This past weekend, ‘The Last HOPE’ conference was held in the heart of New York City, at the legendary Hotel Pennsylvania. ‘HOPE’ of course stands for ‘Hackers on Planet Earth’, this latest iteration being the seventh, and also supposedly the ‘last’. The conference first launched in 1994 and proceeded to become a bi-annual affair in 2000. All but one conference was held at Hotel Penn, so over the years, the hotel itself has become an integral part of what makes HOPE the conference it is.

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The seventh HOPE conference was held this past weekend in NYC and I was there to take in the numerous talks. Such subjects covered were lock picking, Wikipedia’s evils, YouTube, FOIA, hardware hacking and a lot more. Special talks were also given by Steven Rambam, Steven Levy, Adam Savage and Jello Biafra.

http://techgage.com/article/hackers_on_planet_earth_2008_the_last_hope/

With all these new small netbooks/compact laptops like the Asus EEE people keep commenting in online forums such as Slashdot, Engadget, DailyTech, etc. that Vista will crawl and that Vista sucks at this and that and will run like a dog. Really? Maybe if they pulled their heads out of their collective MS hating asses long enough to actually try it instead of repeating what other gerbil zealots are posting online they could get a clue.

I run Vista Business edition on an old IBM x31 ultra light laptop from 2003 with a paltry old Pentium M 1.4 Ghz processor and it runs great; I have 2 Gigs of ram and have upgraded the hard drive for more space and speed. Vista Business edition ditches all the fancy pants Premium graphics effects however it still looks almost the same and operates the same. Office 2007 runs fine and I prefer Vista because I can plug anything into that old laptop and it just works. Cameras, GPS, 3G modems, etc. All that and it weighs like 3lbs and fits into my book bag.

To sum it up on one phrase…Vista haters can suck it!

Update: TweakTown has put Vista on an Asus EEE

I try to stay out of direct political posts here, but some things should be brought back into the light. Money issues like minimum wage are important issues to many of my readers as it affects what gadgets and cool new toys they can purchase or need to save for.

Any here is an older post that was brought my attention:

Senator John McCain joined his fellow Republicans to vote to maintain a filibuster on the minimum wage hike. This is clearly a vote to win him financial backing and support from the elites, but it is one that should come back to haunt him in his Presidential bid.

http://news.aol.com/elections-blog/2007/01/24/john-mccain-votes-to-filibuster-minimum-wage-hike/

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Insider sources have revealed that in a stunning move by music publisher Elektra, they have signed Tom Cruise to portray The Cures’ front man Robert Smith in an upcoming movie detailing the life of the Robert Smith.

Movie studio insiders have indicated that Paramount was not happy with a deal that Tom’s people brokered with Electra on the project. Tom Cruise being a life long fan of Robert Smith’s work was jubilant at the possibly of portraying the music idol of his youth.

Still reading? So, there is no movie that I am aware of featuring Tom Cruise playing Robert Smith. Sorry to get you all worked up.  I was just tired of reading about all the Tom Cruise drama, like any regular person actually cares. I am a big fan of the Cure and when I saw the above picture of Tom Cruise wasting space in my Google news feed it reminded me of Robert Smith; however I was unable to find the picture I was thinking of so I posted the closest one I could find.

Palm Infocenter has gleaned some interesting information from TreoCetral. The upcoming Treo 700p looks to have include:

Power Vision EVDO support
128 MB memory
1.3 Megapixel camera
Bluetooth, SD expansion slot
Refined industrial design, complete upgrade to the Treo 650
Software: Sprint TV, On Demand, Streaming music
Bluetooth DUN modem support

The device is said to luanch on 5/28/06.

More: http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/8473/palm-treo-700p-release-date-leaked/

[WARNING graphic rant ahead] Is it just me or has mobile phone etiquette finally just vanished? There are very few bastions of mobile phone seclusion you can count on, private spaces you totally control, the confessional booth, spelunking deep caves, and the bathroom. Wait, that last one is now gone as evidenced by my recent trip to the men’s room.

So I’m sitting there doing my business, and some one walks in and starts to use the urinal. There is a RING and then a “hello”. I’m thinking, WTF. Then I hear, “...no I’m in the bathroom, where are you?”. I make out an almost inaudible chuckle from the stall next to me.

My internal dialog replays the conversation as such: “...no I’m in the men’s room, phone in one hand and **ck in the other…no I haven’t gone Brokeback Mountain on you, I’m taking a leak. Where are you?” On the other end of the phone I image the person saying, “Where am I? Not in the bathroom talking on the cell phone you freak!”

At least he washed up afterwards. 

Robert Hartley an occational editor here on PDAToday.com has run into a wall in building his uber gaming rig.  He hand picked all the best parts like the Intel D940 3.2 Dual Core, a pair of XFX SLi ready GeForce 7800GTX video cards, ASUS P5WD2 motherboard that supports dual card goodness and even includes the SLi connector cable, RAID 5…well you get the idea.

After discovering that the cards were refusing to run in SLi mode, he did some research and found a couple of interesting links. Apparently, someone has hacked the older 66.xx driver revision to enable SLI support with 6600/6800 boards on this motherboard. That shows that it works, but that doesn’t help with 7800GTX cards since they are not supported in that driver, and he also has a rule against running modified drivers on his system.

Another article he found, quotes an ASUS representative stating that there are no hardware limitations in the Intel chipsets or mainboards that would prevent SLI from running.

We sent an email off to NVIDA to get their response to this issue. Below are the email letter sent and the reply we received.

Click to read what came next…

Thomas Hawk of Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection posted his surreal experience with a horrid online retailer. This story has garnered extensive internet coverage over the past few days including a post on slashdot, which is where I first learned about it.

From Thomas’ blog post:

“I will make sure you will never be able to place an order on the internet again.” “I’m an attorney, I will sue you.” “I will call the CEO of your company and play him the tape of this phone call.” “I’m going to call your local police and have two officers come over and arrest you.” “You’d better get this through your thick skull.” “You have no idea who you are dealing with.”

These are all direct threats that I received today from an individual who identified himself as Steve Phillips, the manager of PriceRitePhoto in Brooklyn, New York when I called to inquire about my order with them. My crime? Telling him that I planned to write an article about my unfortunate experience with his company regarding the camera order I had placed with him yesterday.

Read the whole post, it gets absolutely unreal: http://thomashawk.com/2005/11/priceritephoto-abusive-bait-and-switch.html

Slashdot reports that there have been serious intelligence violations by the FBI. Ya think? Who didn’t see this coming? Anyone…Bueler? 

“The FBI has conducted clandestine surveillance on some U.S. residents for as long as 18 months at a time without proper paperwork or oversight, according to previously classified documents to be released today.”

The good news is that there are watchdogs like the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) an advocacy group that has sued the Justice Department for records relating to the Patriot Act.

I am all for protecting our assets and people but there are some scary similarities to what’s going on now and here to what was going on in other parts of the world back in the 40’s. Our government puts a better spin on agency names and laws by giving them names that would make anyone who disagreed sound like an agitator.

But let’s be fair, I don’t think the FBI is really out to do any intentional nefarious activities they are just doing what they are told to do, and for the most part they do a stand up job. What seem to have happened in the past several years are an imbalance of powers and a lack of checks and balances.

Anyway, back to more pressing stuff like what am I having for lunch…

FBI Papers Indicate Intelligence Violations [washington post]
Significant FBI Abuses of the Patriot Act [slashdot] [source]