Olivia Sutton's Fanfic Journal

 

PenguiCon Con 6.0 Report

by Olivia Sutton

 

SF/Media/"Fun" Panels

 

"Are the Space Monkeys Back Yet?"
William Jones and M. Keaton
 

This was a very fun panel about space opera.  It started with kinda' a definition of space opera, but the panel also leapt all over the place.  And the panelists welcomed input and discussion from the audience.  Both the presenters, William Jones, an English lit. professor and professional writer, and M. Keaton, a writer of young adult and regular fiction,  were very funny, and brought up some great points.  I don't remember all the details, of course, but among the points made were a comparison between SF (Esp. space opera) and Westerns -- and noting that both were the literature of the frontier.  (And yes, Firefly/Serenity was brought up).  Keaton also mentioned Westerns were dying. [Good riddance, imo, tho' I didn't bring that up during the panel.  But I despise Westerns]  Also, Keaton especially, but Jones as well, talked about being paid by the word, and having to fit their work into specified guidelines, especially for series books.  I was amazed to find out that authors still get paid by the word.  Though the constraints placed on series writer's didn't surprise me -- at all.  After all, that's been true for cheap popular pulp writing since the Victorian Age.  The other thing that happened which was quite funny, actually, was that just as the panel was wrapping up -- my cell phone went off  -- with the Star Wars theme (my unknown caller ring tone).  I felt really bad about disrupting the panel -- but everyone got a big laugh out of it -- especially since Star Wars had been mentioned as the beginning of a space opera revival.

 

Bring on da Noise, Bring on da FuMP
Filk

I only saw part of the concert, and it was a bit too loud for my liking.  Though, I did get to hear "Shakespearean Pie" which I adored and ended-up buying on CD (with a CD's worth of miscellaneous other music, some of which was good and some of which was truly awful).

 

Science in the Movies
Shannon Marshall and guests

This was a really fun panel, in a packed room.  I was sorry I missed the very beginning.  But it was highly interactive, fun, and informative, something sorely needed in a lot of the other panels at the con.  (E.G., some panels hit one or two of those three things, but most sorely missed at least one of those concepts; which kinda' was a problem for the entire convention).

 

Johnny Can't Read and Nobody Thinks It's a Problem
Jeff DeLuzio, William Jones, M. Keaton, Tamora Pierce and Lucy Snyder

OK -- first, five people is way too many to have on a single panel.  I've been to enough cons through the years to know -- it simply never works to have more than three people on a panel, often they end-up fighting amongst themselves or half the panel is never heard.  Second, one of the two women, and I don't know who, really needed to get her facts straight.  If she wanted to make wide, sweeping statements, she needed to back them up by citing peer-reviewed journals, surveys, even her own research, not just blindingly saying, "This is true because I said so", which in effect she did.  Also, the guy in the audience who challenged her?  He had a valid point, but he also needed to drop it a lot sooner than he did - a panel discussion should not degenerate into a shouting match between a single panelist and a single audience member.  The guy in the back near me who told them both to "shut-up" may have been rude, but at least he got the panel back on track, at least a little bit.  Overall, the entire panel was a disaster.  The panel ignored the calm members of the audience with their hands-up, including me.  Comments were made and then sailed away before any in-depth discussion could occur.  Again -- too many panelists, a rude panelist who didn't have a clue how to properly document what she was saying, and an audience that resorted to rude yelling when they couldn't be heard...  Well, it was certainly the worst panel I went to, and one of the biggest disasters in a panel discussion room I've seen in twenty years of going to conventions.  I think PenguiCon should avoid having that one woman back (I'm not sure who she was, none of the panel introduced themselves).

 

Oh, and speaking of disasters -- between commuting and poor planning on the part of the convention itself, I missed a lot of panels that looked interesting.  I really disliked the fact that I often had two or three (sometimes four) panels in different "tracks" that I wanted to attend.  And this for a small convention.  I mean, we're not talking WorldCon here, so it should have been easy to attend all or most of the panels that I wanted to see.  Instead, I only attended a handful of panels, the "fun" ones listed above and the work-related ones listed below.  That made the convention extremely frustrating for me.

Computer Tech / Linux Panels

 

"Standing on the Shoulders of Giants -- The Coming of the Linux Desktop"
Jono Bacon, Canonical Ubuntu Community Manager

Mr. Bacon was a highly amusing panelist, and his talk was both fun and extremely informative and helpful.  It also really plugged the Ubuntu Linux distribution, over other distributions such as Red Hat or Knoppix.

First, the speaker Mr. Bacon, discussed the evolution in Linux Desktop, including:  MWM, Gnome 1.x, and KDE 4.0 -- the modern desktop.  The question is when will be the year of  the Linux Desktop, and the speaker explained for Linux to be a success at the desktop level (presumably on the same level as Windows or Mac) businesses must actually use the Linux desktop, which means that businesses control Linux success.  Linux has a marvelous opportunity to get into business, according to Mr. Bacon.  For businesses, Linux offers better technology with lower TCO (Total Cost of  Ownership).  For developers, Linux offers a development culture.  And for the Linux community, there's a solid ethical grounding.

