Even more conferences: Free and Open Source Conference 3 is happening August 23-24, in Germany.  The call for papers is already out. (via Undeadly) Also, there will be a BSD booth at IT360, April 8-9 in Toronto. (via Dru Lavigne) Check Dru’s post for details on free admission. There will be a BSDA exam there, too.
The latest BSDTalk has an interview with Dan Langille, a driving force behind BSDCan and also the creator of the FreeBSD Diary, which is one of the things that inspired me to create this digest.
There’s a BSD convention in Barcelona, April 19th and 20th. If you want more information, it will help if you can read Spanish. As I’ve said before, the number of BSD conventions is growing. (via Planet FreeBSD)
Matthew Dillon recommended a specific way to Merge From Current.
You can never be too rich, too thin, or have too much RAM. However, this ‘Ramback‘ is an interesting idea for Linux I’d like to see more of. (Via the howling void) I’m a sucker for the idea of battery-backed RAM for storage.
Microsoft is running a program called “DreamSpark”, where students get Microsoft tools free to use in creating software for particular academic activities, as long as it’s non-commercial and student status can be verified.
That’s great – I’m not knocking the provision of software that’s normally too expensive to buy so that people can learn. However, I do want to contrast it against BSD (and Linux, too) – where all the development tools come with your free system, and have been doing so with BSD for 3 decades.
For additional snarkiness, compare the Microsoft terms of use and the BSD license.
Registration for BSDCan, happening in mid-May, is open, with prices in U.S. and Canadian dollars equal. Also, PGCon (for PostgreSQL) is happening in the same place, the next week. (Thanks, Undeadly)
I’ve placed a page on the wiki with some guidelines for students who want to work with DragonFly for Google’s SoC 2008. It’s on the wiki, so if you want to add something, please do.
Kris Kennaway did some benchmarks of FreeBSD 4 and 7 along with DragonFly 1.12. DragonFly is still mostly under the Giant Lock, so there’s unfortunately little scaling from multiple CPUs, as his benchmarks show.  (Thanks, Richard Toohey)
USENIX has made the records of all its proceedings public, meaning that a simple search can pick out details from the conferences since … 1975? Search for DragonFly, and you’ll see references popping up in the last few years. (Via Hubert Feyrer)
Dru Lavigne has completed the Spring08 BSDA DVD, which includes Free/Net/Open/DragonFly BSD and a pile of documents related to certification. It’s $40 – check her post for details.
zsh is one of those shells I hear people talk about but have never tried; if you’re in the same boat, I came across this “Get the most out of zsh” article at IBM’s developerWorks. (Via rootprompt.org)
Sascha Wildner has created the framework for something I’ve wanted for a long time: the DragonFly Live CD able to support X and various programs. His post mentions various uses for it; his diff has since been committed.
The latest @Play column on GameSetWatch describes Slash’EM, which is apparently a roguelike for people who find NetHack too simple. Nethack’s in pkgsrc, and I think Slashem should compile on DragonFly…
BSDTalk 143 is an interview with Deborah Norling, focusing on computer accessibility for the blind on BSD, and old computer equipment. It’s a very different interview from the normal technical overview. A choice quote: “We don’t have a [PDP] 11/70 cause they’re just too darn big”.
wiki.dragonflybsd.org has been updated by yours truly to 1.6.1 of MoinMoin; this should fix some reported errors with 1.6.0.
Peter Avalos has been working on CAM locking using lockmgr; he has a patch set available for anyone who wants in on the action.
Welcome our newest committer: Dave Hayes.  His first project will apparently be importing the BSD Installer.
If you’re willing to mentor a DragonFly project for Google Summer of Code, please speak up now, as the application is going in soon.