24C3 - report part 5 - resistence 23, GTD, MI5, rule 34, barcode hacking, and chicks for geeks

Ah, so much to do here. So just some of the highlights.

Yesterday Markus Beckedahl (netzpolitik.org!) gave some (23?) hints of how to fight for your rights starting from lobbying, creating and influencing media, coding etc.

FX of Phenoelit showed cool barcode hacks. Wanna have an upgrade of you flight ticket? Give it a go ...

Another highlight yesterday was definitely the rule 34 content. For good reason this was not recorded. It was great fun!

The morning today started with a presentation by Annie Machon. She was working for the British intelligence service MI5 but became a whistleblower and had to escape from England. She showed the dark (and unfortunately growing side) side of the spy world.

In a workshop Machtelt tough some single geeks how to get a girl by following some simple advices.


Stephan Schmieder introduced the audience of room 3 to the productivity system Getting Things Done. I am using it since some years and share his experiences. The recommended the program ThinkingRock for implementing it. It looks quite bloated to me and I am very happy with jpilot (which I also can use to sync to my smartphone), but I will give it good.

CCCamp 2007 - 8 - Misc hacks

These events are famous for different kinds of hacks. Here are some of my favorite ones that are not so obvious (many thanks to all the people who uploaded the photos):

• CCC => CCCP
• OpenBSD-shirt => personalized camp-shirt (as the official ones are sold out)
• tent + rain => indoor swimming pool 1, 2, 3
  
• golf cart => garbage truck
  
• pallets + Gulden Draake bottles => bikini contest stage
  

With this post I finish my report series of the camp. It was great fun! Thanks to everybody who was involved!

Update:

• melone + bottle => cocktail glas (thanks to Bernd for this recommendation)
• towel => sunshade
• geek => bikini model
  
• wristband => arm implant stabilizer
• lights => black board (another on from Bernd)
• mud hole => football field (and again Bernd)
• airplane => skull opener
• truck => bottle container

Update 2:

• Lenin => Hippie
  

Be Open(BSD)

EN: The waiting is over: The OpenBSD project released the new artwork and song for the upcoming 4.0 release. The song is an homage to the source of inspiration for (nearly) every OpenBSD developer (at least at the parties): Humppa mostly coming in this form*. An additional track - OpenVOX - to the 10th anniversary of OpenBSD artwork can also be found on that site.

(*) If you want to listen to the combination of Humppa and OpenBSD developers I can recommend a radio show (**) recorded at the What the Hack.

(**) Please serve with Golden Drake.

Understanding German humour

EN: The opinion that the Germans lacking sense of humour is widespread. The Guardian analyses this in a recent article [1] and come to the conclusion that this impression is wrong. The reason why German have a humour which is hard to understand by English speaking people seems to be mainly a linguistic one. German with its more rigid structure of sentences and compound words gives less possibilities for joke based on ambiguity, one of the most important element in the British humour. "The German language provides fully functional clarity". A cultural difference make smutty jokes harder: "The Germans did not find the human body smutty or funny, due to all attending mixed saunas from an early age." So, but what humour are the German using then? Regarding to the article mainly "blunt, seemingly serious statements, which became funny simply because of their context".

It's an interesting analysis. I am working in a very international environment and will try to find evidence for the presented theories.

[1] "Lost in translation", Stewart Lee, The Guardian, May 23, 2006