I haven’t been to DefCon in five years and a lot of things changed.

First, of course, is the change of venue to the Riviera. The Riv has a lot more space that allowed the convention to run five tracks, plus have breakout spaces for Q&A to continue after each panel – a very nice touch. It is spread out more, which made it seem like a smaller crowd at times, but the crowd at the closing ceremony was huge and I think Dark Tangent’s estimate of 7,500 people is probably about right.

While larger, the crowd has really changed. DefCon, overall, was much more subdued than in years past. To some degree, this was a necessity for DefCon to continue as some aspects were a out of control. I remember talking to Priest and DT before DC10 and the general opinion was that if were anything like DC9 that it would be the conference’s last year. There are some other reasons as well. For sure, money came and went from the scene, but it was still striking how the cDc’s presentation went from being nearly a rock concert to “hi, I’m with Cult of the Dead Cow. Here’s our presentation.”

The average age of a DefCon attendee has gone up. I don’t know if they are all the same people, but I think the average age is now around 33-35 and a good number of people have 2.5 kids, etc. so people are a little more responsible, I think. Someone said that Jinx sold out of all the kid/baby sized shirts in just a few hours.

There were also more women. Some of this is attributed us guys getting older and bringing significant others, but there were also quite a few women attending the show on their own. More power to you all. Bring your friends.

The Black and White Ball really shrunk, although it was still worthwhile and I had a great time. I enjoyed seeing Karen again and I hope some of the other DJs post mp3s.

No fire marshal problems this year. The goons were mostly well behaved. Even Priest has calmed down a little – complete with a running joke about being to “sensitivity training.”

Number of contests has really increased. The awards took almost 2 hours. The badges were cool (although a little large) and had a small LED sign that was programmable/hackable. Sadly, they ran out of the mod kits for them which included wireless and a 3 axis accelerometer!

Lock picking, while ever present at DefCon, was really big this year. DefCon provided permanent space for several “villages” including one for hacker spaces, wireless, and lock-picking.

My biggest complaint is that many of the panels ran out of time – largely because panelists didn’t appear to have tested or practiced their presentation. Sometimes this was due to loading or seating issues, and that isn’t the panelist’s fault. But, hey, I understand that it’s a little nerve-racking to stand up in front of a few thousand people – so if they get a little off track, that’s life. I just think that a few more of the presentations should have been two hour blocks – especially for a certain Shmoo who has great rants but always runs into overtime. Same goes for the Meet the Fed panel, which only had about 20 minutes of actual Q&A (is that a conspiracy?)

Highlights:

• Toxic BBQ looked really cool (or hot, depending on your point of view) and I wished I could have made it.


• Beer cooling contest (the winner only cooled at 2 degrees/second… surely I can do better? Nice excuse for a liquid nitrogen pump!)
• High security lock review – The Mul-T-Lock picking tool was just fantastic. I enjoyed showing my key ring to several people seated near me as many people have never even seen the keys for the locks talked about in the presentation.
• Update on radio scanning technologies.
• Several presentations on Tor issues., confirming all of my suspicions of various propellerhead vulnerabilities – and some cool ones I had not thought of.
• Review of quasi-multi-factor authentication for banks. Since I’m a security-application web developer, I didn’t learn anything new that I can apply to my own practice (i.e., I didn’t leave screaming “oh, shit, I need to login to my servers and fix this!), but I had no idea just how crappy some of these new systems were. I screamed at my bank a little and told them how stupid I thought it was, but quickly realized that this was the direction the industry was going and getting them to change would be like abolishing ATM fees. I really need to just start my own bank.
• I learned a lot in the Reanimating Hard Drives panel.
• The legal panels confirmed that I have a pretty good grasp on the areas that affect me.
• Black and White Balls were lots of fun. It was a small crowd, but the DJs were pretty good and there was a lot of cool people to dance with. Mad props to the two people who were contact juggling while dancing. Just, WOW! I would think you pretty much have to be able to do it with your eyes closed in order to not be distracted by strobes, etc. Very impressive.

