It’s been one of those years, and with 2015 being the 13th year for the Southern California Linux Expo — hence SCALE 13x — you might expect that superstition would be rearing its ugly head.
I can say that, knock on wood, we have already had what I hope is going to be the only “black-cat-walking-under-the-ladder” glitch-of-the-show moment a couple of weeks ago when the idiot serving as the publicity chair — okay, that would be me — pulled the wrong list of speakers (the ones not chosen) to start doing speaker interviews with the Publicity Team. Thankfully, I found the error before any interviews were done, but it was a considerable amount of orchestrated work that was thrown out the window and redone with the right list.
Larry Cafiero, a.k.a. Larry the Free Software Guy, is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate. He is involved in several FOSS projects and serves as the publicity chair for the Southern California Linux Expo. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero
Yup, those were the days.
Most prominently, 
Due to the increasing attendance, SCALE has also extended the exhibit hall hours, which will now open on Friday, February 20, at 2 p.m. Saturday’s exhibit hall hours will remain the same, beginning at 10 a.m. and closing at 6 p.m. And on Sunday — traditionally a quieter day in general — SCALE 13x has opted to close the exhibit hall at 2 p.m., though sessions will continue to run on Sunday afternoon.
From a PR standpoint, this announcement is paying off for Redmond, at least for the short term. This morning Google returned over four thousand news results specifically related to a search using the terms “microsoft windows 10 free upgrade,” with a slew of additional peripheral results. Outside the FOSS press, the articles generally heap praise on Microsoft for this move, which is seen as “bold” and “daring.” 