My first post...is this group still alive?
Some Guy
Is this group really as dead as it seems, or is my usenet server just
lacking in some way?
I was good friends with Mike Lea (a.k.a. hippykill on usenet, mazeone on
irc and everywhere else), one time poster and maintainer of the
unofficial alt.hackers FAQ. He died in 2003 and I have missed him
terribly ever since. He used to talk about this group quite a bit, so I
kinda wanted to check it out.
I have been using and hacking computers for most of my life, but I'm not
100 percent sure that I have earned the classification of "hacker". I'll
let whoever is left here be the judge of that.
-rich
ObHack:
A simple one to start with...I do alot of work with phones and cabling
where I work. One of my most valued tools is a "tone generator" that
puts a signal down a wire that you can then use an amplified "wand" to
find that wire on the other end of the cable. Very handy if you have a
telco pedestal with 2 100pair, 3 50pair, and 2 25pair cables spliced
together and you need to find one specific pair. Anyway, i lost one of
my tone generators and had to dust off an older one. It didn't work, so
I took it apart expecting to just change the battery. I quickly
discovered that the 9v snap terminal that connects to the battery had
corroded to an unusable level. I found a new battery but had no way to
connect it. I then took the old battery, pulled the outside metal shell
off and I was able to remove the top piece of plastic with the metal
snaps off. I then stripped the wires that connect the battery to the
circuit board and placed them on the contacts of the new battery. I then
took the smaill piece of plastic with the battery snaps from the dead
battery and snapped it onto the new battery, thus holding the wires in
place. By no means a permanent solution, but it worked when I needed it
to :)
Michael Bednarek
>Is this group really as dead as it seems, or is my usenet server just
>lacking in some way?
[snip]
I think most NNTP servers have this newsgroup marked as moderated. With
no obvious moderation mechanism, the contributions have died down
considerably; see <http://groups.google.com.au/group/alt.hackers/topics>
and <http://groups.google.com.au/group/alt.hackers/about>.
--
Michael Bednarek http://mbednarek.com/ "POST NO BILLS"
Eli the Bearded
> On Wed, 11 Jul 2007 08:16:57 -0500, Some Guy wrote in alt.hackers:
>> Is this group really as dead as it seems, or is my usenet server just
>> lacking in some way?
> no obvious moderation mechanism,
This is how it Should Be. This is one of a small group of semi-legit
(well, fully legit in the sense of anything goes in alt.*; but well
recognized) self-moderated groups.
> the contributions have died down considerably;
I hope you aren't trying to connect those two facts.
And where's your hack? No posts without a hack belong here.
So, um, I need a hack myself.
I'm secretary for on a small non-profit Board of Directors. I need to
take minutes for the meetings. I find it most convient to write my
notes on paper and then type them up for the minutes. So I created a
little script that will generate an HTML file I can print and use. I
can cut and paste agenda items and time allocated from the agenda to
my script and it will title a section and allocate a reasonable amount
of space. Then I load it up in Firefox and print it. No hack yet.
After I fill it all it, I go back and edit the HTML to have the
minutes. There are comments in the HTML to let me quickly jump to
the next subject. Now there are fields in the HTML that I only want
to print when the minutes are blank. Here comes the hack.
Rather than remove them, I have this in the style sheet:
body.filledin .hide { display: none; }
The template gets generated with
<BODY CLASS="notfilledin">
And when I change that to:
<BODY CLASS="filledin">
Anything of CLASS="hide" disappears.
Elijah
------
the usefulness of nested style declarations
Doug McLaren
Michael Bednarek <m...@mbednarek.com> wrote:
| I think most NNTP servers have this newsgroup marked as moderated. With
| no obvious moderation mechanism, the contributions have died down
| considerably; see <http://groups.google.com.au/group/alt.hackers/topics>
| and <http://groups.google.com.au/group/alt.hackers/about>.
That is intentional, and it's been that way for a very long time
(forever?) -- a real `hacker' can figure out how to post anyways.
It's a `you must be at least this smart to post' sort of test.
--
Doug McLaren, dou...@frenzied.us
"I was young and foolish then; now I am old and foolisher."
- Mark Twain, A Biography
Eli the Bearded
> That is intentional, and it's been that way for a very long time
> (forever?) -- a real `hacker' can figure out how to post anyways.
> It's a `you must be at least this smart to post' sort of test.
And a real hacker would remember the "most post a hack (however small)"
rule.
Example: I have in my $HOME a directory called notes/, in it I keep
a number of files with quick reference guides, cheat sheets, etc.
I name all the files in there with a long slew of keywords, so when
I want to check one quickly, I can just use a word and some shell
globbing and Bob's my uncle. Example (taken from my shell history)
$ grep -i slb ~/notes/*country*
SOLOMON ISLANDS SB SLB 090
$
Here's the full name of that file:
$ ls -l ~/notes/*country*
-rw-rw-r-- 1 LOGIN GROUP 5487 2006-06-06 18:25 /home/LOGIN/notes/iso-3166-country-codes-tld-codes
$
Elijah
------
has about a dozen files in there now
Rayner
Doug McLaren <dougmc+usen...@frenzied.us> wrote:
>In article <rcqd931h9t21umutr...@4ax.com>,
>Michael Bednarek <m...@mbednarek.com> wrote:
>
>| I think most NNTP servers have this newsgroup marked as moderated. With
>| no obvious moderation mechanism, the contributions have died down
>| considerably; see <http://groups.google.com.au/group/alt.hackers/topics>
>| and <http://groups.google.com.au/group/alt.hackers/about>.
>
>That is intentional, and it's been that way for a very long time
>(forever?) -- a real `hacker' can figure out how to post anyways.
>It's a `you must be at least this smart to post' sort of test.
Indeed, and it keeps the script kiddies out ("hi evry1 can u taech me 2
hack window"). Although they're probably all posting on phpbb forums and
such like, these days. Ahh, web forums. Like Usenet, except slower, less
functional, and with popups offering you free spywa^H^H^H^H^Hsmileys.
Rayner
ObNoHackTooSmall: Our receptionist at work was trying to photocopy a
stack of pages that had been in a comb binding. Frustratingly, the
automatic sheet feeder on the copier kept jamming on the front edge of the
paper, which had all the holes in it. It was looking like a long, boring
afternoon of copying each sheet individually. So I suggested rotating
the stack of paper 180 degrees, so that the unmunged edge of the paper
went into the copier first. And lo, the copier immediately began happily
spitting out perfect photocopies.
--
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