Jonathan Oxer
[Blog]
>> Debian Miniconf at linux.conf.au 2007
Thu, Nov 23rd 9:00am 2006 >> Linux
This is a call for participation in the sixth Debian Miniconf which will be part of the linux.conf.au (LCA) 2007 conference run by Linux Australia in Sydney.
miniconf6.debconf.org
LCA2007 will run from January 15th to January 20th 2007 and the first two days are dedicated to Miniconfs, which are community-organised streams for specific areas of interest. The Debian Miniconf is the oldest and has been one of the biggest Miniconfs at LCA and has always attracted great speakers and an enthusiastic crowd of Debianistas.
This year Pascal Hakim is joining me as co-convenor, so if you would like to do a presentation at the Debian Miniconf please email Pascal and myself at miniconf6@oxer.com.au with details including:
* Your name
* Talk title
* Talk length (full = 40 mins, half = 20 mins)
* Talk description
* Short bio
Please note that because the Debian Miniconf is not a stand-alone vent but is a part of LCA2007 it's necessary for all participants including speakers to be registered for LCA2007 itself. So if you want to come to the Debian Miniconf just sign up for LCA2007 and come along for the fun! Transport / accomodation is up to you: please check the main conference site at lca2007.linux.org.au if you need help.
Feel free to forward this message to local LUG mailing lists or anyone else who may be interested.
This is a call for participation in the sixth Debian Miniconf which will be part of the linux.conf.au (LCA) 2007 conference run by Linux Australia in Sydney.
miniconf6.debconf.org
LCA2007 will run from January 15th to January 20th 2007 and the first two days are dedicated to Miniconfs, which are community-organised streams for specific areas of interest. The Debian Miniconf is the oldest and has been one of the biggest Miniconfs at LCA and has always attracted great speakers and an enthusiastic crowd of Debianistas.
This year Pascal Hakim is joining me as co-convenor, so if you would like to do a presentation at the Debian Miniconf please email Pascal and myself at miniconf6@oxer.com.au with details including:
* Your name
* Talk title
* Talk length (full = 40 mins, half = 20 mins)
* Talk description
* Short bio
Please note that because the Debian Miniconf is not a stand-alone vent but is a part of LCA2007 it's necessary for all participants including speakers to be registered for LCA2007 itself. So if you want to come to the Debian Miniconf just sign up for LCA2007 and come along for the fun! Transport / accomodation is up to you: please check the main conference site at lca2007.linux.org.au if you need help.
Feel free to forward this message to local LUG mailing lists or anyone else who may be interested.
>> LUG / Linux Australia comms
Tue, Nov 21st 10:12pm 2006 >> Linux
Andrew Chalmers from Linux Users Victoria joined the Linux Australia committee on our weekly teleconf last week, and it was a really useful conversation. LA is meant to be following the "upside down umbrella" model as a support mechanism for LUGs (among other things) but something I've been discovering recently is that a remarkable number of LUG members have no idea what LA is about or what it does. Inviting LUG organisers onto the committee teleconf was a very cool idea that came out of our last face-to-face meeting in Melbourne. I can't remember who suggested it, but whoever it was - thanks!
One of the things that came out of our conversation was that I offered to go along to LUV and do a "Meet Linux Australia" talk.
So if you're involved in organising a LUG and would like to have a chat to the LA committee on our teleconf or have your nearest committee member come along and speak at your LUG please drop us an email.
Andrew Chalmers from Linux Users Victoria joined the Linux Australia committee on our weekly teleconf last week, and it was a really useful conversation. LA is meant to be following the "upside down umbrella" model as a support mechanism for LUGs (among other things) but something I've been discovering recently is that a remarkable number of LUG members have no idea what LA is about or what it does. Inviting LUG organisers onto the committee teleconf was a very cool idea that came out of our last face-to-face meeting in Melbourne. I can't remember who suggested it, but whoever it was - thanks!
One of the things that came out of our conversation was that I offered to go along to LUV and do a "Meet Linux Australia" talk.
So if you're involved in organising a LUG and would like to have a chat to the LA committee on our teleconf or have your nearest committee member come along and speak at your LUG please drop us an email.
