metatron

Yeah, I'm just bringing: Laptop GPS dongle Wireless cards + selection of antennas Ham Radio + TNC + bits and I usually travel with a lot of tech. I think its going to be 6 people at most and no one in their right mind drives into London.

I extend my reservation at the hotel for another night so I'll be about all day Friday, Saturday and I head home some when Sunday so I don't feel rushed at any point.

Yeah sounds good

Yeah I know what you mean, I try to make it to London 2600 when I can but Fridays are not a good day for me and I tend to get the last train home from London Victoria so its not always easy for me to stick around that long. Same for things like the hacker space meeting and DEFCON, they have them on work nights, no one seems to like meeting on a Saturday. I'm staying in a hotel on the Strand, like a 5 minute walk from the pub so I'll be about to the end, for next months. I'll do the OpenTech thing too, may as well

Linux is very much ready for the public in some uses, Netbooks being that use. Its a device which has limited use and is marketed as such, web, email and office applications on the go. The reason Netbook based distro's work is they don't have CD/DVD drives and the general public tend not to buy USB ones, this means they don't get pissed off trying to get their printer/scanner/web cam/ whatever working. I think a Netbook is seen more like a mobile phone, just more usable when it comes to web browsing and and working on files. You can also get support from the manufactures. On the desktop or real laptop, its not ready. You can not walk into a computer shop and pick up any piece of random tech or software and expect it to work under Linux and there is not really a big understandable market place for Linux software like you do with Windows and Apple. Someone can not walk into a PC shop and say I need some OCR software for my Linux PC. The software is about on the web and sure you can download some but most normal people want to walk into a shop, hand over some money and walk away with a CD that works. Linux on the server is better than Windows on a number of common tasks, the only one that comes to mind is as a web server. I have to say Exchange is a lot easier in ways than Sendmail and Postfix and does just as good a job for most company email tasks. Microsoft SharePoint is really a key feature now a days. Mac hardware is too expensive when it comes to servers and OSX really does not have a proven history when it comes to a server OS so will not become a server OS for mission critical tasks for DoD, medical and scientific projects where its more important that it works than risking it if it does not. UNIX is still flooring about in those markets but its a lot of old hardware a lot of stuff is moving servers over to Linux although only really Red Hat in any real numbers and desktops over to MacOS (it has a proven history as a desktop OS). Windows will remain the the OS of the people for a very long time with MacOS increasing its market share for the bulk of people in the World, I really don't see a time when Linux will ever become a real option for anything other than servers and hardware where you not planning to change a great deal. On a side note Windows, Linux and OSX should never be used on embeded hardware, QNX and VxWorks is where its at. I could list more but those are the key two.

Okay, so my schedule has been hectic to say the least as of late so I've really not been reading or able to to help. Anyway as I already had the Friday booked off for this, I've booked a hotel for myself for the 3/7/09, so the first Friday of next month as I didn't see anything concrete happening. I'll be about all day Friday and hitting 2600 in the evening and I was thinking about going to Open Tech on the Saturday, although I'm not sure about Open Tech as they seem like a load of tree hugging hippies, although it might be fun asking needlessly complicated questions to the speakers and watching them squirming. I'll be about if people want to grab something to eat, talk shit, have a few beers and play with electronic toys.

I've been going the last 10 years, but I really don't attend anything or really do that much other than drink with people I know any more, so this year I'm giving it a miss as I'm going to attend HAR and ToorCamp instead as they seem more interesting.

Its cheaper to just buy a used IPcam of ebay.

So you want a repeater?

Mechanical engineering is worth finishing and getting a masters/PhD in as its very useful and is very much about tinkering and taking apart and trying to put things back together, but you are at college and as such they have to teach you the fundamentals and maths is a massive part of any engineering degree. Every degree has to meet guide lines. I was talking to someone the other day that was doing a degree in Circus and Preforming arts and even that has paperwork. Any IT related degree is largely going to be programming, a little maths, some networking and other general stuff everyone knows. Programming tends to be the big part and its boring as hell, its all knocking out shitty Java, C# and C++. Any IT degree is a waste of time if you can get an engineering degree as every man and his dog has a programming/computer science/ BS computer degree and the jobs are largely boring and low paying when compared to engineering. The only degrees worth doing are mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, mathematics and/or physics if your willing to do a PhD and a medical degree.

