Last week, The Bazaar, an Open Source meeting and exhibition, was held for the first time in New York City. It was not a well-attended event, with fewer than 3000 registered visitors, and the view from the show's main floor was downright dismal because most of the people there spent most of their time in tutorial sessions, not cruising the (sparse) display booths. But it was still an event many found valuable. Here are some "show tales" from Slashdot readers who were there. (click below)

Okay, here they are: Brian Paul's answers to your questions. Even if you've never heard of Brian or Mesa, his comments give insight into how an "essential but unsung" Open Source project runs, and why Brian has devoted endless time to Mesa. (More below.)

Shortly after their IPO, Red Hat's Bob Young had a book published, written by he and Wendy Goldman Rohm (who, I should add, I had a drink with at @ ALS, and is a very nice woman) about Red Hat, and what Linux is trying to do. Click below to get the full story - and thanks to Malcolm Tredinnick for his indepth review.

This week Bruce Perens ^[?] learned the hard way that Open Source development has become a popular spectator sport. Or, as I described it a few days earlier, a performing art. Like it or not, things are changing with Open Source development, with the Internet, with the way online news is gathered and spread, and with Slashdot. More ->

The original concept of free, Open Source software was that of programmers writing software they wanted for themselves and sharing it with their peers like poets writing work that only other poets would ever read. Now Open Source and free software are getting major attention. There is suddenly an adoring public out there beyond the footlights. And the presence of this audience is changing the entire Open Source "movement." (more below)

Thanks to Tony for sending me the information on SourceForge. They've gone into public-beta, and having seen it yesterday, it looks super-cool. It's a free (as in beer) service to Open Source developers offering easy access to CVS, mailing lists, bug tracking, message boards/forums, task management, web site hosting, permanent file archival, ftp downloads, full backups, and total web-based administration. Check out - and put your stuff in.

Being the history major that I was, I was happy when Joe Mahoney offered to review Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger's new book The Year 1000 - What life was like at the turn of the first millennium. Looks back at a year in the life of a common Englishman, circa 1000 AD, in a very entertaining and informative way.

Let's get the serious stuff out of the way: chrisd put up a survey to track what trade shows Linux Coders think are a good idea to go to. With the proliferation of cons, its nice to know what ones matter. Oh, and if you're looking for beer, you should try Heineken's BarTrek. its a PDA proggie with maps to bars and reviews of beer. And if you have GPS, it'll even lead you to it. My guess is after a few beers, it better be a really user friendly app or you might wind up in a desert or something. k-rist sent us linkage to Pulp Simpsons! which I highly recommend. An anonymous reader pointed us to a 15 pound Millenium Falcon made of legos. CK-2 pointed us to what looks like the most impressive real life light saber money can buy. dave pointed us to the site worth it. notjenni, a parody of jennicam. An AC pointed us to a Swedish site has a photo of the Daytrading Yucca plant. This plant is wired up to a computer to trade on the Swedish stock market in response to its electrical activity. If it makes a profit it is rewarded with water and light, if it makes a loss it is unwatered and sits in the dark. The plant has made an 18 percent profit in the last three months! God I hope this is true ;) Effugas pointed us to a pretty good parody of the Matrix. regs pointed us to MonkeyBagel which outta win an award for something. I don't really know what tho. Random merchandising: at0m noted that Copyleft now has Slashdot polos in grey and green. Finally, what would quickies be without some porn? Tolath sent us something graphic... if you happen to be an electrical cord.

Gryphon writes "According to research completed at the University of Toronto, "mashed potatoes and barley may indeed be food for thought". The effect is most noticeable for the elderly and those with bad memories, but in all subjects, memory was noticeably enhanced just 15 minutes after ingestion, with effects lasting for about an hour. Being a student with exams to write, I thought this was cool -- bring on the beer and fries? :) " If potato chips counted I'd be capable of remembering the stone age. As it stands, I can't remember most of college.

Monday's questions for the Cult of the Dead Cow ranged from serious-tech to silly. Various members of the Cult answered appropriately. Great stuff! One warning: if you are offended by strong language or are a hacker under 18, you should not read this Q&A session. The Cult is one of those groups the assorted nanny-censor programs try to keep away from deity-fearing, good-citizen, mass-average folks because they're commie anachist no-gooders. Or something like that. (And we like them that way!) Click below to learn why these people are A Danger to the Established Order(tm).

A few days past, we solicited questions from you folks to ask QuakeLaird John Carmack ^[?] . We sent the questions over to him, and he answered. A lot. It's definitely one of the best interviews we've had yet - click below to read more.