>> FOSS economics / innovation talk at LUV
Tue, Nov 21st 3:42pm 2006 >> Linux
A few hours after my little flying excursion I did a talk at the monthly Linux Users Victoria meeting titled "Software Freedom: Pragmatic Idealism?" where I examined the role of Open Source software in fostering an innovative local ICT industry and the macro-economic impact on metrics such as the national balance-of-trade.
Following on from my comments about aviation and DIY, there's no group with a stronger DIY culture than the Open Source community. The entire Open Source software development paradigm is about looking inside the magic box to understand why and how it works, and being allowed to modify it until it does exactly what you want it to do rather than being forced to just accept software "as it comes" with no choice in the matter. The premise of my talk was that by encouraging a return to the "looking under the hood" roots of computer-related training at school level we could build a much more innovative and stronger local ICT industry by turning out not just technology consumers but also more people with intimate knowledge of how modern technology works internally. I believe that the high level of technical literacy we associate with younger generations is largely an illusion: younglings today may be very gifted when it comes to using technology such as mobile phones and instant messaging but they have remarkably little understanding of how technology actually works internally. They tend to treat gadgets as handy but inexplicable magic black boxes.
I'm sure there'll be objections to that statement and of course there are always people who are exceptions to such broad generalisations, but on the whole I don't think younger generations are as technically gifted as they're made out to be. Being a good driver doesn't mean you have any idea how to go about designing, building or modifying a car.
The cool thing is that FOSS gives people the *opportunity* to learn how software works. Proprietary software locks it away and doesn't let you look and develop your skills even if you want to. It forces everyone to start "from scratch" rather than collaborating and learning by example.
A few hours after my little flying excursion I did a talk at the monthly Linux Users Victoria meeting titled "Software Freedom: Pragmatic Idealism?" where I examined the role of Open Source software in fostering an innovative local ICT industry and the macro-economic impact on metrics such as the national balance-of-trade.
Following on from my comments about aviation and DIY, there's no group with a stronger DIY culture than the Open Source community. The entire Open Source software development paradigm is about looking inside the magic box to understand why and how it works, and being allowed to modify it until it does exactly what you want it to do rather than being forced to just accept software "as it comes" with no choice in the matter. The premise of my talk was that by encouraging a return to the "looking under the hood" roots of computer-related training at school level we could build a much more innovative and stronger local ICT industry by turning out not just technology consumers but also more people with intimate knowledge of how modern technology works internally. I believe that the high level of technical literacy we associate with younger generations is largely an illusion: younglings today may be very gifted when it comes to using technology such as mobile phones and instant messaging but they have remarkably little understanding of how technology actually works internally. They tend to treat gadgets as handy but inexplicable magic black boxes.
I'm sure there'll be objections to that statement and of course there are always people who are exceptions to such broad generalisations, but on the whole I don't think younger generations are as technically gifted as they're made out to be. Being a good driver doesn't mean you have any idea how to go about designing, building or modifying a car.
The cool thing is that FOSS gives people the *opportunity* to learn how software works. Proprietary software locks it away and doesn't let you look and develop your skills even if you want to. It forces everyone to start "from scratch" rather than collaborating and learning by example.
>> Flying high
Tue, Nov 21st 3:33pm 2006 >> Flying
Over the last few weeks there have been all sorts of things come up that made me think "I've got to blog that" but I'm so massively far behind in everything that it just hasn't happened. So here goes. Time to catch up on stuff that should have been posted ages ago.
A week and a half ago I took the first baby step toward fulfilling a dream I've had for a long time: learning to fly. After years of not really taking the idea seriously I got in the car and drove out to the local airport, went through a pre-flight briefing covering an introduction to the physics of flight along with the basic aircraft controls and their primary and secondary effects, and spent about 45 minutes in the air getting the feel for how it works in reality.
