Linux Users of Victoria, Inc.

Talks:

• The World's Worst Inventions — Paul Fenwick
• Linux Networking Research Roundup — Julien Goodwin

The World's Worst Inventions — Paul Fenwick

Technology advances through the creation of new inventions. Devices, protocols, machines, and ideas all increase the breadth of human knowledge, and make life easier for us all… At least in theory.

In reality, the advance of progress is littered with bad ideas. A profound lack of foresight, thinking, or just plain common sense has left us with countless artefacts of mis-design. What’s worse, we often build upon such twisted horrors in the creation of new technology.

Leeches that predict the weather, fire alarms that trap their users, poorly thought-out medicines, toys which irradiate, mangle, or intoxicate their users, and a bizarre array of poorly conceived ideas are just a few of the inventions that litter the otherwise noble pursuit of applied science.

Join internationally acclaimed speaker Paul Fenwick as we examine some of the worst design decisions ever made.

Paul Fenwick is the managing director of Perl Training Australia, and has been teaching computer science for over a decade. He is an internationally acclaimed presenter at conferences and user-groups worldwide, where he is well-known for his humour and off-beat topics.

In his spare time, Paul’s interests include security, mycology, cycling, coffee, scuba diving, and lexically scoped user pragmata.

Linux Networking Research Roundup — Julien Goodwin

There are all sorts of interesting research projects in the networking space, the majority based on Linux. This talk will cover many of the projects, like OpenVSwitch & OpenFlow, as well as more abstract topics like "Bufferbloat".

Julien has long been involved with the Open Source community in Australia, and has spoken at conferences on topics such as System Administration and VoIP Security.