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Fifth HOPE Conference Underway
The Fifth HOPE conference is starting today at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City. If you haven't heard of it, read through their website or see our report on the last conference to get some idea. The lockpicking talk is scheduled for Saturday morning, and Kevin Mitnick, Steve Wozniak, and Jello Biafra will all be speaking. Well worth your time and the $50 admission fee, so if you're in the Big Apple, come on down.
now call the FBI, we have all the h@x||'s in one place, get those terrorists.
To smack Kevin Mitnick? I know a lot of people that would like the opportunity to pop this attention whore that was trashed the name "Hacker". We could donate the revenue to the EFF to help support the fight for real hackers, not criminal posuer jerks.
Cool, so I don't have to worry about locking myself out of the car if I go :D
Wow i wish I was there instead I am a slave stuck behind this damm keyboard. But when the FBi raids the place for everyone in there being a terrorist and they all end up in jail being held without a trial for supporting terrorist. I am sure HOPE also violates the DMCA in some way or another!!!
They'll have most of the first and second streams recorded and put online so if you can't make it, check back in a week or so and you can listen them.
Pennsylvania Six Five Thousand.
...for various things. Whew, those stats are moving up fast...
The Army reading list
I understand you geeks may not be into punk rock. I'm here to help.
Jello Biafra (real name: Eric Boucher; born June 17, 1958, Boulder, Colorado) was the lead singer for the Dead Kennedys, a punk rock band.
Biafra has used absurdist media tactics in the tradition of the Yippies to highlight issues of civil rights, social justice, and anti-corporatism.
In 1979 he ran for mayor of San Francisco using the slogan borrowed from a Jello ad campaign, "There's always room for Jello". His platform included such ridiculous points as forcing businessmen to wear clown suits. He finished fourth out of 10, gaining 3.5% of the vote, and the election was resolved in a runoff that did not involve him. Also in 1979 Jello formed the label alternative tentacles (http://www.alternativetentacles.com/)
Biafra was a swift critic of the Parents Music Resource Center, and has constantly criticised co-founder Tipper Gore.
In 1985, Biafra was brought to trial in San Francisco for distributing "harmful matter" in the Dead Kennedys album Frankenchrist. The jury was deadlocked, the judge declared a mistrial and ordered the charges dropped. The band broke up during the trial, but Biafra has since become a renowned "Spoken Word" artist, and an icon for anti-censorship groups.
He has released several spoken-word albums, including No More Cocoons, and is the lead singer of the band Lard, which has released several albums (The Power of Lard, The Last Temptation of Reid, Pure Chewing Satisfaction, and more).
He coined the slogan "Don't hate the media, become the media". Indymedia and related alternative media often use this line, or the now more apt "Don't hate the media, be the media".
In the year 2000, Biafra was drafted as a candidate for the Green Party presidential nomination, and a few supporters were elected to the party's nominating convention in Denver, Colorado. However, Ralph Nader was overwhelmingly chosen as the party's candidate.
Of note: Biafra was the name of a country which attempted to secede from Nigeria in 1966. After 4 years of fighting, and horrific starvation, Nigeria regained control of the nascent Biafran state. Jello Biafra came up with his name as a combination of a violent civil war and a consumer product.
Jello was featured and has spoken at many of the H.O.P.E. confrences(audio is freely available of these apearances)
(Taken from Wikipedia)
Who the wants to pay to go to NYC, and get harassed by facist policemen searching for bin Laden in every subway car ?
If I were holding a conference like this, I'd find some depressed mid-western or just rural city that is cheap as shit and as easy as possible to get to. A small college town might do; it would have to be close enough to an airport serviced by Southwestern for cheap flights, that you could run a shuttle van back and forth to get people to it.
For the venue, I would find an empty department store or closed factory that could be rented for a month or a couple of weeks.
Finally, you have to be close to a Motel 6 and within driving distance of cheap-ass RV parks.
With that setup, you could run a slightly longer conference and do some more interesting things. Like a "best mod to bzFlag written in 48 hours" contest. Or whatever.
I guess elite pretenious snobs wouldn't show up, though. Probably no Mitnick or Jello. I wouldn't miss them.
From http://store.2600.com/2600hacker/
FIFTH HOPE TICKETS
NO LONGER AVAILABLE HERE!
Preregistration has CLOSED.
You can get tickets to the conference at the door.
On the other hand, maybe this is their idea of screening the attendees to weed out the chaff from the uber haxx0rs.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
http://fifthhope.blogspot.com/
We are taking photos at the event and will post asap.
