HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: twpierce@unix.amherst.edu (Tim Pierce)
Subject: Re: Total erasure of hard drive data??
Organization: Amherst College, Amherst MA
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 20:04:11 GMT

In article <1992Sep30.204200.15817@javelin.sim.es.com> gfowler@javelin.sim.es.com (Gary Fowler) writes:

>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.

Maybe he just liked solving problems.  Who's the real "bozo" here?

-- 
____ Tim Pierce                / "You are just naive and repressed because
\  / twpierce@unix.amherst.edu /  penis envy is here and it's now and it's
 \/ (BITnet: TWPIERCE@AMHERST) /  all around you." -- Neal C. Wickham
From: adrian@milton.u.washington.edu (Adrian Mariano)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: dirty tricks
Keywords: ouch
Date: 29 Sep 92 15:59:30 GMT
Organization: University of Washington

In <1992Sep27.164747.16092@rchland.ibm.com> jdahl@rchland.vnet.ibm.com (Jared Dahl) writes:

>in MS-DOS...

>PROMPT=?
>cls

>I know. you already knew that certain dos interrupts won't print
>a question mark, and the one used for the prompt is one of them.
  
Not in any version of MS-DOS I've ever used.  No I/O method eats the
'?' and the above simply gets '?' for the prompt.  


On someone's MS-DOS box, we once edited command.com to invoke our file
instead of autoexec.bat.  We gave the new file a name that would blend
in -- we didn't hide the file, because we decided that an unexpected
hidden file would jump out at the victims.  We made sure that we
didn't change the date on command.com when we edited it.  (One of the
victims recounted that he actually looked at the date when trying to
figure out what was going on.)

Our replacement of the autoexec.bat file contained something like

@call \autoexec.bat
@echo off
subst d: c:\download
assign c=d

This has the effect of turning the c: drive into just the c:\download
directory.  Of course, the victims had all of their utilities in other
directories.  

The victims started to understand what was going on when they ran a
memory mapping program to list TSRs and noticed 'assign' in the list.
The trick could be improved by eliminating this memory record.
Xref: sparky alt.folklore.computers:14761 talk.bizarre:32757
From: nj@magnolia.Berkeley.EDU (Narciso Jaramillo)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,talk.bizarre
Subject: Re: You know when you're hacking too long when...
Date: 4 Oct 92 23:28:40
Organization: Postcarcinogenic Bliss, Inc.
NNTP-Posting-Host: magnolia.berkeley.edu
In-reply-to: lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu's message of 1 Oct 92 01:48:15 GMT


You know when you're hacking too long when you realize that all his flesh
has long since disintegrated into small bubble-like gelatinous lumps of
meat and fat and you might as well put down the axe because it's about
as tender as it's going to get anyway.


nj
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: peter@NeoSoft.com (Peter da Silva)
Subject: Re: dirty tricks
Organization: NeoSoft Communications Services -- (713) 684-5900
Date: Sat, 03 Oct 1992 22:12:13 GMT

In article <1992Oct3.163229.7375@cybernet.cse.fau.edu> michaelb@cse.fau.edu (Michael Rogero Brown) writes:
> What usually 'stumps' the users of our Sun Sparcstations is that you first
> 'exit' out of X windows, and then you must exit out of your account.  Many
> forget the second exit. :\  Or we have the idiots who pick 'exit' from the
> window manager menu, thinking it exits them out of their account, when it
> only kills the window manager.  I have no sympathy to those who repetivly
> do this (after I've told them several times).  

Why don't you just put something like this in .login:

if ( `tty` == /dev/console ) then
  echo ""
  echo -n "Starting XWindows (type Control-C to interrupt)"
  sleep 5
  xstart
  echo -n "Automatically logging out (type Control-C to interrupt)"
  sleep 5
  logout
endif
-- 
Peter da Silva.  <peter@sugar.neosoft.com>.
 `-_-'   "Heeft u vandaag al uw wolf geknuffeld?"
  'U`  
Kunt u mij de weg wijzen naar het dichtsbijzijnde intelligente zoogdier?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: IQTI400@INDYCMS.IUPUI.EDU (macphil)
Subject: Re: Possible UL alert(was Re: Videotaping rapes)
Organization: IUPUI
Date: Sun, 04 Oct 92 14:22:18 EST

In article <krikket.9447@meltdown.chi.il.us>
krikket@meltdown.chi.il.us (D. 'krikket' Krick) writes:
 
>market...  (Okay, so I'm dating my youth here...)
 
careful...dating your youth is illegal in some states!
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: IQTI400@INDYCMS.IUPUI.EDU (macphil)
Subject: Re: You know when you're hacking too long when...
Organization: IUPUI
Date: Sun, 04 Oct 92 13:47:51 EST

In article <BvGp4H.27E@rice.edu>
dboyes@is.rice.edu (David E Boyes) writes:
 
>I just thought of something -- when is it time to *retire*?
>
>I was working on some documentation this morning and I caught
>myself saying "does this go in area A or area B?"
>
>You folks that have actually written COBOL understand.
 