I think it is very clear that these three airlines are overselling their planes on purpose – during the holidays no less. I can’t think of any other way to describe this than rat bastards.

On the up side, I’m really glad to not see my favorite airlines like Southwest and AirTran participating in this practice. I’m also very surprised to not see Delta on the list. While it doesn’t surprise me that some airlines just got caught overbooking, I’m really glad to see that most airlines, too numerous to mention individually, are all playing it straight.

While this sample just shows flights to Atlanta, I tried other major cities like New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Las Vegas, and Washington D.C. The same airlines are implicated. I also checked their individual web sites and each offered a ticket, so they can’t blame the SABRE network.

Overbooking airlines claim that all airlines overbook. Obviously, that is not the case. Look, stuff happens. Every airline in Denver today is overbooked due to the weather. Mechanical delays and other issues can cause it to happen to the best of airlines. But now, armed with this information, you know whether or not it is a routine practice. So, if you are in Denver today (or anywhere else) and not flying on one of these airlines, cut the gate agents a little slack. Whatever delayed or overbooked your flight is an act of God. Take it up with him. And if you are on one of the above airlines, $800 and your seat belongs to me.

We had a radio scanner to listen to the launch control, which is a good thing because if you don’t hear the countdown you might miss it. You don’t really hear the shuttle when it takes off because it takes sound some time to travel from the launch pad to you. In addition, the shuttle was surprisingly quiet, maybe as loud as a 747 or an F-14, but not as loud as a lot of other military jets. Building implosions are similarly not-loud.

It would be very difficult to make a launch photograph that truly shows the launch as we saw it. The flame from the engines was intensely bright, more than a welder or a magnesium flare but less than the sun. It was actually hard to look at because it was so bright. Some people had trouble looking at it, even with sunglasses. Some of our cameras produced almost night looking images in order to balacne the brightness. The flames lit up the smoke plumes.

The shuttle quickly becomes just a dot and it is difficult to see many of the events after 2 minutes. I could barely see the solid rocket boosters eject and deploy their parachutes. I could not follow them all the way to the ground. For several minutes, the shuttle was just a bright star in the daytime before it finally dissipated.

The smoke plume left at the launch pad was white on the outside but had an orange cast inside. Apparently, the SRB smoke reflects white but transmits orange.

On the delayed launch days we toured Kennedy Space Center, saw the IMAX movies, and hung out on Cocoa Beach.

Even though the space center is geared more toward kids, I did really enjoy it. Actually, I think I enjoyed the other visitors the most. I’ve always been a space buff and it was neat to be surrounded by people who shared that interest. KSC does allow you pretty close to a lot of stuff and has lots of toys to share. Everyone I know who works with NASA seems to really enjoy it and there is palpable sense of family.

My initial purpose was to determine when the least busy times were for people to visit so that they could avoid the large crowds I have heard about.

As expected, weekends are very busy. In fact, the Aquarium has no tickets available for the next two weekends and is half sold for the weekend after that. During the week, the busy times follow the “class field trip” schedule. Early in the morning, the 9 and 10 slots, have lots of tickets. Tickets sell out first during the middle of the day, but more slots open up as school gets out. Students have to be returned to school in order to return home on schedule, it appears. Rush hour is a good time to go. Pretty much anytime during the week after 3pm is decent since all the kids are back at school.

I’m not certain if the inordinate number of first slot tickets is due in part to the Aquarium not having visitors already inside. During the day, they must expect that a certain percentage of visitors will remain past the hour block they entered.

The total number of tickets available per day approaches 3510, so I’m assuming that is the maximum number of visitors the Aquarium can support per day. Assuming they can sell each spot each day for the full adult ticket price, the total gate fees for the year would be only $29 million. Given the massive cost of construction and operation, it seems hardly feasible that they would be able to continue operations. I assume that they also receive grants, research money, etc.

