HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: u8802356@cs.uow.edu.au (Elephant)
Subject: Re: You kyou've been in hack mode too long ...
Organization: Dept of Computer Science, Wollongong University, Australia
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1992 07:13:59 GMT

g8801935@cs.uow.edu.au (The Jester) writes:

>u8802356@cs.uow.edu.au (Elephant) writes:

>>mwt@bcm.tmc.edu (Man Wei Tam) writes:

>>>.... you start dreaming code

>>or, just to get the thread running again ...
>>You start dreaming in Tetris (or whatever game has you fancy at the
>>moment). And start trying to rearrange the furniture so
>>it all fits neatly against one wall
>>:-)

>Ha piled against one wall is easy, how about stacked up against one wall
>so that it supports the roof, and so any part of it can be removed and
>utilised without damaging the supporting pile. What a nightmare.

>Anyway, you know you've been in hack mode too long when the writing on amber
>screens starts to look blue.
>>Elephant
>-- 
>\ /  /    / /  /\   | I trapped all alone in the gas station of love,
> \\/ \/\ /\ \/ \/_  | and I have to use the self-service pumps.
> / \/  /   \ \/ \   | 	--"Weird Al" Yankovic.
>g8801935@cs.uow.edu.au

I know someone who, during a phase of Armour Alley (on Macs), started playing
while driving. He would plan schemes that, if he changed lanes, he would
be able to kill the car in front of him, because he would be on the same
level, and the missiles would get a lock (!).

You know you've been in hack mode to long when you test a program, and
it fails, so you jump into the editor, look at it, jump out, recompile and
test (without making changes) and it still doesn't work, so
you jump ........ and it still doesn't work ...... recompile without
any changes........ (this tends to happen after 24+ hours ;-))

Elephant
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: colinm@alfred.carleton.ca (Colin McFadyen)
Subject: Re: CP-6?
Organization: Carleton University
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1992 19:45:24 GMT

In <1992Apr4.194808.25369@cs.tulane.edu> pierce@navo.navy.mil (Jim M. Pierce) writes:

>In article <1992Apr2.150715.3425@agora.uucp>, jdm@agora.uucp (Jesse Michael) writes:
>|> I was just told that I would be useing a CP-6 (?) in one of my computer classes
>|> I was also told that this is some type of Honeywell Mainframe...
>|> 
>|> Can someone give me some info on this please?
>|> 
>|> Thanks,
>|> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>|> |> Jesse Michael - jdm@agora.rain.com - Amiga Programmer/Smart Person :] <|
>|> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>|> Love your enemies. It'll make 'em crazy.

>   Ah yes, the CP-6. It was built by Honeywell. It is now a Bull CP-6 as
> Honeywell gave up on the computer end and gave it all to their
> subsidiary Bull. It has an editor called IBEX that, IMHO, is even worse
                             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The editor is called EDIT (surprise).  IBEX is a command processor like
shell.  It may be worse but it is probably the most powerful line-editor
around.  One of the development programmers has written an editor called
FSE (full screen edit) that can use emacs commands.  Much better.

> than 'vi'. The operating system is case-sensitive on filenames. Its full
> name is Honeywell/Bull DPS90 CP-6. We have one at the local University.
> { Thats the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, MS. }

DPS90 is only a model name.  There are many machines in the DPS family.
As far as working on them, I administer two of them (DPS 8/70 and a
DPS 8000).  They are very user friendly using english-like commands
and are a security-phobe's dream come true.  It is very easy to prohibit/
allow access to files and programs in the same account.  One drawback
is that it has a flat filesystem so if you don't organize yourself,
your account can get very messy.

>  My other email address/job is jmpierce@usmcp6.bitnet.
                                             ^^^
> BTW, I'm about the only Amiga user there also. { On the staff anyway. }
>-- 
>     pierce@navo.navy.mil  Jim Pierce 
From: steven@hpopd.pwd.hp.com (Steven Croft)
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 16:17:05 GMT
Subject: Re: me vs. vi
Organization: Hewlett-Packard NSG-PWD, UK.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers

Joe,

Shut up you snivelling piece of rhinoceros pizzle.


Your type make me want to puke.


Steve.

PS Feel free to flame, weirdo.