So why has the Linux Desktop (revolution) not happened yet?

There are concerns.  Business people are worried about the Community, as Bacon put it, "they are geeky guys that would put communism in your water".  The technology, however, is good technology that will work, it won't cost that much, and there are upstreams or "products" like Firefox, openoffice.org, gimp, etc.

So in order for Linux to get somewhere in business, the Operating System. must be managed, reliable, and sustained.  But because Linux is open source, everything takes place on-line, in the open, it confuses business and business considers the community to be a bit weird.  The user community is seen to be a bunch of strange fanboys and fangirls.

There's a need to switch the vocabulary from open source "fans", contributing to things their "fans of", to a development community.  A switch in vocabulary to something to which businesses can relate.

According to Bacon, businesses depend on "us" meaning open source contributors, and the open source community is essential to desktop success.

Bacon also talked about the concept of  "Mindshare" which he stated was most important.  Mindshare includes a world-wide community of contributors.  He specifically  focused on Ubuntu Linux, but other distributions (or more colloquially "flavors") include:  OpenSuse and Red Hat Linux.  Suse is now distributed by Novell and Red Hat by IBM.  The Scorecard, or summary, now reads that the community is important to desktop success, distributors are important to desktop success, and the community can make the Year of the Desktop happen.

The next part of Bacon's lecture reviewed the history of Linux (where it came from), that is that Linus Trovalds invented it basically for fun, so he could play with a personal form of UNIX at home.  (He was a UNIX programmer by trade).  Also reviewed was Maslow's Pyramid of Needs (a basic psychological theory).  Since I was already familiar with Maslow, I didn't take notes on that part of the lecture.  But Maslow basically said there are certain basic needs (such as food, shelter, clothing, security) that must be met before more advanced needs can be met (such as self-actualization).

Bacon wants to establish a community of distributors, working together, to make the year of the desktop successful.  He also well, complained, about the Vocal Minority, which was defined as a small group of people who ram their opinions down the throats of everyone else.  This group, according to Bacon, scares off folks who aren't quite as committed to purely free software.  In other words, though members of the community might understand where the vocal minority comes from and they ignore them (like trolls on a posting board), newcomers, especially in the business world won't understand and will think that either the entire community is represented by the vocal minority, or that the cracks in the cohesiveness of the entire open source community will make it impossible to work with the community to implement Linux desktops in business environments.

Then, of course, Bacon, who is the Canonical Ubuntu Community Manager, stressed that Ubuntu Linux is doing it right, it's open and transparent, and the community is "getting stuff done".  And, as expected the Linux community is inclusive - everyone should feel welcome, there's a core element but everybody can have an impact.  The community works together to make things happen.  The Linux community also steers clear of having too much bureaucracy which slows down development progress, according to Bacon.  But Ubuntu Linux also does have traditional governance, including:  Code of Conduct, Membership Processes, Community Council, Technical Board, and Team Councils.  In conclusion, Mr. Bacon addressed the audience and said that, "We can make the Desktop happen."

 

"How to Set Up a MythTV"
Bo Hansen (Saturday, Noon)

MythTV is an open source alternative to Tivo and other proprietary DVR (Digital Video Recorder) hardware and software packages.

I unfortunately did not understand much of this particular demonstration/lecture.  I did get out of it that, unfortunately, one cannot run MythTV as a separate program on one's main PC - it requires a box of  it's very own, which can run up to $500 or more.  Five hundred dollars for hardware is hardly my definition of "free", especially when most satellite companies will give away the DVR when you upgrade your service.  This was also the lecture (I think) where the presenter could not figure out how to hook up his presentation and demo equipment to the hotel system, resulting in half an hour of sitting around waiting for him to figure it out.  I must admit, though, I had a great time chatting with the guys around me about various SF/Media stuff while waiting, so it wasn't a total loss.

The steps to creating a MythTV box, according to Mr. Hansen, include:  Hardware, Distributions, Install, Configure, and Extras.  Requirements for the box include:  CPU (the faster the better), Memory (MythTV runs adequately in 256 MB RAM) and hard discs.  Encoded video takes up a lot, and I do mean a lot of hard disc space.

 

Encoded Video Chart

Vid Format	Size
MPEG-4	700MB/hr
MPEG-2	268MB/hr
ATSC	768MB/hr

 

Hansen recommended using "storage groups" to spread the video across several discs.  This was something I didn't understand, as I would think that individual files would need to stay together in order to play correctly.

 

Recommended file systems include 64-bit or 128-bit, JFS, and not FAT or Reiser File Systems.  Also needed is a video capture device.  There are different types of capture devices, including frame grabbers (the most basic and cheapest), hardware MPEG-2 encoders, DVB capture cards (Hi-definition) and a HDTV card.  The new version of Myth TV, however, is included in various Linux distributions, and includes a hardware-based video decoder for playback on your TV or computer.  Distributions include:  KnoppMyth, MythDora, and Mythbuntu.  MythTV is a front-end and back-end system which comes with a MySQL database.  Additional equipment needed on the back-end includes:  two capture cards, one per receiver when hooking up to a home digital satellite system (such as DirectTV or Dish Network).  You can then tune the two receivers, use the two capture cards, and MythTV will happily record for you.