Another way of looking at it is that it will take 3.5 years at maximum capacity for all of the population of Atlanta to see the aquarium. That, of course, assumes no out-of-town visitors.

So, take a break from work sometime and checkout the aquarium. On my trip during the week, I found it very uncrowded and could get as close as I wanted to anything without any problems.

Overall, I’m very pleased with the aquarium. It’s a very nice addition to our city and I’m glad I forked out for an annual pass.

Inside, the aquarium was done very well. One or two tanks had some water quality issues, probably local airborne molds and algae that they will remove with due time. SCUBA divers were still working in most of the tanks. I really enjoyed the coral tank and could sit there for an hour. They have a very large deep-sea tank with a 100-foot long tunnel underneath it. The docent said that we were 20 feet under water and that the tunnel was about 28 inches thick to withstand the pressure. They had a moving sidewalk that actually turned out very well. You can hop on and it creeps along at about 2 inches per second, but once people are on, they stand still. Everyone gets a good spot where they can see, kids stop pushing around, etc. You can also sit or walk on the carpet if you like.

The species selected represent “the usual” common marine fish, although I did see a few neat ones that I wasn’t aware of. The coral tank contains mostly varieties that are available commercially to home the home aquarist like myself. Still, an annual pass is a lot less expensive than maintaining a marine tank of any size at home. The displays are designed so that you can get up very close to the fish. It’s very well designed in that respect. It’s easy for people with short attention span kids to wander through, but also good for those of us who can sit there for hours admiring them. There aren’t many signs telling you what is on display in each tank or what is special about them. They even had some of the same fish I have. I talked briefly about them with a couple of other visitors but tried very hard not to bore them longer than 60 seconds.

The aquarium is touted as the largest in the world. I don’t know what metric they are using, but it’s not a record that they will hold for long. It isn’t spectacularly larger than the Aquarium of the Americas in New Orleans, possibly smaller. On a square footage standpoint, 25% is classroom and research. There’s also a 5000-6000 square foot indoor playground and two ballrooms for special events. It’s also comprised entirely underwater exhibits. It does not have a rain forest area like many other aquariums do. It is larger than the famous aquarium in Monterrey, California.

I had heard a lot of negative feedback about the aquarium from several friends who have visited, some of which was to be expected of a new facility. For that matter, there’s always some hassle with major tourist attraction. Even a trip to Disney World, the grand mother of all tourist attractions, involves some hassle. You have to get tickets in advance, park miles away, take a tram to the gate, wait in line, do security, take a boat, walk some more and stand in line for everything. The aquarium is much better than that.

Friends said that it was too crowded, that lines were long, and that all the signs were very low to the ground and hard to read. I also had a lot of problems purchasing my annual pass. The web site was down for days and no one answered the phone. The day after they stopped selling annual passes, someone replied to my email sent several days before and told me that she received my email too late and that they would not sell annual passes again until December. Fortunately, I was able to use my knowledge of web servers to temporarily repair their system long enough for me to process my purchase. Even if you have an annual membership, you still have to make a reservation to go to the aquarium. In my case, the web site failed to email my entry ticket so I had to get a “replacement” at the box office.

Anyway, things went smoother than expected during my visit. The parking deck has people directing traffic to the areas with the most spaces. I passed half a block of signs indicating where the line to enter was, but no one was standing there. I joked with the security people by taking off my shoes before being checked for weapons. They didn’t understand the joke until I explained it to them, after which they just passed me through the line by barely waving their wand quickly as though to say, “you are not carrying the weapons we’re looking for.” While they might have caught an AK47, someone could have carried a .357 Magnum in the place and no one would have noticed. The box office line was shorter than most theaters and the clerk successfully handled my refusal to show identification. The line to get photos taken for membership cards was 20 minutes, but a sign said that if the wait was too long we could get our cards on our next visit. The system worked smoothly. When it was my turn, it took less than 90 seconds to get my card. The contrast and focus on my card was poor, which really disappointed me because it was a really good photo of me. The clerk inserted the blank upside down in the printer, so I have a weird looking card that is part upside down, kind of like the famous stamp. I didn’t want to hold up the line, so I kept it.

