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Technology

Scenes From Bob Young's New Tech Circus 63

Posted by timothy from the circuses-need-elephants dept.
Chris Strider writes "Bob Young has left Red Hat, but he's still been keeping busy. I recently went to his new venture, the Lulu Tech Circus. I have to admit some of the stuff there was pretty cool, especially the robotics. On the other hand, some of it was pretty weird, like the electronic band with the alien heads. Anyway, the local online TV station RTPTV.com put up some video scenes from the Circus if you want to watch it."
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Scenes From Bob Young's New Tech Circus More

Scenes From Bob Young's New Tech Circus

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  • GUMBY (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Did anybody else see Gumby in that video??? He's right at the begining! Gumby lives again!

  • walking scorpion robot (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The circus has robotices, eh? So, this is where the eight legged walking scorpion robot is walking... It wants to join the circus!

    http://science.slashdot.org/science/02/10/12/123 82 46.shtml?tid=134

    freeble.

  • A shame (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jem ( 78392 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @06:24AM (#4452316) Homepage
    I'm saddened to see that at an event that is showing the lunatic fringe of high-tech and robotics, there is nothing more original than a first person shoot 'em up to play.
  • Jesus, I need to keep a closer watch on the news, I never heard he left!

    • Re:Bob Young left Redhat? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I have it on good authority that the reason he left Redhat because he thought there decision to go with the metacity windowmanager was boneheaded. After working for many years to provide flexibility and power to linux users, he was dismayed that with the decision to take all configuration options away from the user.

      • what a valiant response, but no. is not why bob left. your good authority was mistaken. oh did i forget to say, i worked at Red Hat (notice the correct spelling) until i moved.

  • Disappointed... (Score:5, Informative)

    by mshiltonj ( 220311 ) <mshiltonjNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @06:39AM (#4452344) Homepage Journal
    1) wmv format files? *groan*
    1a) Thanks, mplayer!

    2) instructions: "view it with the Windows Media Player that's found on almost all PC's" *groan*

    3) I got no sound with the video.

    Wish I could have went to Lulu though.
    • No kidding! What the heck is a wmv? Why can't they use standard mpeg files or at least quicktime or realplayer?

      Next week they'll switch to Microshit .LIF which stands for Latest Incompatible Format.

  • Here's an idea. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @06:40AM (#4452347)
    Dear Slashdot,

    From now on, could you just post hints and / or possibly clues to the location and content of the site, rather than actually linking to it? I think that having to find the site might deter every reader from hammering it's server at once. Then I could actually check the link out. Jinkies.

    Thanks,
    -Jason Strumfelds
    Aslich, Texas

  • Oh god (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @06:47AM (#4452367)
    This is what you get when you let the geekiness hang out all over the place.

    Is not your inner geek screaming out for freedom? Does your inner geek not yearn for rocket cars, megawatt lazers, and robots with shotgun attachments? Can your inner geek not hear, not just the calling for some good deathmatch, But deathmatch on a 52" plasma with a 500 watt 6 channel system. Yea, I say. No amount of legos, folding tables, and alien inspired freeform experimental music will satisfy the inner geek.

    A spectacle must be spectacular.

    Still, there's probably nothing better to do.

  • disappointed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mrycar ( 578010 ) <mrycar AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @06:51AM (#4452375) Homepage Journal
    I was expecting so much more than just an apparently poorly attended fragfest with RC robots, techno bands, and fan driven gumbies.

    Maybe it was just the videographer, but I doubt iy. The presentation of the circus seemed lame.

    Where are the Gee-Wiz things? Virtual Reality, Biometrics, intelligent robots, etc.

    With Circus in the name, at least they could have added pizzazz to the existing presentations. This looked more like a geek user group presentation.

    This show has a good premise. We need to excite the youth and the community with technology. Present it in a way that non-geek people want to stay.

    Hopefully the next show will be better.