>I'm getting too old for this...
 
It's been said "no one retires from this industry:  they die or
change careers."
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: gfowler@javelin.sim.es.com (Gary Fowler)
Subject: Re: Total erasure of hard drive data??
Organization: Evans & Sutherland Computer Corporation
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 20:42:00 GMT

hollombe@polymath.tti.com (The Polymath) writes:

bozo stuff deleted

>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.

more bozo stuff deleted

********************************************************************************
*     Gary Fowler                     *     The storm starts when the drops    *
*     gfowler@esunix.sim.es.com       *     start dropping.  When the drops    *
*     Evans & Sutherland              *     stop dropping then the storm       *
*     600 Komas Drive                 *     starts stopping.                   *
*     Salt Lake City, UT              *     -Dr. Seuss                         *
********************************************************************************
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,talk.bizarre
From: cline@cs.scarolina.edu (Ernest Cline)
Subject: Re: You know when you're hacking too long when...
Organization: USC  Department of Computer Science
Date: 29 Sep 92 21:07:15 GMT

igb@fulcrum.bt.co.uk (Ian G Batten) writes:

>In article <1992Sep18.075936.20819@lugb.latrobe.edu.au> 9125113g@lux.latrobe.edu.au (Mitch Davis) writes:
>> Every five minutes, he freezes solid for about thirty seconds then 
>> continues on as if nothing ever happened.

>I know how he feels.  Aphasia.

>ian

Well, I



        dont.
From: dev-null@lorc.UUCP (The NULL device)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: dirty tricks (was: The funniest bug)
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 92 14:11:33 EDT
Organization: LORC Enterprises

scs@adam.mit.edu (Steve Summit) writes:
> Somehow, /dev/null had been replaced by a 400-block regular file
> (apparently /dev/null had been accidentally deleted, and the next
> command which tried to discard its output with something like
> 
> 	program > /dev/null
> 
> just happened to be run by the superuser).  Nothing else that ran
> on this machine must have used /dev/null much, because the
> situation persisted for quite a while.

Blasphemy! Treason!  A null device that wasn't null!  This deprives me of my
daily intake of dead bits (which are mighty tasty, I might add!).  I won't
stand for it!  Wahhh!!!!  All devices MUST be null!  Hail the dev-null!

> 					Steve Summit

dev-null@lorc.UUCP
From: Charlie_Gibbs@mindlink.bc.ca (Charlie Gibbs)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What ever happened to Motorola 88000 chips
Date: 7 Oct 92 04:43:27 GMT
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Distribution: world

In article <1992Oct6.121334.2598@mdcbbs.com> rivero@mdcbbs.com
(Michael Rivero) writes:

>  I recall hearing about Motorola's follow-on to the 68000 series
>of CPU's, the 88000 series. It featured (initially) a CPU chip
>paired with twin memory managers running as cache's and IP units
>or somesuch. Sounded like a fascinating chip set, but it sorta faded
>away. Did the RISC revolution kill them off or what?

     If so, please don't tell Data General.  We have a couple of
brand-new 88000-powered AViiON boxes running here, and I'd hate to
have them suddenly die.  :-)

Charlie_Gibbs@mindlink.bc.ca
"I'm cursed with hair from HELL!"  -- Night Court

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: adrian@milton.u.washington.edu (Adrian Mariano)
Subject: Re: dirty tricks
Keywords: ouch
Organization: University of Washington
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 04:12:58 GMT

In <1992Sep30.022332.14534@rchland.ibm.com> jdahl@rchland.vnet.ibm.com (Jared Dahl) writes:

>In article <adrian.717782370@milton>, adrian@milton.u.washington.edu (Adrian Mariano) writes:
>|> In <1992Sep27.164747.16092@rchland.ibm.com> jdahl@rchland.vnet.ibm.com (Jared Dahl) writes:
>|> 
>|> >in MS-DOS...
>|> 
>|> >PROMPT=?
>|> >cls
>|> 
>|> >I know. you already knew that certain dos interrupts won't print
>|> >a question mark, and the one used for the prompt is one of them.
>|>   
>|> Not in any version of MS-DOS I've ever used.  No I/O method eats the
>|> '?' and the above simply gets '?' for the prompt.  