Bill Swingle writes "The final speaker schedule for the upcoming FreeBSDCon has been announced. Highlights include, Kirk McKusick's BSD Internals tutorial, and keynotes from both Brian Behlendorf of the Apache Project and Jeremey Allison from the Samba Project. There are all kinds of fun events planned for the conference, including a free (for attendees) beer bash. This should be one killer conference! " Read on for more. CT : This is the first article in our new BSD Section maintained by Nik. Enjoy.

Rene S. Hollan has sent an insightful piece regarding the use of a non-GPL license that is still fair to the free software community, and might even win the approval of RMS ^[?] .

Monday we got a whole bunch of questions for Nitrozac, the shadowy, boot-wearing creator of the After Y2k! online comic strip. We tossed out all the "Are you really a woman?" questions; I've talked to her more than once and assure you that she is indubitably female and, as she puts it, "slightly over 25." A little inside note for y'all: Nitrozac has lots of female fans who think Taco and Hemos are "hot." This should give hope to all male, female-lacking geeks out there! But let's have Nitrozac speak in her own (laughworthy) words. The complete Q&A sesion is below. Enjoy!

I've been so busy on the code frenzy that I've been behind on the quickies! Tragic! First lets get the serious quickies out of the way: chris sent us the Atlanta Linux Showcase Tutorial and Conference program for the 3rd Annual ALS, comming up October 12-16, 1999, in Atlanta Georgia. Registration is open. Bl0w0ff noted that The dockapp warehouse has been upgraded and redesigned. k-rist sent us SimShatner. Here is a site selling a video history of Atari with interviews with the guys that did Pac-Man and all that early stuff. Someone sent us a link to another place you don't want to see a BSOD. Want some Blair Witch Parodies? irishmikev sent is a Southpark Parody and stairs sent The Blair Family Circus Project. How about a pair of strange places to put a server? Gareth Walwyn sent us one in a potted plant and GFD noted thatLinux Today has a story about a box that runs in a real Pizza Hut Box. If strange Linux boxes ain't your bag, someone submitted Apple Fritter which contains strange cases for Apples (Legos, Radios, and more) Jade wrote in with how to apply for the position of Sith Apprentice. and rjh pointed us to the iMaul (seems like a lot of stuff is coming in pairs today) Evan Vetere noticed that despair.com has new de-motivators. Matthew McCabe sent us tuxtiles which is taking votes on designs for "Linux Blankets". Since we're mentioning merchandise, I gotta plug Think Geek which is the first place I've seen with good stuff. They mailed us a box of freebies, but I actually woulda bought most of the stuff they sent me (mugs with #include <beer.h> and some sweet perl shirts and other cool stuff). Most of the "Geek" sites just sell crap but most of this was actually clever. We probably should also note that Copyleft finally has the new Slashdot shirts from our contest winners, they look great. ralphb was the first to say that Time Digital has an article on Slashdot.

So I was looking for something new and different to do for this weekend's Ask Slashdot. Lo and behold mallocat submits a logic problem! "I wanted to try and use the Slashdot effect to attack this brainteaser. A couple of my friends and I each sepeartely solved it in about an hour..." that's the time to beat, but I'm giving you all till midnight Sunday to figure it out, and then I'll post the solution on Monday in forum. It's simple: First person to solve the problem (determined by timestamp of comment submission), with proof, wins. Winner gets a hearty, virtual slap on the back. I'd offer more, but since I have no budget, that makes it rather problematic. <grin!> So without further ado, click on that link!

Ralph Wiggam writes "A heartfelt, if somewhat sappy, article about the upcoming demise of Prodigy Classic. It gives credit to Prodigy for pioneering, or attempting to pioneer, things that history will probably not remember it for. Read the Time.com article here, and on October 1, pour some beer on the sidewalk for an old friend." Prodigy was my first online experience beyond local bulletin boards, back in 300 baud modem days. The original Prodigy was clunky as hell, but it was the first service to put "the masses" online. We knew the end was coming. Now we know exactly when. RIP Prodigy.

Monday a whole bunch of people had questions for Mandrake, one of the heavies behind Enlightenment. Slashdot Moderators picked the best ones. We forwarded them, unedited, to Mandrake on Tuesday. His (excellent) answers appear below.

The Ottawa Linux Symposium has come and gone. It was a superb, very technical, conference that was also a great social event. Dana has put up her pictures, and the lovely Alix has put up hers. Last but not least, Alan Cox has put up his large collection. Finally, I've included my report below.

Having finally flown back home, recovered from the gain/loss of sleep, time zones, and of course, the obligatory luggage being lost, we're trying to wrap-up the latest installment of LinuxWorld. If you are interested in some commentary and stories coming out of LWCE, click below.