HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: lachlan@dmp.csiro.au (Lachlan Cranswick)
Subject: Re: Total erasure of hard drive data??
Organization: CSIRO Division of Mineral Products, Melbourne, AUSTRALIA
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 08:43:57 GMT

dougm@cns.caltech.edu (Doug McNaught) writes:
>I just try to remember that you run into bozos
>in all walks of life, and most of them are nice folks. Being a system
>manager gives you lots of different methods of revenge for those few
>who turn out to be assholes :)
>-doug

These different methods of revenge :- What are some of these for
the novice system manager who wants the flexibility but
not the sack?
-- 
  Lachlan Cranswick  -  CSIRO             _--_|\  lachlan@dmp.CSIRO.AU
  Division of Mineral Products           /      \ tel +61 3 647 0367
  PO Box 124, Port Melbourne 3207        \_.--._/ fax +61 3 646 3223
  AUSTRALIA                                    v
From: jml12@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Jonathan M Lennox)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: MDL
Date: 1 Oct 92 07:12:56 GMT
Reply-To: jml12@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Jonathan M Lennox)
Organization: Columbia University

In article <1aa4jgINN98k@early-bird.think.com> barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin) writes:
>In article <8em6K2C00YV9A1kfYt@andrew.cmu.edu> Samuel Roy Helwig <sh4j+@andrew.cmu.edu> writes:
>>    Does anyone in this group remember MDL (muddle)?  I was told that
>>the original Adventure was written in it.  
>
>No, Adventure was originally written in Fortran.  The original Zork was
>written in MDL.
>
>>					    It seems that it was an
>>interactive fiction game language.  Is this true?  
>
>Not really.  MDL was a variant of Lisp, used by a small group at the MIT
>Laboratory for Computer Science (the Dynamic Modeling group) in the 70's.
>Many of its distinguishing features (better abstract data type support, in
>particular) eventually found their way into Common Lisp.

  This obviously presents the question:  is the original MDL source
available anyplace, and can it be translated into Common Lisp?
Another post on this group indicated that the MDL Zork had more rooms
and a better parser than the Fortran port--if this is true, I'd
certainly prefer to have the former.

Jonathan Lennox
jml12@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: peter@NeoSoft.com (Peter da Silva)
Subject: Re: Total erasure of hard drive data??
Organization: NeoSoft Communications Services -- (713) 684-5900
Date: Fri, 02 Oct 1992 05:24:48 GMT

In article <1992Sep30.204200.15817@javelin.sim.es.com> gfowler@javelin.sim.es.com (Gary Fowler) writes:
> hollombe@polymath.tti.com (The Polymath) writes:
> >The same person also wrote a move-cursor function for a VT-100 that was
> >over 150 lines long, in Pascal.  I later re-wrote it in 6 lines (and
> >included some bounds checking he'd left out).

> I once worked with a guy who went through a lot of trouble to write a program
> in C to switch a vt220 terminal to pass-through print mode, output a text
> file, then switch the terminal back to normal mode.  When I told him that it
> could be done in a 6 line shell script, and in fact it already had been done
> and was available on the system, he didn't seem to care.  I guess he just
> liked wasted effort.

Well, about two months ago someone posted an article to news.admin containing
a 40-60 line C program to parse a .newsrc file and remove marked-unread
messages in unsubscribed groups.

It's a one-liner in sed: "sed '/!/s/[-,][-,0-9]*[-,]/-/'".

