"This is our SUV, the Nebuchadnezzar. From it, we hack into the Matrix and broadcast our pirate signal."

That pretty much sums up our trip to CarolinaCon 8, held last weekend at the Hilton Hotel in Raleigh, North Carolina.

CarolinaCon, now in its eighth year, is a small, intimate hacker con founded by people who believe that sharing information with one another is the best way to both learn and advance the state of the art. It's the sort of con where you will see a talk by someone who may have learned about public speaking from watching Jerry Seinfeld's …