From: dwilson0000@yahoo.com (sircompwiz) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Computer Practical Jokes Date: 3 Dec 2003 11:32:58 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Lines: 7 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: 199.88.112.211 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1070479978 19602 127.0.0.1 (3 Dec 2003 19:32:58 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 19:32:58 +0000 (UTC) Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156783 Can anyone post some good computer practical jokes here? Thx! Here's one: With a DOS computer, put a line in AUTOEXEC.BAT that says: PROMPT FATAL DISK ERROR ROFLOL! ###### From: Eric Sosman Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2003 15:24:36 -0500 Organization: Sun Microsystems Lines: 10 Message-ID: <3FCE4684.68BC3BB6@sun.com> References: Reply-To: Eric.Sosman@Sun.COM NNTP-Posting-Host: tardis.east.sun.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: news1brm.Central.Sun.COM 1070483076 12242 129.148.168.113 (3 Dec 2003 20:24:36 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@news1brm.central.sun.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 20:24:36 +0000 (UTC) X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.79C-CCK-MCD [en] (X11; U; SunOS 5.8 sun4u) X-Accept-Language: en Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!eusc.inter.net!priapus.visi.com!green.readfreenews.net!news.readfreenews.net!news-out.visi.com!petbe.visi.com!feed.news.qwest.net!namche.sun.com!news1brm.central.sun.com!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156784 sircompwiz wrote: > > Can anyone post some good computer practical jokes here? Thx! > > Here's one: With a DOS computer, [...] Stop right there: you've already got a practical joke. -- Eric.Sosman@sun.com ###### From: "philo" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 15:33:37 -0600 Lines: 29 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.103.199.150 X-Trace: news.uni-berlin.de 1070487219 70486446 209.103.199.150 ([143062]) X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1158 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1165 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!209.103.199.150!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156786 : > > PROMPT FATAL DISK ERROR > > ROFLOL! Don't know if I quite fell on the floor laughing about that one. I don't have a practical joke...but can at least think of an amusing story. Years ago, they had a PDP-11 where I worked...but the company upgraded to a Nixdorf and fired our programmer...however...they were "kind" enough to sell him the PDP-11 at a very low price. The next day I watched the company V.P. begin to erase all the tapes with a de-magnetizer...as they did not want any data on them when they went to the guy they just fired. At noon, when he was about halfway done with the job... he left for lunch and left the extension cord running across the isle-way at about waist height...so I just unplugged it when I left for lunch. When I returned...the VP was at his job...continuing the erasing ... however, he never even seemed to notice that the cord from the de-magnitizer was now unplugged...he was practically stepping right on the plug! I decided not to bother to tell him about it. ###### From: dgriffi@cs.csbuak.edu Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: 4 Dec 2003 00:56:41 GMT Organization: CSUnet Lines: 22 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: pegasus.cs.csubak.edu User-Agent: tin/pre-1.4-19990216 ("Styrofoam") (UNIX) (OSF1/V4.0 (alpha)) Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!enews.sgi.com!sdd.hp.com!news.usc.edu!newshub.csu.net!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156797 philo wrote: > : >> >> PROMPT FATAL DISK ERROR >> >> ROFLOL! > Don't know if I quite fell on the floor laughing about that one. I don't > have > a practical joke...but can at least think of an amusing story. In a roomful of SGI Octanes, I set some of them to emit a loud burp upon sucessful login. It took a week or so for the users to realize I wasn't around the corner making the noises myself. Well... it was a recording of me burping. That's not really a floor-roller, but it was amusing at the time. -- David Griffith dgriffi@cs.csbuak.edu <-- Switch the 'b' and 'u' ###### Message-ID: <3FCEC045.B85660A2@comcast.net> From: Charles Richmond Reply-To: richmond@nospam.plano.net Organization: Canine Computer Center X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7C-CCK-MCD {C-UDP; EBM-APPLE} (Macintosh; I; PPC) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 35 NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.1.126.198 X-Complaints-To: abuse@comcast.net X-Trace: attbi_s01 1070507339 24.1.126.198 (Thu, 04 Dec 2003 03:08:59 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2003 03:08:59 GMT Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2003 03:08:59 GMT Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newshub.sdsu.edu!elnk-nf2-pas!newsfeed.earthlink.net!wn14feed!wn13feed!worldnet.att.net!204.127.198.203!attbi_feed3!attbi.com!attbi_s01.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156811 dgriffi@cs.csbuak.edu wrote: > > philo wrote: > > > : > >> > >> PROMPT FATAL DISK ERROR > >> > >> ROFLOL! > > > Don't know if I quite fell on the floor laughing about that one. I don't > > have > > a practical joke...but can at least think of an amusing story. > > In a roomful of SGI Octanes, I set some of them to emit a loud burp upon > sucessful login. It took a week or so for the users to realize I wasn't > around the corner making the noises myself. Well... it was a recording of > me burping. > > That's not really a floor-roller, but it was amusing at the time. > In college, I knew my friend's password to the DEC-20. I logged into his account and edited his "login" file to contain a "logout" command. (Or is it "logoff"???) Anyway, as soon as he logged into his terminal, it logged him right back off again. Not much of a joke... Once he figured out what was going on, he just had to control-C out of the login script before it reached the "logout" command. -- +----------------------------------------------------------------+ | Charles and Francis Richmond richmond at plano dot net | +----------------------------------------------------------------+ ###### NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2003 21:22:19 -0600 Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2003 21:22:20 -0600 From: fcweed User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031013 Thunderbird/0.3 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: Lines: 27 NNTP-Posting-Host: 216.87.146.140 X-Trace: sv3-JxZcU/024QtS47DYF8Sn03zdgTzKfuOQ+SwDv3jPfo4b4wlhZ10zL1yU+gX9UoTGfQa2DH4XppCZpXT!WXFcsGnCzafJkl3ZhTZJS9uF+3Xy4Q1H23dUGrUTDIS4fAZ3g52BKcgYJyToLW4Yo1/9NVPU6w== X-Complaints-To: abuse@august.net X-DMCA-Complaints-To: abuse@august.net X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.1 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newshub.sdsu.edu!small1.nntp.aus1.giganews.com!border1.nntp.aus1.giganews.com!intern1.nntp.aus1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!nntp.august.net!news.august.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156812 philo wrote: > : > >>PROMPT FATAL DISK ERROR >> >>ROFLOL! > > > Don't know if I quite fell on the floor laughing about that one. I don't > have > a practical joke...but can at least think of an amusing story. > The Sun SPARCs we used a few years ago shipped with an audio tool and demo audio files - toilet flushing, doorbell, applause, etc, and a woman's laughter. The sound clips could be played locally and also could be rsh'd on another workstation. Late one evening I heard another programmer in his cube call his girlfriend on the phone. After a minute or so, I rsh'd the woman's laughter on his machine. A moment of silence then: "I don't know!............... It came out of my computer! ......... Yes!........ I'm at work, I swear!............... "Yes!!........ No! there's no one else here!............. ###### From: "Nico de Jong" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers References: Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Lines: 15 X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000 X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 Message-ID: Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 06:08:02 +0100 NNTP-Posting-Host: 129.142.193.202 X-Complaints-To: abuse@get2.net X-Trace: news.get2net.dk 1070514395 129.142.193.202 (Thu, 04 Dec 2003 06:06:35 CET) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2003 06:06:35 CET Organization: get2net Internet Kunde Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!ecngs!feeder.ecngs.de!news.cambrium.nl!news.cambrium.nl!news.cambrium.nl!skynet.be!130.227.3.83.MISMATCH!newsfeed1.uni2.dk!news.get2net.dk.POSTED!53ab2750!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156813 "sircompwiz" skrev i en meddelelse news:b9c0866f.0312031132.c0afa13@posting.google.com... > Can anyone post some good computer practical jokes here? Thx! > When I was an operator in the late 60's, we had a collegue doing the separating, bursting etc. And to be true, he wasnt very bright. One day, he was bored a bit, so a collegue set him to work separating a box of two way fanfold. As usual at the time, it had carbon paper between the layers. Suddenly he stopped, and said "Look, there is no print on the paper, and neither on the copy". "Well", he was told, "that is because we printed this one with invisible ink" Nico ###### From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Jos=E9_Mar=EDa?