And after half a dozen people pointed this out he still defended doing it in
C on grounds of performance.
-- 
Peter da Silva.  <peter@sugar.neosoft.com>.
 `-_-'   "Heeft u vandaag al uw wolf geknuffeld?"
  'U`
From: jem@SunSite.unc.edu (Jonathan Magid)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Oldest ARPAnet messages?
Date: 6 Oct 92 04:05:13 GMT
Organization: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

In article <BvI9ut.EE1@well.sf.ca.us> hlr@well.sf.ca.us (Howard Rheingold) writes:
>
>I'm writing a book about virtual communities and I am trying to track
>down evidence of the earliest messages on the ARPAnet, specifically
>group messages (were the first group messages mailing lists, as I
>presume?) about subjects that aren't directly related to the task of
>setting up the network. If this is a FAQ, forgive me and point me to
>the archive.

many old arpanet message lists used to be on fionavar at mit under
their humor archives.  there was a joke list among other things.

i remember some stuff from as early as 1979.  If fionavar no longer
has that stuff, there is a copy of what was there on sunsite.unc.edu
in /pub/docs/humor/fionavar.

Good history and some very funny things as well.

jem.

-- 
Jonathan Magid     jem@sunsite.unc.edu       SunSite Administrator
Virtual pizza Delivery (tm)::faxed in 30 cycles or less or you get it
----------------------------------------FREE!!!-----------------------
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,rec.games.int-fiction
From: lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,talk.bizarre
Subject: Re: You know when you're hacking too long when...
Date: 1 Oct 92 01:48:15 GMT
Reply-To: lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner)
Organization: Columbia University

In article <1992Sep30.091442.18367@cv.ruu.nl> anton@cv.ruu.nl (Anton H.J. Koning) writes:
>You know you've been hacking to long when you start typing semi-colons
>at the end of sentences instead of full stops;

You'll probably get more traffic tickets if you don't stop typing semi-colons
or any other characters on your portable terminal while driving.  Wait until
you're home to type.  Just because your vehicle is at a full stop doesn't
mean you can hold up traffic while you type on your keyboard.

cj "safety first" l
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: kibo@world.std.com (James "Kibo" Parry)
Subject: Re: Cliff Stoll live in concert!
Organization: Two rooms filled with typography, in downtown Boston
Distribution: U.S.
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 03:23:41 GMT

In article <BvLx0x.M1o@sti.com> stev0@sti.com (Steve Berlin) writes:
>Attention!
>
>Cliff Stoll, author of "The Cuckoo's Egg", will be appearing on the NPR
>radio show "West Coast Weekend" on October 17th.

As always, be reminded not to confuse him with Gary Stollman (author of
EMACS) and Richard Stallman (known to alt.alien.visitors readers.)

>-- 
>Stev0@sti.com
>This is a kibo .signature virus.  Kibo's .sig file has now
>been appended to yours.

If this were MTS, and you did $COPY K1B0:SIGNATURE K1B0:SIGNATURE(*L+1),
you could really wreck up the system.  (Though this is best if you use
temp files--if you append a file to itself ("*L+1" means "after the last
line") it grows infinitely, and temporary files reside in virtual
memory, and...)
								-- K.

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.unix.misc
From: keith@ksmith.uucp (Keith Smith)
Subject: Re: The need for an assembler (was: Favorite CPU)
Organization: Keith's Computer, Hope Mills, NC
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 92 01:52:56 GMT

In article <1992Sep24.001021.18663@NeoSoft.com> peter@NeoSoft.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>Sounds like another poor algorithm, 'cos "vi" uses VM on *any* file and it's
>a lot better than "ghastly" on Xenix-286.

Funny you should mention that Peter.  vi is a WAY whole lot better than
that, even on a 2400 baud modem connected to a 286 Xenix box.  I have a
tendency to USE vi with very large files since MicroEMACS starts to
swallow VM at an alarming rate.  I've also made the mistake of the
command:

emacs a_really_big_100MB_file_i_meant_to_use_less_on

And turn around a minute later and ... find somewhere to kill that
puppy.  'vi' woulda had the first 24 lines on the screen already.

I did a LOT of program development using vi on a 286 Xenix box way back.
The MAIN reason for vi was the SPEED, NOT the user interface :)!

