Penguicon: End of Day 1
I know. It's not even midnight. That said, I'm tired and want to be certain I can wake up if anyone from Ops calls with a problem starting at 2:00 AM.
I don't typically run into people I know at Penguicon, at least not people I know from outside Penguicon. Today was an exception - I ran into someone from my pottery class. Spiffy!
I continued my evening with the Introductionto Forensics, presented by Kyle Rankin. Of course, this was just an interesting presentation for me. It's not as if I'll ever use this information as part of my go-to-meetings-and-send-email job, but it was thought provoking all the same. I hadn't really given much thought to what one should do in the situation where the have a system getting hacked, but as with many security topics, having a security policy (& associated procedures) defined in advance seems key. Then one can get down to the technical stuff.
Link to the information presented (not yet tested.)
From there, I headed over to the opening ceremonies where I grabbed a seat in the last row. This was the first year I attended the opening ceremonies, so I wasn't certain what to expect. It turned out to be a letter from Wil Wheaton, apologizing for and explaining his non-appearance; an explanation from Dr. Horrible regarding Wil's non-appearance, a special delivery for the Conchair, a funny song about Penguicon current and past, GoH introductions, and a Nifty roundup.
Next, (side note: as I write this, all of the linking words I learned in Japanese to say "first", "next", "after that", and so on keep popping into my head.) I listend to Jon "maddog" Hall's presentation about sustainable computing.
In spite of using open source software myself, I've not yet been successful in coming to any supportable theories as to why I do, besides that I want more choice & flexibility - whether I use it or not - than is offered by proprietary software. Maddog's presentation succinctly explained what I'd not been able to entirely explain on my own - proprietary software just isn't sustainable from a business model perspective due to the inability to scale support for the large number of users today. (Note: I reserve the right to edit/correct this conclusion after I've slept and more fully considered the presentation to determine if this was actually the point.)
Maddog also made an interesting point about OLPC. What use is a laptop if it cannot access information, such as the internet? Therefore, rather than concentrate (for now) on providing laptops to children in Africa, where internet infrastructure is many miles away, why not focus efforts on providing laptops to people in more densely populated, but still poor, areas where internet access is much closer?
As he was speaking of this, I couldn't help but think back to a commercial I often see on hulu. A child, presumably from Africa though I don't recall a country being specified, thanks OLPC and says, "you've changed my world". How, I wonder, was the child's world changed and why is there no mention of how this in the commercial? Surely, the commercial wouldn't be that much longer if an additional example was given.
Follow up items to look at: Watch Slumdog Millionaire; What is RoHS compliance?; koolu.com; LTSB project.
Time for sleep, but not before I figure out what the first thing is that I want to do tomorrow morning.
I don't typically run into people I know at Penguicon, at least not people I know from outside Penguicon. Today was an exception - I ran into someone from my pottery class. Spiffy!
I continued my evening with the Introductionto Forensics, presented by Kyle Rankin. Of course, this was just an interesting presentation for me. It's not as if I'll ever use this information as part of my go-to-meetings-and-send-email job, but it was thought provoking all the same. I hadn't really given much thought to what one should do in the situation where the have a system getting hacked, but as with many security topics, having a security policy (& associated procedures) defined in advance seems key. Then one can get down to the technical stuff.
Link to the information presented (not yet tested.)
From there, I headed over to the opening ceremonies where I grabbed a seat in the last row. This was the first year I attended the opening ceremonies, so I wasn't certain what to expect. It turned out to be a letter from Wil Wheaton, apologizing for and explaining his non-appearance; an explanation from Dr. Horrible regarding Wil's non-appearance, a special delivery for the Conchair, a funny song about Penguicon current and past, GoH introductions, and a Nifty roundup.
Next, (side note: as I write this, all of the linking words I learned in Japanese to say "first", "next", "after that", and so on keep popping into my head.) I listend to Jon "maddog" Hall's presentation about sustainable computing.
In spite of using open source software myself, I've not yet been successful in coming to any supportable theories as to why I do, besides that I want more choice & flexibility - whether I use it or not - than is offered by proprietary software. Maddog's presentation succinctly explained what I'd not been able to entirely explain on my own - proprietary software just isn't sustainable from a business model perspective due to the inability to scale support for the large number of users today. (Note: I reserve the right to edit/correct this conclusion after I've slept and more fully considered the presentation to determine if this was actually the point.)
Maddog also made an interesting point about OLPC. What use is a laptop if it cannot access information, such as the internet? Therefore, rather than concentrate (for now) on providing laptops to children in Africa, where internet infrastructure is many miles away, why not focus efforts on providing laptops to people in more densely populated, but still poor, areas where internet access is much closer?
As he was speaking of this, I couldn't help but think back to a commercial I often see on hulu. A child, presumably from Africa though I don't recall a country being specified, thanks OLPC and says, "you've changed my world". How, I wonder, was the child's world changed and why is there no mention of how this in the commercial? Surely, the commercial wouldn't be that much longer if an additional example was given.
Follow up items to look at: Watch Slumdog Millionaire; What is RoHS compliance?; koolu.com; LTSB project.
Time for sleep, but not before I figure out what the first thing is that I want to do tomorrow morning.