in reply to (Perl)Monks, Zen, Caffeine and Hacker Habits

Off Topic

Reading a book about tea and the ancient methods used in China to prepare hot water to be poured on the tea, i found a sentence which blasted my mind; the book in question is an italian book by Marco Ceresa, titled "La scoperta dell'acqua calda" (meaning "The discovery of Hot Water") and the sentence was somethin' like "In past times, Zen Monks have always been strong Tea users, because Caffeine that's in tea helped them to stay awake and meditate for hours and hours...";

I find this confusing since Zen is the strain of Buddhism developed in Japan. Green Tea, a.k.a. Cha or Sen Cha (possibly derived from your reference, i.e. Zen-Cha) DOES NOT HAVE CAFFEINE IN IT.

... what blasted me was the immediate link to Hacker habits of drinking Coffee and Caffeinated Drinks to be able to stay up late and code.

And Truck Driver habits of Black Beauties, and med students, internists, air traffic controllers... There are a LOT of speed addicts in our very demanding society that you are excluding in your comparison...

The question i pose, here, is: "Does the community of PerlMonks strive to represent the spirituality (lost in time) of using Caffeine as a 'Gift from the Gods'?"

Simple Answer: NO. Caffeine is a tool, computers are tools, vi & emacs are tools. People who fight about their favorite tools are Fools!

"Should we dare to call ourselves PerlMonks if we're just fascinated by caffeine and we've lost our sense of respect towards it and ourselves as well?"

Dare? You've missed the point. Perlmonks is a metaphor, the 'monastery' is a metaphor. It implies a place to study quietly & contemple without distraction. What on Earth are you talking about?

and then, "If not, what should we do to be a real community and not a bunch of silly children playing the "hacker" role without being it?"

Is this hacker-monks? No. Does this site promote hacking? Yes & No. Hacking in the traditional geek definition is anyone who's so good with computers that you can't understand how they do it & it takes on the semblance of magic...more or less. The other meaning is sometimes referred to as Cracking & that is generally considered to be either illegal, presumptuous, and/or destructive behavior. Every single time someone posts a script that can be used maliciously or illegally it generally gets taken down. Take the recent hubub about the DeCSS script(s) as an example... Or a votebot, etc..

I know, reading somethin' like the "Jargon File" or "Conscience of a Hacker" can be *really* fascinating, but it won't resolve in drinking a whole lot of coffee and waiting for someone to code for us the "Definitive Hacking Tool". Let's start writing real code and learn from errors!

I take this as being somewhat obnoxious to our bretheren in that you imply that we're a bunch of 'script kiddies'... While that might be the case sometimes, there's plenty of the 'REAL' variety of hackers here, TO BE SURE. And I believe I represent the majority of people here when I say that this is a "real" community.

If you want to play with existing code & make your "Definitive Hacking Tool" then start with the source code for something like SATAN/SANTA by Dan Farmer, which is written in Perl, for the most part & put the industry on it's ear for a month or two. But at least it was written as a means to try to help system administrators keep up with CERN warnings and so has a positive application, while most 'exploits' do not.



Wait! This isn't a Parachute, this is a Backpack!
  • Comment on Re: (Sigmund)Monks, Zen, Caffeine and Hacker Habits

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Re: Re: (Perl)Monks, Zen, Caffeine and Hacker Habits
by Sigmund (Pilgrim) on Aug 31, 2001 at 12:28 UTC
    I find this confusing since Zen is the strain of Buddhism developed in Japan. Green Tea, a.k.a. Cha or Sen Cha (possibly derived from your reference, i.e. Zen-Cha) DOES NOT HAVE CAFFEINE IN IT.

    well, first of all, thanks for your reply, so long and thougthful, it points out some ideas i share. but i have to say something about some others...
    The tone i intended in posing those questions was totallyrelaxed, and maybe that "dare" was too strong. by the way, I'm italian and my use of english language is not perfect...
    in second instance, i'd like to correct a couple of your statements:
    Zen is not Japanese!!! it was born in India as something between traditional Mahayana Buddhism and Meditation: dhyana (meaning meditation) then passed in China known as "Ch'an" and "Zen" is just a transliteration of the chinese word made by the Japanese when they finally discovered it!!! This is to be accurate.
    Then, in Tea, it is true, there's no caffeine at all, but there's Theophylline that has an almost identical effect, and the sense of my phrase remains *exactly* the same, as to say "they drank somethin to stay awakw and meditate", being unimportant the substance of the alkaloid.
    If you're interested in knowing more, there's an excellent reading on the net: the Caffeine FAQ. it's helpful, and it's at:

    http://www.coffeefaq.com/caffaq.html

    And finally, when saying "Hacker" and "hacking" i meant exactly what the word means, i.e. "Dissector", signifying a person who look at how the things around him are made and work, so to be able to produce other things or optimize the existing ones. This is what i think when I think of hacking. So Perlmonks is made up of hackers, who hack coding something useful; I myself spend whole days dissecting Obfuscated Code to understand how it works, and this IS really useful!!! Better than a hundred of tutorials!
    When talkin' about "The Definitive Hacking Tool", finally, i wanted to use the word "hacking" in the way the people whom i was talking about use it, i.e. the wrong one! Just to say that there are many "script kiddies" (and i don't like this definition) who just sit and wait that someone code for them a good new weapon for their IRC wars. I will never understand them...

    Sure that PerlMonks is a REAL community! i wouldn't have joined otherwise! And "no", "i didn't mean that you(and me as well) are a bunch of script kiddies", i never meant it and i won't. I like perlmonks, i feel good when i log in and at ease when i read nodes. That's all.
    thanks again,
    SiG
[reply]

      green tea (sencha) does have caffeine. Usually a third to a half of what coffee has. Read this FAQ

[reply]
        no, it actually doesn't contain ANY caffeine. what you read in that poor FAQ is a common way of talking "not too technical", because it's easier to understand when the only thing you wanna know is if you're gonna sleep tonight. Talking of theophilline or theobromine would only confuse things to the eyes of people looking for a simple, direct answer.
        However, the sense of my speech is just the same: i know there is no caffeine but it's not important "as a definition"; it is "as a concept", to state that there's "something that makes you stay awake". thanks for reply! bye SiG

        perl -le 's ssSss.s sSsSiss.s s$sSss.ss .$s\107ss.print'
[reply]

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