Now back on Usenet. Will this project be revived? Probably not
ValuHack is the name given to a multitude of programs that all have the same basic function: to educate. Each program in the ValuHack series performs the same operations, but in a different programming language. The program was not designed to be difficult, but to be a learning experience for the coder wishing to broaden his (or her) horizons, as well as for the user of the program. ValuHack, in a nutsehll, tells the user that defacing websites, stealing email accounts, using 4nn0y1ing typing methods, and 'hax0ring hotmail' are not, in fact, hacking. ValuHack struggles to inform about actual hacking and hackers*, and to denounce those with malicious intent.
These fine people have contributed to ValuHack.
ValuBot is a Perl program that interactively performs (via Internet Relay Chat) the same function as ValuHack. At such a command as !deface* website.com, it informs the user that what they want to do is, in fact, not hacking. It was written with the same spirit as ValuHack, except with an IRC flair.
These folks have contributed to ValuBot.
To contact any members of the ValuHack team, you can subscribe to the mailing lists or mail drumstik directly.
The ValuHack project is collaboratively maintained with the aid of:
Taken from the Jargon File :
*hacker n.
[originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe] 1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. 2. One who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming. 3. A person capable of appreciating hack value. 4. A person who is good at programming quickly. 5. An expert at a particular program, or one who frequently does work using it or on it; as in `a Unix hacker'. (Definitions 1 through 5 are correlated, and people who fit them congregate.) 6. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be an astronomy hacker, for example. 7. One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations. 8. [deprecated] A malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around. Hence `password hacker', `network hacker'. The correct term for this sense is cracker.
The term `hacker' also tends to connote membership in the global community defined by the net (see the network and Internet address). For discussion of some of the basics of this culture, see the How To Become A Hacker FAQ. It also implies that the person described is seen to subscribe to some version of the hacker ethic.
It is better to be described as a hacker by others than to describe oneself that way. Hackers consider themselves something of an elite (a meritocracy based on ability), though one to which new members are gladly welcome. There is thus a certain ego satisfaction to be had in identifying yourself as a hacker (but if you claim to be one and are not, you'll quickly be labeled bogus.
This term seems to have been first adopted as a badge in the 1960s by the hacker culture surrounding TMRC and the MIT AI Lab. We have a report that it was used in a sense close to this entry's by teenage radio hams and electronics tinkerers in the mid-1950s.