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The mis-meaning of "hacker" helped convict me by merlyn · 2000-05-08 06:38 · Score: 1 · on On Usage of "Hacker vs. Cracker"

In my ongoing ongoing legal battle, one of the issues raised in front of the jury was my frequent self description as Just another Perl hacker. I believe the prosecution was able to use this fact, twisted as they wish, to convince the jury that I was basically evil. In fact, I meant nothing like that in my moniker, but I'm sure the jury wasn't able to distinguish that.

Re:Nikon Coolpix by merlyn · 2000-04-22 20:19 · Score: 1 · on Which Digital Camera Do You Recommend?

I agree. The Coolpix 950 is a great camera (coming from someone who has done a lot a video and a lot of still shots in a previous life).

See literally thousands of examples of my shooting at my picture archive.

Re:I Feel That I Must Warn You... by merlyn · 2000-03-19 03:52 · Score: 1 · on Perl Creative Daemon Contest

Oddly enough, I have no problem with Intel. I've even had them as a client of mine in the years since the arrest. See this check as proof.

The issue for me is not Intel's actions, but the law under which I was convicted that permitted an influential large employer in Oregon to use the public resources to handle what was essentially an internal dispute. For a good summary of what's wrong with the law, see Steven McDougall's Rant.

Re:I Feel That I Must Warn You... by merlyn · 2000-03-19 03:52 · Score: 1 · on Perl Creative Daemon Contest

Oddly enough, I have no problem with Intel. I've even had them as a client of mine in the years since the arrest. See this check as proof.

The issue for me is not Intel's actions, but the law under which I was convicted that permitted an influential large employer in Oregon to use the public resources to handle what was essentially an internal dispute. For a good summary of what's wrong with the law, see Steven McDougall's Rant.

Deja Vu for me by merlyn · 2000-03-01 23:58 · Score: 1 · on Busted for (L0pht)Crack Possession

Having skimmed the +2 or better comments in this thread, I can see that we have a parallel to my own case, although I would argue my intentions were higher.

I had crack, and used it, on my client's "ypcat passwd"-available password file. My intentions were honest - to reveal that the group I had left had fallen down on the job, because when I was there, I had run crack constantly and chastised those with bad passwords. After I had been gone for a year, 48 passwords were found out of 600, including the Vice President's password (pre$ident was his, if I recall).

However, while the State of Oregon couldn't prove that I had done anything wrong with those passwords, I couldn't prove that I had only good intentions. And the confused jury decided against me, making me a triple felon (two of the three counts relating to the "theft" of the publicly available password file, and the "theft" of the passwords by running crack).

This case is still in progress - I'm awaiting the first round of appeals, but I've spent a quarter of a million dollars of my own money on lawyers and fines, and the bills continue to mount.

If you want more info, send my bot an empty mail for a reply or visit the Friends of Randal Schwartz site. You should also check out a well-reasoned treatise by Steven McDougall about what's wrong with laws like the one that convicted me.

Deja Vu for me by merlyn · 2000-03-01 23:58 · Score: 1 · on Busted for (L0pht)Crack Possession

Having skimmed the +2 or better comments in this thread, I can see that we have a parallel to my own case, although I would argue my intentions were higher.

I had crack, and used it, on my client's "ypcat passwd"-available password file. My intentions were honest - to reveal that the group I had left had fallen down on the job, because when I was there, I had run crack constantly and chastised those with bad passwords. After I had been gone for a year, 48 passwords were found out of 600, including the Vice President's password (pre$ident was his, if I recall).

However, while the State of Oregon couldn't prove that I had done anything wrong with those passwords, I couldn't prove that I had only good intentions. And the confused jury decided against me, making me a triple felon (two of the three counts relating to the "theft" of the publicly available password file, and the "theft" of the passwords by running crack).

This case is still in progress - I'm awaiting the first round of appeals, but I've spent a quarter of a million dollars of my own money on lawyers and fines, and the bills continue to mount.

If you want more info, send my bot an empty mail for a reply or visit the Friends of Randal Schwartz site. You should also check out a well-reasoned treatise by Steven McDougall about what's wrong with laws like the one that convicted me.

Deja Vu for me by merlyn · 2000-03-01 23:58 · Score: 1 · on Busted for (L0pht)Crack Possession

Having skimmed the +2 or better comments in this thread, I can see that we have a parallel to my own case, although I would argue my intentions were higher.

I had crack, and used it, on my client's "ypcat passwd"-available password file. My intentions were honest - to reveal that the group I had left had fallen down on the job, because when I was there, I had run crack constantly and chastised those with bad passwords. After I had been gone for a year, 48 passwords were found out of 600, including the Vice President's password (pre$ident was his, if I recall).

However, while the State of Oregon couldn't prove that I had done anything wrong with those passwords, I couldn't prove that I had only good intentions. And the confused jury decided against me, making me a triple felon (two of the three counts relating to the "theft" of the publicly available password file, and the "theft" of the passwords by running crack).

This case is still in progress - I'm awaiting the first round of appeals, but I've spent a quarter of a million dollars of my own money on lawyers and fines, and the bills continue to mount.

If you want more info, send my bot an empty mail for a reply or visit the Friends of Randal Schwartz site. You should also check out a well-reasoned treatise by Steven McDougall about what's wrong with laws like the one that convicted me.

Re:Order vs Disorder by JordanH · 2000-02-16 04:11 · Score: 3 · on Perl vs. Python: A Culture Comparison

I'm sick of all these comments complaining about how hard Perl code is to read.

Providing that:
a) you actually know the language, and
b) the code was written by someone who actually knows the language

You should have zero problems with readability. Remarkably enough, the above applies for nearly every other programming language.

