If you are interested in computer hacking, then 2600 is for you. They publish a quarterly magazine, have a weekly radio show on WBAI in New York City, and are holding a conference in July, also in New York City.
Their conferences go by the name HOPE, for Hackers On Planet Earth. The upcoming conference is dubbed The Last HOPE because the hotel where the conference is held may be demolished. The first speakers for The Last HOPE conference were just announced. They are:
- Kevin Mitnick, "the world's most dangerous hacker" in the eyes of the government and mass media, imprisoned for over five years, and now a successful computer security consultant.
- Adam Savage, co-host of the TV show Mythbusters
- Steven Rambam, private eye extraordinaire, who can find out anything about anybody and has always been willing to share his knowledge of privacy with the hacker community.
- Steven Levy, author of Hackers: Heroes of the American Revolution and chief technology writer for Newsweek.
- Jello Biafra, former lead singer of The Dead Kennedys and one of America's most interesting social activists.
The FBI prevented Steven Rambam from speaking at the 2006 HOPE conference, arresting him moments before his lecture. The case against him was later found to have no merit.
The Last HOPE will take place July 18-20 at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City, just across the street from Penn Station and Madison Square Garden. If you are in town a day early, Ricky Gervais will be performing the Garden. Competing with the first day of the conference, the Dalai Lama will be in town. That's New York City, something for everyone, even in the summer.
Conference organizers expect to have over 100 presentations in four tracks. See also "Hacker confab 'Last HOPE' to track attendees with RFID".
Update June 6, 2008: Additional speakers/topics
* Crafting a Security-Enhanced Wikipedia - Virgil Griffith
* What's Wrong With Your Company's Website? - The Cheshire Catalyst
* VoIP (in)security: Italians Do It Better - Alessio L.R. Pennasilico aka mayhem
* SWF and the Malware Tragedy - BeF, fukami
* Simulating the Universe on Supercomputers - Mark Vogelsberger
* Ghetto IDS and Honeypots for the Home User - Black Ratchet
* How to Make Cool Things with Microprocessors - Mitch Altman
* The Phone Losers of America - Various PLA representatives
* Botnet Research, Mitigation, and the Law - Alex Muentz
* The (Im)possibility of Hardware Obfuscation - Karsten Nohl
* Evil Interfaces: Violating the User - Gregory Conti
* Macro Social Engineering - LexIcon
* Building a Hacker Space - Representatives of the Global Hacker Space Movement
* Current and Emerging Robotic Technologies - Ben Sgro
* Methods of Copying High Security Keys - Barry Wels, Han Fey
* Threat Modeling - Kevin M. Williams
* Monumental Women and their Influence on Modern Technology - L33tphreak
* RIAA Litigations: How the Tech Community Can Help - Ray Beckerman
* Autonomously Bypassing VoIP Filters with Asterisk - Blake Cornell
* AntiSocial Networking: Vulnerabilities in Social Nets - Nathan Hamiel, Shawn Moyer
See a summary of all my Defensive Computing postings.
Apple plans to debut an iPhone platform development track at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference next month, as the computer company seeks to become the Johnny Appleseed of iPhone features.
The iPhone platform will be one of two development platforms set to take center stage at Apple's developers conference next month. Mac OS X Leopard will be the other showcase platform.
The event will run June 9-13 in San Francisco.
Under the iPhone track, developers can work with Apple engineers to design applications that focus on the device's multitouch user screen, animation technology, and APIs.
iPhone sessions will also be held to cover the OS X iPhone 2.0 software, including iPhone SDK and the App Store. These sessions are designed to show developers how to wirelessly deliver their applications to iPhone and iPod users.
The Mac track will focus on development techniques for OS X Leopard applications, ranging from interface design to application frameworks, security, localization, and networking.
Other sessions during the five-day event will include Cocoa Touch, Interface Builder, and Xcode. Developers will be allowed to bring code to the labs, where they can work with Apple engineers.
I recorded W3C President Tim Berners-Lee's press conference at this week's WWW2008 conference in Beijing.
I will write about the contents later. Click here for the audio and then click on the olive-colored play button.
