FSCONS 2011

Monday, November 14, 2011

I just got back from FSCONS 2011 late yesterday. FSCONS is such a cool conference since it combines both technical, social and political issues. For instance, during Saturday’s social event I discussed (among many other things) Free Software in education, the problems with privatisation of the public sector in Nordic countries, instruction sets of different processor types, if what the “Anonymous” group is doing is an effective and justified method of activism, and how the cryptography in the PS3 hardware was cracked.

I’m not going to mention all the talks that I liked, because that will be such a long list. I’ll just highlight Smári McCarthy’s talk about how cryptocurrencies (read Bitcoin) are at odds with taxation and current welfare systems. That was a very interesting topic that led to interesting discussions, and it also highlights the convergence of the technical and societal themes of the conference.

Even though Richard Stallman didn’t say anything I haven’t heard before (I’ve seen many videos of his talks on the web), it was still fun to see the closest there is to a “rock star” in the Free Software movement. Also, he signed my copy of his book :)

I took a few very shoddy photos as well.