= Mateos Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 08:11:34 +0100 Organization: chema.homelinux.org Lines: 29 Message-ID: References: <3FCEC045.B85660A2@comcast.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: 213.37.210.120 X-Trace: news.uni-berlin.de 1070526404 72648383 213.37.210.120 ([179928]) X-Orig-Path: chema.homelinux.org!news X-Echelon-Header: Al-Qaeda bomb Bin Laden decrypt terror CIA Enfopol X-Request-PGP: http://chema.homelinux.org/~chema/key.asc User-Agent: slrn/0.9.8.0 (Linux) Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.belwue.de!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!213.37.210.120!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156816 In alt.folklore.computers, Charles (richchas@comcast.net) wrote: > In college, I knew my friend's password to the DEC-20. I > logged into his account and edited his "login" file to > contain a "logout" command. (Or is it "logoff"???) Anyway, > as soon as he logged into his terminal, it logged him > right back off again. In my student's guild (Eurielec), we have several Linux computers for everyone to use (that is, everyone with an account). It is inevitable for someone to leave and not close their session. That's when everyone gathers around the computer and the party starts: * .bashrc editing * Creation of $HOME/bin with several "alternate" programs (ls, cp, rm...) * .bash_logout editing Plus an e-mail sent to a public forum saying: "I've been 'flowered'". Yes, we call that "flowers". Regards, Chema. -- http://EuropeSwPatentFree.hispalinux.es - EuropeSwPatentFree Take out "-news" if replying by e-mail / Quita "-news" para contestar I don't read HTML posts / No leo mensajes en HTML Blog Overflow: http://chema.homelinux.org ###### Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 08:21:10 +0100 From: Steve O'Hara-Smith Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Message-ID: <20031204082110.70214d8d.steveo@eircom.net> References: X-Newsreader: Sylpheed version 0.9.7 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i386-portbld-freebsd4.9) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 21 Organization: EuroNet Internet NNTP-Posting-Date: 04 Dec 2003 18:00:17 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: p0369.nas4-asd6.dial.wanadoo.nl X-Trace: 1070560817 news.euronet.nl 4685 62.234.221.115:1440 X-Complaints-To: abuse@euronet.nl Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!solnet.ch!solnet.ch!newsfeed.tiscali.ch!feed.news.tiscali.de!uio.no!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!newsgate.cistron.nl!news.cambrium.nl!news.cambrium.nl!news.cambrium.nl!news2.euro.net!postnews1.euro.net!news.euronet.nl!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156842 On 3 Dec 2003 11:32:58 -0800 dwilson0000@yahoo.com (sircompwiz) wrote: S> Can anyone post some good computer practical jokes here? Thx! In the brief period I dealt with DOS boxes I quite liked the panic TSR which was a useful thing to place in sites where backup discipline was lax. It would at some random point cover the screen with a large garish message congratulating you on having won a free hard disc format and start counting "tracks". Below this was the large message warning you of the dangers of switching off. A three fingered salute would pop up a "Too Late" message. The data on the hard disk was of course untouched and if you waited it through you could carry on working. It worked wonders for backup discipline. -- C:>WIN | Directable Mirrors The computer obeys and wins. |A Better Way To Focus The Sun You lose and Bill collects. | licenses available - see: | http://www.sohara.org/ ###### From: Joe Morris Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 12:51:05 +0000 (UTC) Organization: The MITRE Organization Lines: 38 Message-ID: References: <3FCEC045.B85660A2@comcast.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: jmorris-pc.mitre.org X-Trace: newslocal.mitre.org 1070542265 26575 128.29.24.210 (4 Dec 2003 12:51:05 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@mitre.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 12:51:05 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: nn/6.6.4 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!ucberkeley!newstransit.mitre.org!news.mitre.org!jcmorris Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156824 On mainframes: * Switch the labeled jewels and buttons around, especially between different peripherals. Loads of fun when a new operator tries to figure out how to respond to a "CHIP BOX FULL" alarm on a printer. * Under OS/360 PCP, write a program that issues the console message IFBF05W MACHINE ERROR RELOAD OS/360 and goes into a loop. * Get into supervisor mode (far too easy on early versions of OS/360) and ring the console bell. On a 1620: * Issue a neverending series of instructions for the operator to change the settings of the four sense switches. Make coffee bets on how long the operator will follow the instructions before cancelling the job and sending a nasty note to the programmer. * Go to the console while someone else's *very* long-running program is still chugging away, then key in instructions into an area you know is unused. Poke around in memory for a while, then resume the user's program while he's turning an impressive shade of purple. On a PDP-1: * Wait until a furious game of Spacewar is in high gear, then shuffle across the (nongrounded) machine room carpet and draw a spark between the computer frame and a coin held in your hand. (Interesting comment on the resiliance of the PDP-1 design: all this would do was to set the stop latch. I never saw it cause data corruption. In later versions of Spacewar, you could get the same effect by hitting any key on the console typewriter (it would dump Spacewar to the drum, then open DDT). (Warning: if you do this, be sure that you've got your escape route planned...) Joe Morris (who has seen and/or done all of the above) ###### Reply-To: "Barry in Indy" From: "Barry in Indy" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers References: <3FCEC045.B85660A2@comcast.net> Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Lines: 25 X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1158 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1165 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: 199.8.31.240 X-Complaints-To: abuse@prodigy.net X-Trace: newssrv26.news.prodigy.com 1070547288 ST000 199.8.31.240 (Thu, 04 Dec 2003 09:14:48 EST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2003 09:14:48 EST Organization: SBC http://yahoo.sbc.com X-UserInfo1: Q[R_PJSCTS@WRV@[\JMVOQD@LJTD@C\MPXVN^GEMLXMTWA]EPMTKAH_[JTXDX_KI\VB]JBVMS^YT_G[CZVWAOS\DHFWEH]@KGXYHB\_CMDSFABP^J[AHHRKARLE_JDBLJ\XA[JRMEI]MGJSPB\Y]^KG\@S^@VQKI_Q[G@@_ACSARASDEFLBJ]S\GFNTUAVBL Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2003 14:14:48 GMT Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!elnk-pas-nf1!newsfeed.earthlink.net!pd7cy1no!pd7cy2so!shaw.ca!prodigy.com!newsmst01.news.prodigy.com!prodigy.com!postmaster.news.prodigy.com!newssrv26.news.prodigy.com.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156829 "Charles Richmond" wrote in message news:3FCEC045.B85660A2@comcast.net... > In college, I knew my friend's password to the DEC-20. I > logged into his account and edited his "login" file to > contain a "logout" command. (Or is it "logoff"???) Anyway, > as soon as he logged into his terminal, it logged him > right back off again. > I did something similar, only the logoff happened every other time he tried to log on. So he'd call someone over to see what had happened, he'd try to log on, and it would work! And the next time, it wouldn't. We also once created an exact copy of the Roscoe logon screen, so that when anyone tried to log on to this particular terminal, nothing would happen. -- Barry in Indy Knock me out to reply ###### From: Pete Fenelon Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 14:54:31 +0000 Organization: Utility Muffin Research Kitchen Lines: 83 Message-ID: <7rhnqb.n1f.ln@fenelon.com> References: <3FCEC045.B85660A2@comcast.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: host81-128-219-19.in-addr.btopenworld.com (81.128.219.19) X-Trace: news.uni-berlin.de 1070549829 72049647 81.128.219.19 ([203095]) X-Orig-Path: not-for-mail User-Agent: tin/1.7.1-20030918 ("Berneray") (UNIX) (Linux/2.4.19 (i686)) Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!host81-128-219-19.in-addr.btopenworld.COM!