Please forgive the mediocre sound quality; I record for my notes, and not primarily for broadcast. I came in a few seconds late as Berners-Lee was being introduced in alternating Chinese and English. The remainder of the press conference, including questions and answers, is in English.
Other posts from WWW2008 are here, and I'm Twittering here.
Update: I was having a glitch while linking to the podcast URL. It should work now. Or copy and paste http://gwbstr.podomatic.com/entry/2008-04-23T01_42_40-07_00 into your browser.
William Chang, chief scientist leading Chinese search engine Baidu, said it's natural for Chinese to use Baidupedia (Baidu Baike) rather than the foreign Wikipedia.
"There's, in fact, no reason for China to use Wikipedia, a service based 'out there,'" Chang said at the WWW2008 conference in Beijing on Tuesday. "It's very natural for China to make its own products."
I agree that there's not always a reason for people to use global services, especially when what they deal with is primarily domestic. But with the wiki world, I think the value of cross-border, multilingual conversation is astonishingly high.
Especially as autotranslation gets better, the benefit of not having populations nationally siloed comes into focus. If we can both read and contribute knowledge to something that primarily exists in a language I don't know, then we really can share knowledge.
Until that utopian vision comes true, though, it very well may be that Wikipedia isn't yet built ideally for Chinese users. Perhaps Baidu is doing a better job for people in this country. But I hope we can all get to conversing across this divide.
For now, it's more or less moot. As I reported before, despite the fact that Wikipedia in English is now available from China, the Chinese-language version is still blocked.
At this week's CeBit technology trade fair in Hannover, Germany, police raided 51 exhibitors' booths because of suspected patent violations.
(Credit: Deutsche Messe AG/CeBit)Dozens of exhibitors at Europe's largest gadget confab were in for a surprise this week: Suspecting patent violations, German authorities raided 51 booths, carting off cell phones, navigation devices, and other gear that allegedly infringe on patents.
According to an Associated Press report Thursday, more than 180 police and customs officials took part in the bust, which affected 51 exhibitors at CeBit in Hannover, Germany. Of the accused, 24 were from China, 15 were from Taiwan or Hong Kong, nine were from Germany, and the others came from Poland, the Netherlands, and Korea.
The police didn't name which people or companies were targeted, but they did say the alleged patent violations deal with devices that have MP3, MP4, or digital video broadcast functions; DVD players; and blank CDs and DVDs. They managed to fill 68 boxes with gadgets, documents, and advertising material and took down the identities of nine people, most of whom were reportedly cooperative.
The raid was a response to a rising number of "criminal complaints by the holders of patent rights in the run-up to CeBit," and the patent holders had warned the accused companies in "good time" about their lack of licenses, police said, according to the AP.
When word of the raids first trickled out Wednesday, rumors started flying that an iPhone "clone" made by the Chinese electronics company Meizu was one of the targets. But, as it turns out, a portable MP3 player that Meizu makes, not the Mini One smartphone, was the subject of the investigations, according to reporters on the scene.
Could we expect to see something similar go down in the middle of next year's sprawling Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas? (This is assuming--only for the sake of argument--that any patent infringements might occur.)
Short answer: probably not.
U.S. officials regularly conduct raids in which they seize certain goods because of intellectual property violations--pirated Microsoft software, for instance, or mod chips that allow video game consoles to play pirated games. But the key difference is that those exercises deal primarily with copyright or trademark violations. There's no equivalent seizure authority under U.S. patent law.
"Because of the difficulty in determining issues of patent infringement, we don't have criminal prosecutions (or raids or seizures) for patented inventions (unlike trademark counterfeiting and copyright piracy which are easier to determine)," a United States Patent and Trademark Office spokeswoman told CNET News.com in e-mail.
Because it's generally impossible to look at a product and tell whether it's infringing on a patent, famously unsexy American patent lawsuits are generally resolved through complex court proceedings that may lead to fines against the infringer and injunctions barring use of the contested invention.
Things are a bit different when U.S. patent violations by international firms are concerned, but they're still not quite the same as what reportedly transpired in Germany this week.