NOTE
My views are not necessarily shared by the company I work for, although they
haven't heard the drivel that Mr Joseph M. Newcomer spouts.
From: ssouth@hpldsla.sid.hp.com (Steve South)
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1992 20:51:30 GMT
Subject: Re: Space Shuttle Computers
Organization: HP Scientific Instruments Division - Palo Alto, CA
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers

I believe that, at least on the early shuttle missions, they took along an
HP41C calculator to "perform certain flight critical calculations if the main
computers failed"

Steve (I've got an HP48, can I go to Mars?) South

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: viking@iastate.edu (Dan Sorenson)
Subject: Re: You know you've been in hack mode too long when...
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames IA
Date: Sun, 12 Apr 1992 01:22:48 GMT

In <3!4Hz0$n6@cs.psu.edu> dsbarr@modula.cs.psu.edu (Dave Barr) writes:

>	When doing laundry, thinking 'touch *' to make them all new 
>and clean again.   :-)

	Not even close.  You've been in hack mode too long when you
are awakened by a rather randy female (assuming you are male, please
feel free to reverse genders if applicable) and all you can think of,
in that muddied half-conscious state before becoming fully awake, is
something having to do with male and female serial connectors and
how the baud rates have to be synchronized.

	I've since cut back on the number of hours I work each week.

<Daniel R. Sorenson   Dod #1066  |If Iowa State University agreed with me >
<z1dan@exnet.iastate.edu <- work |I'd make $90K/yr.  They don't, I don't. >
<viking@iastate.edu      <- play |"I am *not* goofing off.  I am driving  >
< myself mercilessly in the pursuit of relaxation." -- T. Weeds           >

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: dsbarr@modula.cs.psu.edu (Dave Barr)
Subject: Re: You know you've been in hack mode too long when...
Reply-To: dsbarr@cs.psu.edu
Organization: Penn State Computer Science
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1992 21:52:28 GMT

In article <4jtj67k@lynx.unm.edu> evilted@vesta.unm.edu writes:
>...you're looking for your hilighter and you think:
>find . -pen HiLiter -print
>
>additions?

	When doing laundry, thinking 'touch *' to make them all new 
and clean again.   :-)

--Dave
-- 
Dave Barr            | The man with the even
dsbarr@cs.psu.edu    | number of odd jobs.
From: jn11+@andrew.cmu.edu (Joseph M. Newcomer)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: nondestructive core
Date: 16 Apr 92 04:49:28 GMT
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA

The only implementation I saw used two-hole cores. The write pulse went
thru the normal X-Y addressing in one hole, the read pulse went thru the
X-Y addressing in the other hole.  Because the second circle could not
write the first, but could be affected by its magnetic field, the sense wire
could pick up the state of the permanent core.

Another technique which wasn't core was the nickel-plated wire memory used
in, I think, ESS-1; they needed utterly reliable program store and core 
didn't have sufficient reliability (remember those 3-minutes-in-20-years
figures?)  This plated wire could be sensed by a nearby sense winding
which based on the pulse could tell which way the wire had been magnetized.
                            joe
From: hollombe@polymath.tti.com (The Polymath)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Space Shuttle Computers
Date: 9 Apr 92 01:35:01 GMT
Article-I.D.: ttidca.34384
Organization: The Cat Factory

In article <1992Mar31.062213.29174@demon.co.uk> Michael Hewitt <hewitt@cix.compulink.co.uk> writes:
}Does anyone know anything about the computer hardware currenty being used on
}the space shuttles? I seem to remember reading somewhere that, due to its
}age, it's comparatively low-tech stuff and that they're finding it difficult
}to get programmers. Any truth in the story?

You can probably get the latest in sci.space.shuttle.  I did some work on
those computers back around the time of the STS-1 (was there for the first
landing -- wow).  The company I worked for did the coordinating software
between the 5 on-board AP-101's.  I was working on the then proposed
heads-up display (did they ever implement that?).

I've no idea if they've since upgraded or are still running the original
computers.  As told to me by the management at Rockwell, their initial
specification went something like this:

     NASA went to IBM and said, "We want to put an IBM 370 in orbit." To
     which IBM replied, "You can't -- they're too big -- but the AP101 has
     a very similar architecture.  Why not use them?" And so they did.

A lot (all?) of the code was written in AP101 assembler*, which looks a
lot like S370 assembler except there are two banks of 8 general purpose
registers instead of one set of 16.  I can see where they might have some
problems finding scientific programmers (vs. COBOL types) who're familiar
with that architecture these days.

* [Note:  I don't care what language you've read or been told the AP101's
are programmed in.  I've held the listings in my hands and seen with my
own eyes.  I even got paid to document a chunk of the code (the IPL
sequence).  It was written in AP101 assembler -- which I had to learn on
the job.]

