Jan02 Meeting Report.
Brum2600 Jan 2002

In attendance:

Reload
Savvy
No-Angel
Jasun <-- Shock appearance (we thought he was dead)
lsl
bambam
DeanX

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Note the lack of a fizzy - ominous "family matters"
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The meeting again started slowly, with only three people
arriving on time; also we had no fixed venue for the first
time in quite a few meets.

bambam suggested we moved up to the newly opened "dot comm"
cybercafe on Broad Street, and we drove/walked there.

On arrival we found an empty, brand spanking new, free,
licensed facility with flat screen displays attached to a
mix of win2000/XP boxen.

Our natural urge to investigate lead us first to the bar,
then the task list, netstat, "tracert", www.spy.org.uk,
to the bt adsl router's web interface, and then onto irc.
The post-owned-cafe bordom then separated the interest and
people started just bumming around on the internet and
exploring the local machines further.

Mid-way through this exploration a suited Manager
type came over and asked us in a rather nervous-dog-
trapped-in-the-corner way if we would kindly not
"go into dos". A couple of our group attempted to explain
the either "I'm not in dos, I'm in windows, see: [clicks
on a few other windows and moves them around to emphasise
the point]" or "this is telnet, I'm talking to another
computer, I'm typing commands on another computer, not
this one, it's got nothing to do with dos", but our
efforts seemed to fall on deaf ears (which was possibly
because of the music volume in there). Each of us has
no doubt encountered this situation many times before,
and we surely understand how difficult it must be to start
up a place like this.
Clearly our response (in order to forge and maintain good
relations with this individual and this venue) needs to
be one of information and reassurance. Unfortunately
he wouldn't give us his phone number, so we'll just have
to email him :)

The music in there started off fairly chilled garage/indie
musak, and then built to an orgasm of trendy dance/garage/
ibiza anthems as a crowd of second class yuppies entered,
attracted by the reef-for-a-pound introductory offer that
the management had presumably layed on, to the desired
effect.
We left to the sound of a hardcore home-mix of drum and
baseline and some woman chanting "Birmingham is da bomb"
or something along those lines.

See the photos from outside.

Having queried a bouncer about the possibility of using
a hotel bar to sit quietly and talk we decided not to go
in and instead went back to the car to drive to a more
distant venue.
Someone noticed that there was a nice quiet pub which then
turned out to have a perfect back room.
It appeared the brum2600 had found it's new home.

Here we cracked out a new lappy and had brief talks about:
the cybercafe we were just in,
network libraries and tools,
dildonics,
crypto software and the trust we should give it.
portable power.
Dsniff and it's lack of ssh2 protocol support
(and improvements therein).
"war driving" with a wireless (802.11b) card and a lappy.
(and legalities therein).
owning of windows boxen behind a many-to-one NAT gateway.

[IT IS IMPORTANT TO BE AWARE THAT AT NO POINT DURING
brum2600 MEETS DOES ANY ILLEGAL ACTIVITY TAKE PLACE.
brum2600 IS A FORUM FOR FREE INFORMATION EXCHANGE]

This time without (and thankfully so) the alcohol haze,
our linguistically and mnemonically challenged ontourage
has produced only a couple and not so amusing quotes:

" the darwin, formerly the crown
you mean the white swan
exactly, the crown.
no, the white swan.
yes, the white swan, that's what i said."

" she's ugly.
yeah, but she's horny"

" tell them you want to write a linux driver for
it, they'll have to send you a complimentary one"
(you have to read above to get that one)

" I'm sure that he is just wimping out
cos he is tired from last night, I vote we kick him out
of the irc channel and give him a bad report"
I agree."

" this place is cool - look - hotties!
sorry?
attractive ladies with little attire, look!"

With a new venue, and a drive to get the meet into the
meets list in the magazine (www.2600.com/meetings),
Brum2600 storms into the New Year.

--------------------------------------------------------------
report 1
report 2
Brum2600 Report for Jan 5th:

In attendance at some point or another in the evening where....

Me: L-s-L
Bambam
Re-Load
jasun
Deanx
No-Angel
Savvy

Ive being asked to point out that the assembled members expressed thier
disapointment that fizzy was 'too tired' to attend. Tut Tut.

At the forefront of our minds this month was finding a new venue for
brum2600 now that we have outgrown the hogshead. With this aim in mind we
headed off to Birminghams newest cyber cafe, on the ever trendy Broad
Street.

This instantly appeared to be a good move, the place was almost empty and
offered free surfing until 10pm with many cheap drink offers. It also
appealed to our contingent for a number of other reasons. Primaraly it was
extreamly ownable and after possibly a record 3mins we owned it. Secondly
for those of us not owning it, the staff where universally attractive. From
this point however things went downhill, the system was poorly set up and
kept booting us out, when we complained we attracted the attention of a
Administration type character who later appeared to be the manager. Until
we left he hung around in a bad temper screaming at us.....
"Dont use DOS man" (it was NT, we tried to explain but he wouldnt have it.)
"I kick you out, you not come back."
"Dont want no smart asses man"
"Dont go into my system man"
Also the place began to fill up with pre club type people, at this point
we'd had enough of the owner/manager and trendies (sum first class ass
tho) and left.

After wondering aimlessly around various offices and discussing how the data
protection act would allow us to request the footage of us doing so, we (much
to my supprise) found a pub, not just any pub, we found a chilled pub with
comfy chairs and ample table space for lappies and our other toys. This we
decided was going to be our new venue.

As per usualy our conversations varied from the serious and informative to
the downright ilreverant.

Amonst the serious topics on offer was reverse telnet and its uses, ssh and
encryption, both of which talk the form of bambam educating Deanx (the
latter topic) and myself (the former). In the ssh, encryption bits, I tried my
damnest to own bambams lappy, giving up breifly before coming back to it and
realising I could just cd to /root, i believe he has now sorted this,
everything else looked ok though.

Wireless LANS got a look in as the group discussed ways in which they could
be used to own various pieces of BT hardware aroung the city. As did Psion
hardware and the failings of the UK Info disk.

Less informative topics mostly consisted of mine and Re-loads discussion of
cyber-dildonics and the posiblility of me writing a linux driver for them, I
may also take up Re-loads suggestion of writing a wap interface to go with
it.

Some prize quotes of the night (apologies to bambam, who i believe has a
much better collection of these)

"Dont use DOS man" Cybercafe Manager
"I dont care, she fucking horny" Myself
"Ive just CD'ed to root" " "
"You want me to manipulate the image?" Re-Load
"Yeah make him look thinner" No-Angel
"One of them pully up and down ones...shit that could hurt if you pissed her
off" Re-Load about male cyber-dildonics.

Im sure the was many more, ive just forgoten them.

Peace:

L-s-L

lsl@brum2600.net

Images.