Subject: RE: [hackers-il] Meta: New mailing list : hackers-il-hacks

From: Chen Shapira <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 11:04:06 +0200

> I started out a new mailing list dedicated for discussion 
> "hacks, exploits
> and endeavours" whose authors think are of general interest 
> to the public:
> 
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hackers-il-hacks/
> 
> Hopefully this will increase the SNR of this list, albeit I 
> must add that
> if the discussion gets too philosophical I will move it here.

Since this list is very low traffic, and without a clear topic of
discussion, I don't see any problem with keeping hacks and others here.
Given that they don't involve cracking.

I find the idea of splitting the little traffic we have between two lists a
bit silly. Next thing you know we have hackers-il-rants,
hackers-il-war-stories, hackers-il-programming-in-strange-languages and
hackers-il-good-books.

Thanks,
Chen.

---

From: Gilad Ben-Yossef <[email-masked]>
Date: 18 Sep 2002 15:10:48 +0300

> hackers-il-war-stories, hackers-il-programming-in-strange-languages and

You forgot hackers-il-mailing-lists for discussions of new mailing
lists... :-)

Gilad.

-- 
Gilad Ben-Yossef <[email-masked]>
http://benyossef.com

"Too many journalists think that C4I really stands for Inteligence,
 Communication, Control, Computers and Consiparcy."

---

From: Shlomi Fish <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 10:13:40 +0300 (IDT)

> hackers-il-war-stories, hackers-il-programming-in-strange-languages and

Chen, you should have spoken during my original post. I hope you know the
story, now I know that:

1. Muli supports splitting the list.
2. A few others who have filtered _all_ my messages also do that.
(honestly speaking, I am offended by this behaviour and could not care
less for them)
2. Chen is against.
4. Tzafrir, I assume is against as he took active responses to my post.
5. Likewise for Nadav and Arik.
6. OmerZ specifically wrote a post to defend me.
7. I, am neutral, but think the "exploits" I posted were on-topic.
8. I'd rather not speak in the name of others, but request them to
voice their opinion now.

It's impossible to make everybody happy all the time. So, we have
to decide on one course of action or another. A possible one would be a
"[HACK]" subject line or a [CODE] one.

BTW, my hacks were not the first ones to have been posted on the list. I
clearly remember Nadav's mp3 randomizer awk script right at the inception
of this list.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

 > Thanks,
> Chen.
>
>
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> [email-masked]
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish        [email-masked]
Home Page:         http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
Home E-mail:       [email-masked]

"Let's suppose you have a table with 2^n cups..."
"Wait a second - is n a natural number?"

---

From: Muli Ben-Yehuda <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 10:19:47 +0300

> 1. Muli supports splitting the list.

This is factually incorrect. I support keeping the list with a very
high signal to noise ratio. Some of the so called hacks that have been
posted in the past fail to come close to that criteria. 

> 2. A few others who have filtered _all_ my messages also do that.

See above for the reason some people have filtered you. 

> (honestly speaking, I am offended by this behaviour and could not care

You have nothing to be offended about. Nobody owes it to anyone to
actually read what they write. 

> "[HACK]" subject line or a [CODE] one.

I see nothing wrong with a creative use of one's procmailrc to keep
one happy. 

> clearly remember Nadav's mp3 randomizer awk script right at the inception

I'm sorry, but you seem to have the mistaken impression that I'm
against posting any code or hacks to the list. Of course not! I'm
against posting "here's what I did during my five minutes lunch
break", unless you happend to discover a rebuttal for the theory of
general relativity or implemented AES in intercal. 

Ok, here's a test case. Here's a nice script I wrote. It must've taken
approximately an hour, including cosulting the man page and tweaking
it to do exactly what I want. Is there anything to be gained by my
posting it here as a "hack"? I honestly don't think so. It's just not
good enough to qualify! I'll leave the moral to you to figure out. 

syscalltrack/utils/sctlog/sctlog: 

#!/bin/bash

function die() {
    echo $1
    exit 1
}

# open the device file on fd 3 
exec 3<> /dev/sct_log || die "failed to open the log device"

# pass all arguments to the log device and flush it 
sct_logctrl --fd 3 $* flush || die "failed to set log device parameters"

# enable it, in case it wasn't enabled before 
sct_logctrl --fd 3 enable || die "failed to enable the log device" 

# will read from device file to stdout
exec cat <&3

-- 
Muli Ben-Yehuda
syscalltrack hacker-at-large

---

From: Omer Zak <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 12:24:29 +0300 (EET DST)

> 7. I, am neutral, but think the "exploits" I posted were on-topic.

