[ale] Thoughts on ALS

[Fulton Green]

I agree, outstanding show (as usual). I'll try to go to Oakland next year if
I can find a company that actually has a travel budget for developers. :)

Detailed thoughts, random as they are (and from a developer's perspective):

Serious stuff:
------------------
The PocketLinux booth seemed to generate a LOT of traffic. I checked it out.
Pretty neat, actually. What they've done is taken a Debian distro for both
MIPS and StrongARM archs, ported their parent company's (TransVirtual) open
sourced Java VM (Kaffe'), then added an open sourced PDA environment with
open sourced apps. Yep, all open source. They've ported to both the Compaq
iPAQ and the VTech Helio. I had a really good talk w/one of the developers
about the XML/XSLT processing underneath the hood. I actually plunked down
the $140 or so on the Helio, even though the software's still buggy.  It's a
perfect opportunity to hack something fun.

Speaking of PDAs, it was pretty cool to see a Compaq iPAQ running Linux and
XFree. Even neater that the demonstrator was Jim Gettys, who was one of
the original X Window architects from Digital. Keith Packard, who was also
heavily involved in X Window from way back when, showed off an example of
translucent capability that had been shoehorned into an XFree server. If
that ever makes it into the mainstream server, Eterm and other apps could
sure make use of it.

The major open source e-commerce folks were there as well. I talked to eGrail,
which has a content management system (which uses a ton of PHP/MySQL and some
C), Open Sales, which has a sales management system complete with shopping
cart (100% Perl), Kidar, which is developing a transaction-quality DBMS from
the ground up (version 0.8, mostly C), and another co. (whose name I don't
recall) with an eCRM (specifically, sales force automation) solution using
mostly PHP and MySQL.

I talked to people at both the VA Linux and XFree booths about getting a
good 3D graphics machine. Everyone sez DRI compatibility is important.  Their
Quake 3 demo at the XFree booth was running on a Voodoo card, FWIW.

That was cool to see the live Beowulf demonstration. They just took a bunch
of the email garden machines, installed control software on one machine, had
the rest boot Beowulf off CD-ROM, then showed a Beowulf-aware Mandelbrot
app on steriods. The fractal would render about as fast as Donald Becker could
click. Oh yeah, the demo was of their just-released 2.0 software.

I also picked up the Linux Sound and Music book from the Linux Journal booth.
I've started looking at it already. It's solid. I didn't know there was that
much out there in the way of open source for creating studio-quality music.

The Debian hackers were in force. I bought an Iliad-autographed tee from
them, then bought the $6 distro from Linux Central. Unfortunately, I was
disappointed in the Linux Games CD-ROM from LC, as it only had demos from
Loki. Not that those games are bad, but I was expecting it to be a broader
collection.

For the spooks out there, the satellite imagery open source software org.
known as OSSIM showed off an incredible movie generated by a combination of
multi-angled aerial shots and elevation data melded into a 3D model of some
major city.

And for you Java programmers with stock options worth more than the toilet
paper you just used, Geekcorps needs you in Ghana to help COBOL programmers
over there see the light, object-oriented style.

The Eazel talk was pretty cool. They showed off the latest build of the
Nautilus graphical shell for GNOME.

That was a very enlightening keynote by Apache Software Foundation's Alan
Coar. I learned a lot about the Apache Group's (the webserver folks)
decision-making process. And Larry Wall spoke on the upcoming Perl 6.

Giveaways
------------------
A few free distros: SuSE 7.0 preview, Mandrake 7.1, and Slackware 7.x.  Also
picked up (for free) the sales force automation CD, Solaris 8 for Intel, 
StarOffice 5.2 (for which its source was officially released on Friday), and
Beowulf 2.0.

I'm no longer hurting for T-shirts. I gave away my eGrail tee last night.
I'll probably keep the AbsoluteX, OSDN, VA Linux, and Slackware, and give my
M-size PocketLinux away.

I think I'm up to four penguins now, from IBM, the Linux Fund, PocketLinux,
and Maximum Linux (that one I had to win by shooting a Nerf dartgun).

The noisy ball from Sun was a neat toy. So was that paddle from Atipa. Also
got a Red Hat coaster, a Geek Dating flowchart from User Friendly, several
tattoos from UF and ActiveState, and the usual assortment of free magazines,
pens, bumper stickers, etc.

The lighter side:
------------------
I heard CmdrTaco talk about his ongoing battle with the Natalie Portman
trolls and such. Apparently half of the troll messages are gen'd by 25 snots.
Also heard ESR give fashion tips for when you have to deal with the suits.

AOL had a job recruitment booth. Complete with, I kid you not, breath
freshener packs called "Recruit-mints".

People at work were jealous when I told them about the free food/drink/game
fest at Dave & Buster's. Many thanks to VA Linux and CodeWeavers for an
awesome time.

And Larry Wall was funny, but his style of speaking wound up putting me to
sleep, for some reason. Maybe it was D&B fatigue kicking in.

------------------
OK, that's my $0.02 worth ... overall, awesome show. I hope it comes back
soon.

On Mon, Oct 16, 2000 at 04:40:23AM -0400, Chris Woodruff wrote:
> Another ALS has happened and I had some thoughts I wanted to share. 
> First I want to thank the ALS folks who worked hard to make this year's
> showcase a great time.  I took all three days off to attend and got
> information overload.  The tech sessions that I attended where great.	I
> liked the fact that there were no "sales" pitches this year just cold
> hard technical talks.  I did miss the Eazel talk due to a very slow
> waitress but learned more than I ever wanted to know about clustering
> overall.
> 
> The exhibit floor was fun and toned down this year.  No more 30' high
> booths and hard sells.  Just a lot of people having fun.  I was looking
> forward to more publishers and seeing what new books were on the way. 
> Having ESR come in was a surprise.  I had lunch with the Scyld guys and
> Don Becker and learned a lot about Beowulf2.
> 
> The best event by far was the EFF dinner on Friday night.  I think
> everyone needs to try to find ways to help EFF and organizations that
> are trying to keep freedom a reality.  Also the food was tasty. <g>
> 
> Thanks again ALS for the great time and I hope all the people who helped
> with the show are getting the deserved sleep the missed.  I am looking
> forward to the Oakland ALS.
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