The Polymath (aka: Jerry Hollombe, M.A., CDP, aka: hollombe@soldev.tti.com)
Head Robot Wrangler at Citicorp                   Turn the rascals out!
3100 Ocean Park Blvd.   (310) 450-9111, x2483     No incumbents in '92!
Santa Monica, CA  90405 {rutgers|pyramid|philabs|psivax}!ttidca!hollombe
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: amon@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Laurent Amon)
Subject: Re: You know you've been in hack mode too long when...
Organization: CS Department, Stanford University, California, USA
Date: 11 Apr 92 17:19:28 GMT

hseung@retina.anatomy.upenn.edu (Hyunsuk Seung) writes:

>In article <4jtj67k@lynx.unm.edu> evilted@vesta.unm.edu writes:
>>...you're looking for your hilighter and you think:
>>find . -pen HiLiter -print
>> 
>> additions?

>... you want more coffee and you think:

>finger waiter; cat *coffee* | grep -v decaff | drink | more

Some months ago, late at night, hacking on a project, I was trying to get at
some munchies, and having problems to open them (fingers stayed in keyboard
mode). I found myself thinking:

Finger: Error, cannot open chocolate_bar.

Lga.
amon@cs.stanford.edu

Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 01:31:20 -0400 
From: "Joseph M. Newcomer" <jn11+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: More than one syntax...

>I'm sure that these distinctions have been muddied as various micro
>manufacturers have mix-n-matched the syntaxes over the past decade.

I thought the plural of 'syntax' was 'syntice' (index, indices, 
kleenex, kleenice, etc.)
                                joe

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: terryd@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Terry Dawson)
Subject: Re: Those wackhy K&R guys
Organization: Sydney University Computing Service, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Date: Sun, 12 Apr 1992 04:11:45 GMT

person@plains.NoDak.edu (Brett G Person ) writes:

>This is probably whaqt started the whole thread, but I'll post it anyway. 

>Many years ago, when I was just starting out in CS, I took a class
>where  I was rudely ittroduced to the concept of recursion by the
>instructor who said " write a recursive shell-script"    

>Most of us had no idea what he wanted done.  We looked in the back of
>Kerninghan and Pike ( the calss text)  and found that recursion was
>discussed on some page in the high hundreds.  Yeah, the page number
>reference was the same page I was looking at in the index!  

>I think the text is _the unix programming environment_

I just took a look at my copy here:

on p355: "recursion 18, 355"

on p18, the _only_ reference to recursion I can find is:

"Great fleas have little fleas
And little fleas have lesser fleas,
And the great fleas themselves, in turn,
  have greater fleas to go on;"

Terry


-- 
Terry Dawson, terryd@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU, vk2ktj%vk2ktj@vk2aqg.nsw.aus.oc
+61 2 925 1556 (voice), +61 2 922 5973 (fax).   __\*/__  0^Ooooo   _____
From: lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Is SOAP a Myth?? (was: Mel: Fact or Fiction?)
Date: 17 Apr 92 15:11:08 GMT
Article-I.D.: cunixf.1992Apr17.151108.1489
Reply-To: lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner)
Organization: Columbia University

In article <1992Apr17.131457.17694@sctc.com> smith@sctc.com (Rick Smith) writes:
>lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner) asks:
>
>>Are you sure that SOAP actually worked?  
>
>I never used it personally, though I remember looking at old SOAP
>listings at Boston U. They used an IBM 650 running SOAP to determine
>that "my kids got 69% fewer cavities using Crest."
>
>In any case, you should be able to go to any general work on '50s
>efforts in automatic programming and find references to it. I got
>the feeling it was an important part of the 650's market success.
>
>Rick.
>smith@sctc.com       arden hills, minnesota

Clearly their intention was for it to work; the 650 design predates the Mel
story by at least a few years.  I am just suggesting that from all we know
about the company Mel worked for, they were attempting to somewhat belatedly
copy 650-like design while the industry was gradually shifting to core.  They
needed Mel's demo program to deceive the buying public into believing that
the 1000-1 speed degradation you get without drum head-optimization tricks
wasn't important.  Yet, there wasn't a working SOAP that the programmers
could trust, and this apparently was company-wide, not just paranoia from
Mel.  So, Mel hand-coded what a SOAP utility *should* have done thus speeding
up his demo program.  But the typical application wouldn't get this treatment
which is the essence of the deceipt of the customers.

Anyone know any other demo programs that imply system performance, yet are
actually atypical of it to a large degree? (Your mileage *does* vary; it
goes way down compared to the demo's performance.)

cjl
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: adam@owlnet.rice.edu (Adam Justin Thornton)
Subject: Re: Patron saint of programmers?
Organization: Milo's Meadow
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1992 21:37:25 GMT

My vote goes to Blessed St. Leibowitz.

