News from ApacheCon US 2002 47
pdw writes "Apache Week this week has a feature detailing the happenings at last week's ApacheCon in Vegas. Read up to find out what's new in the world of Apache."
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News from ApacheCon US 2002
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All seems condemned in the long run to approximate a state akin to Gaussian noise. -- James Martin
Its all about the swag (Score:4, Funny)
I expect good swag for any conference or seminar, whether or not it is a simple day seminar or something more elaborate. If there isn't the possibility of vendor treats, most IT monkeys don't go.
Re:Its all about the swag (Score:3, Insightful)
If IT people can't pick out a "haha only serious" comment and realize that it is only half true (yes, we expect swag, no it is not the only reason we go), then it is a good indication of the dilution of the industry. In other words, if you don't know better, how can you expect your management to? If you can't give them a good reason why you should go, then you shouldn't go. Simple as that.
Vendors have marketing departments, and marketing people know that a key to getting market share is getting attention from consumers. This can be done with flashy ads, give-aways, informal dialogs over lunches, and other ways of getting mindshare previous to marketshare. Ultimately, vendors (usually) have to compete based on features, i.e., merit. However, getting someone to look at your product in more depth or showing a customer that you think of them often involves giving them a tshirt, a mug, or some other treat, whether that is pre- or post-sale.
I assumed people still knew all this, but maybe the industry is in such a depression that it has been forgotten... or maybe it has always been different up here in Canada.
(P)raise-condition ;) (Score:2)
This sounds like one of those cases where speakers start to praise something and that something which is in reality relatively simple and easy to understand becomes godlike wisdom from heaven. Well, maybe it is just easy to get carried away when standing in front of thousands of people...but that's just too thick. :)
It's ironic... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's ironic... (Score:3)
Secondarily, apachecon is hosted at a hotel with no casino -- definitely helpful, since the hotel is thus focused more on the needs of the convention and basic hospitality than steeering you into a gambling pit at every opportunity.
Re:Advertising by stealth in Slashdot (Score:1, Offtopic)
Usually it's selling computer hardware and the like, but still... does it really get in the way so bad?
Phil, just me
Re:Advertising by stealth in Slashdot (Score:2)
That is lame, placed right at the top of the related links. On one hand, that is pretty sneaky way to sucker people into looking at products, not as honest as a good ol' banner. On the other hand, it costs money to run the site, pay for bandwidth, etc.
I suppose we could support /. and click the everliving FSCK out of those links... I'm sure not buying any whateverthehell they want to advertise, I'm immune to that ad brainwashing... oh look, a nice pretty banner for a Netgear access point! I'm going to the computer store, bbl...
OT: How best to handle advertising on /. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:OT: How best to handle advertising on /. (Score:3, Informative)
Like I suggested before, I like the banners. They are honest advertising.
I'm not naive, nor do I wear a tinfoil hat, nor do I live life with my head stuck in the sand. Websites cost money to operate, business needs to be transacted. Without the commercial influence this Internet that we all thrive on would not exist as we know it. It would still be an obscure network for academics, which isn't to say quality of information wouldn't be better, but it sure wouldn't be as empowering for the general population.
Banners are honest advertising, they are visible, they do the job. Popups are evil, so don't let your company use them. The insidious little links at the sides of the stories are sneaky and I don't like them. By all means, get in my face with your products, but do it with some respect.
Those who can't handle a little bit of advertising are hippocrats. They need to stop trying to live in 1991 and let the last 10 years help them mature.... in other words, suck it up, buttercup!
Slashdot can't exist without generating some revenue. If you don't like it, hit the smaller less professional sites and see how that works out for you. Build another Slashdot so you can discover that eventually you either stagnate or you general revenue to grow. Money is not inherently evil, people trying to transact business are not inherently evil, and there is nothing wrong with an information portal trying to generate the resources (i.e., money to pay for other resources) so they can survive.
Sun is helping Apache... but where is Sun going? (Score:5, Interesting)
From ApacheCon Day 3: "Fowler noted the major contributions Sun has made not only to Apache and related projects such as Tomcat, but also in non-Apache related projects such as the Gnome desktop and OpenOffice.org."