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156830 Barry in Indy wrote: > "Charles Richmond" wrote in message > news:3FCEC045.B85660A2@comcast.net... >> In college, I knew my friend's password to the DEC-20. I >> logged into his account and edited his "login" file to >> contain a "logout" command. (Or is it "logoff"???) Anyway, >> as soon as he logged into his terminal, it logged him >> right back off again. >> > > I did something similar, only the logoff happened every other > time he tried to log on. So he'd call someone over to see what > had happened, he'd try to log on, and it would work! And the next > time, it wouldn't. > > We also once created an exact copy of the Roscoe logon screen, so > that when anyone tried to log on to this particular terminal, > nothing would happen. > Once upon a time in a University, oh, about 3 miles from where I'm sitting now and about 15 years ago, there was an amusing practical joke played on the users and administrators of the Computer Science dept's machines. At the time, they had two HLH Orion 1/05s - fairly fast Clipper-based things running a buggy 4.3BSD-ish OS. (There is a school of thought that says that the Orions were bought because their price/performance was better than the old Vaxes and the maintenance contract was a lot cheaper than DEC; there is another school of thought that says they were bought because the department's spinoff company had just got a contract to deliver a "shelfware" Ada compiler targeted to the Clipper...) There were, inevitably, many ways to root on them - the simplest of which being the fact that the OS just seemed to lose track of bits of the u_area and set them to zero... - anyway, that wasn't the way that root was broken for this particular little hack (it involved discless Sun 3/50s and NFS..., but the backdoor probably originally came from the Orion ;))) So, a bunch of us were sat in the Sun workstation lab one night with a few Newcastle Browns inside us and the idea of putting something amusing onto the undergrad Orion occurred to us. Root was broken, and the Orion C runtime startup code perused with a hackerly eye. Something like if (getpid()%42==0) { /* 42 was felt to be significant ;) */ (void)close(creat(".paranoia", 0)); } was hand-compiled to Clipper assembler. Looked OK apart from things like jumps to system calls. Bit obvious. So another bright spark looked up the innards of syscall() and inlined them, and what we had was basically a very tricky looking bit of assembler. With a ruddy great string ".paranoia" in there. Not too good. The masterpiece, done by one of the most devious programming minds I've encountered, was a sequence of instructions that actually *generated* the string right onto the stack. Genius (he was one of the brightest guys I've ever met). So the offending assembler was stashed somewhere safe, /lib/crt0.o regenerated from it (a masterpiece, no strings, no "new" syscalls, just a bit longer!) and soon every newly-compiled program on the system started leaving unreadable, empty, .paranoia files around.... Not particularly harmful, but fun nevertheless... ;) At one point, apparently, some tools used on the "other" Orion (for MSc students) were rebuilt from the undergrad box, and so the .paranoias spread to there! Not particularly harmful, but fun nevertheless. (as an aside, the Green Hills C compiler on the machine was crap - every time I tried to compile crypt-breakers workbench it blew up, so in the end I had to rewrite a couple of functions in assembler, and started trying to write a gcc 1.3 backend!) pete -- pete@fenelon.com "there's no room for enigmas in built-up areas." ###### NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2003 11:36:07 -0600 From: Evan Platt Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2003 09:36:05 -0800 Organization: none Reply-To: evan@theobvious.espphotography.com Message-ID: References: X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.91/32.564 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 18 NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.135.64.135 X-Trace: sv3-NXf+RTRu9tl7K5O/fqd1FfIEInZDgpwNyr7RJzo0Dla5eULHQ15sIxvQ1sS7avLJOoWhPZhaqaThFDc!gHZQCPDRcyRuf+o8cHrpOnqzE6tf0EZTXK2CTRDH+kOYqemAVrzZvF1ZNpSXvgQZiL4be4qdhvmo!pZ+FlucBwwZgadbx X-Complaints-To: abuse@alink.net X-DMCA-Complaints-To: abuse@alink.net X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.1 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!solnet.ch!solnet.ch!newsfeed.mountaincable.net!newshosting.com!news-xfer1.atl.newshosting.com!diablo.voicenet.com!cycny01.gnilink.net!cyclone1.gnilink.net!small1.nntp.aus1.giganews.com!border3.nntp.aus1.giganews.com!intern1.nntp.aus1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!nntp.alink.net!news.alink.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156836 On 3 Dec 2003 11:32:58 -0800, dwilson0000@yahoo.com (sircompwiz) wrote: >Can anyone post some good computer practical jokes here? Thx! > >Here's one: With a DOS computer, put a line in AUTOEXEC.BAT that says: > >PROMPT FATAL DISK ERROR > >ROFLOL! How about Echo Y | format C: /u /q :) (DO NOT TRY THAT) To e-mail me, remove theobvious from my e-mail address. ###### NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2003 11:39:33 -0600 From: Evan Platt Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2003 09:39:30 -0800 Organization: none Reply-To: evan@theobvious.espphotography.com Message-ID: References: X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.91/32.564 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 8 NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.135.64.135 X-Trace: sv3-GPjVYwWgVz+MNcfsQ8/ZjEMryVJu5zo703GiriwYMDa7fvXOLZbVuMuSX07oHCCUhWSTfJYVtpQko1i!J22DRHXqQ32YKn5QF6qv+jA6sChNNQK4xsG7bqD2lhZORPbaEG77tDtf1Wu88nrHF8JjGj6ydE7S!6HRmYnxqB75m3Oyu X-Complaints-To: abuse@alink.net X-DMCA-Complaints-To: abuse@alink.net X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.1 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!solnet.ch!solnet.ch!newsfeed.freenet.de!fr.ip.ndsoftware.net!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!newshosting.com!news-xfer2.atl.newshosting.com!216.166.71.118.MISMATCH!small1.nntp.aus1.giganews.com!border1.nntp.aus1.giganews.com!intern1.nntp.aus1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!nntp.alink.net!news.alink.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156837 Kinda shows you how different todays world is. No one has done any of these things in the last 20 years. Every one of these anecdotes starts with "It was 1962...". Too many people nowdays would sue you over a stupid joke like that. :) Evan To e-mail me, remove theobvious from my e-mail address. ###### From: Marco S Hyman Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: 04 Dec 2003 10:18:18 -0800 Organization: S.N.A.F.U. -- http://www.snafu.org/ Lines: 19 Sender: marc@hana.snafu.org Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: dumbcat.snafu.org (208.201.244.209) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: news.uni-berlin.de 1070565424 71799497 208.201.244.209 ([97260]) X-Orig-Path: dumbcat.snafu.org!news User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.3 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.belwue.de!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!dumbcat.snafu.ORG!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156846 > layers. Suddenly he stopped, and said "Look, there is no print on the paper, > and neither on the copy". "Well", he was told, "that is because we printed > this one with invisible ink" Somewhat along the same lines. During USAF tech training on the operation of Burroughs medium systems machines some of the jobs we ran were compiles for officer/programmers. One 2nd Lt came marching into the machine room glaring at us enlisted types just a few weeks out of basic training (i.e. officers were still god :-) demanding that his compiles got top priority. The priority scheme on Burroughs medium systems was 1 to 9 with 1 the lowest priority. The guy at the SPO says "yes SIR" and types in something like " pr 1" (I think that's the right command, it's been 30 years) and shows the output to the 2nd Lt who is satisfied and leaves the room. We made sure to set all of his compiles to priority 1 in case he came back to check! // marc ###### From: Rich Alderson Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: 04 Dec 2003 13:38:09 -0500 Organization: Systems Administration, XKL LLC, Redmond WA 98052 Lines: 48 Sender: alderson+news@panix5.panix.com Message-ID: References: <3FCEC045.B85660A2@comcast.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix5.panix.com X-Trace: reader2.panix.com 1070563089 26323 166.84.1.5 (4 Dec 2003 18:38:09 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 18:38:09 +0000 (UTC) X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.7 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!ecngs!feeder.ecngs.de!38.119.100.83.MISMATCH!news-out1.nntp.be!propagator2-sterling!news-in.nuthinbutnews.com!cyclone1.gnilink.net!peer01.cox.net!peer02.cox.net!cox.net!panix!