardware and software stack. The engineers work on projects ranging from websphere development, custom solutions development and one guy here even works on code for the cell processor which he is writing for the next version of the Blue Gene supercomputer. Overall, some really cool guys, they all run Linux at home and some do at work as well. Out of the 7 of them I was with, four ran Fedora, one was a die hard Debian fan and the other two ran Ubuntu.

After all of the above, madly racing around I finally got to spend time working on the Fedora Event Kit. See my email to fedora-ambassadors-list for more info, this post it too long as it is. (We finally got Fedora stationary, too, thanks again to Diana for the awesome work). Also, our local Ambassador, Moshe Roffe, finally stopped by and we got to talk about a few things. We discussed the event we are planning on having here, the general state of Linux affairs here and of course the World Cup. Moshe happens to work for Matrix IT, the official Red Hat reseller in the country, so he has a pretty good sense of the Linux uptake and what really needs to be done in order to gain more widespread Linux adoption. Truth is, no one around here is too fond of Microsoft and most companies would rather not trust their whole infrastructure to them. At least that's the feeling you get when talking to people around here. Hilti, for example, a power tool and construction equipment manufacturer, is constantly dealing with problems with their Windows Server deployment and they recently decided to switch off of Windows and are currently looking at SuSe and Solaris.

A lot of my interaction with the greater Linux community here came when visiting the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Open University. There are a large number of students in the Computer Science and Engineering programs of which a large majority love Linux. There are so many projects being worked on at HUJI and the students were telling me how much of it would not have been possible without Linux. I did the standard Fedora talk twice to two very different groups of people and everyone loved it. Many people came out feeling very energized and enthusiastic, and hopefully we will have some new community members soon.

And so the story continues. I have 10 days left here and plan on making the most of them. We still have to go pick up Fedora DVDs and T-shirts, an event to run and hopefully lots of more meetings. More as it happens. Right now though, I just got word that there is a large rally of Fedora fanatics at the beach. Yeah, I should go check that out. ;)

Technological Nose Picking

It's called Balloon Sinuplasty and it freaking awesome!! The doctor shoves a tube/needle with a balloon up your nose, all under local anesthesia, so it feels really weird. He then inflates the balloon which expands the sinus cavity and begins to slowly drain the sinus. Yes it sounds nasty and disgusting, and if you get a chance to look at the product, it most certainly is. Other than the "ewwww" factor though, it is an awesome procedure which everyone with sinusitis should be aware of and requesting.

I Feel A Sickness, Coming Over Me...

... but it's a good one.

Many of you know of my longstanding obsession with the world's greatest band ever--Pearl Jam. Just wanted to announce that their new album, which is appropriately self-titled (i.e. Pearl Jam for all those of you who don't understand) is released as of today May 2nd 2006. The reason I say it is appropriately self-titled, is because it is much like a debut release, with the band getting back to the basics which made them so well accepted in the earlier parts of the 1990s.

This is, in my opinion, and in the opinions of many of the popular review sites, the best Pearl Jam album in 10 years, and the more I listen to it, the more I start to think it is their best ever. Seriously, it's not like previous albums, it's real good.

The maturity of the lyrics make this album well worth the 10 bucks you'll pay; it's not kiddy stuff. The songs are all catchy and the musical arrangements have such uncharacteristic (for PJ at least) depth to them, that you might mistake them for something off a Pink Floyd record. With this album, Pearl Jam renews its reign over the kingdom which is Alt Rock and are well on their way, blazing a path, to the retake throne of Rock and Roll, which is so rightfully theirs.

Diamonds in this Coalmine

So a good friend of mine just called me in response to my recent blog post and she wasn't too happy with my pessimistic outlook. She also reminded me that I forgot to post about the good news I got on Friday -- NYU has formally agreed to put me another $60,000 in debt. (Get It?!?)

I'm sure once I have a chance to relax and let some time lapse things will be looking better again. So until then, can someone please post a review of FUDCon for all to see. I would do it myself, but I'm too damn tired and don't feel like concentrating enough to write a proper review.

Also, Fedora has been officially invited to the O'reilly Open Source Convention this year. I have all the forms and paperwork ready and have spoken to the coordinator for that, so I'll post up some more info when it's available.

Down In A Hole

Just got back from Boston. This has ended up being the worst and most expensive trip of my life.

$800 Auto Glass Replacement + $350 Traffic Ticket + $200 Gas = $1350.

I now realize that I could have gone on a weeklong European vacation and saved money. Anyway, somebody must be giving me the evil eye or something because this is just insane. Just when I got over the broken window, and had the weekend to relax, a stupid fucking state trooper pulls me over.

I've learned my lesson though. Time to take a break from travel for a long while. I think I am going to crawl into some hole and disappear for a good long time.

Do The Evolution. Or Not.

In response to Jesse's recent posts about filing evolution bugs:

Have fun. I myself have filed numerous bugs, especially over this past summer working with Dave Malcolm, and all are yet to be fixed. Wait, scratch that, one was fixed, but that was the one which we included a patch with, and it was a stupid fix anyway. The important things, including the potential to lose mail, don't seem to bother them. I doubt you will get very far using bugzilla reports. Me, I prefer baseball bats and brass knuckles.

