Kevin O'Brien

Author's posts

Penguicon 2016 Report

As in previous posts on this topic, I want to emphasize that this is not a review of the entire range of Penguicon, but simply a report on what I did and the panels and presentations I attended. Since I was responsible for the Tech Track, you shouldn’t be surprised to find that most of …

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Penguicon 2015 Report

Penguicon 2015 was a great success, and far more happened than I could have been part of. We had about 500 hours of programming, and even my track, the Tech Track, had 100 hours of content. So this report is my own diary of my particular experience of Penguicon 2015. Each person would have their …

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Penguicon 2015 Call for Talks

I am the coordinator for the Tech Track at Penguicon 2015, which is a combined FOSS/Science Fiction convention held every spring in the Metro-Detroit area. The 2015 event will happen April 24-26 at the Westin Hotel in Southfield, MI. The theme for the upcoming year’s event is Biotechnology and Medicine, looking at how technology is …

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Penguicon 2014

I have recovered from the weekend and this seems like a good time to recap my own experience of Penguicon 2014, my first as part of the team. I had been associated with Ohio Linux Fest for a few years, but Penguicon actually came first. In fact, I was recruited for OLF by Beth Lynn …

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Turning Off Comments

I wish this was not necessary, but the fact is that virtually all of the comments that people attempt to post on my site are spam. I was manually moderating, but it seems like a waste of time at this point. If you are  a real person you can probably figure out how to reach …

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Statistics and Polling

This is a bit of a change of pace, but I got some inquiries about this and thought I would offer my own two cents on something that often confuses people. My qualifications for this are two-fold: In my past life I was a professor who taught classes in Statistics; I have worked for a …

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Review of Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security In An Uncertain World

Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly about Security in an Uncertain World by Bruce Schneier My rating: 5 of 5 stars Bruce wrote this book in 2003 as a response to 9/11 and how it lead to changes in security practices in the U.S. He criticizes many of the security measures taken as “security theater” that makes …

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Review of The Code Book

The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography by Simon Singh My rating: 5 of 5 stars This book is a very good review of the history on encryption and explains the basic principles involved. It is a lot like David Kahn’s The Code Breakers, but is available for a …

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Review of The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal

The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal by M. Mitchell Waldrop My rating: 5 of 5 stars Having just read Katie Hafner’s Where Wizard’s Stay Up Late I was ready to tackle this book, which is both deeper and more ambitious. Where Hafner’s book was purely about the origin of …

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Review of Where Wizards Stay Up Late

Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet by Katie Hafner My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is a classic book that sat on my shelf for a while and I just decided to pick it up and read. It was very rewarding. It tells the story of how the Internet came …

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