>Sorry.  '?' should be '$'.  I don't use DOS very often any more. 
>Sort or a reward I guess.

Ah.  To set the record straight, the $ is eaten not by DOS interrupts,
but by interpretation for prompts.  There are several special
sequences that start with $.  You can get an actual $ for a prompt by
doing
  PROMPT=$$
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: dirty tricks
From: nunn@nutmeg.ntu.edu.au (JsNO  BAR---NUNN)
Date: 7 Oct 92 00:45:59 +0900
Distribution: world
Organization: Information Technology, Northern Territory University
Keywords: Unknown

In article <1992Oct6.135525.1@cc.curtin.edu.au>, sbakerjr@cc.curtin.edu.au writes:
> When someone leaves their VAX terminal without logging off (fatal mistake)
> I find it hilarious to add the line to the front of thier login.com file...
> 
> $ LOGOFF
> 
> This really creates a riotous situation...
> 


 even better:

 edit a file called 'rabbit.com' as follows:




  $ BACK:
  $ submitt rabbit.com
  $ goto back



   to execute it type: submitt 'rabbit.com'



....your systems people will be saying 'good evening' at 3:00 pm.



-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                      JsNO BAR----NUNN
                  "It's his last semester, give him a good pat on the back"
                          nunn@pandanus.ntu.edu.au  DARWIN, NT, OZ
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: george@seal.micro.umn.edu (Rogers George)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: dirty tricks
Keywords: Sun X newbies
Date: 4 Oct 92 02:13:10 GMT
Organization: University of Minnesota CIS

In article <19ub05INNehl@stanley.cis.Brown.EDU> evan@gauss.math.brown.edu (Evan M. Simpson) writes:
>   Our Sun lab is great for this stuff... the way it's set up you can rlogin
>to any of them (they all carry the same accounts) and run xlock (Everyone uses
>X all the time). It will happily lock out the person sitting at the machine,
>and they can't do a damn thing unless they enter *your* password.
>
>College is great.
>-- 
>Evan Simpson               My .sig got stale, so I had to throw it out.  
>Brown U. Math Dept.
>evan@gauss.math.brown.edu  


At the U of MN Sun lab a few days ago, I was startled to notice that an
extra window had popped up on my display.. It seems an X-windows novice
(xnovice?) had tried to log into my machine, and had instead opened an
xterm on my display pointed at his home directory. (It was a really ugly
blue-on-slightly-darker-blue, too, almost impossible to read, which makes
me think he hadn't found his .vtwmrc or .mwmrc yet..) anyway. Suggestions
from neighboring users included .tar-ing his entire home directory, then
nuking it and giving it back later, but the one that actually got
implemented was a line added to his .xinitrc:
xv -root -quit .backdrop &
where .backdrop was a nice n' juicy .gif from a.b.p.e.

-Rogers

geor0007@student.tc.umn.edu
From: viking@iastate.edu (Dan Sorenson)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: you know you've been hacking too long...
Keywords: hacking long absurd msdos TM
Date: 6 Oct 92 06:47:20 GMT
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames IA

tzs@stein.u.washington.edu (Tim Smith) writes:

>Anyway, he was participating in a one-night stand with a woman.  The next
>morning when he woke up, he thought that she was a PDP-11 and was trying to
>figure out how to boot her.  Now that's someone who hacks too much.

	I can better this, and I've posted it before: when the randy
woman decided to have a bout of early-morning fun, I was just waking up.
Not having that morning pot of coffee in me, my thoughts centered around
a DB-25 serial port and how to configure a cable to attach to a DB-9
serial port.  Somewhere in there was a parallel-to-serial interface, but
I soon woke up enough to discount this and go for the null-modem interface.

	A word to the wise: Don't *EVER* attempt to awaken a programmer
without coffee being within arms reach.  Your liklihood of success is
quite low, and the results are not certain.

