First I am going to respond as a person who has been to many, and who didn't attend this one.
The talks had been posted for a while now. Had you looked over the list of talks and decided your money would have been better spent elsewhere you could have avoided this rant. You received a dissmissive answer to a noobish question by a staff member that would have done exactly what you were instructed to do to answer in any other manner. Hackers are supposed to be smart people, you asked a dumb or lazy question. NLUGs installs have been becoming less important over time as the ability of any user to download and install linux has become almost a non problem. This was a service to users of odd hardware recently, and any hardware previous to that. When downloading was a major undertaking for some people it was very useful to roll in and have the latest of several distros available. Last year, the best I think came out of NLUG was teaching some of the root wars people how to lookup and install missing dependencies for whatever script it was they wanted to use for the contest. It is also likely when you went to talk to the root wars table, it was staffed at that time with staff members just tasked with physical protection of the box(s). As long as that duty was accomplished, the rest of the hacking could have been done from just about anywhere. There are many people who show up at Phreaknic for the party. Considering the hotel isn't itself bad, and there is usually a lot going on on the party floors, the $25 isn't a bad price to pay for that kind of variety and 2 nights of partying. You would have almost spent that much if you go out to 2 clubs on a weekend getting in the door. Some years Phreaknic is really good, others it isn't so good. It all depends on who is attending and who is volunteering. I'm sure this year there wasn't quite the attendance as in previous years. The economy is sucking and has been for a while. Many people who show up drive in and gas has been high. Many people as well have competing plans that get in the way. Ohh, and for most of the people who attend Preaknic, the social groups are very much a meritocracy. If you didn't show a reason for them to accept you, it is possible you will never get accepted. Granted that doesn't explain why ware is always around, but then again, I am not around enough to see what all he does. > On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 10:00 AM, linux_losers > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > First off let me say, I attended Phreaknic this weekend expecting a > > great experience, catch a few security talks, trade a few tips at > Root > > Wars. I did not get any of that. It was one of the most poorly > > organized events I have been too in the past few years. > > > > Who wants to attend a lecture from a nerd about how to pick up > women? > > Who cares what Google has to say about Malware? > > > > When I asked a staff member what was going on I got the reply," > What > > does the program say?" > > > > You want people to pay twenty-five dollars to come here and then be > a > > dick to them? > > > > The NLUG group was visible for a "mass install" with about 5 > machines > > running ubuntu. > > > > Root Wars had 6 or 7 guys sitting at a table with a command prompt > > open, no scripts running nothing just talking about World of > Warcraft > > or something. And when they were asked a question about, what OS > was > > the box running or had anyone gotten ROOT yet, the answer was. > > > > "I Don't Know" followed by everyone staring at their feet. > > > > Now antisocial is one thing, but if you can't carry on a > conversation > > about a computer at a "Hacker-CON" then what is the point of > living? > > > > With that said, I am not here to flame, though I am sure I will get > my > > fair share. But damn, at least let people know that all Phreaknic > is > > about is hanging out at a hotel on the ghetto side of Nashville > with > > some underage kids drinking and hanging out with only their online > > friends. Not one person made me or my group feel like we should be > > there because we were not part of the group. > > > > If I wanted to sit around and drink with ugly girls and get drunk, > I > > could do it at a much better place, for a much cheaper price. > > > > Preaknic = FAIL > > > > > > > > > -- Steven Critchfield [EMAIL PROTECTED] --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