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156844 "Barry in Indy" writes: > > We also once created an exact copy of the Roscoe logon screen, so > that when anyone tried to log on to this particular terminal, > nothing would happen. When I was a grad student working part-time at the Comp Center at a prestigious Midwestern university on the South Side near the Museum of Science and Industry[1], the game of Adventure appeared on the DEC-20. Since it was known as a time sink, there was initialization code that checked the TOD against open/closed hours, and offered to allow the user to play if the user were a wizard. Answering YES to the question "Are you a wizard?" got a query for a password, to which one responded DWARF, and got a new response of Oh, I thought it was ABCDE where "ABCDE" was a random string of five uppercase alphabetics which one had to run through a mildly complicated algorithm involving the time of day (in ten minute chunks) to generate another five-letter string which if typed in allowed the user to play during prime time. One bright sprog wrote a little APL program to do the calculation, which of course was very popular. Of course, it was odd that running the program made your session log out, but people were willing to put up with inconveniences of that sort for important things like playing Adventure. Terminals connected to a Tops-20 system are generally run in full-duplex mode, and password hiding is accomplished by switching the line to half-duplex with no echo. While quite a few people noticed that the half-duplex hiding did not work after the APL session crash, it was a couple of weeks before anyone saw what was going on. The beautifully crafted login prompt was of course part of the APL program, and Sprog was collecting user passwords in a file. Purely educational purposes, of course. None were apparently ever used before Sprog was caught and lectured sternly. Twenty-six years later, it's mildly amusing. [1] I'm not naming the university in question, since some of the people caught by this should certainly have known better. I, for example, was shown the APL program by a very senior person at the Comp Center. -- Rich Alderson | /"\ ASCII ribbon | news@alderson.users.panix.com | \ / campaign against | "You get what anybody gets. You get a lifetime." | x HTML mail and | --Death, of the Endless | / \ postings | ###### From: "Charlie Gibbs" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: 04 Dec 03 13:09:51 -0800 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com Lines: 17 Message-ID: <636.468T2590T7895899@kltpzyxm.invalid> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: p-994.newsdawg.com X-Newsreader: THOR 2.5a (Amiga;TCP/IP) Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!enews.sgi.com!arclight.uoregon.edu!newshub.sdsu.edu!tethys.csu.net!pln-w!spln!dex!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!enews1 Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156852 In article evan@theobvious.espphotography.com (Evan Platt) writes: >Kinda shows you how different todays world is. No one has done any of >these things in the last 20 years. Every one of these anecdotes starts >with "It was 1962...". > >Too many people nowdays would sue you over a stupid joke like that. :) Unless you're Microsoft. 1/2 :-) -- /~\ cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs) \ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way. X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855. / \ HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored. Join the ASCII ribbon campaign! ###### From: Brian Boutel Organization: X User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20030925 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 27 Message-ID: <6YOzb.11432$ws.1059224@news02.tsnz.net> Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 11:55:53 +1300 NNTP-Posting-Host: 203.96.144.148 X-Complaints-To: abuse@tsnz.net X-Trace: news02.tsnz.net 1070578562 203.96.144.148 (Fri, 05 Dec 2003 11:56:02 NZDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 11:56:02 NZDT Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!newsmi-eu.news.garr.it!newsmi-us.news.garr.it!NewsITBone-GARR!newsfeed.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp!newsfeed01.tsnz.net!news02.tsnz.net!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156854 Marco S Hyman wrote: >>layers. Suddenly he stopped, and said "Look, there is no print on the paper, >>and neither on the copy". "Well", he was told, "that is because we printed >>this one with invisible ink" > > > Somewhat along the same lines. During USAF tech training on the > operation of Burroughs medium systems machines some of the jobs > we ran were compiles for officer/programmers. I was told by a former British Army Officer that he had worked around 1960 at an army computer centre, where the programmers were corporals (it's just clerical, isn't it?), but the operators were officers (in charge of expensive equipment). Of course, officers had to wear Mess Kit, including swords, after 8pm, even while working on the night shift in the computer room! --brian -- Brian Boutel Wellington New Zealand Note the NOSPAM ###### From: Joe Morris Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 23:04:34 +0000 (UTC) Organization: The MITRE Organization Lines: 26 Message-ID: References: <3FCEC045.B85660A2@comcast.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: jmorris-pc.mitre.org X-Trace: newslocal.mitre.org 1070579074 11928 128.29.24.210 (4 Dec 2003 23:04:34 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@mitre.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 23:04:34 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: nn/6.6.4 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!snoopy.risq.qc.ca!headwall.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!ucberkeley!newstransit.mitre.org!news.mitre.org!jcmorris Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156855 Rich Alderson writes: >When I was a grad student working part-time at the Comp Center at a prestigious >Midwestern university on the South Side near the Museum of Science and >Industry[1], the game of Adventure appeared on the DEC-20. Since it was known >as a time sink, there was initialization code that checked the TOD against >open/closed hours, and offered to allow the user to play if the user were a >wizard. Answering YES to the question "Are you a wizard?" got a query for a >password, to which one responded DWARF, and got a new response of > Oh, I thought it was ABCDE >where "ABCDE" was a random string of five uppercase alphabetics which one had >to run through a mildly complicated algorithm involving the time of day (in ten >minute chunks) to generate another five-letter string which if typed in allowed >the user to play during prime time. I was never a DECsystem-10 guru, and even looking at the source code for the do-it-in-prime-time test I could never figure out the algorithm (which had serious hardware dependencies). In the IBM implementation, the test was much less complex: the password was ^W^I^Z^Z^A^R (why no ^D to complete the word is left as an exercise for the student). Joe Morris ###### From: never+mail@panix.com.invalid (Michael Roach) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 23:27:45 +0000 (UTC) Organization: A small notepad underneath my in box Lines: 13 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: panix1.panix.com X-Trace: reader2.panix.com 1070580465 3276 166.84.1.1 (4 Dec 2003 23:27:45 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 23:27:45 +0000 (UTC) X-Clueful-responder: echo "never-reply+panix=com" | tr "-+=" "+@." X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test76 (Apr 2, 2001) Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!switch.ch!takemy.news.telefonica.de!telefonica.de!news-fra1.dfn.de!fu-berlin.de!peer01.cox.net!peer02.cox.net!cox.net!panix!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156856 In article , sircompwiz wrote: >Can anyone post some good computer practical jokes here? Thx! Our vendor decided to change "Press Any Key" to "Kiss Keyboard" in standard output on April 1. Thus, "Press Any Key to Continue" becomes "Kiss Keyboard to Continue". This didn't just affect the application; in scripts, echo "Press Any Key to Exit" would also be modified. -- OMNIVERSAL AWARENESS?? Oh, YEH!! First you need four GALLONS of JELL-O and a BIG WRENCH!! ... I think you drop th' WRENCH in the JELL-O as if it was a FLAVOR, or an INGREDIENT ... or ... I ... um ... WHERE'S the WASHING MACHINES? ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes References: <3FCEC045.B85660A2@comcast.net> Organization: me From: Morten Reistad X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test76 (Apr 2, 2001) Originator: mrr@via.reistad.priv.no (Morten Reistad) Message-ID: <0cgoqb.4ea2.ln@via.reistad.priv.no> Lines: 69 Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2003 00:35:28 +0100 NNTP-Posting-Host: 80.111.165.173 X-Complaints-To: abuse@chello.no X-Trace: amstwist00 1070582424 80.111.165.173 (Fri, 05 Dec 2003 01:00:24 MET) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 01:00:24 MET Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.belwue.de!news.uni-stuttgart.de!npeer.de.kpn-eurorings.net!news.cambrium.nl!news.cambrium.nl!news.cambrium.nl!amsnews01.chello.com!amstwist00.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156861 In article , Barry in Indy wrote: >"Charles Richmond" wrote in message >We also once created an exact copy of the Roscoe logon screen, so >that when anyone tried to log on to this particular terminal, >nothing would happen. Did that once with the Primos operator dialogue, but with further actions. The Primos console is attached to a VCP (console processor; a little 8-bitter that runs diagnostics, loads microcode and can live a separate life from the main system.). The shell inside the VCP has around 30 commands, around 5 of which do something useful for a machine in a runnable state. We duplicated those, together with the bootstrap dialogue; complete with long waits between every 512 bytes of text that has to be read from floppy. It looked very authentic. This system gets a lot of warnings about sick hardware that Primos itself may not be aware of. It was normal to have a copy of this console in operator rooms etc. You can attach two terminals to a VCP, but there was only one shell, the two terminals are typing on top of each other.You can also pipe commands through to a Primos shell; this "console" shell is the only "truly root" shell on that OS; because it owns all the processes. We spiced up the emulation with spurious messages and a partly functional Primos pipe-trough shell that would run every program for 1 second and then give it a hair-raising exception. Everything in totally unpriviliged mode, and emulated in a process. But you don't get far enough to discover this. We let this thing