Adam
-- 
"Adam Thornton plays the homosexual Horatio without succumbing to _too_ many
 cliched stereotypes.  His Horatio, Hamlet's bosom companion...has a penchant
 for cream dresses and thigh-high black leather boots." | adam@owlnet.rice.edu
Rice and I don't share opinions, thankfully. | Retry Student A | 64,928 | ;-)
From: vijay@cdsun.fnal.gov (Vijay Gurbani)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Virus Jokes
Date: 15 Apr 92 13:10:51 GMT

Brian Ridgely <ridgelyb@copper.ucs.indiana.edu> writes:

> Wanted: Virus Jokes

You wanted it...you got it :-)

         -----   M A J O R  V I R U S  A L E R T   <-----

o  George Bush Virus - Doesn't do anything, but you can't get rid of it until
   November
o  Ted Kennedy Virus - Crashes your computer but denies it ever happened
o  Warren Commission Virus - Won't allow you to open your files for 75 years
o  Jerry Brown Virus - Blanks your screen and begins flashing an 800 number
o  David Duke Virus - Makes your screen go completely white
o  Congress Virus - Overdraws your disk space
o  Paul Tsongas Virus - Pops up on Dec. 25 and says "I'm Not Santa Claus"
o  Pat Buchanan Virus - Shifts all output to the extreme right of the screen
o  Dan Quayle Virus - Forces your computer to play "PGA TOUR" from 10am to 4pm
   6 days a week
o  Bill Clinton Virus - This virus mutates from region to region.  We're not
   exactly sure what it does.
o  Richard Nixon Virus - aka the "Tricky Dick Virus" you can wipe it out, but
   it always make a comeback.
o  H. Ross Perot Virus - same as the Jerry Brown virus, only nicer fonts are
   used, and it appears to have had a lot more money put into its development.

- vijay
--
 (____)    Chicago Bulls                       Vijay K. Gurbani
'(o  o)`   1991-92 NBA World Champions         Fermi National Accelerator Lab.
  \  /     05 23 24 33 54                      vijay@{cdsun,fnsg01}.fnal.gov
== OO =====All opinions are mine, of course====================================
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: spam@iastate.edu (Michael L Begley)
Subject: too involved...
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, IA
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1992 01:47:14 GMT

Don't you hate when you get too involved in your hacking (in this case cajoling
gopher to run) that you forget that you started cooking spaghetti 3 hours
ago?


Folklore be damned...I'm still scraping the shit out and hoping I can clean
up this mess before my wife gets home...




Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: bmarcum@world.std.com (Bill Marcum)
Subject: Re: chip-on-chip technology
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1992 12:00:29 GMT

In article <1992Apr9.143659.1@mdcbbs.com> rivero@mdcbbs.com writes:
>(Someone else said)
>> 
>> Perhaps 'define sharp' ??           (   :-) )
>> 
>
>  The '#' is silent!   :)
>
You must be tone deaf.  You pronounce it half a step higher. ;-)  (-;
From: jn11+@andrew.cmu.edu (Joseph M. Newcomer)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: heat and machines
Date: 16 Apr 92 05:03:16 GMT
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA

One interesting feature of the Xerox PARC Dorado was that each board
(ECL, remember) had a heat sensor that would shut the board down.

A DEC20 had flow sensors in every ventilation path.  Failure of flow would
shut the machine down.  The problem was the airflow sensors were sometimes
flaky, so I was shown the magic tiny bypass switch (down at the front,
about 4" from the floor) that would allow the machine to run even if the
airflow switches said "no".  Turning this switch on also caused the one
panel light of the DEC-20 to blink, indicating the safety bypass was on.

When we powered it up, Bill Wulf (who has a Burroughs 200 front panel in
his den) said "You know, Joe, it's really sad; modern computers don't have
any blinking lights".  I got a grin THIS BIG and said "Bill, you want
blinking lights, you get blinking lights!" and reached down and flipped
the switch...

