March 2008 - Posts
Wynn Las Vegas tomorrow...
I wonder if I can sneak some photos...
Bellagio Fountains...Las Vegas style
By the way, this is video taken with the camera of the AT&T Tilt.
Sitting here waiting for the last presentation of the day to start, I thought I post a few more pictures. The first one is the huge construction site between the Monte Carlo and Bellagio. It's the new city center going in. There is an awful lot of construction noise. I wonder what the Bellagio guests think since it's right in their front yard. We'll be at the Bellagio HTC event Wednesday night.
Across the street is the Eiffel Tower/Paris Hotel Las Vegas and Casino.
Also across the street is Trader Vic's.
And I just thought this was a cool looking Saturn sitting out on display.
We headed out to walk around the convention center after the morning sessions. We're about 2 miles from the convention center and fortunately there will be free shuttle service starting tomorrow to and from the hotel.
I also thought I'd share the somewhat disappointing bag they give you when you show up at the information desk.
And all the stuff they threw in the back.
The maps are a necessity. The place is huge. Here is the map.
There is a red line through the top. The box that starts says "Keynotes", and the arrows lead from the convention center over to the Hilton. CTIA also takes up space on the second floor of the convention center.
Off to the afternoon educational sessions.
The day is about half over, at least CTIA the first day. CTIA was a little busy today. It was a cab zoo. Thankfully I was there first thing at 9 AM because shortly thereafter the lines for attendees grew quickly. What I don't understand at shows like this is why they don't do more electronic scanning. There was a gentleman at the door with a piece of paper asking us all as we came in whether we had printed out the bar code for attending. If we did, we were allowed to access the Fast Track registration. If not, we were told to go to the Attendee full registration line. It didn't matter that I had the bar code on my PDA in an email. It didn't work. Fortunately the woman working the Fast Track counter allowed me to register anyway. But, you would think they would allow electronic sign in.
The exhibit hall was closed off in both directions. Doesn't open until tomorrow.
We were only allowed in to the educational series area. The place is huge.
Wrapping up the first day, we headed out to walk the strip. They warned me of the crowds that gather here for CTIA and up to this point, I'll have to say they are right. Everywhere we go it's been packed.
We ended up at Diablo's Mexican Cantina to round out the evening. Nice live band.
I forgot...hotels here have no concept of coffee pots in the room. Off to find coffee.
Well, I'm in, and is it ever crowded. Only took me about 2 hours longer than I anticipated getting here. Some photo's along the way:
Sitting around waiting for the flight that was an hour late getting out.
Finally allowed to leave.
32,000 feet and climbing.
About two hours in to the flight.
The descent.
We're here.
The crowded airport.
The long taxi line.
At the hotel. Yes, it's the same hotel that caught fire awhile back.
OK, off to see the wizard. More later, with more (and hopefully better) pictures.
I'm finally on the plane and got upgraded to first class. Lots of room, an adult beverage, my tunes...now I'm all set.
Hopefully this isn't a sign of some sort. Flight is now delayed. Looks like a minimum of 30 minutes.
A brief summary so far. I made it to the airport, but had to assist a driver that had ran over a light pole about 2 minutes outside the airport. I get inside, only to end up behind an older woman traveling with a fragile item (a rather large framed picture) that doesn't speak good English. As patient as the TSA folks were, she was trying the patience of everyone in line. She didn't want her picture to go through the metal detector, didn't want to remove her coat, and didn't want to remove her scarf. She didn't have a problem though removing her shoes. Very strange. There was no one in line when we cleared the ID checkpoint, but by the time we made it through the metal detector, there were probably 20 of us waiting to get through.
On to the gate, stopping off at Peat's for some coffee, only to find out for some reason that it was closed.
That's unfortunate. It's the best coffee stops in the airport. Anyway, I ended up having to go to Starbuck's. I prefer Peat's, but I had to make do.