I believe Sun is having a hard time finding a direction, right now. Hardware? Software? Work on free stuff? Beat Microsoft? I wonder where they are going to end up.
Re:Sun is helping Apache... but where is Sun going (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe Sun has found their direction. I'm only speculating, but when Microsoft wants to improve their PR, they dump $100 million into India to fight AIDS. I look at Sun in a different light given their contributions to open source. Granted, their may be genuine interest by their employees to donate work and code to the open source community, which leads me to believe that this may not be simply a PR stunt. It's advantageous to Sun to be able to place their mark in software that they believe will eventually be in use by a great number of people (is that a run-on sentence?). I say bring it on. Whatever benefits us as a community benefits the whole, whether it's a group of individuals, or a giant corporation, donating their time and effort.
Re:Sun is helping Apache... but where is Sun going (Score:3)
Well, all three of these projects relate to existing Sun software:
- If Tomcat is successful, then Sun Java and J2EE products benefit.
- Solaris needs a GUI to replace CDE. Gnome and OpenOffice run on Solaris. If Gnome and OpenOffice are successful, then Solaris as a desktop UI also benefits.
Read All About it Last Week (Score:5, Interesting)
I enjoyed reading about this event last week. Thanks to Micheal Radwin's blog [radwin.org]
and hey, thanks for the tips [drbacchus.com]!
Other ApacheCon 2002 blogs (Score:1)
There were actually a number of bloggers at ApacheCon aside from Michael Radwin - each with their own independent views/opinions (!) of what they saw/heard ;-) They provide a alternative perspective to Mr. Radwin's own blog. Here are a couple of others:
[you may have to skip to the dated entries Nov 19-22 - the conference really started with the first keynote on that Tuesday, there were tutorials only (extra $) on Monday]
Andy Oliver [freeroller.net]
Ugo Cei [beblogging.com]
Peter Royal [livejournal.com]
Migrating to Apache 2.x (Score:5, Interesting)
My point being, although I am coming to it in a roundabout fashion...what are the benefits for the average (or even above average) website migrating over to 2.0 at this time? Just seems sorta pointless to me right now.
Of course, that also goes back to the "Alpha Geeks" thing O'Reilly talked about. Hopefully the fully usable apache 2 goodness will filter down to my level sometime
Re:Migrating to Apache 2.x (Score:2, Interesting)
The useability and benifits will come as more people migrate. If I am a developer, will I develope my package fro the 1.3.* or 2.0.* series. Right now, possible the 1.3.* series because that's where most of the people are. But if more people start using the 2.* series, than I'd have a large target audiancs (and a larger demand in general) so I might consider it.
Sometimes you simply have to start using something to make it viable.
Again, consider if some one introduces a new language. At first no one will learn it because no one else uses it. But as more people start to use it, more will want to use it because it is more viable.
(For referance, I am currently using apache 2.0.43 for my site. Had some dificulty getting php working, but it does, and so does perl, and thats about all I need so I'm good).Re:Migrating to Apache 2.x (Score:5, Informative)
This latter is still the major obstacle, since the number of third-party libraries used by (say) PHP is pretty large. You can eliminate the threaded-MPM obstacles by using the process-based prefork MPM, but you don't get some of apache2's performance improvements, especially on operating systems with slow, expensive forks (Solaris, Win32).
Re:Migrating to Apache 2.x (Score:2)
To speak for PHP and Apache 2 support: IMHO the currently need their time to get to PHP 5/Zend 2.
b4n
You know it's all skewed when... (Score:1, Informative)
It's a slow-news-day for sure and, yes, news about a conference for apache geeks is about as thrilling as a barium enema. Go figure..
Online Material? (Score:2)
I would have loved to have gone, but being a poor starving student and doing apache stuff for a student run organization (non-profit), that was kind of out of the question this year.
Report at apacheweek.com (Score:1)
Is sitting bull making a speech? (Score:1)
Aww...
Last Post! (Score:2)