Just eight hours after the East Coast's largest hacking conference opened its doors Friday, H2K2 had already taken on the feel of summer camp for enthusiastic engineers. While most are here to hack around the clock for a few days and. . .
Just eight hours after the East Coast's largest hacking conference opened its doors Friday, H2K2 had already taken on the feel of summer camp for enthusiastic engineers. While most are here to hack around the clock for a few days and catch up with friends they rarely see face-to-face, a significant number said they came hoping to find employment or clients.

"There's no better place to find a government job than a hacker convention," said Gray Adams, an unemployed programmer from Chicago. "There are always people at these shows who are looking to hire hackers."

But for most people, H2K2 isn't a jazzed-up job fair. The center of attention at the show in the early hours were the computers. H2K2 boasts a huge wireless network which attendees are welcome to jump into. Plenty of connected computers are available for hacking with no worries about pesky legal prosecution.

Mark Williams, 17, of Manhattan, said he was "totally stoked" to find a place where he was encouraged to attack other people's computers.

"It's so hard for me not to slide into systems when people leave them wide open," Williams said. "I don't do it because I don't want to end up as Bubba's bitch in some jail cell. It's great to be somewhere where you can be yourself."

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