  • disappointed (Score:3, Informative)

    by neptune1 ( 301990 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @07:13AM (#4452436)
    I was very disappointed in the event. If you were interested in any of the speaking tracks it would have been worthwhile, however I didn't have a need for most of presentations.

    There were more people there working Saturday afternoon than there were people in attendance.

    This was only the first one so hopefully the shows will come around.

  • Hrmm (Score:5, Insightful)

    by enneff ( 135842 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @07:28AM (#4452454) Homepage
    I just watched the video, and aparrently what's known as a "computer show" has been renamed to a "Tech Circus". I'm sorry, but the presence of people dressed up in ridiculous suits, jugglers, and a square-shouldered man in drag does not make an event a 'circus'. Almost everything displayed in the video is openly available retail at many stores.

    A pretty amateurish video, for a pretty amateurish event. A good 30 second was devoted to people playing Unreal Tournament 2003 - how incredible. Narration of some sort would have definately made this a lot more interesting. At many stages it's unclear whether the robots are remote or ai-controlled.

    One thing that was very cool was a robot climbing up a wall and what looked like looking for holes to put something into. (again, some sort of narration would be great)

    I must say, I am a bit surprised to see this on Slashdot. Then again, Slashdot never really ceases to surprise me. :)

    • Re:Hrmm (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Patrick ( 530 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @10:14AM (#4453076)
      the presence of people dressed up in ridiculous suits, jugglers, and a square-shouldered man in drag does not make an event a 'circus'

      It just made the show corny. Everyone who went had to listen to a "ringmaster" speech about how great the circus was. Ick.

      At many stages it's unclear whether the robots are remote or ai-controlled.

      IIRC, every robot shown in the video was remote-controlled. The climber, the ping-pong ball grabbers, the volley ball grabbers, and the battlebot were definitely all controlled. The Triangle Ameteur Robotics club had some (presumably) autonomous robots, but they weren't showing them doing anything.

      One thing that was very cool was a robot climbing up a wall and what looked like looking for holes to put something into.

      Mindstorms, built by one of the guys presenting it. (And trying very hard to sell $200 Mindstorms kits to anyone who showed any interest.) My impression was that it was tuned for pretty specific hole locations. I don't think it was "looking" for holes.

      I must say, I am a bit surprised to see this on Slashdot.

      The Tech Circus was run by Bob Young, Mr. Red Hat. So I'm not surprised it got coverage at Slashdot.

      One last lame bit that wasn't shown in the videos: the computer cluster on the show floor, which was offline for most of the time I was there, was running Windows. I know Mr. Young is divesting himself from Red Hat as fast as he can, but you'd think there'd be at least some loyalty to Linux at his show. Nah.

      Overall: unpolished, unremarkable, and underattended.

  • "Bob Young has left Red Hat..."

    Have I been living under a rock? I thought he was just still a director or something.

  • Decent show, not the best organization (Score:4, Informative)

    by ticklejw ( 453382 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @07:45AM (#4452475) Homepage
    I was there too. I really had a good time, but IMO it was a little badly arranged. They had the FIRST robotics team right next to one of the, umm, lecture halls, and we couldn't understand a word of what the Pragmatic Programming dude had to say.

    But overall it was pretty cool, definitely expensive though. If they work on the organization a bit and it comes back through here again, I'll probably go again.

    Oh, ps, the Asian girl they had "introducing" people to the place was hot. Keep her around and I'll definitely come back :-P

  • New Tech Circus Acts I'd like to see (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @08:30AM (#4452608)
    New Tech Circus Acts I'd like to see:

    • Bill Gates taming a cage full of disgruntled sysadmins
    • Bearded Lady Carly Fiorina
    • That Dell Guy walking a tight rope of firewire, and fall to his demise
    • Larry Ellison sword swallowing act
    • Steve Ballmer's team doing the "elephant walk" [alligator.org], Fraternity style
    • All dotcom/dotbomb boneheads getting shot from a cannon

  • Disappointed (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @08:34AM (#4452624)
    I was expecting much more. Turned out to be nothing more the a poorly organized Linux/Geek event, which for the most part was a fragfest, a bunch of tables for User Groups, some legos throw in some pits for the tykes, and a few more assorted 'specialized' events - robotics (which was the only really cool thing I saw), music - walk into a room where the volume is on 13 and some kid is wailing on a drum machine (headache).