MythTV can also be the center of a full blown media center, though the TV schedule must be downloaded via The Web.  You can view programs across the Internet and you can also set-up a Myth Archive of up to 500GB of programming.  Programming can also be transferred to DVD.  (Mind you that it seems like an awful lot of trouble when you can simply buy an entire season of any TV show for around $30.00).  The presenter listed off various add-ons for Myth TV, which I won't go into because there are too many.  Overall, even considering the technical problems, this wasn't the best presentation of the weekend.  I didn't follow some of the technical aspects of the very rushed lecture (even with asking a couple of questions).  I did figure out that MythTV probably wasn't for me, and I'd be better off upgrading my satellite service (DirectTV) to include a DVR, which was probably the opposite of what the presenter intended.

 

Beginner Baptism on the UNIX Command Line
Craig Maloney

This panel really was a beginning-level panel, and thus much of the material covered was familiar to me.  The panel also was one of two with some extremely rude people in the audience who disrupted the entire flow of the panel.  The panel covered the use of the UNIX command line (which isn't so different from Linux, since Linux was designed to be a portable/desktop/home version of UNIX).  According to the presenter, Craig Maloney, the command line in UNIX is replicable, meaning it is easy to script or duplicate.  It's also powerful.

UNIX is a multi-user, robust, secure, command-line driven, flexible system and it's everywhere.  In UNIX, programmers write programs that do one thing and do it well.  They write programs that work together.  There are many shells that can be used with UNIX, but the most common one and the one demonstrated at the panel was the BASH shell.  In showing how delimiters work, Maloney, demonstrated that spaces separate file names.  For example:

 

rm file1 file2

 

To refer to a file with spaces in it, use quotes or an escape character "\".

For example:

 

rm spacely\file

rm "spacely file"

 

As with Linux, UNIX is case sensitive.  Case really does matter, so the following are three different file names:

 

MyFile, MYFILE, myfile

 

The following are basic commands in UNIX:

 

ls - lists files and directories

cp - copies files (overwrites automatically)

mv - moves files

rm - removes or deletes files

mkdir - makes a new directory

rmdir - removes/deletes a directory

cd - change directory (move through the directory tree)

cat - combines files

more/less - used to manipulate how much information displays on the screen.

ls -r - organizes a list of files and directories by last modification date

ls -al list - all and long, gives permissions, owner, group, date/time, shows hidden files, indicates a directory with a slash

 

Mr. Maloney then demonstrated uses of cp and mv as well as switches for remove (rm).  He also demonstrated use of mkdir, cp and mv, and stressed that cp (copy) was safer to use than mv (move).

Mr. Maloney then started to explain the UNIX directory structure (which is again, very similar to Linux).

 

/root - the root directory.  In UNIX, all directories are under ROOT.

/etc - several useful standard files and directories are found here.

/usr - the user's directory

/home - home directory of the user

/var

 

grep (global regular expression and print) - used like a search engine for files and text patterns.

ps - process list - every task in UNIX is a "process".

TOP -

kill processes -- stop a process that's misbehaving, causing problems.

kill child processes then the parent process to prevent instability in the system.

From the process list, find the process number then kill that process, such as kill 2112.

kill - 9 -- "Kill it a lot", will stop the process but it must be the owner of the process who issues the command.

man - call up the manual or help pages.

vi - visual text editor

ESC:q! - quit the text editor

ESC!qw! - write the file then quit the text editor.

Vim Tutor - Learning the Vi Editor

du directory usage

pwd - present working directory

df - disk free

w - who's logged in

whoami - what user you are logged in as

root - Superuser - root overrides everything.  Root is much more powerful than Window's "Administrator", and must be used with great care.

Mr. Maloney briefly discussed permissions, users, groups, and world in the context of a UNIX system.  He also started to discuss pipes when time ran out (pipes can be used to combine commands in UNIX).

Overall, the presentation was good, though I was familiar with most of the ground covered.  The speaker took questions from the audience, and never asked the audience to hold questions to the end.  Because this resulted in lively discussion, the speaker was unable to completely cover everything he had prepared.  But there was also a woman in the audience (besides me) who yelled at (screamed really) the entire audience for asking questions and actually creating a discussion, which I thought was highly uncalled for (and I even complained to the official PenguiCon people about, via the web).  If the speaker had said something like, "Please hold all questions to the end," or whatever, and the audience still engaged the speaker in conversation, then the complaints may have been warranted, but since it seemed to be a discussion panel, like many others over the weekend, it was totally uncalled for that one audience member should complain, and actively yell at the entire audience for quote "being rude" unquote.

 

Introduction to Forensics
Kyle Rankin

I only saw part of the panel, and what I saw was very boring.

That's the entire con report.  Overall, yes I will probably attend next year if my schedule allows it.

--Olivia