The crowd was moderate but I was able to see things and also leave room for kids to get up close in front of me. With so much glass and concrete, there is a big echo in the building and the din can get tiring. Next time I go I will bring earplugs or noise cancellation headsets.

The group was mostly made up of adults, although there were a few kids, some of which were quite young. It was neat to see them all participating together. Some kids, of course, don’t grow up… they just get bigger toys. I never built rockets as a kid (except for a 5 minute one as a quick scout project, but I didn’t get to launch it), but it was neat seeing how different designs, many of which I recognized from the venerable Estes catalog, performed.

The sod farm was also neat. I never really gave any thought to where it comes from. The field was a kid’s dream. So many fun things could be done with it – ball parks, kite flying, model airplanes, etc. I thought briefly about what it would be like to own such a business, but then I realized that it was a lot of lawn to mow. Never mind.

During my recent trip to Italy, I mailed myself some postcards. This one arrived from Rome. It took 23 days to get here.

If you travel to Italy, Rome in particular, I suggest you find out as much about the transit system as you can in advance. There seemed to be few signs, pamphlets, etc. that explained how things worked. We never did figure out the buses in Rome. Several of our group members had to leave the bus one night in a bad neighborhood and take a €70 taxi ride back to the hotel. Most of the transit agencies have English on their web sites, so whatever you can figure out and print in advance would be to your advantage. Additionally, street maps are very hard to read. The signs on the roads are inconsistent and it was very hard to look at a street sign and figure out where you were on the map, unless you got a good map.

Buying our train ticket from the airport to the transit center was confusing since none of us had a good idea where we were going, none of the maps we had in travel guides were really any good, etc. The nice lady at the box office spoke about as much English as we did Italian, but by pointing to a map of where we wanted to go and making hand gestures, we were able to buy tickets and get instructions on which train to get on. We left the station not really knowing if we were on the right train or not, but it all worked out.

The national brand of trains, Trenitalia, look very old, but in fact are pretty clean, comfortable, and efficient. We made our way to Termini, the central train station in Rome. Many of the members in our group over-packed, so lugging their bags around got to be a chore. They didn’t really fit in the luggage holding areas of the trains; so many of them had to stand on the ride. The ride itself was smooth, but takes you through the more rundown areas of Rome with lots of graffiti and such.

The in-town train was a lot like the system in New York. It ran on-time most of the time, was jam packed with people, and had lots of graffiti. I used it quite a bit and found that it was a good way to get around town.

Each time I mailed a batch of postcards I included one addressed to myself. I did this partly because I wanted to see how long they took but also because I think the marks that mail picks up as it travels are kind of cool.

This is the first postcard I have received from my trip. It was mailed from the Vatican City and took 20 days to get here.

After we got off our plane, we stood in a huge mob of people for “passport control.” When I got to the booth, I handed the agent my passport. She spent, maybe, 400 milliseconds looking at the photo, putting a worn out stamp in it and handing it back to me. She gave me the impression that stamping passports all day was as silly and annoying to her as standing in line was to us.

After passport control, we picked up our checked luggage, just like any domestic flight. From there, we went through Customs. As you walk down the Customs corridor there is a partition dividing the walk way. A sign above one side says “Items to declare” and the other says “Nothing to declare.” I have no idea if I have to declare anything or not, but it does not matter. Both sides lead to the same hallway where people are rushing through to get to wherever it is that they are going. There was no difference between one side an the other, apparently. People went through both sides without stopping and the two men in uniform just stood there with a dull expression on their face that said, “Oh, God, I hope none of these people are stupid enough to declare something. I might have to do paperwork.”