Federal law gives U.S. customs agents the power to seize imports of goods that have been found to infringe on U.S. patents.
"You can get an order from the International Trade Commission in the United States barring any importation of a product that infringes a U.S. patent," said Gilbert Kaplan, a partner with the Washington office of King & Spalding who specializes in international trade and intellectual property law.
Sometimes, a U.S. patent holder who has won an infringement suit can also seek a temporary restraining order from a U.S. district court that similarly bars imports of infringing products. Unlike in the Germany situation, however, those cases aren't in the investigatory stage: a decision has already been reached about whether a certain patent has been infringed.
Seizures ordered by the ITC typically occur at the border, when packages and containers are inspected by customs officials. Kaplan said he wasn't aware of any cases where customs agents had blustered into a trade show, but "they do have that right," he said. "So (those ITC orders) theoretically could apply to these kind of infringing imports if they happen to slip through at a trade show."
Practically speaking, that may be hard to pull off because "you'd have to have a lot of warning that shipments are coming in," said Fabio Marino, a patent partner in Orrick's Silicon Valley office.
"I'm aware of other situations where that has happened in Europe, but I've never heard of it happening in the U.S.," he said of the CeBit raid. "There is no criminal provision under the U.S. patent laws."
Will he or won't he?
Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell is speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference at 8:45 a.m. PST on Monday. Maybe some comments regarding the Yahoo bid will fall from his mouth, and then again, maybe not.
Microsoft's big bid for Yahoo
Liddell's Webcast may add to comments made Monday by Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer in Hannover, Germany.
Ballmer made the case for the existing offer.
"The deal makes sense with the price and structure we announced. We hope it becomes reality," he told reporters, according to the Associated Press.
Update 9:20 a.m. PST: Morgan Stanley analyst and moderator Mary Meeker asked Liddell the effect of software as a service on Microsoft's business. In response, Liddell noted: "Software as a service will be a bigger part of our business, and things like a Yahoo acquisition is one way how we see that."
Update 9:47 a.m PST: As Liddell's presentation and the Q&A portion wrapped up, no one in the audience--to Liddell's surprise--asked a single question about Yahoo.
Hello...Microsoft is looking to lay down mega, mega, and, I say, MEGA bucks for Yahoo and no one at the investor/technology conference asked a single question about its bid.
That didn't stop Liddell from addressing the proverbial elephant in the room.
Said Liddell: "No one asked me about Yahoo, which is interesting. It's a small company we are looking to acquire, but the company has not yet formally responded to our offer...We will continue to look at our options and that is something I am incredibly systematic about."
The systematic approach Liddell referenced includes looking at the horizon for other acquisitions too. Of course, he didn't drop any names of who might fit the bill for those.
First, the bad news: No, Google is not announcing a business wiki or presentation product at the Office 2.0 conference. However, I did get a demo of a few new features in Google's spreadsheet.
First, there's a new autofill function. If you enter a series of consecutive numbers, it will extend the series. OK, yawn. But, using data provided by the old Google Sets experiment, the spreadsheet will automatically fill in a row or column with items it thinks match your selection if they're not in an obvious sequence. For example, highlight a name of a state, press Ctrl (on a PC) and drag down a few cells, and the spreadsheet will fill in other states. You can also try a state of mind (e.g., "happy") to get other emotions. Or names. The more items you select before you control-drag, the more likely Google is to fill in items you expect, as opposed to wild guesses.
Google Apps product manager Rishi Chandra demos spreadsheet user stalking.
(Credit: Rafe Needleman / CNET)Second, you can now pull in data from other sources, including RSS feeds. (For instructons, see this Google Help page.) This means the Google spreadsheets can now be real-time, for any data that's expressed in an RSS feed. Previously, you could look up certain real-time data, like stock prices, but this is much more flexible.
There's another important feature that launched a few weeks ago: If you're collaborating with someone on a Google spreadsheet, cells that other people are working on are color-coded by user. When someone starts to edit a cell, it will get grayed out so you don't collide with their edits. You can also follow a user as they read and edit a spreadsheet. This is a feature I've been waiting for. It's great for collaboration and training.
