H2K2 Conference

2600's Macki writes in to remind me and everyone else that H2K2 is coming up shortly, with pre-registration closing on Friday. The conference will be July 12-14 in New York City, in the exciting yet inexpensive Hotel Pennsylvania. I could only make the HOPE 2000 conference for one day, but it was quite interesting and it looks like audio from most of the panels is available, or just check out the list of panels for 2002 to see if it looks intriguing to you. And if you read Slashdot, the answer to that is probably "yes".

Comments

hotel Pennsylvania

[Triv]

great hotel. Two interesting points:

You know the old song "Pennsylvania six-five-thousand?" It's about that hotel - I'm pretty sure their phone number's still 212-???-6500

Secondly, there's an (admittedly tiny and expensive) electronics store in the lobby. Perfect for this sort of convention.

Oh, and try the chocolate covered strawberries in the hotel restaurant. It's been awhile, but they were wonderful.

Enjoy!

Triv

Re:hotel Pennsylvania

[A. Brate]

As Triv said, the number for the Hotel Pennsylvania is 212 736 5000.

Or PEnnsylvania-six-five-thousand.

This is further explained at X is for Xchange, which relates that the original setup was three-letter/four digit; that is, PENnsylvania-five-thousand.

Glenn Miller (who got on a stamp) finally found continuous success after years of struggle when he formed the Glenn Miller Orchestra to play at the Cafe Rouge [realaudio] in the Hotel Pennsylvania in 1938. I believe this year H2K2 will be using the Cafe Rouge space.

The Glenn Miller song PEnnsylvania-6-5000 (in which the only lyrics were the band shouting "Pennsylvania Six Five-Oh-Oh-Oh"--the Brian Setzer orchestra later recorded the song with fuller lyrics) was one of his band's first major hits. He disbanded the orchestra in 1942 to form a band for the US Air Force troops for World War II. His plane was lost at sea on December 14, 1944.

As The Telephone EXchange Name Project explains, both PEnnsylvania-6-5000 and the John O'Hara novel/Liz Taylor movie BUtterfield 8 (which garnered her a Best Actress Oscar) are named after telephone exchanges. In Butterfield 8, Taylor plays a call girl reachable at that number (the movie poster is especially evocative).

--Adam Brate

Deagles...

[fluxrad]

You can meet all the chicks you want...
which you will neeverrr lay...

We hackin' shit up in the Hotel Pennsylvania...

Such a lovely place,
But no clothing taste...

There's many a room at the Hotel Pennsylvania...

Bring your alibi,
for porn and KY...

Almost

[Triv]

eh. close enough. It's 212 736 5000.

Triv

H2K2

[bellings]

Since there isn't the normal quote marks and italics, I am assuming Micheal wrote this entire article, all by himself.

Would it have been possible to tell us what H2K2 is somewhere in the body of the article? Could you at least have written something like "H2K2 is 2600 magazine's fourth 'Hackers On Planet Earth' conference."

Adding even the most basic description wouldn't have been hard, and it would have saved the trouble of clicking the link and overloading 2600's poor server. 'Cuz, this ain't intriguing to me. And I'm not sure why I read slashdot.

H2K2 from Boston to NYC. HACKER BUS. $20

[outz]

I do not live in the Boston area, but here are some local nerds whom are trying to get 20 - 40 people together to rent a bus and go.. saves you the trouble of parking etc.

http://www.cow.net/hackerbus/

Registration fee...

[psyconaut]

...is $50? I nearly fell off my chair. I guess I was used to conferences in the dot-com boom era and paying $2600 (haha...pun intended) for a 3-day conference.

Seriously contemplating going...if only to do some WiFI war-walking.

-psyconaut

HOPE fun

[A. Brate]

I've been to the last two HOPEs (Beyond HOPE and H2K) and let me tell you that they're a blast.

Beyond HOPE was held in the beautiful Puck Building, was much larger than HOPE, and left 2600's finances in utter disarray. The intended hookup with HIP didn't get past the one guy who had a blinkenlight that people in Holland could control. Which was still pretty cool. We got to go for free to a show at the lost-but-not-forgotten Coney Island High on St. Mark's Place in the East Village, and to the Hell's Kitchen club the Octagon. I still have vivid memories of Cap'n Crunch working the dance floor. Much too vivid. Red Balaclava's discussion of the Metrocard made the front page of the New York Times. The social engineering panel was a great success, including a brilliant hack of the Astor Place K-Mart. The Beyond HOPE bumper sticker was a brilliant parody of the NYNEX logo, cut and colored to fit exactly over telephone booth signs...if one so desired.

H2K, in Hotel Pennsylvania, bumped up the price from $20 to $40 (so the $50 raise is quite reasonable, though I agree it's depressing). It was a madhouse. There was an entire room of dumb terminals glowing orange in the dark, kiddies poking and prodding through everything, some launching genetic algorithms to fork-spawn-kill the network. The best panel, by far, was from the Dutch lockpickers, who will be returning to H2K2. The CDC's presentation was beyond silly. Highly entertaining but genuinely incomprehensible. RMS even made a stealth appearance.

I'm going to be helping set up H2K2 and will be shilling my new book Technomanifestos shamelessly, with a nice 57" LED display I picked up recently and will probably try to raffle off.

The other event that weekend which is a must is the art-happening/rave-to-end-all-raves out in Long Island City in Queens, in 90,000! sq.ft. of an abandoned power plant...two thousand two--note it's damn cheap for that kind of event.

All in all, it promises to be an excellent weekend. New York City is just about all it's cracked up to be...I mean hacked up.

--Adam Brate (ab@adambrate.com)