This was the first day of talks, though I wouldn't know because it was impossible to get into most of them. If you were at OSCON and thought that the room sizes were on the small side, you ain't seen nothing yet. This feels like a similar-sized crowd to OSCON but with total capacity for session rooms (including the ginormous tent) at about 400. Most attendees are by the pool, the expo hall, or the various lounges.
Not that this disappoints most of them, as I am rapidly learning that DefCon is a party first and a conference roughly 4th or 5th. The bars run all the time and I've heard it said that the hotel sells more alcohol at DefCon than at any other event they hold. Did I say "bars"? Yes, there's a bar in the expo hall and a bar in the wireless lounge. That's not to be confused with the hotel's own bar. Yes, these folks are serious partiers.
I did, by the way, make friends last night. It turned out to be surprisingly easy. I am making more, slowly. The hardest part turns out to be remembering names, although I'm getting better--it took four repetitions for me to learn Shawn's and Frank's names last night, but only two to learn Scott's and Andrew's today.
Highlight of today was seeing the HaXXX0r porn DVD booth right beside the Christian hacker booth. Yes, Christian hackers---Jesus L0vz0rz J00 type stuff. Very scary. The HaXXX0r porn wasn't so scary after that--it's a DVD goth girls stripping while reading nmap tutorials, type of stuff. Oh, and naked dumpster diving.
And now it's back to the conference for me, to meet more people. The wireless access has been very unreliable today, and I'm back at the hotel, frittering away O'Reilly's cash reserves writing this on a dialup line from the hotel room. Forgive me, Unca Tim!
--Nat
... goth girls stripping while reading nmap tutorials ...
Must . . . resist . . . promiscuous interface . . . joke.
