[Tutor] (no subject)

[Carroll, Barry]

Jacob,

What, exactly, do you mean by 'hack'?  The free dictionary wiktionary 

         http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki

gives the following definitions

hack
Verb
to hack (third-person singular simple present hacks, present participle
hacking, simple past hacked, past participle hacked)

1. To cough noisily. 
      This cold is awful. I can't stop hacking. 
2. To chop or cut down in a rough manner. 
      They hacked the brush down and made their way through the jungle. 
3. To withstand or put up with a difficult situation. 
      Can you hack it out here with no electricity or running water? 
4. To play hackeysack. 
5. to accomplish a difficult programming task. 
      She can hack like no one else and make the program work as
expected. 
6. To work with on an intimately technical level. 
      I'm currently hacking distributed garbage collection. 
7. To make a quick code change to patch a computer program. 
      I hacked in a fix for this bug, but we'll still have to do a real 
      fix later.. 
8. To gain unauthorized access to a computer system (e.g. website) by 
   manipulating code. (Widely called "crack") 
9. to hack into; to gain illegal access to a computer network; a "crack"

   in computer parlance.

I'm going to guess that you aren't referring to any of the first four
definitions, so I'll bypass those.  

If your interest is in definition 5, 6, or 7, the short answer is, you
learn by doing.  Find a problem you want to solve, make a stab (hack, if
you will) at solving it using Python, and post questions here.  There
are many skilled people here who will be more than happy to help.  

If you're talking about definitions 8 or 9, you've come to the wrong
place.  No one here is interested in helping people break the law or
steal someone else's intellectual property.  

Go to 
   
    http://catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#MS_hater

and read Eric's excellent essay on hacking.  If you're still interested,
come on back and we'll help you get started.  

Regards,
 
Barry
barry.carroll at psc.com
541-302-1107
________________________
We who cut mere stones must always be envisioning cathedrals.

-Quarry worker's creed


> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 3
> Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2006 18:36:26 -0600
> From: "Jacob Simonovich" <Simo10 at mchsi.com>
> Subject: [Tutor] (no subject)
> To: <tutor at python.org>
> Message-ID: <000601c63d91$579ac1b0$6600a8c0 at LivingRoom>
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> 
> I want to learn how to hack but don't know where to start.  I have
been
> searching all over the internet to try to find things out but none of
the
> websites have helped me.  I would like to know the tools needed and
just a
> step by step process on how to do it using widows xp home edition.
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