loose on one operator one April 1st, very early in the morning. The outcome was pretty predictible, Operator arrives, checks console; sees it has warnings of system state and is in VCP mode tries to have a look to see exactly how bad it is. Lots of hardware can just be disabled from this operator dialogue, and you can continue with the running of the system. The system is very much in his way, and every theory he puts forward about what can be wrong is immediatly shot down by a new error message. (they were random). In the mean time he sees a seemingly normal system on all the other plain terminals. He broke into a serious sweat when he visualized the system falling apart before his very eyes. We had to stop him before he called in cutovers to backup systems etc. And show him the real console. Unfortunatly he deleted this program from his system before we had a chance to take a copy. It would have made a nice addition to the BSOD screensaver. -- mrr ###### From: bhk@dsl.co.uk (Brian {Hamilton Kelly}) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 23:48:40 +0000 (UTC) Organization: Dragonhill Systems Lines: 26 Message-ID: <1070578745snz@dsl.co.uk> References: X-Trace: mail2news.demon.co.uk 1070581720 13369 10.0.0.1 (4 Dec 2003 23:48:40 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@demon.net NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 23:48:40 +0000 (UTC) X-Received: from dsl.demon.co.uk ([158.152.92.150]) by news.demon.co.uk with smtp (Exim 4.12) id 1AS3D3-0003T3-00 for mail2news@news.demon.co.uk; Thu, 04 Dec 2003 23:48:38 +0000 X-Path: dsl.co.uk!bhk X-To: mail2news@news.demon.co.uk X-Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers X-Newsreader: Demon Internet Simple News v1.31 X-Lines: 25 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!solnet.ch!solnet.ch!newsfeed.freenet.de!news-lei1.dfn.de!newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!kibo.news.demon.net!mutlu.news.demon.net!demon!mail2news.demon.co.uk!bhk Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156859 In article fcweed@mail.com "fcweed" writes: > The Sun SPARCs we used a few years ago shipped with an audio tool and > demo audio files - toilet flushing, doorbell, applause, etc, and a I heard a tale back in the 1960s that at Ferranti's Wythenshawe factory (where they made the Argus process-control computers) that someobe had coupled up an interface to a standard reel-to-reel tape recorder, on which various announcements had been recorded. Under program control, a particular length of tape could be selected and played out. AIUI, the Autocode interpreter had been hacked so that this mechanism was harnessed instead of merely printing out an error message. So instead of seeing "ERR 23 L218" the whole building heard, over the Tannoy, "Some stupid bastard's tried to take the square root of a negative number". Our field circus engineer swore this was true. Of course, not so useful for diagnostic purposes without details of the line at which the error was detected. -- Brian {Hamilton Kelly} bhk@dsl.co.uk "We can no longer stand apart from Europe if we would. Yet we are untrained to mix with our neighbours, or even talk to them". George Macaulay Trevelyan, 1919 ###### X-Trace-PostClient-IP: 68.147.131.211 From: Brian Inglis Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Organization: Systematic Software Reply-To: Brian.Inglis@SystematicSw.ab.ca Message-ID: <8dtvsvsns1i5jnllqk8lc44pj2pohdhu11@4ax.com> References: <20031204082110.70214d8d.steveo@eircom.net> X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.93/32.576 English (American) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 27 Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 03:08:10 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.71.223.147 X-Complaints-To: abuse@shaw.ca X-Trace: pd7tw2no 1070593690 24.71.223.147 (Thu, 04 Dec 2003 20:08:10 MST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2003 20:08:10 MST Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!ecngs!feeder.ecngs.de!63.218.45.11.MISMATCH!newshosting.com!news-xfer2.atl.newshosting.com!167.206.3.103.MISMATCH!news3.optonline.net!pd7cy1no!shaw.ca!pd7tw2no.POSTED!53ab2750!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156868 On Thu, 4 Dec 2003 08:21:10 +0100 in alt.folklore.computers, Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote: >On 3 Dec 2003 11:32:58 -0800 >dwilson0000@yahoo.com (sircompwiz) wrote: > >S> Can anyone post some good computer practical jokes here? Thx! > > In the brief period I dealt with DOS boxes I quite liked the >panic TSR which was a useful thing to place in sites where backup discipline >was lax. It would at some random point cover the screen with a large >garish message congratulating you on having won a free hard disc format >and start counting "tracks". Below this was the large message warning you >of the dangers of switching off. A three fingered salute would pop up a >"Too Late" message. The data on the hard disk was of course untouched and >if you waited it through you could carry on working. > > It worked wonders for backup discipline. On the opposite tack, the mainframe spreadsheet DynaCalc (/DynaPlan) displayed a large, friendly, green DON'T PANIC message in block letters any time you typed an invalid command, e.g. /DP for /CO. -- Thanks. Take care, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada Brian.Inglis@CSi.com (Brian dot Inglis at SystematicSw dot ab dot ca) fake address use address above to reply ###### Lines: 29 X-Admin: news@aol.com From: mensanator@aol.compost (Mensanator) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: 05 Dec 2003 04:23:56 GMT References: Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Message-ID: <20031204232356.13822.00000131@mb-m10.aol.com> Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!snoopy.risq.qc.ca!headwall.stanford.edu!newshub.sdsu.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!artemis.acsu.buffalo.edu!newsstand.cit.cornell.edu!ngpeer.news.aol.com!audrey-m2.news.aol.com!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156872 >Subject: Computer Practical Jokes >From: dwilson0000@yahoo.com (sircompwiz) >Date: 12/3/2003 1:32 PM Central Standard Time >Message-id: > >Can anyone post some good computer practical jokes here? Thx! > >Here's one: With a DOS computer, put a line in AUTOEXEC.BAT that says: > >PROMPT FATAL DISK ERROR > >ROFLOL! We used to have a lot of fun with the salesmen in our factory. We sold electronic time clocks and we had ID badges made with dummy employee names. We would slip the salesman a badge where the employee name was "CHECKSUM ERROR" (he didn't suspect anything because it was punched in Hollerith code). Then we'd sit back and watch as he tried the badge over and over and over trying to get it to read (the fact that the clock was programmed to emit a single beep on a good read vs. three beeps on a true error never registered). -- Mensanator Ace of Clubs ###### From: Howard Shubs Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2003 23:39:46 -0500 Organization: ='SEQUENTIAL' Lines: 30 Message-ID: References: <3FCEC045.B85660A2@comcast.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: p-205.newsdawg.com Mail-Copies-To: nobody User-Agent: MT-NewsWatcher/3.2 (PPC Mac OS X) X-Face: "S"r{U%bs].&Ud}Pc~~~0a]M:t5l>>EN\1Faw10M9NK1Xq59wo7-"s0S+[{etQorO /Nf-Ci"i9v'MT!R8)J]N[4|2&x1r^Iq&{SB"6dknr0=+6UFb.>+{zMn_1=rw&/V+"d@* ZS5\LoW_ Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!switch.ch!takemy.news.telefonica.de!telefonica.de!feed.news.schlund.de!schlund.de!newsfeed01.sul.t-online.de!newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!news.he.net!cyclone-sf.pbi.net!129.250.175.17!pln-w!spln!dex!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!howard Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156875 In article , "Barry in Indy" wrote: > I did something similar, only the logoff happened every other > time he tried to log on. So he'd call someone over to see what > had happened, he'd try to log on, and it would work! And the next > time, it wouldn't. We did it so that it'd do something (seemingly) nasty, then delete itself. As this was on VMS, the previous version would then resume operation the next time the user logged in. No traces. After graduating, I took a VMS internals class. This led to a few nasty ones: a program which found the NULL process's Process Header Block, incremented the byte declaring it to be a PHB, then quit. The next time the system went idle, the scheduler would bugcheck. This could take a while to happen on a busy system, and there was no way I'm aware of to determine who did it. Under VMS 4.5 or so, before the NULL process went into hiding. The second one was too mean to talk about here. My best one didn't require internals, just knowledge of the VT220. I designed a font to replace the VT220's "A" and "S" characters with an upside-down "A" and a swapped left-for-right "S". Took the victim a few minutes to figure out what the heck had happened. -- You are what you eat, therefore, I'm a vegetable! Cows and chickens and Pop Tarts are too. ###### From: glen herrmannsfeldt User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes References: <3FCEC045.B85660A2@comcast.net> <7rhnqb.n1f.ln@fenelon.com> In-Reply-To: <7rhnqb.n1f.ln@fenelon.