Apart from the little details there are also some major differences to be found if you compare european countries. Well, actually I can‘t really compare them all but Italy has a slightly different approach when it comes to traffic. Or to be more precise: traffic lights.

While a red traffic light in Germany is considered a rule it is more seen as being a recommendation in Italy. A red light means something like: „you might probably want to stop as there is a good chance for competing traffic from other directions“ while in Germany it means simply „stop“.

This might sound scary first but the good thing about it is that it produces much „optimized“ traffic on the one hand and less superflous stops on the other hand. It also has the advantage that people will never expect a green light to be a undisputable sign of a clear way. I don‘t really know how pedestrians fit in this game but it might be the same with both systems.

Italian traffic somehow mimics Internet standards: there are recommendations and you usually do fine folllowing them. There is, however, room for optimizations that might make you ignore one of these recommendations without actually doing any particular harm to the whole concept.

Great ice cream is being served at Via San Quintino 31. This is a traditional, sicilian ice cream maker. That place is so crowded that the counter is organized like your local registration office. On entry you take a ticket with a number and then you wait until your number is on display. A friendly crowd of nice ladies is at your service on three counters at the same time. Never seen an ice-cream shop so busy.

My recommendation: Granite, which is basically flavoured crushed ice. You get it in all colors. I chose coffee and lemon (one after the other, of course) and I can understand why this place is as popular as it is. And it‘s open until 1 in the morning.

I am about to finish my trip to Italy. As usual, these vacancies give you some new impressions and hopefully new conclusions.

I closed my day with a visit to a restaurant deep in the suburbs of Torino. The restaurant is called „Manhattan Pub“ and if you will be in Torino once, I can only recommend going there (Via Giachino 46). I just participated in the biggest and one of the best-tasting Pizzas I ever had. The pizza for six people covered the table completely and delivered on my dreams without compromise.

My italian friends fetched me at the ground station of the mountain railway to Superga. What followed was a high-speed drive through the streets of Torino. Seems as if everybody feels like driving a Ferrari all the time. So Italy is also delivering: be prepared to discover the stereotypic behaviour that you probably have in your mind when you think about this very special place in Europe. Meanwhile, the back-seat passengers where busy exchanging Amore.

There are some things where Italy really excels. One is food, the second is the devotion to discussion (the use of mobile phones is beyond what I expected) and the third is the warmth that people use when communicating with each other. No comparison to what I am used to in Germany. Especially when you relate to the computer scene.

The hackers here seem to be much more integrated and „normal“. Of course, there is nerdy behaviour, but it is either taking less precedence or there is simply not the same amount of necessity in developing it as in Germany where the nerds seem to be much more distuinguished than the scene over here. But it is just a first impression and I may be also completely wrong. Take it as just one more reality to choose from in your daily life.

I left „El Barrio“ and took some time out to explore the center of Torino. It is deserted. It seems if everybody has left the city or was expelled for some other reason. Quiet Earth.

Most of the shops are closed. It comes to my mind that this is a deeply catholic society. So everything is closed on sunday. Well, not everything but downtown Torino is not the place I would recommend to my friends on christian holidays.

The city is pretty dense. Huge, monolithic buildings, one after the other. Small roads. No much free space although here and there some small parks have been thrown in. It‘s like a „buy two and get one free“ offer. You go for the bonus but in the end you just get the initial offer. So I leave the center and walk my way along the big road towards the river Po. It is getting nicer and nicer then. And greener. Public football places, kids playing. Every now and then a refreshing public water supply.

I finally I found my way to the Superga mountain railway station. I spend EUR 4,13 on a return ticket (8000 Italian Lira). I enjoy the trip with the ancient cable car and on the top I am being served with a beautiful view on Torino. Well, it could be better as the weather is a bit dizzy today.

On the top of the mountain there is basically a church and a couple of shops. A classic tourist trap. The church is under reconstruction so you can‘t get in anyway. I dont‘t care as I am fed up with churches anyway. I rarely visit even museums when I enter foreign cities. It is so boring. The shops offer a a mix of fan articles for the two big J‘s: Juventus and Jesus. I guess most people go for Jesus, with Juve securing a strong second place. While I was shaking my head, hacking on my log a bit and listening to the disgusting pop music that poured out of the bar‘s shrieking loudspeakers some people were folding out flags and were generally spending too much money on useless stuff.

I am spending some of my money on some useless paraphernalia as well. I am not too unhappy with it as I am able to bring it down to a reasonable price. Then I have to leave. My tourist job has ended. I am going to rejoin with some of the Hackmeeting guys in hope for a delicious meal.

My flight leaves at 7 in the morning. Hope I will find some sleep before.

The Hackmeeting has come to end. Traditionally this is done by assembling everybody in a huge discussion circle to talk about how everything has been, what should have been better and what is next.

The next Hackmeeting is going to be in Genua. And there are plans for an additional, trans-national event that much more addresses crowds from other countries calling for participants from Croatia to Spain, from Italy to Germany. And probably everybody else.

As I said before, this is important. Don‘t know if my presence has stimulated anything but focusing on international events is a good thing. We are trying to do this at the Camp as the dutch hackers have been doing it for more than a decade now.

Got spare time? Experienced with scissors? Then you might want to check out „『ロボットタイリク』ロボットカタガミ★２６„.

