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Defcon X - Live in Las Vegas

Posted by timothy on from the land-of-the-free dept.

Navisto writes: "DEFCON X gathering has begun in Las Vegas already as everyone begins to prepare for the start of Friday's event at the Alexis Park. The hacking convention is in its' 10th year and this is said to be the largest yet. This year there are dozens of speeches happening ranging from wireless, .Net security all the way to Mac OS X AppleScript security issues and hacks. Gathering in Las Vegas brings all the hackers together. This year the official events of Defcon include DC Shoot, Capture the Flag,Hacker Jeopardy, Scavenger Hunt, and this year's first WarDriving Contest. When Live Streams are activated the information will be posted on defcon.org and on the Defcon Forums... PS - E-Mail the Alexis Park letting them know their site isn't cross-browser compatible. Not everyone uses IE and NS ;)"

4 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. Will Malcom X be there? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    I'm a big fan of his work in Revenge of the Nerds 3.

  2. *BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    It is official; Netcraft confirms: *BSD is dying

    One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

    You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

    FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

    Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

    OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

    Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

    All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

    Fact: *BSD is dying

  3. Why is everything "X"? This sucks. by User+956 · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Why does everything have to be "X"? Why can't they just use the number 10?

    We have "Generation X",
    "OS X"
    the "X BOX"
    the "X Games"
    the movie "Jason X"
    the movie "Triple X".

    Cut the marketing crap. Using the roman numeral "X" doesn't make anything more cool or "hip", it just makes it seem tired, rehashed, and derivative.

    Maybe they'll even advertise it as "Defcon: eXtreme"! I can hardly wait to see!

    --
    The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
  4. The Hypocrisy of /. Regarding MS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    Listen, this has been bothering me for a while. Now, as we all know, most of the people who frequent this site are Libertarians (except for a few socialists - Go back to France!,) which is a fine and noble lifestyle. The problem is that they throw their ideals out the window (bad pun) with any issue concerning Microsoft.

    What exactly do I mean by this? It's easy to see. Any time there is a story about Microsoft, there are 300 posts crying for the government to step in and break MS into two companies, force them to open their code, etc. Excuse me folks, but having the government interfere with the economy is not capitalism. It's communism. I don't want this great nation to end up like Russia, ok?

    Another thing that pisses me off: anytime there is a circle-jerk discussion about Mozilla, people whine and bitch about how Internet Explorer doesn't conform to W3C standards, and how unfair it is. Well guess what? We don't need the W3C (government-wannabe of the Internet) forcing companies to do things. The market has decided - Internet Explorer is the standard. That's how the "Invisible Hand of John Smith" works. If you want to gain market share, follow IE's lead. Otherwise, go back to Cuba or China you commie bastards.

    BTW, if this gets modded down, you can bet the Liberals are out in force modding down all non-group-think. Fuck You!