Scenes From Bob Young's New Tech Circus

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."

GUMBY

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:GUMBY

[Ron Harwood]

Yes, the green man is cool - too bad the orange wasn't shaped like a horse.

Check out my pictures [yellowsnow.ca] from the event (as I worked it).

walking scorpion robot

[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

[jem]

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.

Bob Young left Redhat?

[Troy H Parker]

Jesus, I need to keep a closer watch on the news, I never heard he left!

Re:Bob Young left Redhat?

[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.

Re:Bob Young left Redhat?

[collias]

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.

Re:For the humor impaired....

[LizardKing]

The website linked to may require Windows Media Viewer, but if you had engaged your brain while reading the Slashdot article you would notice that it's not Lulu Tech Circuses website. It is in fact a TV station website *reporting* on Lulu Tech Circus.

Chris

Disappointed...

[mshiltonj]

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.

Re:Disappointed...

[Radical Rad]

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.

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Classic obsessive compulsive disorder on slashd

[floydigus]

I checked my pirourities and they said 'you don't play darts outside' followed by 'if you go outside for the rest of the day, your boss will fire you'

disappointed

[mrycar]

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.

Re:disappointed

[freaksta]

Actually, if you look, there is VR.

Re:disappointed

[ticklejw]

They did have some VR shooters in one corner (although they could have expanded upon it SO much more...) But it DEFINITELY was a geek user group presentation. They should have raised one or two marketing people to help out in organization a bit...

Re:disappointed

[Keith_Beef]

The intended name was Lulu Tech Circuits , but somebody mis-typed.

Re:disappointed

[1Oman]

Hey I am one of the guys that built those robots and they are a lot more than just R.C. cars.

Ceck us out at www.opensaurus.com [opensaurus.com]

Jason

disappointed

[neptune1]

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

[enneff]

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

[Patrick]

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.

Left Redhat?

[hangdog]

"Bob Young has left Red Hat..."

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

Re:Left Redhat?

[SerpentMage]

Yeah we have been living under a rock, since I looked at the Redhat management team and I did not find Bob Young....

When did this happen?

Re:Left Redhat?

[Chiggy_Von_Richtoffe]

Whoa! I thought for a moment that this said Left-ist Redhat, you know like China's (planned) Distro. screw it it's lunch time!

Decent show, not the best organization

[ticklejw]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

[wherley]

At least according to this recent F'd Company [fuckedcompany.com] post.

beowulf

[someguy]

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. . .

[kfg]

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

Re:Bob is clearly suffering from the dis-ease. . .

[Ron Harwood]

Actually, he's into bass fishing.

alien heads?

[gelstudios]

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/

Bob's info still available

[f0d0]

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

[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

Lulus...

[Cramer]

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.)

blatant plug

[kr4jb]

Anyone interested in the autonomous robots?
See TriangleAmateurRobotics.org [triangleam...botics.org].

The Tech Circus was great

[PepsiProgrammer]

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

Last Post!

[alpg]

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

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