-- 
Keith Smith          uunet!ksmith!keith            5719 Archer Rd.
Digital Designs      BBS 1-919-423-4216            Hope Mills, NC 28348-2201
Somewhere in the Styx of North Carolina ...
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: u734120@bruny.cc.utas.edu.au (John Lamp)
Subject: Re: Counting on hands: (was: Possible UL alert)
Organization: University of Tasmania, Australia.
Date: Sun, 4 Oct 1992 08:50:46 GMT


For a very good exposition of this topic can I recommend Frederik Pohl's
_How to Count on Your Fingers_, a short story in an anthology called
_Digits and Dastards_.

This also includes _On Binary Digits and Human Habits_ on related matters

Cheers
John

--
   _--_|\             John Lamp, originating in Hobart, Tasmania
  /      \                 Phone: 002 23 1366 - Fax: 002 34 5685
  \_.--._/                   email: u734120@bruny.cc.utas.edu.au
        v <-----------------------------------------------------
From: peter@NeoSoft.com (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Total erasure of hard drive data??
Date: 7 Oct 92 00:54:10 GMT
Organization: NeoSoft Communications Services -- (713) 684-5900

In article <1992Oct5.182255.13846@javelin.sim.es.com> gfowler@javelin.sim.es.com (Gary Fowler) writes:
> Well let's just reinvent the wheel.  Who wants to start by rewriting "cat"?
> And let's do it in assembler for performance reasons.

Joe Kalish did that. Got it under 300 bytes, as I remember, though once he got
it under 512 it was a bit of a waste going further: that was the block size on
the PDP-11.
-- 
Peter da Silva.  <peter@sugar.neosoft.com>.
 `-_-'   "Oletko halannut suttasi tdnddn?"
  'U`  
Dit kan mijn kamer niet zijn, ik adem geen ammoniak.
From: michaelb@cse.fau.edu (Michael Rogero Brown)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Mean-looking iron: design decision or just cool stuff?
Date: 30 Sep 92 15:02:21 GMT
Organization: Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, USA

In article <BvDKvs.M5q@rice.edu> dboyes@is.rice.edu (David E Boyes) writes:
>I just got my first look at the poster photos of a CM-5 --
>Thinking Machine's latest super-powered warp-accelerated widget.
>My first thought was: 
>
>  "Damn, that machine looks *mean*."
>
HEY!  Anyway to get posters of CM-5 or CM-2?  They'd look cool in our
lab (all we have is bare walls).  Does Thinking Machine make any posters?

-- 
<<                                                               >>
<< Michael R. Brown    CS Graduate Student-Florida Atlantic Univ >>
<< Internet: michaelb@sol.cse.fau.edu                            >>
<< BitNet: m_brown@fauvax                                        >>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: claird@NeoSoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Subject: Naming conventions (was: thoughts)
Organization: NeoSoft Communications Services -- (713) 684-5900
Distribution: alt
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 17:35:46 GMT

In article <26354@castle.ed.ac.uk> ercm20@festival.ed.ac.uk (Sam Wilson) writes:
>jeff.zeitlin@execnet.com (jeff zeitlin) writes:
>> RF::>Hah!  Cambridge does that _much_ better.  For example, Trumpington Rd.
			.
			.
			.
>>   Incidentally, in Manhattan, West 12th Street crosses West 12th
>>   Street.  I still haven't figured that one out...
			.
			.
			.
Who knows Chicago?  Is it Wacker Drive that successively
appears as South Wacker, North Wacker, East Wacker, Up-
per Wacker, and Lower Wacker?
-- 

Cameron Laird
claird@Neosoft.com (claird%Neosoft.com@uunet.uu.net)	+1 713 267 7966
claird@litwin.com (claird%litwin.com@uunet.uu.net)  	+1 713 996 8546
From: lstowell@pyrnova.mis.pyramid.com (Lon Stowell)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: dirty tricks
Date: 2 Oct 92 23:00:25 GMT
Reply-To: lstowell@pyrnova.pyramid.com (Lon Stowell)
Organization: Pyramid Technology Corp., Mountain View, CA

In article <1992Oct02.003355.23812@bigbrd.agchem.redwater.iol.ca> p45dpmg@bigbrd.agchem.redwater.iol.ca (Peter Graw) writes:
>Some of my favorite pranks:
>
>a program that would output a moving snake to a unix terminal with write 
>permission turned on, erasing text. 1st years would really freak.
   
