April 27, 2025
Keeping tech free
It would seem the day of website defacements just for the heck of it are long past. I mean, that was so 1990s, right? Today’s hacker, the ones who have meaningful targets, are having a field day. Even the huge guard at the gate, Linux server space, has been knocked aside in order to gain passage.
Before I start, a friendly reminder: You have until midnight tonight to submit a presentation to the Southern California Linux Expo SCALE 14X. The first-of-the-year Linux/FOSS show — on Jan. 21-24, 2016, at the Pasadena Convention Center — already has Cory Doctorow and Jon ‘maddog’ Hall lined up to speak (as well as our favorite FOSS funnyman, Bryan Lunduke), and if you want to join this list of esteemed speakers, sharpen that No. 2 and get cracking. Don’t make me check with your boss to make sure you’ve submitted…
His name is Morgan, but it hasn’t always been his name. What it was before doesn’t legally matter any longer. What does matter, to us, is the concentric circles by which “Morgan” arrived…came to be. Morgan doesn’t know any better. Many metaphors of consciousness can be applied, but for Morgan, your arguments on his condition fall outside of his realm of concern. Morgan is Morgan, and what Morgan does in the present is all that matters. What might have been his reality, to you, before “the incident,” is simply pabulum to Morgan. To Morgan, you are children trying to complete a puzzle with missing key pieces. You amuse him.
I don’t say enough good things about Ubuntu, so when they give me reason to, I’m on it. I also don’t talk enough about openSUSE either; good, bad or indifferent. Not that I’m turning over a new leaf or anything, but this week’s wrap up contains two items about these distros, and more. Don’t just sit there: Read on&hellip.
The 2015 edition of the Raleigh based open source conference, All Things Open (ATO), is now one for the history books. It’s also one for the record books.
We knew going in there would be a record number of speakers this year — 131 according to a count on the ATO website — and we learned on our way out — at the closing ceremonies — that this year’s attendance topped 1,700, much more than last year and nearly doubling the attendance from the first ATO in 2013. Todd Lewis, the master of ceremonies for the event — his official title, chairperson, doesn’t begin to describe what he does — said that next year they’re aiming for 2,500, a number they probably have a good chance of hitting.
The odd thing was that if you didn’t know that attendance was up, you might’ve thought that the numbers were actually going down.
“Footballs in a basketball state,” I said wryly, looking down on a guy who was sitting across the table, absently playing with some small swag footballs imprinted with a company logo.
He didn’t catch my drift.
“What?”
“This is a basketball state,” I explained.
“You’re right!” He seemed as if this had just dawned on him.
What could be a better combination than one of the world’s foremost digital freedom advocates and Cards Against Humanity? Read on.
Cory Doctorow at SCALE 14X: While the Call for Presentations for SCALE 14X is ongoing and closes in two weeks — on Friday, Oct. 30, at midnight Pacific, so at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday morning the 31st, your unsubmitted proposal turns into a pumpkin — the SCALE team has announced it has chosen one of the keynoters for the four-day, first-of-the-year Linux/FOSS event.
Although the numbers behind the name do not reflect it, the currently-named “SpeechLess” front end for MaryTTS is now being released as beta software. I was able to assemble a three man team to create a GUI and to my way of thinking, it has come along nicely. Although the demo is web-based, these guys have been able to construct it so the entire thing is local. That means little to no latency between hitting enter and having the text replicated to speech.
I’ve talked at length about how TTS in the Linuxsphere is less than user friendly at about every turn. Our goal is to create a front end that makes MaryTTS easy to use for everyone. We’re getting there.
In last week’s wrap-up, I posted an item about both Sarah Sharp and Matthew Garrett ceasing their contributions to the Linux kernel, and I was going to leave it at that and let those who read their blogs, as well as reports here and elsewhere, draw their own conclusions.
But giving it some thought over the weekend — not dwelling on it, of course, because the baseball playoffs are currently in progress — it occurred to me that many of the issues are not being addressed, and that’s going to continue to fester. The result of that remains to be seen and, sadly, this is par for the course in FOSS circles. That has been mentioned on many occasions elsewhere, so we won’t go into it here.
Inside the Linux Kernel Mailing List where this drama transpired, my guess is that it’s business as usual: Square One at frat-boy central is moving along as usual, with caustic feedback to those participating. That is, when they’re not giving each other digital wedgies and noogies.
Grab some popcorn — make two bowls — and get comfortable.