<Dan Sorenson, DoD #1066 |"I see angels on Ariels in leather and>
<z1dan@exnet.iastate.edu | chrome, Swooping down from heaven to >
<viking@iastate.edu      | carry me home."   ---    R. Thompson >
<ISU thinks I need more education, which they provide for a fee.>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: dirty tricks
From: don@zl2tnm.gen.nz (Don Stokes)
Date: 6 Oct 92 19:42:32 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: The Wolery

nunn@nutmeg.ntu.edu.au (JsNO  BAR---NUNN) writes:
>  even better:
>  edit a file called 'rabbit.com' as follows:
>   $ BACK:
>   $ submitt rabbit.com
>   $ goto back
>    to execute it type: submitt 'rabbit.com'
> ....your systems people will be saying 'good evening' at 3:00 pm.

This is a very good way to lose your account if you're on an educational 
system, a good way to get your head kicked in otherwise.  (Actually, you 
run the risk of the latter if on educational systems too....)

Up to V.5.4 of VMS this activity will overload the queue manager to the 
point of unusability.  Up to about 5.3, there's a good chance of blowing 
it out of the water completely.  V5.5 onwards fixes the performance 
problems but I suspect other hassles ensue.  If nothing else, it's a big
pain getting rid of all those entries.

A queue manager rebuild is a slow painful operation.  I know.  I've had a
lot of practice.  (I eventually came up with a way to repair a broken queue
file on the fly, at least for the class of breakage that was hitting us at
the time.)

<sigh> One day DEC will build a queue manager that really works.  

If you're a student or users, don't do it.  If your a system manager, can I
come and help you deal with anyone who does?  I think I've got some bamboo
slivers for putting under fingernails....  8-)

--
Don Stokes, ZL2TNM (DS555)                        don@zl2tnm.gen.nz (home)
Network Manager, Computing Services Centre            don@vuw.ac.nz (work)
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand              +64-4-495-5052
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: reichert@dragon (Bastard)
Subject: Re: dirty tricks
Organization: University of Lowell Computer Science, Lowell MA
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1992 07:37:37 GMT

A nasty I was responsible for involved a scheme to prevent too many users from
logging in after I had:

I had created a small text file that mixed text with DEC's pseudo-ANSI terminal
codes to recreate the school's login screen terminated by a KAM string; that is;
to lock the keyboard.

Once I had gotten onto the system in the main terminal room, as a user-hopeful
would approach a terminal, I would cat this file to their dev.  The screen would
flash imperceptably, but would look normal (actually, the astute would note the
cursor did not flash.)  They would hammer at the keyboard, but nothing would
happen.  They would assume that terminal was not working, and move to another.
If I had been able to remember the numbers for all of the terminals, they would
eventually give up.  Of course, resetting the terminal via setup would clear
this.

Childish, yes, but it did speed up our rogue games.

As for people who didn't log out, among the many infamous tricks would be to
doctor their .login to do something (non-malicious), and then reset.  Burying
them under a few nested levels of 'script.'  (Actually, it annoyed the LA's
immensely to have to unpeel these people.)  Abusing symbolic links and aliases
could cause many headaches (A real icky one was
 alias ls '\bin\ls !:^; csh -f'
or something like that.

Via enviroment variables to load and execute
obnoxious macros when they would start vi was a method as well.

Needless to say, depending on your target, there are many annoyances that can
be performed.  These were not directly instructive to the dingbat user, but as
someone would be repreatedly caught, and have to be cleaned up by an LA, the
LAs took to chatising them more stringently about not logging out.

NOt very original on our part either, I'm afraid...
-- 
reichert@dragon.ulowell.edu			   Brian (you Bastard) Reichert

USnail: 25 East Derry Road
	Derry, NH 03038			"Intel architecture: the left hand path"
From: peter@NeoSoft.com (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: That darn Bug story
Date: 1 Oct 92 01:02:23 GMT
Organization: NeoSoft Communications Services -- (713) 684-5900

In article <26417@castle.ed.ac.uk> ercm20@festival.ed.ac.uk (Sam Wilson) writes:
> which was itself derived from Algol 60.  It was further developed and
> several things were changed in the final version, IMP80: the form of the
> counted cycle changed; the until clause of a conditional cycle moved to
> the end of the loop (there is a while clause which can be placed at the
> beginning);

That's nice, much better than the three loops in C.

> arbitrary bases were introduced; the string delimiter was changed from '
> to " to allow easier distinction between a single character constant (an
> integer type), say 'A' and string constants, say "A", which were

That sounds like it influenced or was influenced by C.

> things (for instance the effects of many of C's operators are achieved
> with what in IMP are syntactically functions - the address of a variable
> is taken with ADDR(variable-name); mapping a variable onto an address is
> done with a mapping function, say INTEGER(address).)

