SLUG meeting notes for Mon 10 Dec (Linus Torvalds video)

[Ben Scott]

Hi list,

  "We came, we saw, we watched."

  The Dec 2007 meeting of SLUG (Seacoast/UNH/Durham) was held Mon 10
Dec.  About a dozen people were there.  Rob "Old Faithful" Anderson
ran the show.

  On 31 Jan 1996, some guy named Linus Torvalds came to UNH, and spoke
about something called Linux.  Someone had the foresight to record a
video of the event, and Rob was able to borrow a copy, and screened it
to the group.

  This was largely a historical exercise, but a very interesting one.
It was fascinating to see how far we've come, what's changed, and
what's stayed the same.  One thing I (re)discovered: Linus is not just
an excellent programmer, he's gifted with a keen insight into the Real
World.  A lot of his predictions and pronouncements in 1996
demonstrate that he'd already thought about a lot of the issues the
community is dealing with over ten years later.  I suspect if Linus's
skills had stopped with software, we'd be a lot worse off today.

  The '96 event was "sponsored" by UNH, Digital Equipment Corporation
(/me doffs hat), ACM (IEEE Association of Computing Machinery), NNEUUG
(Northern New England UNIX Users Group), and GNHLUG.  Dave Marston was
the MC, and maddog... was maddog.  :)

  The copyright holder of the video requested that no copies be made,
and we are honoring that request.

  Planned upcoming SLUG meetings:

Jan 2008 - Rockbox - Open Source MP3 player firmware.  Replace the OEM
firmware on MP3 players from Apple, SanDisk, and various others.  Adds
features, unlocks your music, and enables whole new things.  Want to
play Doom on your iPod?  Now you can.

Feb 2007 - Enlightenment GUI tools.  Back in the late 90's,
Enlightenment (or E!) was the original "bling" window manager.  It
turns out that not only is E! not dead, it's evolved into something
more.  The Enlightenment Foundation Libraries provide some interesting
capabilities, and has applications to not just X11, but also small,
frame-buffer-only devices (cell phones, etc.).  Rob seems pretty
impressed by it, and promises an interesting demo.

  Happy hacking, everyone.

-- Ben