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 40 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: 12.228.234.203 X-Complaints-To: abuse@comcast.net X-Trace: attbi_s52 1070613603 12.228.234.203 (Fri, 05 Dec 2003 08:40:03 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 08:40:03 GMT Organization: Comcast Online Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 08:40:03 GMT Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!enews.sgi.com!sdd.hp.com!news.usc.edu!attla2!ip.att.net!attbi_feed3!attbi.com!attbi_s52.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156878 Pete Fenelon wrote: (snip) > if (getpid()%42==0) { /* 42 was felt to be significant ;) */ > (void)close(creat(".paranoia", 0)); > } > > was hand-compiled to Clipper assembler. Looked OK apart from things like > jumps to system calls. Bit obvious. So another bright spark looked up > the innards of syscall() and inlined them, and what we had was basically > a very tricky looking bit of assembler. With a ruddy great string > ".paranoia" in there. Not too good. The masterpiece, done by one of the > most devious programming minds I've encountered, was a sequence of > instructions that actually *generated* the string right onto the stack. > Genius (he was one of the brightest guys I've ever met). Some years ago, I knew someone working with a Zilog computer system running a Zilog supplied OS. (The Zilog that made the Z80, which most likely is what this machine ran on.) At some point he had put together a very similar machine to the system he had bought from Zilog, and decided to test it out with the Zilog OS boot disk. Immediately the message comes out: Hardware error, call Zilog. A quick search through the disk reveals that string does not exist anywhere in the OS. Yes, just like above, it was created on the stack. After some searching, he found that one counter/timer chip had a slightly different part number than the original, and called Zilog to ask about it. This one sold for $300 or so, much more than the normal one. It turned out that there were defective versions where two register bits were shorted together. Zilog used them so that the OS could identify the hardware that it was supposed to run on. Yes, programs really do create strings on the stack. -- glen ###### From: glen herrmannsfeldt User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes References: <3FCEC045.B85660A2@comcast.net> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 23 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: 12.228.234.203 X-Complaints-To: abuse@comcast.net X-Trace: attbi_s53 1070614027 12.228.234.203 (Fri, 05 Dec 2003 08:47:07 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 08:47:07 GMT Organization: Comcast Online Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 08:47:07 GMT Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!ecngs!feeder.ecngs.de!216.166.71.118.MISMATCH!small1.nntp.aus1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!cyclone1.gnilink.net!wn14feed!worldnet.att.net!204.127.198.203!attbi_feed3!attbi.com!attbi_s53.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156879 Rich Alderson wrote: (big snip) > The beautifully crafted login prompt was of course part of the APL program, and > Sprog was collecting user passwords in a file. Purely educational purposes, of > course. None were apparently ever used before Sprog was caught and lectured > sternly. I once knew someone to try a similar trick on an HP TSB/2000 system, where the program that prints the logon message is in the Z999 account. After somehow finding the Z999 password, they carefully constructed the program to simulate a login prompt and write the password to a file. It turns out, though, that while the program is stored in the Z999 account, it is actually run in the account that just logged in. The result is that the passwords were written to the users own account! They quickly restored the original message, and went on with what they were supposed to be doing. -- glen ###### From: glen herrmannsfeldt User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes References: <3FCEC045.B85660A2@comcast.net> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 19 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: 12.228.234.203 X-Complaints-To: abuse@comcast.net X-Trace: attbi_s51 1070614819 12.228.234.203 (Fri, 05 Dec 2003 09:00:19 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 09:00:19 GMT Organization: Comcast Online Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 09:00:19 GMT Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.belwue.de!feed.news.tiscali.de!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!newshosting.com!news-xfer2.atl.newshosting.com!diablo.voicenet.com!news.alt.net!wn13feed!worldnet.att.net!204.127.198.203!attbi_feed3!attbi.com!attbi_s51.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156881 Howard Shubs wrote: (snip) > My best one didn't require internals, just knowledge of the VT220. I > designed a font to replace the VT220's "A" and "S" characters with an > upside-down "A" and a swapped left-for-right "S". Took the victim a few > minutes to figure out what the heck had happened. I once knew someone with a terminal with a writable character generator. (Custom built, 8080 processor.) There was a program that would read the ROM character generator, invert the character and write to the RAM CG. Then an escape sequence would activate the RAM CG. All this could fit into one line, and could be sent through the system's command for sending a one line message to a remote user. -- glen ###### From: Randy Howard Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2003 05:01:41 -0600 Organization: Imperious Overlords Anonymous Message-ID: References: X-Newsreader: MicroPlanet Gravity v2.60 X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 92 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!ucberkeley!sn-xit-02!sn-xit-01!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156887 In article , evan@theobvious.espphotography.com says... > Every one of these anecdotes starts with "It was 1962...". OK, here's a more recent one, albeit it didn't start out as in intentional practical joke... sorry it's so long. About 10 years ago I was working in a UNIX OS development team, back when various computer companies were still rolling their own implementation in the years before Linux. One of the tech support guys (this particular one was a no-op) was mouthing off one day about what a computer "security guru" he was when I walked by. I decided to bet him that I could break into his computer system, no matter what precautions he took. He took the bait, in front of a lot of witnesses, including his boss. I said it would take less than 24 hours, max. I simply waited around for him to leave work for the day (he was living in cube-hell at the time). He was kind enough to shut his system down when he left, presumably so I couldn't hack into it over the network. I went and got a boot floppy, booted from it, and mounted the hard drive. I then went in and added a login for myself with id 0, and rebooted the system off of the hard drive and logged in. Once I was in, I modified a few things, so that if he found one thing, he'd think it was fixed up, but not catch them all. I don't remember exactly how many, but there were at least 3 or 4. First I squirreled away a copy of /bin/sh under a different name with suid root privileges. Then, I modified his root .profile so that every time he logged in as root, it would check to see if my login ID was present, and if not add it back in with id 0 (root). If it was present but not ID 0, it would change it back to 0. I also added a crontab entry to do the same thing every 2 hours, just in case he whacked it but didn't log out and back in during the day. Anyway, you get the idea. The next day I logged into his machine as myself, and starting echoing various funny console messages and bells so that he and everyone around would quickly realize his system was no longer "secure". This was all funny, but not a big deal. He would go in and delete one, or perhaps even two of the traps, but he never managed to get them all at once, or figure out how simply I had got into the machine in the first place. Finally, after a couple days of my logins coming back in every time he looked for them again, he decided he would use the wonderful (ahem) FMLI-based sysadm utility to remove my login account instead of just deleting it out of /etc/passwd with vi. Now comes the "Accidental practical joke". I never anticipated this, but in order to prevent him from seeing my home directory, I just made it "/", instead of /home/foo. Well, when he used the sysadm tool, up comes a screen, he selects my login. It spews out a page of colorful data, including login id, name, home directory, and I don't know what all else. He selects the function key for delete. It asked him, "do you wish to remove the home directory for user foo also?", to which he selected yes, and hit enter. Almost immediately after doing so, he realized that it was immediately executing the equivalent of "rm -rf *" from / on his system. By the time he realized it, got it interrupted, it was too late, and his machine had a smoking hole where a file system used to be. There was much hollering and teeth gnashing, with some accusations of me intentionally destroying his machine. Once everyone figured out that he actually did it to himself, with the relevant data on the screen at the time, I was off the hook, but he was the proud winner of a reinstall. From 5.25" diskettes, about 50 of them. Ouch. The final straw was I decided to put a present in the next internal build for him. Knowing what he liked to use as his personal login name, (his initials) I modified