Ch, Ch, Ch, Ch, Changes

Thanks to the marvelous work of Mr. Matthew Miller and the graciousness of the Boston University ECE department, FUDCon has been moved to Boston University. Not to dis MIT or anything, they just weren't on top of their game. Anyway, this is somewhat better since it is alot closer to Hynes and there are certain benefits we will be getting at BU that MIT couldn't or wouldn't provide. Thanks Matt. FUDCon is still on Friday February 18, 2005.

Two Words: IBM Rocks

I ordered a ThinkPad T42 because my 6 year old Dell Inspiron 5000e is shot. I've also been having issues with it for a while before it decided to die anyway. So I ordered the T42 and all was well until I got my order confirmation email which showed only a 1 year warranty. So I called up IBM tonight and told them the order should have been for a 3 year warranty and the sales rep was happy to oblige. Then all of a sudden he pauses and tells me that I can get a better model with almost all of the specs doubled for $200 less than what I'm paying now. I was ecstatic!! So my T42 now has an Pentium M 745 which is 1.8GHz, a Gig of RAM, and 80GB 7200 RPM drive with a nice ass video card as well. And yes, its $200 less. Still, thats not the best part--It comes with the IBM fingerprint reader!! I can't wait to play with that thing. Anyone know if PAM has hooks for this or am I going to have to do some hacking?

The Missing Link

Okay, I forgot to mention that the registration link isn't functional yet. Still working on it, Elliot needs to get back to me.

Extra, Extra! FUDCon is On

The Fedora Project Announces Its First Conference

The Fedora Project, a Red-Hat-sponsored and community-supported open source project, today announced a packed program for their first international conference.

The Fedora Users and Developers Conference, affectionately termed FUDCon, is the first of its kind, which aims to bring together both users and developers alike. It is to be held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Mass. on February 18th, 2005.

The conference promises an eclectic mix of sessions, bringing together the interests and expertise of those involved in The Fedora Project. Sessions will be conducted in a two-track format, for users and developers, with talks ranging from Package Management to Stateless Linux, to the current state of the Fedora Project.

The Fedora Users and Developers Conference provides the opportunity to meet the community, developers, and users that are contributing to The Fedora Project, to exchange ideas and advance the project forward.

Keynotes and sessions delivered from a varied panel of speakers include Michael Tiemann, Vice President, Open Source Affairs at Red Hat, as well as Havoc Pennington, Desktop Architect at Red Hat.

Did we mention that attendance to the conference was FREE?

For full conference details, and for details on how to register your
attendance, see: http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon1

FUDCon is graciously co-sponsored by Red Hat, Inc. and Pogo Linux, Inc.

About Red Hat, Inc.
Red Hat, the world's leading open source and Linux provider, is headquartered in Raleigh, NC with satellite offices spanning the globe. Red Hat is leading Linux and open source solutions into the mainstream by making high quality, low cost technology accessible. Red Hat provides operating system software along with middleware, applications and management solutions. Red Hat also offers support, training and consulting services to its customers worldwide and through top-tier partnerships. Red Hat's Open Source strategy offers customers a long term plan for building infrastructures that are based on and leverage open source technologies with focus on security and ease of management. Learn more: http://www.redhat.com

About Pogo Linux, Inc.
Founded in 1999 and headquartered in Redmond, Washington, Pogo Linux Inc. is a hardware vendor of servers, workstations, and storage systems. With a Linux focus and in-house technical expertise, Pogo Linux is dedicated to delivering powerful, and reliable Linux-based servers, workstations, and storage solutions for exceptional value. Our systems highlight hardware from the industry's top leaders, the cost-effective benefits of IDE RAID, Serial ATA, and dual-boot workstations with Windows and Linux. Pogo Linux delivers deep 'real world' Linux expertise. When you buy a system from Pogo Linux, you're investing in our Linux knowledge and experience. Pogo Linux is fully committed to the progress of Linux and the success of the Open Source movement. Learn more @ http://www.pogolinux.com

The Fedora Project Press Team
press@fedoraproject.org

The State of the State

I don't know how many people have actually been conscious since the new year began because alot has happened. In particular, alot has happened that is changing the face of computing, and no one has been making a big fuss. Well I'm here to make that big fuss.