Evolution was sucking hardcore and no one cared to fix anything so I switched to Thunderbird. Thunderbird has open bugs about reply-list and guess what, it's actually been fixed already. Chris Aillon is out in California this week and is meeting with some of the moz dudes. So I had him talk to the people responsible, and that bug is fixed and ready to be rolled out in the next update.

Mozilla is actually willing to work with people and invest the time and effort to fix things and I proudly support their efforts.

P.S. Why did we ever abandon Mutt and Pine?

Announcing FUDCon Boston 2006

Hot on the heels of the release of Fedora Core 5 and the success of previous FUDCon events worldwide, the Fedora Project is proud to announce FUDCon Boston 2006. FUDCon Boston 2006 will offer a wide range of speakers on an even wider range of topics, in three separate tracks, and is sure to have something for everyone.

More Info can be found at:
http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon/FUDConBoston2006

==When==

Friday, 7 April 2006. This is the Friday right after LinuxWorld Conference and Expo.

==What==

FUDCon Boston 2006 is the fifth such event globally and the second to be held in Boston, Mass. USA. FUDCon Boston 2006 will feature an expanded three track lineup which includes a user, developer and applications track. The application track will feature unique individuals and corporations, such as Levanta, MySQL, Pogo Linux and even representatives from the Catalonian Government in Spain, who have
leveraged Fedora for unique purposes and have contributed to the community.

The complete schedule can be found on the wiki and will be updated to reflect any time conflicts speaker may have. Please use it as the definitive timetable for the day's events. Additionally, the wiki will be updated with more detailed speaker, abstract and room info for each specific talk.

==Where==

The Fedora Project is honored to be able to work with Boston University once again to make this FUDCon a reality. The event will be graciously hosted once again by the BU Office of Information Technology, and this year, the BU School of Management gets in on the fun.

Also, as last year, we plan on offering streaming video and audio of all tracks and sessions. This year, these streams will be higher quality than previous attempts, as we think we've gotten it right this time. The streams will be Ogg Theora and should work out of the box for users of Fedora Core 4 and 5. Check the wiki in the coming weeks for links to the streaming content.

==How==

As spaces are limited we urge all those interested to pre-register by emailing fudcon-register@fedoraproject.org . Those who pre-register will have badges available for pickup the day of FUDCon and will receive preference for sessions which may fill up quickly.

==Thanks==

Thanks go out to all who made this possible and have contributed so much to the massive growth and success of the Fedora community. You know who you are.

See you in Boston!!

FUDCon CFP Almost Closed

The Call for Papers for FUDCon Boston 2006 is drawing to an end. The official deadline is about to lapse, although we will still consider submissions that come in over the next few days and are encouragin. Thanks go to everyone who has submitted abstracts and we look forward to announcing the final lineup and events schedule later next week.

FUDCon Boston 2006 Call for Papers

I would like to start out by thanking both the community and developers who have helped make Fedora such a huge success on so many different fronts.

Riding on the success of the series of FUDCon events worldwide I am proud to announce that we will be holding FUDCon Boston 2006, taking it back to where it all began. The event will be graciously hosted by Boston University once again with sponsorship from BU Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the BU Office of Information Technology, and this year, the BU School of Management. The date for the event is Friday April 7th, the day following the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo.

We are looking for interesting topics and presentations covering a number areas. Talks should be focused on one of the 3 main tracks.

Track 1 - User Track : Topics that deal with the user experience, desktop innovations, etc.
Track 2 - Developer Track : Topics that deal with software development in the Fedora environment.
Track 3 - Application Track : Either topics that deal with applications/uses of Fedora in other Open Source projects or topics that showcase a specific Open Source application.

To be considered for presentation, abstracts should be submitted to fudcon-cfp@fedoraproject.org by no later than Thursday February 23, at 11:59pm. We welcome submission from both developers and community members alike, new and old.

After the review process, notifications will go out on Thursday March 2nd followed by a full schedule for FUDCon Boston 2006 and official announcement on Monday March 6th.

Thanks.

There's No Place Like ~

Okay, so it's been a struggle getting caught up with everything and finally being able to breathe, but lo and behold, sometime between 11 and 12 today, I accomplished that exact feat. So what now? Well, I've been working on a little project on the side with a few friends for the past month and things have really begun to pick up steam. I might be headed to NYU in the fall to participate in the most awesome ITP Program. Lot's of good stuff coming out of there.

However, don't be fooled. As of Jan 9, I am able to step back into all my Fedora work full force, and I find that awesome. There is much to be done on every front. Marketing is always busy and we are trying to get together another awesome FUDCon and a most special event for the LinuxWorld expo, so look for updates on that. As part of the ambassadors, I am almost done writing my letters to the U.N. and Mayor Bloomberg. I'm looking forward to picking up pieces of the triage stuff as well and maybe getting my hands dirty in a few other things.

It feels good to be able to breathe again.

P.S. Howard Stern's first Sirius Broadcast is Jan 9 as well. I'm looking forward to listening to the first show and seeing what it's like. I got my Sirius Radio last year for other reasons, but I'm sure this will be interesting.