login so that anytime he logged in with that login it would immediately panic the box, with the message PANIC: Security Guru not present. followed by a stack trace. Then, the support team decided it was terribly funny, and he decided it was not funny at all. Of course, I had already gone in and removed the offending code about 5 minutes after the build completed, so it was a one time deal (until the next build came out), but I don't think he ever got over that one. -- Randy Howard _o 2reply remove FOOBAR \<, ______________________()/ ()______________________________________________ SCO Spam-magnet: postmaster@sco.com ###### From: "Rupert Pigott" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2003 13:12:25 -0000 Organization: Titanic Enterprises Unlimited Lines: 15 Message-ID: <1070629945.697766@saucer.planet.gong> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: darkboong.demon.co.uk X-Trace: news.demon.co.uk 1070629946 16962 80.177.7.220 (5 Dec 2003 13:12:26 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@demon.net NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2003 13:12:26 +0000 (UTC) X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1165 X-Priority: 3 X-Cache: nntpcache 3.0.1 (see http://www.nntpcache.org/) X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1158 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal Cache-Post-Path: saucer.planet.gong!unknown@192.168.69.33 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!kibo.news.demon.net!news.demon.co.uk!demon!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156891 "Randy Howard" wrote in message news:MPG.1a3a218fd8423110989971@news.megapathdsl.net... [SNIP] > PANIC: Security Guru not present. > > followed by a stack trace. LOL well played m8. :) Cheers, Rupert ###### From: Howard Shubs Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 08:32:49 -0500 Organization: ='SEQUENTIAL' Lines: 11 Message-ID: References: <3FCEC045.B85660A2@comcast.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: p-280.newsdawg.com Mail-Copies-To: nobody User-Agent: MT-NewsWatcher/3.2 (PPC Mac OS X) X-Face: "S"r{U%bs].&Ud}Pc~~~0a]M:t5l>>EN\1Faw10M9NK1Xq59wo7-"s0S+[{etQorO /Nf-Ci"i9v'MT!R8)J]N[4|2&x1r^Iq&{SB"6dknr0=+6UFb.>+{zMn_1=rw&/V+"d@* ZS5\LoW_ Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!ecngs!feeder.ecngs.de!216.166.71.118.MISMATCH!small1.nntp.aus1.giganews.com!border1.nntp.aus1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!cyclone-sf.pbi.net!129.250.175.17!pln-w!spln!dex!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!howard Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156893 In article , glen herrmannsfeldt wrote: > All this could fit into one line, and could be sent through the system's > command for sending a one line message to a remote user. That's effectively how I delivered it, yes. $BRKTHRU is a good thing. -- You are what you eat, therefore, I'm a vegetable! Cows and chickens and Pop Tarts are too. ###### From: Joe Morris Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2003 14:52:47 +0000 (UTC) Organization: The MITRE Organization Lines: 17 Message-ID: References: <3FCEC045.B85660A2@comcast.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: jmorris-pc.mitre.org X-Trace: newslocal.mitre.org 1070635967 9062 128.29.24.210 (5 Dec 2003 14:52:47 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@mitre.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2003 14:52:47 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: nn/6.6.4 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!ucberkeley!newstransit.mitre.org!news.mitre.org!jcmorris Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156895 Howard Shubs wrote: > My best one didn't require internals, just knowledge of the VT220. I > designed a font to replace the VT220's "A" and "S" characters with an > upside-down "A" and a swapped left-for-right "S". Took the victim a few > minutes to figure out what the heck had happened. Back in the 1980s my shop had some HDS terminals. These units were designed for use with APL, and included the ability to load a latent expression string that was processed when the terminal was powered on. One joker managed to set the latent expression to the string that disables the keyboard...then couldn't figure out how to remove it. (There was a way to do a force-reset to clear the LX, but it was buried deep in the where-the-hell-is-it documentation.) Joe Morris ###### From: mwilson@the-wire.com (Mel Wilson) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Message-ID: References: Lines: 27 X-Newsreader: VSoup v1.2.9.37Beta [95/NT] Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 10:40:49 -0500 NNTP-Posting-Host: 205.206.39.92 X-Trace: nnrp1.uunet.ca 1070642927 205.206.39.92 (Fri, 05 Dec 2003 11:48:47 EST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 11:48:47 EST Organization: WorldCom Canada Ltd. News Reader Service Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!snoopy.risq.qc.ca!news.uunet.ca!nnrp1.uunet.ca.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156898 In article , Randy Howard wrote: >Finally, after a couple days of my logins coming back in every time >he looked for them again, he decided he would use the wonderful >(ahem) FMLI-based sysadm utility to remove my login account >instead of just deleting it out of /etc/passwd with vi. Now >comes the "Accidental practical joke". I never anticipated >this, but in order to prevent him from seeing my home directory, >I just made it "/", instead of /home/foo. Well, when he used >the sysadm tool, up comes a screen, he selects my login. It >spews out a page of colorful data, including login id, name, >home directory, and I don't know what all else. He selects >the function key for delete. It asked him, "do you wish to >remove the home directory for user foo also?", to which he >selected yes, and hit enter. [ ... ] ooooooooooooooh. Although it reminds me painfully of the last time I did cd #cvs.lock.1234 rm -r and my home directory was never quite the same. Regards. Mel. ###### From: Eric Sosman Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 10:59:14 -0500 Organization: Sun Microsystems Lines: 26 Message-ID: <3FD0AB52.5F316C4F@sun.com> References: <3FCEC045.B85660A2@comcast.net> Reply-To: Eric.Sosman@Sun.COM NNTP-Posting-Host: tardis.east.sun.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: news1brm.Central.Sun.COM 1070639955 8262 129.148.168.113 (5 Dec 2003 15:59:15 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@news1brm.central.sun.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2003 15:59:15 +0000 (UTC) X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.79C-CCK-MCD [en] (X11; U; SunOS 5.8 sun4u) X-Accept-Language: en Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!tiscali!newsfeed1.ip.tiscali.net!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!news-out.visi.com!petbe.visi.com!feed.news.qwest.net!namche.sun.com!news1brm.central.sun.com!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156896 Howard Shubs wrote: > > In article , > "Barry in Indy" wrote: > > > I did something similar, only the logoff happened every other > > time he tried to log on. So he'd call someone over to see what > > had happened, he'd try to log on, and it would work! And the next > > time, it wouldn't. > > We did it so that it'd do something (seemingly) nasty, then delete > itself. As this was on VMS, the previous version would then resume > operation the next time the user logged in. No traces. This was particularly easy to achieve on CMS, whose file "modes" included a type intended for temporary files. A mode-3 file was CMS' equivalent of Mission Impossible's "This tape will self-destruct:" as soon as you read the file, the system would delete it for you. It became a bit of a game to plant mode-3 login profile scripts in people's accounts. The victim would log in, something peculiar would happen, and the evidence would disappear automatically. -- Eric.Sosman@sun.com ###### From: Eric Sosman Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 11:09:30 -0500 Organization: Sun Microsystems Lines: 36 Message-ID: <3FD0ADBA.FAA13131@sun.com> References: Reply-To: Eric.Sosman@Sun.COM NNTP-Posting-Host: tardis.east.sun.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: news1brm.Central.Sun.COM 1070640570 8546 129.148.168.113 (5 Dec 2003 16:09:30 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@news1brm.central.sun.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2003 16:09:30 +0000 (UTC) X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.79C-CCK-MCD [en] (X11; U; SunOS 5.8 sun4u) X-Accept-Language: en Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!solnet.ch!solnet.ch!newspeer1.nwr.nac.net!ply1.onvoy!onvoy.com!feed.news.qwest.net!namche.sun.com!news1brm.central.sun.com!