I remember a few years ago when IBM started toying with the whole Linux idea and began a cautious crawl towards accepting Linux whole-heartedly, throughout their organization. I remember it distinctly because on one of those days I was in the car with my friend listening to 1010 WINS and I heard a report on IBM embracing Linux. I was a bit shocked to hear the word Linux on a car radio in New York City and I stopped and told my friend "The company of the past just became the company of the Future." Today, IBM solidified the premise of that quote when they announced that they would be allowing FLOSS to use 500 patents without fear, uncertainty and doubt, in essence creating a patent commons, and asking other corporations to step up. Where are you Novell?

IBM has unequivocally, to me at least, proven their commitment if not to Linux and Open Source, then at least to open software. Software that is free from risk and vitriolic admonishment. Software that can be creative and innovative and take an idea an mold and fold it into something incredible. Software that does what software is supposed to do--help people achieve and help others. For a geek, especially, who knows what software means to geeks, and knows how hard we struggle and fight for our rights to create software that solves problems creatively, it just makes me feel like someone, somewhere is starting to get it.

I had alot of naysayer friends that said once IBM find a newer more viable and marketable platform, they would dump Linux in the toilet. To them I say that there is no platform more viable and more marketable than Linux. Linux is many things to many people, all at once. Linux is what software is supposed to be, something that bends to suit your needs, not the other way around. And as IBM has proven, they get software. You can say that its a strategy to get at Microsoft all you want, I don't think so and that brings us to the next topic.

IBM doesn't need to destroy Microsoft because Apple just did it for them. I think the $500 Mac is the smartest thing that Apple has ever done. Let's just face it Windows fuckin blows. If you say that Windows doesn't blow, then at least Microsoft's policies towards it blows. The whole Microsoft development ideology is somewhat flawed and just adds crap on top of something that is already crap.

I thank God that Apple finally wised up and decided to release a product that is in the average consumer price range. I don't know about anyone else but just coming out of the holiday season I am sick of fixing people's Windows XP problems and getting 9pm phone calls from people about how I need to come to their house right away to fix their pop-ups flooding their screen. Even that Microsoft Anti-Spyware thing they just released sucks as well. It doesn't actually remove 90% of the spyware, it'll detect it and try to remove it, but the spyware hackers are two steps ahead of Microsoft. Although, Ad-aware and Spybot aren't any better.

Anyway, I don't want to turn this into an anti-Microsoft diatribe. The point is, OS X is better and nicer and more user friendly. Now that it's cheap, every idiot I know is getting one of these. Whether they want it or not, I will force them on to it. There is no reason not to. Even if it ends up taking $5000 of my own money I will make sure that at least the least computer competent of the bunch has one of these machines. I don't expect that the rest of the world will be far behind.

To the brain trust behind Apple's recent strategy and behind this MiniMac, I would like to extend my thanks. I guess it really took the iPod to give Steve Jobs and crew the self-esteem needed to accept the fact that their products could succeed in circles other than those of the hipsters and artsy fartsy and finally act on it. I look forward to January 22nd.

Vote Fedora in 05

As many of you know, LinuxQuestions.org runs a yearly Members' Choice Awards. Jeremy, the very cool proprietor of the site is a good friend of mine and a very big supporter of the community. A Fedora user as well, in case anyone cares. He recently opened up the awards and Fedora is nominated for Distro of the Year. Please get your browsers to the voting booth and get your vote on. The awards will be given out at LinuxWorld in Boston and it would be really nice if Fedora won distro of the year.

While you are there, please check out the site as well. It is a great site that has been servicing the community for a long time and has helped out so much. Who knows, you might make a new friend or two.

