Rattle wrote:
PhreakNIC was fun this year, as it is ever year. I'd like to thank all the staff for their hard work running the convention. It's not an easy job, and we all greatly benefit from their hard work.
Hopefully, I will have a chance to make some more comments about the convention later. I'm currently really backed up with work, and somewhat fatigued.
Most of the Industrial Memetics crew was on hand this year giving talks. Acidus gave an enlightening talk about javascript based security problems in Web 2.0 apps, which was by far the best talk on web security I've ever seen. He is currently working on a book on this topic, and we are all looking forward to it. Decius gave a talk entitled "The Year of the Fourth Amendment: 2006", which I wish everyone was able to see. He put a number of the events of the past year into perspective, in the form of a call to action that I'm sure all who were in the room will answer. Neoteric and Abaddon gave another version of their infamous "Why You Suck" talk, which is way more good natured than it sounds, and was in many ways the high point of PhreakNIC this year. It had the highest turnout of any talk and was extremely funny. I gave a talk entitled "Prior Restraint and Information Security Research", in which I went over case studies of security researchers who have gotten into legal trouble for disclosing the product of their research, some past legal president that I felt people should be aware of, and advice about how to communicate with the media and protect yourself if you find yourself in a position to do a risky disclosure.
I've received word that the video from all the talks Saturday was lost due to a technical glitch in the the video recorder, so these may be lost forever. This is sad, but sometimes these things happen..
I had a collection of posters on hand which I hung up in various places in the hotel. I came up with this batch of slogans over two sittings, with the intent to make people laugh, inspire a bit, and instill some curiosity. In short, a blatant branding and propaganda exercise. There were a number of them that by design contained some mildly obscure references. Here are the ones that I got asked questions about the most:
The Peters Projection is an equal-area map projection of the earth, which more accurately represents the planet's land mass than the maps we most often see. For instance, Greenland isn't the same size as Africa, as it appears in most maps. I'm not actually sure if the military uses a Peters Projection at all, but it fit with the collection of posters that had a Globalization theme.
A number of the posters were inspired by talks given by Thomas Barnett, the author of The Pentagon's New Map. I suggest finding one of his talks on C-SPAN and watching it.
The "No one in this room owns a Lexus or an Olive Tree" poster is referencing the book by Thomas Friedman.
The "If in doubt, don't" quote from Donald Rumsfeld an be found in his list of rules.
The "Google is the Grey Goo" poster references arguments made by Bill Joy, and puts a certain spin on them..
"Mook" and "Midriff" are not people.. They are marketing/advertising terms. A Mook is an "in your face" character who acts generally like a clown. A Midriff is a young girl who is over sexualized and attention obsessed, think Brittany Spears. Both are the archetypes for many characters you see on MTV all the time. They are the souls of the unthinking impulsive consumer. I am of the opinion that we should fight the Mook and Midriff within all of us. I think Midriffs are cute, but I'd prefer to have my women be more focused on being smart and insightful, rather than being objects. Mooks may look funny on TV, but are annoying in all other contexts.
Let me know if anyone has questions about any of the other propaganda posters. Late Saturday night, I stuck the remainder of the posters in the doors of all the rooms on the 7th and 8th floor. These were _not_ targeted... So don't read into it... It was just some good natured propaganda designed to inspire some thought.
I still say the convention needs a wax museum.