Does this mean pointers are untyped? PL/M does this, and it's a big pain.
The typed pointers in C or Pascal are much better.
-- 
Peter da Silva.  <peter@sugar.neosoft.com>.
 `-_-'   "Segodnja volka obnimal?"
  'U`  
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: kevinq@Ingres.COM (Kevin Quinn)
Subject: Re: Computer comics and illiteracy
Reply-To: kevinq@Ingres.COM (Kevin Quinn)
Organization: Ask Computer Systems Inc., Ingres Division, Alameda CA 94501
Date: 7 Oct 92 01:52:23 GMT

In article <1af0jnINN10r@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> rfd@po.CWRU.Edu (Richard F. Drushel) writes:
>
>	From the comic strip "Shoe" by Jeff MacNelly, Thursday 1
>October 1992:
>
>Computer Wizard:  Great news!  In the past few months they've developed
>                  a way to upgrade your computer to ten megs of REM!!
>                                                                ^^^

Yeah, the 'toon was a real sleeper.


kbq
--
Kevin Quinn                         | kevinq@ingres.com
                                    | {mtzinu,pacbell,ll-winken,sun}!ingres.com
My opinions are my own.  Should you think otherwise, think again.
Xref: sparky alt.folklore.computers:14684 rec.games.int-fiction:395
From: toma@sail.LABS.TEK.COM (Tom Almy)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Zork/Dungeon (was Re: MDL)
Date: 2 Oct 92 16:57:23 GMT
Article-I.D.: sail.12657
Reply-To: toma@sail.labs.tek.com
Followup-To: alt.folklore.computers
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton,  OR.

In article <1992Oct1.113936.24516@bohra.cpg.oz.au> als@bohra.cpg.oz.au (Anthony Shipman) writes:

>So now I'm confused.  What is the genealogy?

Originally Dungeon was written in MDL.

I played a version in the late 1970's that was a translation into Fortran.
It was dated 18-JUN-78, and was distributed by DECUS. Compared to the MDL
version it claimed to lack the endgame, have a simple parser, and have
numerous bugs and spelling errors. It had 500 points.

In 1980 (I believe) a new version came out, this time with sources, that
had the endgame, the egg, the Bank of Zork, and the Puzzle Room added.
Maximum score was now 585 points. The game was then renamed Zork.

Infocom was apparently formed about this time to distribute commercially
to the fledgling home computer market. I had CP/M versions of their games,
for instance.

They rewrote the games (again) to use a small compact interpreter and a
database. (The Fortran is Spaghetti code). This made the program so it
would run on machines with little memory (PDP/11's, 8080's...) since the
database would be loaded as necessary from the (floppy) disk. The floppy
disk capacity on these systems was not great enough to put the entire game,
therefore they had to split it into three parts -- ZORK I, ZORK II, and
ZORK III. (IMHO, it probably would have fit into two games, but because it
doesn't really divide up well, they had to add to II and III to make them
stand on their own).

This new C port, is the 1980 Fortran version brute force converted to
C with a conversion program (this according to its documentation). Looking
at the code bears this out -- it is terrible C code, full of gotos! Quite
naturally it is the same as the old version.

-- 
Tom Almy
toma@sail.labs.tek.com
Standard Disclaimers Apply
From: lowen@lorc.UUCP (Lamar Owen)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: dirty tricks
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 92 08:28:14 EDT
Organization: LORC Enterprises

bjackson@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Ben Jackson) writes:
> There is a popular file transfer protocol called Z-Modem (unix people know it
> in the form sz, rz).  It has this nifty feature that you can enable on most
> PC term programs which will automatically detect the upload start sequence
> and start a download for you.  If you know someone is on such a term, you
> can write to them and start an upload, which will cause their term program
> to start downloading for no apparent reason. :)

Yes, this has happened to quite a few people.  So, good ol' Chuck put a 
handshake packet in that requires the sending side to send an acknowledgement
with a random number (determined by the reciever and sent in the ZCHALLENGE
packet).  So, if the term program implements ZCHALLENGE (which mine does :-)),
the imbedded download command string won't cause a real problem.


--

Lamar Owen, Systems Consultant, GE Lighting Systems, Hendersonville, NC
***********************************************************************
 Opinions expressed herein are the author's and do not reflect policy
   or opinions of the General Electric Company or its subsidiaries.
***********************************************************************
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.folklore.urban