   Even nicer with SVR4 is the ability to use priocntl to run your
   nasty little tricks at priorities ABOVE the scheduler's.  Once a
   sufficiently nasty is started, just try to type in an appropriate
   kill command.  REally nasty is to background it, THEN raise the
   priority.  
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,rec.games.int-fiction
From: David.White@bbs.oit.unc.edu (David White)
Subject: Re: Spellbreaker/Bureaucracy
Organization: Extended Bulletin Board Service
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 20:26:30 GMT


Thanks to all for the Bureaucracy (I KNEW those stamps were good for
something!) and Spellbreaker hints ('specially for the InvisiClues
walkthrough which someone provided.)   (and incidentally, sorry if
"thank-you" messages are off-topic - still learning!)

=-=-= David =-=-=
--
   The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the University of
     North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Campus Office for Information
        Technology, or the Experimental Bulletin Board Service.
           internet:  bbs.oit.unc.edu or 152.2.22.80
From: hees@cubic.com (Phil Hees)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Floor numbering
Date: 3 Oct 92 02:52:44 GMT
Organization: Cubic Toll Systems

In article <1992Sep30.124352.1@bronco.fnal.gov> colombo@bronco.fnal.gov
(Rick Colombo - Fermilab) writes:
>
>As I remember it, many buildings in New York don't have a 13th floor.
>That is, the elevator panel just doesn't have the number 13 on it.
>(Of course I'm talking about buildings with at least 13 floors. ;-)

In Chinese-speaking countries, many buildings don't have a fourth floor,
since the pronunciation of the word 'four' is very similar to the
pronunciation of the word 'death'.  ("Sze" is the closest I can come to
an English transcription.)

When I was working in Taiwan, I noted that my office and hotel buildings
omitted both the fourth and thirteenth floors, out of deference to
Occidental as well as Oriental superstitions.

--
Phil Hees
hees@cubic.com
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: p45dpmg@bigbrd.agchem.redwater.iol.ca (Peter Graw)
Subject: Re: dirty tricks
Organization: Imperial Oil Limited
Date: Fri, 02 Oct 1992 00:33:55 GMT

Some of my favorite pranks:

a program that would output a moving snake to a unix terminal with write 
permission turned on, erasing text. 1st years would really freak.

When rlogin and telnet got abused, permission for the executable was turned
off. I wrote my own daemon and rlogin that would login to the remote
machine (BSD 4.2). I wouldn't show up in the 'who' output, talk user
would result in 'type talk @nodename to respond' on the users terminal,
etc. I also had no cpu time limits. Once on the other system, if you
used the login program, you'd be placed in the utmp (?), but never removed
until a reboot, so doing this a bunch of times got even the admins confused
for a few minutes.

1st years would love write, think they knew computers (ya, but this was
Unix in 84, not a Commodore 64), and always interrupt us. Send them a nasty
message, redirrect stty -raw to their terminal which would place them in raw
mode (hung as far as they knew). Let them sweat for a few minutes, and then
undo the raw mode and let go away to lick their wounds.

Before BSD 4.2, our department had rigged up some token ring stuff to the VAXes
and BSD 4.1. Placing [nodename] in front of the pathname jumped to the other
machine. I wanted rwho, so I wrote a quickie to open, read, close the remote
utmp file. Opps, on the last machine I opened, closed, read (poor coding,
I was a first year hacker, didn't use subroutines, anyway...). This
sequence crashed local and remote nodes. Took me three runs before I clued
in that I was crashing the system, not hardware problems. After that the system
admins would awnswer my questions instead of tell me to get lost.
Guess what I do now?