Today at the Office 2.0 Conference, Zoho (more coverage) is announcing the new, paid business edition of its Web applications suite. Companies will be able to get user administration, company branding, and domain mapping (just like Google Apps for My domain), backup, pooled storage, and telephone support. When the product launches in October, it will cost about $40 per year per user.
Zoho Business Edition gives companies administrative controls for its users.
(Credit: Zoho)Zoho will continue to have a free version, Zoho Personal, but some applications that are currently in it, like Zoho CRM, will move out of Personal and only be available in the Business edition. Other applications will become limited: Zoho Meeting, in the personal edition, will allow only five meetings a month.
This is a necessary step for Zoho. The company needs to make money from its ambitious suite, and businesses are more likely to pay than Ma and Pa Home User. It will take the company some time to gain the trust of business before they will run their mission-critical office applications on it, but Zoho has a decent suite of applications and this move represents a real business opportunity.
A suite for the education market will follow later this year.
Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu will be on my panel about new business platforms at 9 a.m. Friday.
The Office 2.0 conference (more) opens up in San Francisco tomorrow. As it did last year, this show will push the Web 2.0 concept for business as far as it can go. I expect that a lot of activity at the conference will center around groupware and work-flow applicatiosn. In the past few days I've talked to the founders of four companies competing in this space--Central Desktop, Sosius, Huddle, and ShareMethods -- each of which is aiming to use Web 2.0 concepts like simple design, hosted services, and a-la-carte pricing, to knock Microsoft's Sharepoint off its peg, and take on Web 2.0 work-flow stalwart 37Signals' Basecamp as well. Not to mention blocking upstarts from big companies, like Webex's WebOffice, before they can get major traction.
A good Web 2.0 work-flow application integrates task lists, file management with approvals, a calendar, and permission controls. Central Desktop shown here.
(Credit: CNET Networks)It's going to be a tough battle for these products to stand out from each other. The founders I talked to have similar pitches. They talk about low-cost, bottom-up (as opposed to IT-driven) sales, and the fact that they're not trying to replace office products like Microsoft Office or even Web 2.0 suites like Zoho, but rather trying to bring collaboration and workflow to every business with a Web connection.
The one area where these products all need to develop the most is in their integration with these online office productivity tools. At the moment, all of these applications will help you check in and manage files that you create on your PC, and they'll handle approval cycles, discussions, and project plans. But these applications really need tight integration with tools like Google Docs to truly free users from the shackles of local software. That's not just a philosophical perspective--working half online (for work flow) and half on a PC (for productivity applications) is confusing and will slow adoption of these products.
That said, I like all these services. They fill a need that e-mail and wikis can't, and that traditional software is too heavy for. Most of the products look great and aren't over-featured, making it fairly easy for users to get up to speed on them.
The differences between these applications are not immediately obvious...
... Read more
Several signs are pointing to the imminent launch of Google Wiki and the company's long-awaited presentation service at this week's Office 2.0 conference in San Francisco.
The biggest indicators are history and vague comments by Google officials. Last year's Office 2.0 brought the launch of Google Docs and Spreadsheets, and Jonathan Rochelle, the product manager for Google Spreadsheets, will also be at hand for the opening panel at the conference kickoff on Thursday. Between this, an almost-demo by Google's CEO Eric Schmidt of the presentation application, as well as a post on the Official Google Blog that presentations would be making their way to everyone "this summer," and we should be seeing something new as early as Thursday.
The new wiki application from Google would fill out its online office suite, and give Google Apps a little more appeal for small- and mid-size business customers who want a consolidated wiki solution. The launch would also coincide with the anniversary of Google's acquisition of wiki service JotSpot (review) last October. Considering JotSpot served up multiple tiers of service to serve casual to business users, the model could follow suit with Google's four flavors of Google Apps, including their business and enterprise solutions.
However, the trail of clues about how these services will tie into Google's existing online office environment is thin. There have been few signs of Google's presentation service making an early appearance since the acquisition of Zenter and Tonic Systems a few months ago. From the outside, the clearest indicator has been the move of Jotspot's user help and forums services over to Google's own native support network.
Stay tuned.