Hopefully, the title of this link actually actually displays in japanese characters in your browser. I have actually no clue what it means as I just copied and pasted it from the web site and do not understand a single concept of the japanese language. I hope it doesn‘t mean „Welcome To Adobe GoLive“ or something similar offensive :-)

But most probably, the title of the page won‘t reveal the same graphical impression to you as the creator of the page forgot to correctly encode the used character set (Shift-JIS) in his web page.

The creator probably assumed that nobody except japanese people would be interested in cutting out paper robots. He (or she) was wrong. And now the page looks a bit awkward when you first open it and your defauöt encoding is not Shift-JIS. So what can we do?

First, you can try to manually select the Shift-JIS encoding (also called „Character Set“ oder „Character Coding“) from the appropriate menu in your browser. This should fix the display of the page and of the page title as well (of course the title is still broken in Internet Explorer on the Mac even if you select the correct encoding).

Taking care of proper encodings and declaring the DOCTYPE of your web documents is important. It helps other people read what you are talking about. It helps browsers to properly render what you graphically intended.

Web standards are the glue of the information age. Let‘s apply it.

The Hackmeeting community is renowned for its discussion-based decision making. The whole event is organized via a single mailing list where everybody contributes and where everything is being discussed over and over until a decision can be made that is backed by most or everybody on the list.

One of these decisions is to have a restricted access to the Internet. One of the reasons for it seems to be the good experience that was made with this in Catania two years ago where there was no Internet at all.

When I look around the rooms where people sit and work with their machines I see them doing basically the same things I am used to see at the Congress: trading files, watching some movies, playing Quake a bit, working with the command line and so on. The servers are filled with the usual mix of ripped media: audio, video and books. Quite a lot of Linux installed, almost no Windows in sight. I have seen around five Macs so far but some people confuse me when they look on my screen asking: „Ah! This is Mac OS X? Quite beautiful…“.

So the only real change is the absence of external web pages. But this also means: no researching, no updates, no search engines, no news, no web services. I don‘t get it but nobody seems to complain. They are busy discussing and learning which is not a bad thing.

I no longer make a distinction between Internet and Intranet. I can‘t work without Internet being „on“. I use it like a bookshelf and I feel handicapped if my favourite encyclopedias are gone.

DECODER was a printed magazine in italy focusing on computer culture. Today it no longer exists in printed form but as a web site. Among other things it features an old interview with Wau Holland.

The publishing activity of Decoder has transformed into ShaKe Edizioni Underground. They are publishing mainly italian translations of books important to the electronic underground like Crypto of Steven Levy (also author of the famous books „Hackers“ and „Insanely Great„).

I just finished my talk on Blinkenlights. It took quite some time to organize the setup but the crew in the end managed to get the microphone fixed. I am still proud of my new toy, the best-spent 10 dollars ever: Clicker. Doing a presentation with a phone can still be considered rather cool and I love cool things.

After the talk I got invited to a Wardriving session. So now I am sitting inside a japanese car driving through Torino heading to the Fiat headquarters. I am on the front seat, with three young hackers in the back (16/17/20).

Fiat is to Torino what Stuttgart is to Mercedes-Benz (or to be more precise: to Daimler-Chrysler). The town basically lives from Fiat. I guess there is more Volkswagen in Wolfsburg than Fiat in Torino. But it just a rough estimate and one of these totally meaningless infobits.

After ten minutes at Piazza Bernini AirSnort discovers the first network. I had some doubts if wardriving works inside a car without extra antennas. The first network has no password set, so it‘s open. So easy. I was told that wireless security is still a new concept in Italy. I believe it.

It took quite some time for my talk to begin because the crew was playing a weird theatre-style game about sex and computers. I didn‘t really get it as everything was in italian and I left my personal translation assistant at home. But everybody was dressed-up, in good mood and they danced and played strange games so there was a forced delay before I could start with my stuff. Because of the heat I was drinking a lot and unfortunately the coldest drink was beer. So I was already quite pissed when I did my talk. Now the fast driving style are probing my stomach. Hope this is not becoming too embarassing for me.

The second network was discovered. This time it is encrypted with WEP. We move on. For a while a police car precedes us with the flash light on. We look a bit like one of these Corps Diplomatique in Berlin. Next stop at the central post office. This time it is two networks at the same. Weird configuration. No results. We proceed. My stomach makes a nervous move.

My PowerBook sucks. It goes off every now and then because of the vibration caused by italian streets and italian driving style. Hope my stomach is more resistant than my battery contact. Passing Fiat headquarters. No network. Hmm.

It is pretty obvious Italians have a totally different approach compared to Germans when it comes to things like traffic lights. We are trying not to risk too much so we are actually respecting all traffic lights fnord. But everybody else does not really care at all. A red light is somehow considered „alien“ and is easily ignored.

We are driving around banks, supermarkets and other areas. Here and there a signal gets caught but noting strong enough to be able actually have a look inside. I am getting tired. Signal! We stop in the middle of the street. We are standing in front of „Caserma Vittorio da Bormida“. No encryption. No DHCP. Channel 6. Poking around a bit. No results.

The tour ends with a snack at one of these caravan food boxes. I choose sausage in bread – north italian style. Actually quite tasty. Now fatigue is coming over me like the shadow of plane passing by. We drive back to Hackmeeting. Finish typing. Send message. Log off. EOT.

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