Heard that on a multics system, sending the right mail would 
introduce a virus that would wakeup, demand a cookie, and go back to sleep.
Of course, before it would be quiet and go to sleep, the user
had to type 'cookie'. Couldn't figure out how to do it when I got to
multics, maybe the hole had been covered (or it was a myth. Anyone know?)


-- 
Peter Graw    (peter@iol.ca)
Information Management 
Esso Chemical Canada
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: IQTI400@INDYCMS.IUPUI.EDU (macphil)
Subject: Re: you know, you 're reading news too long
Organization: IUPUI
Date: Sun, 04 Oct 92 13:59:55 EST

In article <marc.718046867@vieta.math.uni-sb.de>
marc@vieta.math.uni-sb.de (Marc Conrad) writes:
 
>....when you have a simple question about some stupid problem
>(in my special case: to calculate Fahrenheit to Celsius and vice
>versa - No _don't_ post the answer. I know it!!!)
>and the first idea, you get is to ask it on the net....
>(and not to look in some books or to ask the nice peoble around you or
>to have a look in the holy bible K&R)
>I only realized these alternatives, when I saw the flames :-(
>Marc.
>P.S: C = 5/9 ( F - 32 )
 
To quote Erasmus, "Make things simple, not simpler."
 
Algebraically, the conversions can be expressed as
 
+40
*fraction
-40
 
then you only have to remember whether to use 5/9 or 9/5 as the
fraction.  this means one only has to remember what is really
one formula instead of two.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: elf@ee.ryerson.ca (luis fernandes)
Subject: Re: dirty tricks
Summary: dirty tricks on the PET, always find a machine free
Keywords: ouch
Organization: Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, Toronto
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 22:13:17 GMT

In article <1992Sep27.164747.16092@rchland.ibm.com> jdahl@rchland.vnet.ibm.com (Jared Dahl) writes:
[...]
>I used to change the parity and baud rate on our vt220 terminals
>in our lab.  When turned on, they responded with gibberish and 
>the normal "idiot newbie" responded by trying to find another
>terminal.  I never waited for a terminal after I started doing this.
>
Along the same lines...

In high-school, we had a lab full of (not enough) Commodore PET's (and
too many students). My solution to always getting a machine was to
write a program that looked like the opening screen to the PET (I
was dilligent enought to write a version for the 16Mb, uh, I
mean Kb (:-) machine and the 32Kb machine) took all user input &
discarded it. It also read the cold-boot sequence (SYS64790, I
actually remember it!) & did the appropriate song-and-dance to
fool the user into thinking it had reset.

I was sure to always run this jewel on the same machine.

At the start of term the "newbie's" would merrily type in their
10 line programs & find they could not list them, that theris
program had vanished into thin air, etc., and would thus
search for another machine deeming the infernal machine in the
corner dead-beyond-repair-and-usablity.

The key to this program was the "INPUT #1, A$" instruction which
surpressed the ubiquitous '?' input prompt and could not be broken
with the PET-equivalent of ^C, (which I forget). I came across this
instruction while reading the PET-bible over the summer before the
programming course began.

--
luis fernandes  <elf@ee.ryerson.ca>
From: terry@spcvxb.spc.edu (Terry Kennedy, Operations Mgr.)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: DEC Part numbers (was: Empty boxes)
Date: 27 Sep 92 00:52:24 GMT
Organization: St. Peter's College, US

In article <Bv5KFy.22M@unixhub.SLAC.Stanford.EDU>, ralph@falcon.SLAC.Stanford.EDU (Ralph Becker-Szendy) writes:
> The amazing thing is that a cardboard box can have a release level (as
> if one would expect to come out with a bigger and better box sometime
> later), and that the box as shipped is already an improved version.
> I'd love to see the FCO for the old release of the cardboard box. Any
> company which can waste its time on numbering the releases on generic
> cardboard boxes (not even mentioning the amount of DEC and customer
> time wasted on the VMS licensing scheme) deserves to go bankrupt.