As a consultant, my income depends critically on my machines.  The first time
I lost a machine to overheating, it cost me about $3000 in lost income plus
$1800 to replace the motherboard.  The second time it cost me about $2000
in lost income and $800 to replace.  The next summer I bought whole-house
(office) air conditioning for $2500.  MUCH cheaper!
                            joe
From: warren@nysernet.org (Warren Burstein)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: You know you've been in hack mode too long when...
Date: 14 Apr 92 08:47:29 GMT
Reply-To: warren@nysernet.org
Organization: Mail to News Gateway

JW = weisberg@ee.rochester.edu (Jeff Weisberg)
JK = jkonrath@bronze.bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (Jon Konrath)

JK: your SO asks you where you want to eat on a friday night and you want to
JK: cat yellowpages | grep pizza | grep carryout | more

JW: ^more^less

I'd rather my pizza-consumption tool did not have the ability to move
backwards.
-- 
/|/-\/-\          The entire kitchen is		Jerusalem
 |__/__/_/        still full of strange hamantaschen
 |warren@         And the custodian
/ nysernet.org    is starting to get worried.
From: ivie@cc.usu.edu (CP/M lives!)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: RE: Those wackhy K&R guys
Date: 6 Apr 92 12:08:21 MDT
Organization: Utah State University


I was looking through the index of "The Design an Implementation of the 4.3BSD
UNIX Operating System" and came across the entry "caster oil,266". On page
266 is a figure describing the C-list structure. The contents of the data
buffer illustrated are:

	"Documentation is the caster oil of programming. Managers know
	 it must be good because the programmers hate it so much."

BTW: they spelled it "caster". I know it's supposed to be spelled "castor".

Roger Ivie
ivie@cc.usu.edu
From: overby@cobber.cord.edu (Glen Overby)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Wanted: Unix license plate
Date: 7 Apr 92 19:42:29 GMT
Article-I.D.: cobber.1992Apr7.194229.3952
 <1992Mar30.085911.5955@news.Hawaii.Edu> <1992Apr3.005721.19611@noose.ecn.purdue.edu>
Organization: Concordia College, Moorhead, MN

In article <1992Apr3.005721.19611@noose.ecn.purdue.edu> irick@ei.ecn.purdue.edu (GarBear Irick) writes:
>In article <1992Mar30.085911.5955@news.Hawaii.Edu> edwardy@doc.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Edward Yagi) writes:
>>In article <1992Mar27.000754.6927@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu> dave@cs.arizona.edu (Dave Schaumann) writes:
>>>Last year I saw someone with vanity plates that said "UNIX V". [AZ]

>> curious. I saw one in Hawaii with the same "UNIX V" on a cool 
>>Mercedes (sp?) convertible, with a HOT babe driving.. (really!)

>George Goble, the local UNIX guru at Purdue, has a big white Pontiac
>Transport with a plate that reads "UNIX".  (Hi ghg!)  The same van also has

I'm the proud(?) owner of the ND plates "UNIX V7".  ND's plate motto is "The
Peace Garden State" (how ironical).  I'll sell photocopies :-) Sorry, no hot
babe.

Blayne "chiphead" Puklich <puklich@plains.nodak.edu> beat me to "UNIX" by
2-3 months (he got it in about Feb '91) so his white Chevy Blazer sports
that plate.

Last summer I spotted the Minnesota UNIX plate in the Cray Research
parkinglot one day, but was unable to identify it's owner.

Glen Overby
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Sinclair Lore Query
From: rivero@mdcbbs.com
Date: 13 Apr 92 09:43:28 GMT
Organization: M&E (Division of EDS), Cypress CA
Nntp-Posting-User: gora


  Found a working Sinclair with memory expansion and some tape programs 
for $5 at a yard sale over the weekend. Anyone have interesting stories about
this little machine?




-- 
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
|  Michael Rivero rivero@mdcbbs.com Homo Cyberneticus-Computational Man  |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
|    Anyone who manages to get from birth to death without getting at    |
|   least one ugly scar just wasn't DOING anything!                      |
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Xref: sparky alt.folklore.computers:6532 talk.bizarre:11340
From: smith@sctc.com (Rick Smith)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,talk.bizarre
Subject: Re: Help me upgrade my computer
Date: 16 Apr 92 14:02:33 GMT
Article-I.D.: sctc.1992Apr16.140233.24729
Organization: SCTC

The best visual improvement to _any_ computer is to add blinky lights.
Rows and rows of them. An old TENEX Pager panel would be perfect, or
the front of an old '360, though bulky.

Of course, if I knew where to get such a thing I'd have gotten it
myself!

Rick.
smith@sctc.com       arden hills, minnesota.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: bwatson@isis.cs.du.edu (bruce watson)
Subject: Re: too involved...
X-Disclaimer: Nyx is a public access Unix system run by the University
	of Denver for the Denver community.  The University has neither
	control over nor responsibility for the opinions of users.
Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix at U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 92 20:01:38 GMT

Flames and smoke coming from the kitchen about once a week.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers