Dear English-speaking readers of this blog: The remainder of this post is in German. Sorry for that, but the talk featured will be in German as well (only about 15% of the talks at the 22c3 will not be in English this year).

Wikipedia, die freie Enzyklopädie in mehr als 100 Sprachen, ist auch dieses Mal wieder auf dem Congress vertreten. Henriette Fiebig, Autorin von “Wikipedia — Das Buch” unternimmt in ihrem Vortrag “Hexenbesen und heiliger Gral — Vorläufige und subjektive Gedanken zur inhaltlichen Qualität von Wikipedia-Artikeln” einen Parforceritt durch die Qualitätskontrollprozesse des …

Starting in the middle of the year a few concerns popped up in the mainstream press about security of RIM’s Blackberry toys. You know the little “Managers’ favourite Tamagotchi” feeding all your e-mails through RIM’s own hub… The professional paranoids were not very surprised by that.

First there was the investigative magazine “Computerwoche” telling that at car manufacturer Audi concerns remained to rethink if it’s a good idea to transfer confidential data via the RIM network.

A bit later on another magazine known for detailed and precise reports called Wirtschaftswoche leaked it’s own …

“Capture The Flag is a hacker contest. Teams of hackers battle against each other in a fight of supremacy in a network full of vulnerable services. The teams’ task is to defend a server while simultaneously attacking the other teams’ servers. At the beginning, all teams have the same services running. A central game server checks the services regularly by sending tickets, the so-called flags, which are collected later on. Every flag that is still there is awarded with scores. Whenever a team manages to read a flag on another system then their own, they can submit it at the game-server, thus …

The registration period for the hackcenter is over, and all seats are already distributed. Every project but the *BSD-projects should have just received the confirmation mail – if no mail arrives until Saturday, 17th, please mail to 22c3-hackcenter (at) cccv.de. Our apologies to all those who were not accepted, we had to reject several projects we personally really liked, but we don’t have enough space for all cool projects out there. Sorry.

The BSD-Projects (NetBSD, OpenBSD, OpenSSH, 9fans, MirOS and Darwin) will get their mails until Monday, we have some specific issues there.

Things are extremely busy with the 22C3 crew. Here’s what keeps us spinning at the moment:

• Two more speakers need to hand in details
• A few dates and times for talks have to be pushed around and re-arranged on request of some speakers
• Once these things are finalized, we have to release the stable version of the schedule which will hopefully not change until the end of the conference
• There are pressing deadlines for printed stuff: the proceedings of the conference (containing all the papers speakers handed in) and the all new and shiny “Congress Guide” for first-timers.

But don’t panic. …

We recommend getting a place to sleep during the congress early. There are various possibilities. If you can afford it, getting a hotel room is probably the best, with a real bed and a real shower. If you are lucky enough to have friends in the capital you can bother between Christmas and New Year, getting a couch to crash on may also be neat. Now, what if you don’t happen to have these options? Then the gym is for you.

The gym is only two underground stations away from the congress venue. Staying there will cost you 5 € per night. You can buy tickets at the entrance of the bcc where you also …

Corinna Habets aka ‘pallas’ studies Computer Science at the RWTH Aachen. But her interests aren’t limited to programming language. She takes an interest in natural languages too. After starting to learn many different languages she is currently learning Esperanto with great success and enthusiasm and will speak about her experience with this nerdy language at the 22C3.
But that is not her only contribution to the program. Corinna also initiated the Lyrical I lyrics contest. As you can see, Corinna’s contributions significantly enlarge the diversity of this year’s program, which has never been …

“_Vote early, vote often_” is a quote variously attributed to three different Chicagoans: [Al Capone][1], the famous gangster; [Richard J. Daley][2], mayor from 1955 to 1976; and [William Hale Thompson][3], mayor from 1915-1923 and 1931-1935. All three were notorious for their corruption and their manipulation of the democratic process. It is most likely that Thompson invented the phrase, and Capone and Daley later …

Using Jabber, the open IM (and more) protocol? You can click your own schedule and get a reminder message for each lecture you chose 15 minutes before it starts using the all new 22C3 Lecture Reminder. Check it out.

Another entry in German…

Ihr solltet möglichst die aktuelle, einstündige Ausgabe von Chaosradio Express anhören. Warum? Weil sie ziemlich komplett großartig ist und Freude auf den Congress macht, darum. Am Mikro sitzen Tim und fukami und stellen ihre Highlights aus dem Congressprogramm vor. Podcast-Freunde mit iTunes können den Feed auch einfach abonnieren, um weitere Folgen nicht zu verpassen, alle anderen schauen einfach mal hier.

To a large extent, the 22C3 is a volunteer-driven event. We call the volunteers “Angels” and many odd jobs that need to be done at the congress rely on them. Angels don’t really get financial benefits, but they are rewarded for their enthusiastic and heroic actions with a free t-shirt and catering. If you want to join them, you’ll find everything you need to know in the Angel FAQ at our public wiki.

But wait, there’s more. This year, we want to have people helping out with one specific task. We have hundreds of talks at the conference. Last year, speakers just came unto the stage without an …

While Berlin gets into the top ten list of the world’s coolest cities hands down, sometimes the city officials surprise you with their unerring sense of bad taste. No, we’re not talking about the plan to turn the Alexanderplatz’s landmark TV tower into a pink football during the FIFA World Cup next year (with a little help from that company that quite surprisingly uses a similar colour scheme). We’re talking about Alexa (link is in German, but the pictures are fun nevertheless), the “shopping and leisure centre” currently being built on Alexanderplatz, right next to the bcc.