How so?. If all life was wiped out in say Africa, it would not matter to us besides fewer diamonds, oil, some fruits and a few other bits. We would soon find a new source or just go over there and get it ourself. Africa is not really much of a player in the world market outside of some natural materials, which could be found elsewhere if needed. The place just needs to be left alone for a long time, let them kill each other off until someone comes into power that has a clue. Look at Robert Mugabe, he turned what was know as the bread basket of Africa, due to its land and farming, into a shit hole where people are dyeing of starvation. I really don't think farming as some people on here have said will help as they know how to do it well. Its bad leadership, which can only be resolved through wars that will at somepoint lead to one person or group of people that control an area where both food and materials can be in massive supplies, plus wiping out a seizable number of people allowing for less demand on resources. I think China is a good example for what Africa could become, in a hundred or so years.

Have to agree, after decades of huge amounts of money, equipment and people trying to help, you still see no foreseeable end to issues out there. Most money is wasted, equipment left to rust and people stay as long as it take for them to feel better about themselves. Africa should be left alone with no help what so ever, no one of any intelligence should be given visas to work outside to stop the brain drain, from other countries taking their doctors/professionals and intelligent people. Every country have had a time where we were a third world country, but you pull yourself out of it over hundreds of years or your people die off and the world is a better place for it.

Just got shot of mine to a friend, including a ID printer and other random ID creation products and chemicals. Just thining my shit down, tech wise I only own a Mac Book Pro, iMac and D90. I'm out the game and washing my hands of it.

I just don't like companies that go that far out there way to lock down their hardware. Plus from a hardware design standpoint they really did a piss poor job, although the developer one they put out with the USB port had some interesting things you could get it to do. I like the routerboard stuff if your into a build it yourself, but I tend to buy stuff from Ubiquiti Networks as they make the best AP on the market that are super moddable and are fairly priced.

I'll give it untill this Friday to make sure the date sticks and if it stands I'll book the Friday off and clear that weekend.

Ebay tends to be the cheapest place to buy them. Although your mainly find the 13.56MHz stuff, a little bit of 125KHz, your be hard pushed getting cheap 900MHz stuff on there but other than that their good, on a plus side most give you some VB code and tags with them and there cheap enough to take a soldering iron to and add a custom antenna if that's your bag. I'm in the process of becoming less of a tech person as I find it a bit boring, so I may stick some of my shit on ebay at some point.

So from the above posts are we saying the first week of July in London? 03/07/09 to 05/07/09

I'm fairly unwilling to go any more north than Birmingham, other than that everything else is good.

NOD32 is not expensive and is far better all round than other AV I've tried. I think I paid £60 for three years which is a fair price for the time they put in.

HAR2009 is a matter of a flight to Amsterdam and an hours train ride I believe, although you will also need to make your way from the train station so a taxi as well. I know a few people that are just driving, but yeah its not the easiest place to get to. There has been a few attempts at a UK based con but each time people try and find sponsorship to cut ticket costs and they don't find enough, so they end up wanting BlackHat style prices for something that is untested and has content no where near as good. So they don't sell many tickets and they get canceled. I see the issue as being no one is willing to front the money. If you could get 20 people to stump up £1000 for seed money I'm sure you could put something cool together but I don't see that happening as look at the London Hacker space planning, a few people are only giving a hundred quid at most and loaning a little bit of money, you would need £80 a month from everyone just to make it even worth while once its set up and you need at least 10k to get it off the ground and have a small back up fund. People just don't want it enough or believe in it.

Both phone companies have the capabilities to do deep packet inspection across all data connections so if they see it becoming a problem or you start going over 5GB or whatever the set number is, they can and will go after you for the money.

Yeah defcon can be fun but a little expensive now that the pound is shit, although HAR2009 is a little closer to home and I'm sure will be just as fun. If you go to Mexico and an drunk American asks you do go to a donkey show, just say no. Trust me on this one.

Yeah thought the whole coin thing was this thing. Life is a little crazy at the moment so as soon as everyone works out a date, I'll book the Friday off which will not be a problem. International cons have gone out the window this year as they require me to take at least 4 days off which is just not going to happen, even if I'm out there for work.

Whenever is fine by me. Cybereagle's company has access or did have access to a bunker. I think you can only go to Toorcamp if you went to Toorcon last year as its a first try, so I'm guessing not many UK guys are going unless they are talking.