[mdlug] Email sigs (was RE: CAD vs CAE (for linux))

[Ingles, Raymond]

> From: Morris, Tim
>  "[B]eing able to break security doesn't make you a hacker any more
> than being able to hotwire cars makes you an automotive engineer."
> 
> ... I really like that one! Where do you get these? Is it a 
> Sig program or are they quotes you made up?

 That one, as it said in the message, was from Eric Scott Raymond. I
like collecting pithy, funny, or profound quotes. I currently have...
let's see... 437 of them. I have a little script that randomly picks
one for each message. Actually, it's interesting in a Unix sense how I
do it.

 Most Unix email and news programs will read a 'signature' from a file
called ".signature" in your home directory, if it exists. I don't have
a file there, I have a "fifo". On Unix, you can have a 'named pipe', or
'fifo' (First In First Out) that programs can read from and write to.

 When a program reads my ".signature", they don't get the contents of
a file, they get whatever a program at the other end of the fifo feeds
to them. I have a script called "fifosig.sh" that does the selecting,
picking a random signature and squirting it through the fifo to whatever
program reads from the other end.

--------fifosig.sh--------
#!/bin/bash
while true
do
 # The low-order bits of a PRNG are often not terribly random,
 # but this is good enough.
 SIGGY=$((RANDOM % `ls -1 ~/News/sigs/msig* | wc -l`))
 cat ~/News/sigs/msig$SIGGY > ~/.signature 2> /dev/null
 sleep 1 # Some applications need this 'rest'...
done
--------------------------

 So, I get randomly-selected quotes by default. Sometimes, when I have
a particularly apt quote I remember from my collection, I overwrite it
by hand, but usually I let chance rule.

 Sincerely,

 Ray Ingles                                        (313) 227-2317

 "Yes, but other than being useful, usable, reliable, extensible,
   free, and unencumbered, what does Linux have going for it?"
                       - Hamilcar Barca

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