Skillz that Killz

Okay, so I'm back for 2k5 and looking to blog. Here goes the post New Years wrap up. I didn't do anything special for new years, in fact I spent the night of the 31st sleeping. I was too tired to care and knew that my celebration would be coming in the night of the 1st anyway. I was however, woken up at 00:10 by really loud fireworks that went on for a good hour or so.

On Saturday night, the crew took me out for my birthday, which was already on Thursday. We went to some Japanese place that was awesome and I had lots of sashimi and incredible udon soup. I hadn't had udon in a few months, so it really hit the spot. Then comes the celebration!

On Sunday the 2nd, I was invited to Atlantic City as a birthday gift by my good friend Dan. We all had a lot of fun and won bags of money. I hit a $20 bet on 17 on the roulette wheel, which paid very well, and I also did nicely in blackjack the whole weekend. Dan hit four-of-a-kind Jacks playing Let it Ride and we got comped lots of free food, drinks and a suite at the Resorts Casino and Hotel.

Part of this comp was 4 tickets to see Snoop Dogg live and in concert. Snoop showed up 2 hours late amid rumors that his wife was taken to the hospital. What I think happened, though, is that the delayed 2 hours so that Donovan McNabb could arrive. The second he came in, Snoop magically appeared on stage. The show was awesome and very fun, as I imagined a Snoop show would be, never having been to one before. The best part though was that Donovan McNabb was sitting 4 inches in front of where we were and at one point, I called out to him and said "Donovan, SU '04." He turned around smiling and gave me a pound and said "SU Love." It was cool to have connected with someone you never thought you could relate to and all.

Anyway, Donovan was very cool the whole time and was very into Snoop Dogg and the concert was awesome. We then stayed up gambling until like 8 in the morning and Dan had a very interesting game of blackjack with the man now dubbed "The Blackjack assassin." I wish I had taken a picture of that guy.

The next morning we woke up and went back to gambling for a few hours until checkout and won some more cash and laughed at the funny things Dan did the night before. All in all it was a great trip and I really need to thank Dan for one of the best belated birthday gifts that I have ever had in my life.

I also watched Dodgeball (HILARIOUS!!!) on the night of my birthday, which is how this entry got it's title. I think it describes quite well how we made out like bandits in AC.

Shout out to Joe - Good Night and God Bless.

Now back to reality and setting up FedoraCon.

The Status Whoa

I've waited for this day for too long! Finally, I was able to buy a copy of Garden State on DVD. This has got to be one of the best films of all time. At least to me it is. It leaves me speechless after every viewing. It truly is Whoa! I highly urge everyone to see this movie at least once. After that, it'll be your favorite movie as well. Also, has anyone noticed how many good movies came out today? Why where these not released earlier for the holidays?

Earthquake Warning Missed

We all know that seismological activity happens in bunches and because of that I am curious as to why this article, entitled "Penguins Escape Huge Earthquake" got absolutely zero media attention. It would only seem logical that some seismological research facility got readings of the P-wave activity and could therefore have at least speculated about another massive quake hitting just a day later. Although, it is entirely possible that the horizontal waves coupled with the fact that everyone was getting ready for xmas on Friday could have delayed the discovery of this data. Why doesn't any media outlet give this story (or at least this lead) the time of day it deserves?

He Shoots for Tsunami Aid... Rejected!

The trusty ole Beeb had a story today entitled "Sri Lanka Rejects Israel Rescuers." I just wanted to make a few points about the situation in the article. First of all, I'm not even going to look at the religious conflict that is hinted at in the article, since that one liner is somewhat intended to stir some controversy. Instead I want to focus on the line about this being an issue with the Sri Lankan military and their disdain towards foreign soldiers helping them. Ok, I understand not wanting foreign soldiers on your soil, even though they are there to help, that's a somewhat valid argument and concern. It makes the country look weak to its constituents, etc. etc., but how much weaker can you look? You just got rolled over by a tsunami.