In some ways the whole experience was exactly what I expected and in some ways it totally wasn't. For one thing the aircraft itself was very "agricultural". If you think about the build-quality of a typical car you'll realise that the way everything is fitted together and the level of attention to aesthetic detail is very high. The dash is perfectly moulded and all instruments are neatly labelled. Everything is clean, and if you did something silly like break part of your dashboard somehow you would have it replaced with a brand new identical piece and the car would look exactly "like new" again. Likewise if you dinged the door you would take it to a smash repairer who would fix it so well that you couldn't even find where the damage was done.
In contrast to that the training aircraft I flew had a repair that consisted of a piece of metal rivetted into place on the wing. Switches on the instrument panel were labelled with stickers. A crack in the plastic side window had been reinforced by drilling tiny holes along both sides of the crack, looping wire through them and twisting it tight. The pre-flight check included removing the fuel cap on each wing and poking a piece of wood marked with indicator lines into the tank to check the fuel level.
Now I'm sure these are very well maintained aircraft. The instructors know their lives depend on them and each aircraft is physically inspected prior to every flight: part of the drill was working all the way around the aircraft and checking that a whole bunch of things were working properly, such as indicator lights, control surfaces, hinges, and undercarriage, and the pre-flight checklist is very extensive. Imagine if every single time you drove your car you first had to check that every indicator was working, test the fuel to make sure it wasn't contaminated, check your tire tread and pressure, and do about 26 other checks then sign a logbook stating that you'd done so. It would take 15 minutes just to get out of your carport but you'd certainly have an intimate knowledge of the condition of your car.
So I was left with the overall impression of a very strong DIY culture in the aviation community. It might sound like I'm being critical of the state of the aircraft but my opinion is actually quite the opposite. The value that is obviously placed on a deep understanding of how the aircraft works and exactly what condition it is in gave me a lot of confidence that I wasn't going to suddenly fall out of the sky.
Over the last few weeks there have been all sorts of things come up that made me think "I've got to blog that" but I'm so massively far behind in everything that it just hasn't happened. So here goes. Time to catch up on stuff that should have been posted ages ago.
A week and a half ago I took the first baby step toward fulfilling a dream I've had for a long time: learning to fly. After years of not really taking the idea seriously I got in the car and drove out to the local airport, went through a pre-flight briefing covering an introduction to the physics of flight along with the basic aircraft controls and their primary and secondary effects, and spent about 45 minutes in the air getting the feel for how it works in reality.
In some ways the whole experience was exactly what I expected and in some ways it totally wasn't. For one thing the aircraft itself was very "agricultural". If you think about the build-quality of a typical car you'll realise that the way everything is fitted together and the level of attention to aesthetic detail is very high. The dash is perfectly moulded and all instruments are neatly labelled. Everything is clean, and if you did something silly like break part of your dashboard somehow you would have it replaced with a brand new identical piece and the car would look exactly "like new" again. Likewise if you dinged the door you would take it to a smash repairer who would fix it so well that you couldn't even find where the damage was done.
In contrast to that the training aircraft I flew had a repair that consisted of a piece of metal rivetted into place on the wing. Switches on the instrument panel were labelled with stickers. A crack in the plastic side window had been reinforced by drilling tiny holes along both sides of the crack, looping wire through them and twisting it tight. The pre-flight check included removing the fuel cap on each wing and poking a piece of wood marked with indicator lines into the tank to check the fuel level.
Now I'm sure these are very well maintained aircraft. The instructors know their lives depend on them and each aircraft is physically inspected prior to every flight: part of the drill was working all the way around the aircraft and checking that a whole bunch of things were working properly, such as indicator lights, control surfaces, hinges, and undercarriage, and the pre-flight checklist is very extensive. Imagine if every single time you drove your car you first had to check that every indicator was working, test the fuel to make sure it wasn't contaminated, check your tire tread and pressure, and do about 26 other checks then sign a logbook stating that you'd done so. It would take 15 minutes just to get out of your carport but you'd certainly have an intimate knowledge of the condition of your car.
So I was left with the overall impression of a very strong DIY culture in the aviation community. It might sound like I'm being critical of the state of the aircraft but my opinion is actually quite the opposite. The value that is obviously placed on a deep understanding of how the aircraft works and exactly what condition it is in gave me a lot of confidence that I wasn't going to suddenly fall out of the sky.
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