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
But on the other side, I wonder where is now and for them the border of what is allowed and what is not. Is this "hackers" ethics they define something too murky or it is non-existing at all? How do we prevent the "proceedings" about the "Distributed Password Cracking API" from their conference not going to the hands of terrorists whose next attempt will be to log-on to an airtraffic server? So, where is the balance?
And last, I had a look at their schedule - they have a talk "How to talk to the press". Isn't this is the same old rotten smell of socialism (greenpeace)? Next is to teach them how to lay in front of trains...
I'm guessing it's a reference to Orwell and 1984. They were in a state of perpetual war against "Eurasia" or whoever. The point was that a state of perpetual conflict kept the populace malleable and obedient.
Now, note that the banner doesn't say "Eurasia", it says "Eurabia". This is probably a dig at the current conflict we are being distracted by.
Just my thoughts.
Mitch
Jello's talks usually focus on 'media hacking,' meaning that one becomes a source of media to introduce non-mainstream ideas to the public. His ideas on this topic are still releevant, especially today when US media consumers are all being fed from the same spoon.
I'm starting to get really disturbed by the politics going on right now.
There's nothing wrong with questioning your government. When you start blindly protesting every single action of the government, I think it's time to take a step back and get a little perspective on things.
I'm starting to think twice about going to HOPE next month. Last time I went (2002) it was *incredibly* political. Jello Biafra gave a talk, and said a bunch of things about the "Bush conspiracy"--stuff that was easily debunked as bullshit on snopes.com--but everyone there just ate it up like it was hard fact. Random people would yell out "Bush sucks!" and everyone would laugh like it was the funniest shit in the world.
I've never seen a better example of herd mentality in my life. This is free thinking?
This was before the war, and before I gave a shit one way or the other about Bush and his policies, and I was probably more than likely to say "fuck Bush" based on what I knew about him at the time... and I still remember looking around and thinking these were a bunch of anarchist-wannabe children (many of whom were well past childhood.)
This was supposed to be a gathering of free-thinking people... individuals. Instead, it was a bunch of scene whores trying to act cool in front of "all the other hackers"... spouting ill-informed mass-media opinions without any actual information to back it up. And then they have the nerve to talk about how fucked up the media is. Hah. I'd feel different if I had seen anything but eagerly nodding heads slack-jawed idiots drinking up the bullshit like it was gospel.
I donno, I'd like to go to HOPE, it'd be fun in some ways... but I just cringe every time I think of the immature shit that Emannuel used to spout on his radio show, and I can only imagine how much more political HOPE will be with the current assault on Bush. Something tells me I won't really enjoy myself too much there.
I bet money that they show Fahrenheit 911 in the screening room and spend endless hours spouting mindless propaganda. And no, I'm not trolling. I'm not even a republican. I just hate people who don't think things through for themselves.
Don't forget that he also stated many times that he was glad the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded. He said it was a good thing and that their deaths were worth it because he was convinced that the Cassini space probe (now orbiting Saturn) might have released plutonium into the atmosphere if it had been on board.
Too bad for the families of the astronauts that he was able to seperate his politics from his humanity
"If you meet Jen Savage tell her I said "Hi!"
I said hi to her for ya. She said she hopes you leave your house one day.
"Derp de derp."
I have had the misfortune of working with several members of 2600, including their leader Emmanuel Goldstein (Eric Corley). From my experience with them, they are full of self importance, and, a lot of the times ignorance. For the most part, you do not want to argue with them, because they are so stubborn, and, they feel they are the pinnacle of technical knowlege. Even if you tried arguing that 1+1=2, when they say 1+1=3, there is no way to win.
I could go on and on, however, this probably will be modded into oblivion, so, there really is no point.
The lockpicking talk is scheduled for Saturday morning
The lockpicking talk is given by Matt Blaze. I was lucky to attend his talk at my university. The paper he presented is avalable here.
Not only was his talk educational, it was very entertaining. He actually brough some "tools of trade", and had an interactive demonstration of master key picking. It was fun.
His ideas on this topic are still releevant, especially today when US media consumers are all being fed from the same spoon.
So as an alternative, we feed everyone else from another spoon, on the Michael Moore conspiracy theorist axis?
Someone else here wrote up a good analysis of the last HOPE, and I agree; he doesn't teach anyone to "think for themselves" unless that means thinking the same as him. He has a view that anyone opposed to him is a "Bush lackey" or "henchman of the right" or whatever (implying that everyone on the right is evil, which holds about as much water as saying every liberal is a communist).