  Well, I've seen some of these get up to revision C3 or thereabouts 8-). How-
ever, you'll never see an FCO (Field Change Order), nor even an ECO (for items
in production) for these. It just represents a change in the basic part speci-
fication. DEC has become very committed to environmental issues. Many of these
revisions were changes made by suppliers (at DEC's request) for environmental
reasons. For example, DEC boxes are now 100% recyclable material (they used to
be held closed by metal staples). Some changes are probably to incorporate re-
cycled material in the box construction.

  When a company is as big as DEC, they can't just say "gimme some more boxes
like the last batch", you know...

  The "Empty Filler Box" replaced foam inserts or the infamous "packing pea-
nuts", etc. as a more ecologically sound alternative. The "Cronel" (which was
styrofoam-on-paper packaging) has been replaced by regular paper and rubber
cement, again for ecological reasons).

	Terry Kennedy		Operations Manager, Academic Computing
	terry@spcvxa.bitnet	St. Peter's College, Jersey City, NJ USA
	terry@spcvxa.spc.edu	+1 201 915 9381
From: mallman@oucsace.cs.ohiou.edu (Mark Allman)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: dirty tricks
Keywords: ouch
Date: 6 Oct 92 03:28:09 GMT
Organization: /home/ace/a/mallman/.org

in high school, we had a novell lan which every computer science student was
given an account on.  we all had /bin directories which most people opened
up, so that everyone could access them.  (so we didnt have to keep 10 copies
of pkzip on the lan)  well, our dirty trick was to write a program which
simulated logging ou.  it displayed the logout message, and then the 
standard screen from which one logged in.  except, this program didnt log
you out.  a certain key combination could get someone right back into the
account.  we would place this in someones /bin directory, wait for them
to leave, and then either open up their account to everyone or send mail
as them.  

high school was great. :-)

mark

-- 

/* Mark Allman                |  I'm a computer science student.  Whats
   mallman@ace.cs.ohiou.edu   |  your excuse?
   mallman@duce.cs.ohiou.edu  |                                         */
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: karlm@sequent.com (Karl Maerz)
Subject: Re: thoughts
Organization: Sequent Computer Systems Inc.
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 92 22:33:10 GMT

||  Incidentally, in Manhattan, West 12th Street crosses West 12th
||  Street.  I still haven't figured that one out...
|
|     Here in Port Coquitlam, Eastern Drive and Western Drive go
|up opposite sides of Mary Hill.  They meet at the top; a street
|sign proclaims the corner of Eastern and Western.
|

My favorite is right here outside of good ol' Portland, Oregon,
in Tigard:

    South West North Dakota St.


Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: jcmorris@mwunix.mitre.org (Joe Morris)
Subject: Re: IBM 3021 Data Cell
Organization: The MITRE Corporation
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 12:58:01 GMT

sarr@sinshan.citi.umich.edu (Sarr J. Blumson) writes:

>In 1970 the intro Fortran (it was a long time ago, we were young and
>foolish) decided to put the course files for the final project on the
>data cell because nobody would spring enough funny money for space on
>the real disks.  300 students running batch jobs with no debugging
>tools and not much skill proceeded to put the beast thru its paces at
>a mad rate trying to get their projects done.  MTBF dropped to about 8
>hours, as I recall.

The standing joke at many installations using 2321 Data Cells (aside from
the 2321 itself) was that a proper configuration should always include
two Data Cells, because that increased the probability of having one
working Data Cell.

Back sometime around 1968 or so there was an APAR (translation: bug report)
published by IBM, reporting that the on-line test program (OLTEP) sections
for the Data Cell could actually damage the pick finger.  I never saw
a precise description of the failure; does anyone else remember this
particular problem?

(The "pick finger" is the frotsus which hooks into the "pick hole" in the
end of the data cell strip and pulls it out onto the drum.  I suspect 
that something in the test used a diagnostic order which started the
bin selection motor running while the pick finger was still inside 
one of the bins...)

Joe Morris / MITRE
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers