24C3 - Part 1

Ooooh, my head hurts. Two days at the 24C3 and I'm dizzy. I've attended talks on the Bundestrojaner, on electronic election devices, on surveillance, on the enormous amount of data the US insists be stored forever about airplane passengers, on linguistic analysis, on reactions to violent games....

Some have been very interesting, others so-so, some not listed above I left shortly after they started boring me.

It looked like quite a change this year in the number of women - I spoke with one in line to get my ticket, and counted 7 in my immediate neighborhood. But inside they were quickly diluted to the "normal" homeopathic dosages.

I went to the Haecksen breakfast this morning, that was nice to meet all these women, but most insisted that they did not hack. Many were here to observe women and technology. I hope they had their microscopes packed.

I had two unpleasant experiences today:

1. I had offered a lightening talk, but noted that I could only hold it today. There was another guy in the same position. I went up front at the beginning to try and let the Very Important Busy People know. A guy did the same. His number was way far down the list. Guess what: he got to talk, I didn't. I am invisible.
2. The chaos has gotten to the point that they were not able to distribute receipts for the tickets yesterday. The signs were still up saying that they were busy programming this. I went to the front desk and asked if they had the receipts sorted out and forgot to take down the signs. No, not yet for yesterday. "Can I help program, then? It's not exactly rocket science to program receipts!!" "What?" the guy said, "you can program?" Duh. Of course not. I'm a girl. A girl at at hacker's congress. A girl who has been hacking before he was born. "Sure," I said, "I'm a professor for computer science." "And you can program?" he asked incredulously. "But it is really difficult to get this done."
   
   They were printing receipts for today, and people who did not need
   them were leaving them. I found one for 80 Euros and am happy.
   The receipt consists of the header, the price, the tax, the date, a unique number, and a footer. Give me 30 minutes to read the handbook for the little slip printer, and I'll have you a program that takes a receipt number and an amount and prints out the receipt for you. Of course, it won't be programmed in brainfuck but it will solve the problem.
   

More to come, if I can stand another day.