Muli (?) explained that most of Shlomi's "exploits" are not profound, and
therefore don't really fit Hackers-IL's mission.

I suggest that Shlomi use a Web site to post his hacks, exploits and blog
his stuff.  Anyone who is interested may visit Shlomi's Web site once a
week.  Then he'll post to Hackers-IL only the most interesting and most
profound insights he is having (and if not now, eventually I am sure he'll
have a good judgement about the profoundness of an item).
                                             --- Omer
WARNING TO SPAMMERS:  at http://www.zak.co.il/spamwarning.html
Some (one) of my own trivial hacks can be found at:
                    http://www.zak.co.il/gpl/misc/eng/itches.html

---

From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 12:42:29 +0300

I've been mentioned a few times in your post, so I thought I'd better
put things straight...

> 5. Likewise for Nadav and Arik.

I'm not sure what exactly you mean my position is, but my actual position
is that there is no sense in splitting this group further. Hackers-il is
already a splinter-group spun off from linux-il, and it would be silly
to break it up even further.

After people loudly opposed too "philosophical" discussions in this list,
you spun off philosophy-il. I subscribed to it, because I'm actually very
interested in philosophy, and hoped to discuss it more than is currently
"allowed" in hackers-il. But this mailing list never took off, and the
average traffic is one post in a month. I think this experiment was a
failure, and hackers-il-hacks is likely to fair off even worse.

> clearly remember Nadav's mp3 randomizer awk script right at the inception

Yes, November 5, 2000. But to my defense, I sent this script as a repsonse
to someone (Ishay Sommer) who asked a question about random mp3 playing.
I thought my script was on-topic, and I also thought it was genuinely
useful for the general population (unlike your Makefile, which obviously
won't be of immediate use to anyone).

BTW, Last year, in a party, someone asked me a riddle he was asked in a job
interview, about an efficient algorithm for reordering a list into random
order. I immediately told him about the algorithm, the same one I used in
the mp3 list randomizer script. He was amazed. So actually that script was
less trivial than might first appear.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |    Thursday, Sep 19 2002, 13 Tishri 5763
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |This signature was intentionally left
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |boring.

---

From: Shlomi Fish <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 12:46:51 +0300 (IDT)

So, what do you suggest? That I should not post hacks or whatever that I
consider interesting here? Or should I make sure they are of use to the
general public first?

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

---

From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 12:59:37 +0300

> consider interesting here? Or should I make sure they are of use to the

I did not suggest anything; I was never the one who objected to your posts
in the first place, and among my 2887 lines of mail filtering code (!),
not even one deals with filtering out your hacks ;)

All I said was why my mp3 post *was* on-topic and perhaps even slightly
interesting and useful (though obviously not of earth-shattering important).
Try to defend your posts, instead of pointing to other unwelcome posts;
I am not a very good example - in the beginning of hackers-il I was nearly
booted out because of one unwelcome post, if anybody remembers...

Frankly, I don't see what all the fuss is about, people (I'm saying "fuss"
because it even got to the point where Orna publically announced on linux-il
that she is not on hackers-il because of its low SNR). hackers-il's volume
is much lower than linux-il's (for example), and some discussions (like the
consulting one, or this silly discussion) drag on for much longer than
Shlomi's postings.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |    Thursday, Sep 19 2002, 13 Tishri 5763
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |Experience is what lets you recognize a
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |mistake when you make it again.

---

From: Muli Ben-Yehuda <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 14:06:57 +0300

> therefore don't really fit Hackers-IL's mission.

Guilty as charged. 

> have a good judgement about the profoundness of an item).

I whole heartedly agree, and do exactly the same thing in my advogato
diary.
-- 
Muli Ben-Yehuda
syscalltrack hacker-at-large

---

From: Shlomi Fish <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 21 Sep 2002 07:26:32 +0300 (IDT)

> have a good judgement about the profoundness of an item).

Done then. I will set up something like that soonish. I'll probably use
hackers-il-hacks as a newsletter for it, so everybody who are interested -
please join.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish