Archive for April, 2006
If you see a flashing George W. Bush icon behind the HOPE logo on the main 2600 page that means you can win a pair of free HOPE tickets by figuring something out before anyone else does. What exactly does this mean? Well, we can’t tell you too much but since this is the first time we’ve done this, we’ll give you a couple of hints. It’s something from the brand new issue (Spring 2006) now in stores and subscriber hands. And no, it’s not the puzzle.
April 27th, 2006
We’re thrilled to announce that free software movement/GNU project founder Richard Stallman will be giving the Friday keynote at HOPE Number Six, scheduled for July 21-23 at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City. To register for the conference, head over to our registration page.
In addition to Stallman, an ever-growing list of speakers is being compiled with a very wide range of subject matter. As always, we will do our best to cram it all into the three days that we have.
If you have a talk you’d like to give, are interested in assembling a panel of speakers, or know of someone who we really should get, send an email over to speakers@2600.com. The deadline for speaker submissions is May 15 but the earlier we hear from you the better. In order to improve your chances of being accepted, go into as much detail as you can about what you would like to speak about, how your talk will be of interest to our attendees, and something about yourself that tells us why you would be a good person to give this presentation.
Here’s a sampling of some of the talks we’re already working with:
Friday Keynote: Richard Stallman
Privacy Through Technology Hands On
Pirate Radio
Vulnerabilities in a Connected Future:
Dangers with Smarthomes, Smartcars, IPv6, and Biometrics
Network Monitoring and the Law
Weird Technology
Exploring Dusty Corners of the Web
Hackers in Prison
Alienation and Engagement
Law Enforcement Wiretaps: Background and Vulnerabilities
Making an Underground Documentary and Dealing with Large Corporations
TrackSploits
Hacking the Physical World
2600 Meetings: A Valuable Resource or a Waste of Time?
How to Manage Your Company’s Data
Consumer Electronics Hacking
Miscellaneous Phone Phreaking Talk
Wireless Security Flaws
RFID Privacy - Old Threats and New Attacks
The Life and Times of Alan Turing, Father of the Computer
Pro-actively Secure Programming Techniques
Quantum Cryptography/Computation
MD5Lookup
Hijacking the Air: Acoustic Keylogging
Again, this is just the beginning. More topics will be posted soon. The deadline for submitting your proposals is May 15.
April 22nd, 2006
We’ve got some interesting things happening in the Networking area. One of the topics of big discussion, the uplink, might be fixed firehose-style, but I don’t want to go talking any more about it until we have that all worked out. Longtime supporter NAC is offering to push as many bits as we can hand them; the issue is the actual layer-1 connection.
Wireless this year of course is handled by Dragorn, known best for his work on Kismet. Last year, with the help of almost a dozen people, we built the APs out of micro atx boards, 1U power supplies, pcmcia bridges, duct tape, and bailing wire. This year, they’re real enterprise access points from Aruba, which dragorn is writing the software for.
Other network folk are talking about and working on voip, video streaming, and of course the public terminal cluster. We’ll be needing volunteers to help staff the NOC and PTC. In fact, we still need volunteers for a lot of places. AV/Stage Management comes to mind, that’s actually one of the best places to directly impact the quality of the conference. Those guys get a lot of credit. Anyone wanting to help out for any department should drop a line to volunteers@2600.com.
April 21st, 2006
One thing that folks are curious about is where they can stay during the HOPE conference. There are a number of options.
The most obvious place is, of course, the Hotel Pennsylvania, home to the HOPE conference and to one of the most famous phone numbers in the world. A block of rooms is reserved for HOPE Number Six attendees at the rate of $145 per night. These rooms (unlike most of the others in the hotel) have in-room Ethernet ports for accessing the Internet. To reserve, call that famous phone number — PEnnsylvania 6-5000 (if you live in an area with modern telephones, it’s +1 (212) 736-5000) — and ask for the HOPE Number Six conference rate.
If you don’t want to stay at the Hotel Pennsylvania for whatever reason, two other hotels, each located just a couple of blocks away, are now also offering special discount rates for HOPE attendees.
The Hotel Wolcott is offering a rate of $150 weekend / $130 midweek. To reserve, visit their website, click on “Corporate Reservations”, and enter the password 2600.
The New Yorker Hotel is offering a rate of $142 per night. To reserve, visit their special HOPE Number Six reservations page.
Of course, if none of these options is to your liking, there are lots of other places to stay in New York City. We’re collecting information about many of these places (including some very inexpensive youth hostel options) in the Where to stay section of the wiki. Be sure also to add any information you find which isn’t already there!
April 19th, 2006
The speaker submission list has broken just about 100 posts in just three weeks. We’ve got offers of participation from all kinds of people on all kinds of things including… the current topics like RFID, the surprisingly-relevant 802.11 (with new implications), the old favorites about intelligence and urban spelunking, social talks a-la “hack the media,” and, out of left field, a talk on the history of Alan Turing.
Submissions still come in daily, and while we haven’t actually started to officially schedule the talks for day/time/location, it’s looking like our slate will again be full.
What I want to see more of is ideas for the 2nd floor, our village of the electric. We have lots planned, but not a huge amount of projects from outsiders. The Call for Participation is still open; if you have an artsy/geeky friend with an idea or an axe to grind, you may have some ideas. I’ve got an idea I’m going to try make reality.
April 16th, 2006
Welcome to the HOPE Number Six blog.
We’ll be updating this with news about the conference as we get it — accepted speakers, new cool stuff for the second floor, travel deals, updates on the conference network, or whatever else happens that we think you might want to know about.
As they say, be sure to watch this space.
April 12th, 2006