Secondly, to know anything about Israel would mean knowing that any Israeli who is even slightly skilled has had some form of training via the military. That's just the way the country works. Over half the country is considered, in some status or another, a soldier. That's what happens when military service is mandatory. That's where these people get their skills. Therefore, in order to send in relief workers, doctors and aides they would need to send "soldiers." I just don't know how much "soldier" these soldiers really were. It's entirely possible that a 45 year old pediatrician be classified as a soldier.

My point in all this is that Sri Lanka is hurting, and I understand the philosophy of trying to stay aloof during trying times, but at some point you need to start being realistic. You are literally drowning and someone is sticking out their hand to you, don't be stubborn. Again this is all assuming that this does in fact stem from a military concern. If the decision to refused aid does end up being religiously rooted, well then that's just plain stupid!

**This is not meant to ridicule or mock any persons or places. I have nothing against the countries affected by the earthquake and it's aftermath. It is just me trying to rationalize a decision made by a sovereign state, and analyzing foreign relations dynamics. Did they really have pride on their minds or is there more to this story than meets the eye?**

Check , Check - צ'ק צ'ק

אם זה עובד... אז סבבה. Just checking if the utf works. I think it actually might based on what Roozbeh told me. This would be the awesomest thing ever, since I can now post in Hebrew and Arabic and everything else. That would open up a Pandora's Box of possibilities! I apologize in advance but it had to be done. Don't you love Monday?

I Want My RSS

I'm trying to get feedburner to transform my blogger atom feed to rss, so that sane newsreaders and syndicators can syndicate. For some reason the feedburner smartfeed thing doesn't like to work with some services and fedorapoeple chockes on my blog and makes the site look nasty. Hopefully, this works and I can also get a Flickr account to start adding photos. Here goes nothing. And if I mess up something don't get pissed at me. Please?

UPDATE: It Works!! I figured out what was causing the problem and set my feedburner to rss 2.0 and then had it re-publish my blog index. Yay!

Marketing Open Source

Arjen Lentz, of MySQL AB, wrote a great article entitled "What Makes a Good Product," in which he talks about marketing Open Source and Free software. Arjen makes some good points, including that most developers neglect to promote their project or product, falsely assuming that it is so good that it will promote itself. A must read for anyone interested in promoting Open Source projects or anyone interested in marketing in general.

Who Makes These Names?

I've been playing with Zope and Plone since midweek trying to see if the combination is worthy enough of powering fedoraproject.org. In a word: SWEET. They are both written in Python, which is always a plus and Plone is quite powerful and has some nice features, such as workflow control, document security, and an ACL system. It's also very paranoid when it comes to the outside facing content and thats a good thing. This might be just what we've been looking for. The only downside, is that being written in Python it is rather slow unless you tweak it a little, and there are many tweaks, one of them being using an RDBMS as the backend for all the data. Also, Zope and Plone are nowhere to be found in extras, for one reason or another, unbeknownst to myself. Any volunteers?

Sad and Happy...

Well, first of all I am sad because I today realized that I lost about 200 of my CD's. I got a flat on the highway and in my haste and hurry to get out the spare tire, I unloaded the trunk and then left my CD's on the side of the road. The CD I will miss the most is my Thornley "Come Again" CD and of course all the Pearl Jam stuff I lost, although I liked all those CD's and most of them were new bands. Then again, I only have myself to blame.

I am however happy that LinuxWorld and FedoraCon are taking shape. LinuxWorld is pretty much all in the books, I sent the showguide info to IDG today, which is the last of the necessary paperwork they need from us. We were also invited for candidacy into the Product Excellence Awards. FedoraCon is also starting to come together, most likely on Thursday Feb. 17th P.M. and then all day Friday the 18th at MIT. None of those are set in stone.

The plan for FedoraCon is as follows, which was discussed with myself and Colin. First, get some ballpark figures as to how many people will be coming. Second, allocate space. Third, start planning the show based on the agenda put together by the advisory board that comes together. The more people we have, the more tracks we can hope to have. Hopefully, the first numbers will start coming in tomorrow.