Like that guy said, when you start reflexively protesting every movement by the government, you've got issues. Biafra doesn't do anything to open a dialogue with the people across the aisle, to try to convince them of his views; instead he spits venom at them, labels them as categorically evil, turns his back and lets the exhortations of the choir to whom he preaches refuel his low self-esteem.
B
"I'm payin' taxes, but what am I buyin'?" -- James Brown
There is no spoon ;) Sorry I couldn't resist.
No, it's not a question of "You must feed at the teet of ONE OF THESE TWO:
- Corporate Media
- Jello Biafra"
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying, look at any corporate media outlet, and many are fed from the same source. I said NOTHING about Michael Moore, or the government, or Bush, or ANYTHING ELSE!
What I am saying is: There are issues that go unaddressed by corporate media. There are viewpoints that are somehow not covered by corporate media. One point JB is trying to make is this:
BECOME THE MEDIA.
It is up to anyone that chooses to undergo that endeavor to bring to light anything they want. They could be completely FOR the current administration, that's fair.
In other words, if you have something to say, SAY IT ALREADY!
That is all. Sheesh, just because you have an inferiority complex about being on the right, doesn't mean that everyone not on the right is wrong!
I agree with GAMMAH DJ. People like Jello Biafra and Michael Moore aren't trying to impose their beliefs on you but make you think about ideas. They at least have the balls to stand up for what they believe in - something that a lot of people can't do. You could always be like Britney Spears (and sadly a lot of americans I would assume) and blindly follow and trust your president no matter what he does...hmmm, I believe the Nazis blindly followed and trusted their leader during WWII...
Fahrenheit 9/11 Review
I paid my $6.50 and saw the film. The above is my full review.
----------------
The next conspiracy theory deals with the Bin Laden family. Moore pretends this is new information yet this was revealed long ago. The Bush administration has a relationship with the Bin Laden family. They're very wealthy oil tycoons. But they don't have much of a relationship with their son, Osama. On September 13th they were flown out of the country. What he fails to mention is that the flight restrictions were being lifted on the 13th. The reason they were flown out was because they were being harassed. Moore spends a great deal of time showing old cop films about interrogating witnesses. What Moore fails to consider is that while the Bin Laden family was flown out of the country for their own safety, they were not necessarily out of contact with the White House. In fact he doesn't even ask the question "has the Bush administration talked to them?" He never bothers to find out whether or not the Bush Administration is still in contact with the Bin Laden family. If Bush is trying to protect Osama somehow then it's pretty odd that the first official reports blame him and a war is started against him and his organization within two months. The other important point that Moore doesn't bother to consider is that it was not Bush that authorized the Bin Laden's to leave the country but Richard Clarke. On May 26, 2004 Clarke told The Hill newspaper:
"I take responsibility for it. I don't think it was a mistake, and I'd do it again."
...
"It didn't get any higher than me," he said. "On 9-11, 9-12 and 9-13, many things didn't get any higher than me. I decided it in consultation with the FBI."
http://www.hillnews.com/news/052604/clarke.aspx
I guess we can excuse Moore's ignorance on the issue since Richard Clarke came clean on it most likely after Moore had finished editing his film and history. What Moore also failed to consider is that fact that the Bin Laden family was actually talked to. But that's very inconvenient for Moore since those old cop movie clips provided a bit of humor for his farce.
------------
The FBI did actually talk to the Bin Laden family and then said it was okay to let them leave. Clarke then authorized their flights out. Whether or not the Bush Administration is still in contact with them (very likely) is never considered by Moore. That on top of the fact Moore never bothered to find out who actually let them leave the country or why.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Nah. The astronauts were intact when they hit the water (probably unconscious, possibly dead), but intact, and yet this mythical, nonexistent plutonium (in a sturdy shielded capsule) would have miraculously disintegrated and somehow, magically covered the whole of florida? Sorry. Ain't gonna happen.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Yeah, I'm seriously wondering about the advisability of attending a conference like this, at a time when the gov't says it desperately needs the ability to get people's reading lists without a warrant. 'Evil Hackers' seem to be equated with terrorism, and we all know from the movies how '3vil' all hackers are...
I've been thinking about going to one of these things, but decided not to because I'm afraid of what consequences there could be for me as a foreigner to be seen attending. Who knows what INS/FBI/HomeSec might think?
Seriously, how much surveillance do you think the gov. puts on these conventions? I'd assume everyone in attendence would get a mark on their FBI files for 'participating in a terrorist organization' or something. That is assuming one doesn't get arrested.