And I'm sick of all these dismissive oversimplifications of a complex issue.

Some languages lend themselves more to readability than others.

Admittedly, readability has as much to do with the reader than it does with the writer, but there are some attributes of a programming language that make it more readable when the readers are most human programmers who might try to modify code.

For example, I can parse and completely understand the semantics of simple aritmetic more easily than I can most English prose. This is true, even though I spend probably a minumum of 1000 times more time practicing writing and reading English than I do with arithmetic. Thus, it's not a matter simply of experience with the language.

English prose is far more expressive and powerful and completely contains all the expression and power of simple arithmetic.

The TIMTOWTDI nature of Perl leads to a lot of different ways to express a program. To understand the semantics of a Perl program one might have to think in a number of different idioms. Depending on the original author, the different styles and idioms might cover a large subset of the language in a given program, and Perl is a "big" language, with lots of odd corners.

Here's an extract from a discussion I was involved in a few years back in comp.lang.perl.misc with none other than the redoubtable Randall Scwartz that I think helps illustrate the point I'm trying to make:

>>>>> "Jordan" == Jordan Henderson writes:
Jordan> For example, say I want to extract preformatted text from an HTML
Jordan> file. Note that this is not a general purpose preformatted-text-
Jordan> extractor, but it's handy for files where I can guarantee the
Jordan> format (in a case where I wrote the original HTML file with another
Jordan> program, for example):

Jordan> while () {
Jordan> last if /^/;
Jordan> }
Jordan> if (eof) die "HTML format bad, couldn't locate preformatted text.";

Jordan> while () {
Jordan> last if /^/;
Jordan> print;
Jordan> }
Jordan> if (eof)
Jordan> die "HTML format bad, couldn't locate end of preformatted text.";
Jordan> Is there a better, clearer way to do this sort of thing?

I usually write something like this:

$found = 0;
while () {
$where = //..//;
$found = 1, print if $where;
last if $where =~ /E/;
}
die "we didn't find it!" unless $found;

print "Just another Perl hacker,"
--
Name: Randal L. Schwartz / Stonehenge Consulting Services (503)777-0095
Keywords: Perl training, UNIX[tm] consulting, video production, skiing, flying
Email: Snail: (Call)
PGP-Key: (finger merlyn@teleport.com)
Web: My Home Page!
Quote: "I'm telling you, if I could have five lines in my .sig, I would!" -- me

Now, I was somewhat of a Perl newbie and I'm still nowhere nearly at the level of a Randall Schwartz, but I had a hard time with Randall's answer at the time. I was familiar with the .. operator, but had never used it.

I still feel that my original attempt using the eof operator was simple and very readable. I also love the elegance of Randall's solution.

See, I like Perl, I really do. It's very expressive. Randall's solution points to many other opportunities for good use of the .. operator. I don't think it's the most readable, in this case.

There's the rub. The most readable solution may not use the most expressive idioms. Readability isn't the only criteria on which to judge a work. Shakespeare is harder to read than Suess, but I don't want to be limited to a Suess-like style in my own writing

However, I'm sympathetic to the camp that seems to believe that computer languages should not have the same ambiguities and expressive power than natural languages. In some settings, it may be more productive to use languages with a more limited selection of possible idioms.

For example, I might prefer that an Air Traffic Control system be written in Ada rather than Perl. I want the maintainer of that code to be able to immediately and completely grasp the semantics of the code in front of him or her. I want the maintainer to be immediately comfortable with the style and choice of idioms.

Horses for Courses. Perl still excels in it's adaptability, it's functionality and it's expressive power. Python may excel in simplicity, it's applicability to programming language education and it's readability. I don't actually know Python so forgive me if I misrepresent it.

I'm glad I have simple arithmetic for some things. I'd hate to have to express number problems in English. I prefer "2 + 17 = 19" to "Two plus seventeen equals nineteen."

-Jordan Henderson

Re:YART - Yet Another RMS Triumph by merlyn · 1999-12-19 23:13 · Score: 1 · on RMS The Coder

It's not jr and sr. They are father and son, but they have different middle initials. I know, I've met both of them -- went on a nice sailing trip with the two of them around New York harbor. Bob Morris, the elder, worked for Bell Labs and wrote the bc manual. Robert Morris, the younger, is known for the Internet Worm, for which we both agreed he did much more damage and recieved far less punishment than me in my own celebrated case.

Tell that Randal Schwartz... by kris · 1999-11-09 20:04 · Score: 2 · on CMU Cuts off Net Access for 71 Students Over MP3s

Guessing passwords to enter a password protected
area is not illegally breaking into a computer system and stealing private data? Tell that to Randal Schwartz, "just another Perl hacker and convicted felon".

Rahul.net on Randal, Friends of Randal Schwartz, Randal's Homepage, Tim O'Reilly on the prosecution of Randal.

I'd say, sue CMU and see what comes from it.
© Copyright 1999 Kristian Köhntopp

Take control for yourself! by dlc · 1999-10-25 21:26 · Score: 3 · on Cookies, Ad Banners, and Privacy

Why bother with letter DoubleClick decide to remove their cookies? Do it yourself! In WebTechniques, Randal Schwartz wrote an Anonymizing Proxy server in Perl that can run as a console app in the background that you can use to strip out all your cookies (as he wrote it), or, with a slight modification, you can have it strip out only DoubleClicks's cookies.

The original column is at http://www.stonehenge.com /merlyn/WebTechniques/col11.html (code here), and he updated it (a "Preforking, compressing proxy" (code)) last February. He also wrote a "Cookie Jar" (code here) application that can be used for the same purpose.