I should be at the hotel in a few hours, and will post more when I'm in. Educational series tomorrow, with the first keynote scheduled for 9 AM pacific on Tuesday, April 1st. Hopefully no April Fool's jokes.
You knew it had to come right?
Mobile phones could kill far more people than smoking or asbestos, a study by an award-winning cancer expert has concluded. He says people should avoid using them wherever possible and that governments and the mobile phone industry must take "immediate steps" to reduce exposure to their radiation.
The study, by Dr Vini Khurana, is the most devastating indictment yet published of the health risks.
It draws on growing evidence – exclusively reported in the IoS in October – that using handsets for 10 years or more can double the risk of brain cancer. Cancers take at least a decade to develop, invalidating official safety assurances based on earlier studies which included few, if any, people who had used the phones for that long.
Earlier this year, the French government warned against the use of mobile phones, especially by children. Germany also advises its people to minimise handset use, and the European Environment Agency has called for exposures to be reduced.
Professor Khurana – a top neurosurgeon who has received 14 awards over the past 16 years, has published more than three dozen scientific papers – reviewed more than 100 studies on the effects of mobile phones. He has put the results on a brain surgery website, and a paper based on the research is currently being peer-reviewed for publication in a scientific journal.
He admits that mobiles can save lives in emergencies, but concludes that "there is a significant and increasing body of evidence for a link between mobile phone usage and certain brain tumours". He believes this will be "definitively proven" in the next decade.
How was the reaction?
Late last week, the Mobile Operators Association dismissed Khurana's study as "a selective discussion of scientific literature by one individual". It believes he "does not present a balanced analysis" of the published science, and "reaches opposite conclusions to the WHO and more than 30 other independent expert scientific reviews".
What's a little interesting is that this article was posted March 30, 2008. If you click the link at the bottom of the page for more information, there's another article titled "Public health: The hidden menace of mobile phones", which ran in October 2007. You can read the two articles and compare for yourselves. Interesting that Professor Mild in the October 2007 story is making similar (almost identical) comments as Dr. Khurana is making in March, 2008. Hmmm......
Source
It took three days, but Windows Vista was hacked as well. I blogged earlier that the Mac OS fell the fastest, and now Vista has fallen, through of all things a hole in Adobe flash. Maybe I should take everything Adobe off my computer. Reading through...it looks like the judges relaxed the criteria to get to the machine. The rules:
Three targets, all patched. All in typical client configurations with typical user configurations. You hack it, you get to keep it.
Each has a file on them and it contains the instructions and how to claim the prize.
Targets (typical road-warrior clients):
- VAIO VGN-TZ37CN running Ubuntu 7.10
- Fujitsu U810 running Vista Ultimate SP1
- MacBook Air running OSX 10.5.2
This year's contest will begin on March 26th, and go during the presentation hours and breaks of the conference until March 28th. The main purpose of this contest is to present new vulnerabilities in these systems so that the affected vendor(s) can address them. Participation is open to any registered attendee of CanSecWest 2008.
The relaxing of the rules:
The contest, which saw a MacBook Air get hacked on Thursday, relaxed the rules even further. On the first day of the contest, only the operating system could be targeted, but on the second day that was expanded to include standard applications. An undisclosed Safari flaw led to the MacBook Air's downfall through the OS X operating system.
On Friday, hackers could target any "popular" piece of third-party application software that computer users might locate on a system. The Fujitsu laptop, running Windows Vista Ultimate, was compromised by a previously undiscovered flaw in Adobe's Flash software.
http://cansecwest.com/
OK, so I've tested blogging, picture taking, and video capabilities, all from my AT&T Tilt. I have my youtube account updated to post any video's I take while at CTIA. I think I'm ready. Should be interesting. Stay tuned.
Testing picture post from Diarist.
Update: Important tip when blogging pictures from my phone. The AT&T Tilt has the capabilities of taking 3 megapixel pictures, at 2048x1536 resolution. This is a rather large photo for blog posting since it doesn't appear there are resizing capabilities.
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