    What sucked most was the fact you could ONLY pay for all three days for a whopping $20. Frankly after I was there for an hour or so I didn't see a reason to come back. It would have been nice if he had a daily entry price for those that were not interested in attending the tech speeches, etc. Split the 3 day cost would have been a much more affordable $7/day.

  • TechCircus layed off all but 3 workers? (Score:3, Informative)

    by wherley ( 42799 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @09:03AM (#4452722)
    At least according to this recent F'd Company [fuckedcompany.com] post.

  • beowulf (Score:2, Funny)

    by someguy ( 23968 )
    Just in case people are undecided as to whether to download the video footage or not, I know that there's a pretty big demographic out there that would be interested in one thing - beowulf clusters. There's a few seconds of footage from a talk being given on that. Perhaps it was a local chapter of the support group meeting for an "Imagine A Beowulf Cluster Of <Foo>"(IABCOF).

  • Bob is clearly suffering from the dis-ease. . . (Score:3, Funny)

    by kfg ( 145172 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @10:16AM (#4453093)
    that infects many that made their money young and retired. . . he doesn't know what to do with himself.

    Rather than spending the next few years pissing away his money on ill considered ventures I'd like to suggest to him what many have found to be the cure for his ennui.

    Golf.

    KFG

  • alien heads? (Score:3, Informative)

    by gelstudios ( 605243 ) <gelstudios AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @10:16AM (#4453094) Homepage
    like the electronic band with the alien heads
    the band is called Spacemen, and they are pretty interesting to watch live, from what i've read they are a revolving group of artists, much like blue man group. thier site has lots of pictures of the costumes in action.
    http://www.innervisionmusic.com/
    http:// www.spacemen-are-coming.com/
  • At http://www.redhat.com/about/corporate/team/young.h tml [redhat.com], you can still find his info:
    As Co-founder and Chairman of Red Hat, Bob is very active in determining the company's strategic and creative direction and driving the global, industry-wide adoption of open source development practice.

    • Re:Bob's info still available (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Bob did indeed step down as chairman in April of this year and Matt Szulik has become the Chairman in addition to CEO.

      The local press wrote about it:
      http://www.triangletechjournal.homestead.com/ april 2002redhat2.html
  • And where are the results of the (stuffed) Lulu Nominations [techcircus.com]???

    The voting was, of course, worthless as it did no validity or duplicate checking (hence people with negative and much greater than 10 scores.)
  • Anyone interested in the autonomous robots?
    See TriangleAmateurRobotics.org [triangleam...botics.org].
  • Me and my suitemates went to the tech circus, and explored alot on the first day. Lots of interesting stuff. But the majority of our time was spent playing UT2003. We met bob young in an interesting manner involving shattering smart mass with a hard cover copy of his book. We won some UT2003 shirts, and finally placed second in the team UT2003 tournament and won free copies of the game a week before it was officially released. Afterwards we stayed and helped clean up to get some staff tshirts, free pizza, and a few thousand feet of free CAT5
  • Although it is still a truism in industry that "no one was ever fired for
    buying IBM," Bill O'Neil, the chief technology officer at Drexel Burnham
    Lambert, says he knows for a fact that someone has been fired for just that
    reason. He knows it because he fired the guy.
    "He made a bad decision, and what it came down to was, 'Well, I
    bought it because I figured it was safe to buy IBM,'" Mr. O'Neil says.
    "I said, 'No. Wrong. Game over. Next contestant, please.'"
    -- The Wall Street Journal, December 6, 1989

    - this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...

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