Tuesday, May 03, 2005
Dinner......... and discussions..
There was the usual gathering around the hotel lobby for dinner. This time round, there's two major groups, with the majority going to a seafood restaurant in St Paul's Bay, while all but one of the MSFT gang went to join the other group, which was to a nearby highly recommended Italian restaurant.
We reached the Italian restaurant at about 730pm, with about 18 of us. Amazingly, the owner almost didn't want to take us in, citing that it is too early for dinner! Imagine that..... 18 "tourist" customers ... and they have the gall to reject us. haha
Eventually, they welcomed us in, and we had some great Italian food. The wine's not as good as last night's though.
During the course of the dinner, i found out that the professional areas of interest for these anti-virus researchers have expanded widely. You'd thought that they would be focusing on computer-related areas, but with the malware (aka viruses/worms/trojans/spyware/phishing etc) being more malicious these days, they are doing things that's not unlike CSI agents. Subjects ranged from online children protection strategies, next-generation anti-malware, human-tagging, etc and these are discussed in a informal setting!
That's the true value of all these conferences.. Not the official presentations, not the official discussions, but the informal ones that we do during dinner, and the usual gathering in the hotel lobby cafeteria.
We reached the Italian restaurant at about 730pm, with about 18 of us. Amazingly, the owner almost didn't want to take us in, citing that it is too early for dinner! Imagine that..... 18 "tourist" customers ... and they have the gall to reject us. haha
Eventually, they welcomed us in, and we had some great Italian food. The wine's not as good as last night's though.
During the course of the dinner, i found out that the professional areas of interest for these anti-virus researchers have expanded widely. You'd thought that they would be focusing on computer-related areas, but with the malware (aka viruses/worms/trojans/spyware/phishing etc) being more malicious these days, they are doing things that's not unlike CSI agents. Subjects ranged from online children protection strategies, next-generation anti-malware, human-tagging, etc and these are discussed in a informal setting!
That's the true value of all these conferences.. Not the official presentations, not the official discussions, but the informal ones that we do during dinner, and the usual gathering in the hotel lobby cafeteria.