P.S. If anyone is traveling on the I-81 south between Syracuse and Nedrow and spots 2 bottles of washer fluid and large bag with CD's please contact me. :p Thanks.

LinuxWorld and FedoraCon

Ok, here's the deal. So earlier today I had a teleconference with gregdek and crew regarding the LinuxWorld plans and a possible FedoraCon. As it stands now, we have a Fedora Booth at LinuxWorld (.org pavilion booth #7) and we will have DVD/CDs and maybe some other schwag to throw around. Systems will be provided by Pogo Linux as usual with RH providing signage and the other goodness. The only thing left to do is to formalize our marketing strategy for the show and figure out what schwag is doable as handouts. Additionally, it would be nice to know who (developers) plan on showing up. Some are confirmed, the rest are up in the air and there may even be a few surprises. Either way, LinuxWorld should go off without a hitch.

After that, we discussed the possibility of FedoraCon, which we initially planned on having somewhere in the Hynes Center, and now are considering MIT. Personally, I like the MIT plan because it allows us to put together a more formal set of events and ensures that we wont get anyone there that gets there by mistake- meaning that it will be more of a developer forum will dev issues and project issues discussed as opposed to the BoF which is supposed to be more user oriented. Starting tomorrow, I'll start asking people who intends on coming. The more of a hard number we have, the better, because that will allow us to put together something like a dinner.

Dates of Interest:
LinuxWorld, Feb 14-17 2005, and the Fedora BoF is on Thursday the 16th from 5:15 - 6:45. Ideally, the BoF would end at 6:00 or 6:15 which would allow us to have any FedoraCon event(s) starting at 6:30 or 7:00.

FedoraCon, tentaively Feb 16 and 17. The 16th at 6:30-whenever and the 17th sometime after LinuxWorld is over. This might, and probably will change as people decide what they want to do. We need to avoid certain conflicts such as the RH dinner and whatnot else. Another thing to take into consideration is the fact that some people who fly in might require a Saturday night stay, so maybe Saturday is a viable day for FedoraCon as well. It sure sounds better.

One Protocol to Rule them All...

So I've been poking around the Samba development tree for one of my proposed projects here at the university. The aim is to create a lightweight version of the protocol to be used with these "information sharing" small robots. These things are basically little critters that need to store info and share it with each other when one requests it. All of that isn't my job, so I don't get too involved with it. Anyway, while playing around with it, I realized that Samba 4 is going to kick major ass. Seriously, the roadmap calls for complete and total SMB/CIFS compatability, implementing features even Microsoft hasn't yet. They also plan on integrating LDAP and KRB right in the mix. Samba 4 will be in one word... "WHOA!"

LinuxWorld Confirmed!

Ok, so I faxed them the application and got an ACK back from them on the phone. It's Going Down(tm)... Just wanted to let everyone know that its go time.

LinuxWorld Preparations

Sshhhhhh... Fedora has again been invited to exhibit in the .Org Pavilion at LinuxWorld Boston 2005. All the fun paperwork should be done soon and then I will be able to talk more about it. This time around should be lots of fun and we will also be having another BoF and such. Mmm, I can already taste those KK donuts.
Other than that, thank heavens this semester is coming to a close. I feel like I've been in a hole for the past 4 months. Its gonna be nice to be on break and have a chance to code something other than the retarded things I have to do here. I have a few ideas for some nice projects that might actually come to fruition this time around. Thats news for now... ttyl.

Writers Block

I promise to write something this weekend about why I haven't been updating this darn thing. Basically, school is off and running again, and now I have a whole new set of bills like car, insurance, rent etc. Also, since I decided to stop drinking coke, I've had this awful mental fart where I can't seem to get anything requiring half a brain done. I will write again in 4 days. Hopefully, the Red Sox will be world champs then.