Message-ID: <72494E50-6F10-11D9-BC75-000D93B5315A@xyberpix.com>
From: xyberpix at xyberpix.com (xyberpix)
Subject: Phrack is dead, long live Phrack!

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I really have to agree with starwars on this one, I have been reading 
Phrack for years now, c'mon people even if a few groups are not willing 
to try an publish Phrack for everyone to vote on, why don't a few of us 
get together and keep Phrack going? Anyone who's interested in keeping 
this part of all our lives in one way or another alive, mail me off the 
list and lets make this happen.

xyberpix

On 23 Jan 2005, at 09:45, starwars wrote:

>
> After several years of steady decline in the wrong hands, maybe it is 
> too late to save Phrack. But I think we owe something back to the zine 
> that gave us so much. Many us were drawn into computer security by 
> Phrack, grew up along with it, and were nourished by the high quality 
> papers of it's contributors.
>
> The current editors of Phrack have decided to kill off Phrack for 
> good. This is an outrage. Phrack has always purported to be for the 
> community by the community. They have no right to kill off nearly 
> twenty years of tradition.
>
> Despite it's poor performance of late, Phrack still has
> an unparalleled and awesome record as a technical source you can really
> bite your teeth into. It's also had a major cultural impact over the
> years:
>
> "You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at
> school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let
> slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by
> sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to
> teach found us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water
> in the desert.
> ...
> Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that 
> of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. 
> My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never 
> forgive me for.
> "
>
> -- A hacker's manifesto, the Mentor, 1986
>
> The current "anonymous" batch editors have outgrown the zine. They 
> were a bad choice to begin with, but regardless, that's happened to 
> phrack before. On a regular basis. Every generation or so passes on 
> phrack to the next. It's tradition.
>
> What's different about the current batch of editors was their intense 
> arrogance and unusualy patronizing attitude towards the scene. Phrack 
> hasn't been about the computer underground for years. The last ten 
> years have turned Phrack into a prestigious journal for security 
> research.
>
> The anarchistic underground roots of phrack have been whitewashed away 
> by the latest batch of editors. Go and read the issues from 1980s, 
> early 90s.
>
> The reason this happened was that when the scene moved to the Internet 
> in the mid 90s the MIT hacker memes battled it out against "war games" 
> hacker meme of the 80s. Hacker still has an 80s meaning for the 
> general public, but the MIT hacker meme clearly won amongst the 
> technically savy. The "cracker" and "script kiddy" memes were part of 
> a process that turned Phrack's underground past into an embarrassment.
>
> So Phrack gradually turned against it's own roots.  It's not for the 
> hacker community by the hacker community anymore. Far from it. The 
> current incarnation of Phrack actually spreads hypocritical 
> anti-hacker memes between it's covers. It's BY 
> $150-an-hour-security-consultants FOR 
> our-reputation-in-the-security-industry.
>
> Phrack has been hijacked by sellouts.
>
> Aside from their snobbish elitist attitude, what have the recent 
> editors of Phrack contributed? The articles are written by others. Try 
> reading the "loopback" section written by the Phrack editors sometime. 
> Degrading newbies never gets old for these guys. Ha ha! you're all so 
> stupid! We're so uber elite!
>
> So now what's happened is that these guys are so old school, so 
> been-there-done-that, patronizing assholes that they've decided it's 
> time for Phrack to die rather than evolve.
>
> Here's an alternative to killing off a 20 year tradition: run a 
> competition amongst would-be editors who can publish the best next 
> issue of phrack. Then allow the PUBLIC to vote amongst alternatives as 
> to whom succeeds the current editors.
>
> The team that manages to hack together the best edition of phrack 64 
> wins.
>
> Phrack is dead. Long live phrack!
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
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