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156897 sircompwiz wrote: > > Can anyone post some good computer practical jokes here? Thx! Years ago my college was shopping for a new computer, and we'd whittled the competition down to about three vendors. One of these employed a salesman who knew lots about his own price book (and commission structure, I'd guess), and not much about what computers were used for. But he'd keep showing up at unscheduled times to "talk technical" with us and try to ingratiate himself. Bit of a pest, really. One day he showed up, uninvited, bursting with the news that the BASIC on his system could do matrix arithmetic in single statements. I'd had more than enough of this guy, so I feigned astonishment and asked if I could try it out via the dial-up connection they'd given us for exploratory purposes. "Sure," says he, and I coded up a little bitty program to generate a matrix, invert it, multiply it by its inverse, and print the result. "If this works," says I, "the output should be an identity matrix: ones along the diagonal, and zeroes everywhere else." Ran the program, and it printed out this Gawdawful mess with numbers not- quite-one along the diagonal and numbers not-quite-zero scattered all over the place. "Must be a bug in your BASIC; better take it up with your technical people." He departed, looking slightly shocked and more than slightly at sea. Of course, what I'd done was generate a Cauchy matrix C(i,j)=1/(i+j-1), an example all the numerical analysis texts use to show what's meant by "ill-conditioning," and how it can lead to explosive growth of round-off errors ... -- Eric.Sosman@sun.com ###### From: "Charlie Gibbs" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: 05 Dec 03 09:48:04 -0800 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com Lines: 19 Message-ID: <696.469T220T5883769@kltpzyxm.invalid> References: <3FCEC045.B85660A2@comcast.net> <0cgoqb.4ea2.ln@via.reistad.priv.no> NNTP-Posting-Host: p-459.newsdawg.com X-Newsreader: THOR 2.5a (Amiga;TCP/IP) Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!eusc.inter.net!priapus.visi.com!orange.octanews.net!news.octanews.net!hermes.visi.com!news-out.visi.com!petbe.visi.com!129.250.169.17.MISMATCH!pln-w!spln!dex!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!enews3 Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156901 In article <0cgoqb.4ea2.ln@via.reistad.priv.no> firstname@lastname.pr1v.n0 (Morten Reistad) writes: >Unfortunatly he deleted this program from his system >before we had a chance to take a copy. It would have >made a nice addition to the BSOD screensaver. Oh, you mean Windows 98? I always considered the screensaver to be a proper subset of the BSOD. At least my Win98 box got a lot more stable once I disabled the screensaver. -- /~\ cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs) \ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way. X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855. / \ HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored. Join the ASCII ribbon campaign! ###### Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2003 19:31:42 +0100 From: Steve O'Hara-Smith Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Message-ID: <20031205193142.5d04e581.steveo@eircom.net> References: X-Newsreader: Sylpheed version 0.9.7 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i386-portbld-freebsd4.9) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 13 Organization: Wanadoo NNTP-Posting-Date: 05 Dec 2003 19:08:15 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: p0061.nas3-asd6.dial.wanadoo.nl X-Trace: 1070651295 snatched.euronet.nl 152 62.234.216.61:1573 X-Complaints-To: abuse@wanadoo.nl Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!luth.se!uio.no!193.75.75.20.MISMATCH!news.eunet.no!fi.sn.net!newsfeed2.fi.sn.net!news2.euro.net!postnews1.euro.net!news.wanadoo.nl!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156903 On Fri, 5 Dec 2003 05:01:41 -0600 Randy Howard wrote: RH> OK, here's a more recent one, albeit it didn't start out as in RH> intentional practical joke... sorry it's so long. Don't be - it's a beauty. -- C:>WIN | Directable Mirrors The computer obeys and wins. |A Better Way To Focus The Sun You lose and Bill collects. | licenses available - see: | http://www.sohara.org/ ###### Message-ID: <3FD0DB0A.7010107@ieee.org> From: Chris Fischer User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.0.2) Gecko/20030208 Netscape/7.02 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 13 X-Complaints-To: abuse-news@frontiernet.net X-Trace: 52616e646f6d4956abfaf26cd99b9e5e1c756ec0560d8f4a8e690ac70f7a7c9dde9be79e2771c3c7748943c83edcd35111eb7876cd49f2a60047c3711190e9cea595bcc65ca10ba648852fea427604ca57e786a04016be0937f9396f52dea4b6 X-Abuse-Info: Please be sure to forward ALL headers so that we may process your complaint properly. NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 19:23:20 GMT Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 19:23:20 GMT Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!news.tesion.net!news.belwue.de!feed.news.tiscali.de!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!news-out1.nntp.be!propagator2-sterling!news-in.nuthinbutnews.com!cyclone1.gnilink.net!chi1.webusenet.com!news.webusenet.com!news-feed01.roc.ny.frontiernet.net!nntp.frontiernet.net!news02.roc.ny.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156905 sircompwiz wrote: > Can anyone post some good computer practical jokes here? Thx! > > Here's one: With a DOS computer, put a line in AUTOEXEC.BAT that says: > > PROMPT FATAL DISK ERROR > > ROFLOL! Similar to that, change the prompt to: Yes means No, No means Yes, Delete all files? [Y] ###### NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 13:38:21 -0600 From: "William" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers References: Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2003 13:38:18 -0600 X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2720.3000 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 Message-ID: Lines: 20 X-Trace: sv3-1nKb10QrQODyh17SoOq94x13Kb2rHvoZaiFZIStKU21vSQPNJC+HC7FqfwlYhV6PLHYuK0FuWuMOPXz!U5YimvOkwihVSiqlNT6psCpp/oksVbuN5YvuUNo7ZY6I0w+8jNtTihamwJ+vV/E= X-Complaints-To: abuse@giganews.com X-DMCA-Notifications: http://www.giganews.com/info/dmca.html X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.1 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!ecngs!feeder.ecngs.de!63.218.45.11.MISMATCH!newshosting.com!news-xfer2.atl.newshosting.com!216.166.71.118.MISMATCH!small1.nntp.aus1.giganews.com!border1.nntp.aus1.giganews.com!intern1.nntp.aus1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!news.giganews.com.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156907 "sircompwiz" wrote in message news:b9c0866f.0312031132.c0afa13@posting.google.com... > Can anyone post some good computer practical jokes here? Thx! > > Here's one: With a DOS computer, put a line in AUTOEXEC.BAT that says: > > PROMPT FATAL DISK ERROR > > ROFLOL! Only tangentally related to computers, but a couple of times I've used a magician's flame shooter to good effect (it's a small device that shoots an impressive, but relatively harmless, ball of fire from your hand). I palm it, then reach around to the back of their monitor saying something like, "Say, what's this loose wire here? " Best reaction was from one guy who shoved himself, in his chair, straight out the office door. Well developed reflexes there. -Wm ###### From: Elliott Roper Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 20:49:33 +0000 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: <051220032049332066%elliott@yrl.co.uk> Reply-To: Elliott Roper References: <3FCEC045.B85660A2@comcast.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 8bit Mail-Copies-To: nobody User-Agent: Thoth/1.7.2 (Carbon/OS X) X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 40 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!snoopy.risq.qc.ca!chi1.webusenet.com!sjc70.webusenet.com!news.webusenet.com!sn-xit-02!sn-xit-01!sn-post-02!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!elliott Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156909 Back in the days when VT52's were new and all, and RSX11-M was about version 3, I was working on a project with far too many people in a long thin room. There were terminals and programmers jammed almost shoulder to shoulder down both long walls. Some nameless smart-arse, I wish it were me, but it wasn't, simultaneously discovered breakthrough writes and direct cursor addressing. Each terminal in turn, right round the room, got 77 breakthrough writes consisting of five 'lines', direct cursor addressed a little further to the right each time. They alternated between /// --- | | --- \\\ and \\\ --- | | --- /// as they moved across the screens. If you remember the farty noise the bell on the VT52 made, you would understand why adding a 'bell' to each move was irresistible. The project leader got a simulated RSX system crash dump when the 'bug' reached his terminal. He saw the funny side.. ...after a while. -- Swen has got to me. I thought I would be the last on earth to mangle my e-mail address. fsnospam$elliott$$ ###### Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2003 22:23:11 +0100 From: Steve O'Hara-Smith Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Message-ID: <20031205222311.4b7fa8e0.steveo@eircom.net> References: <3FCEC045.B85660A2@comcast.net> <051220032049332066%elliott@yrl.co.uk> X-Newsreader: Sylpheed version 0.9.7 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i386-portbld-freebsd4.9) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 18 Organization: Wanadoo NNTP-Posting-Date: 05 Dec 2003 21:46:28 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: p0631.nas3-asd6.dial.wanadoo.nl X-Trace: 1070660788 flip.euronet.nl 419 62.234.218.123:1889 X-Complaints-To: abuse@wanadoo.nl Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!ecngs!feeder.ecngs.de!news.cambrium.nl!news.cambrium.nl!news.cambrium.nl!news2.euro.net!postnews1.euro.net!news.wanadoo.nl!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156912 On Fri, 05 Dec 2003 20:49:33 +0000 Elliott Roper wrote: ER> Back in the days when VT52's were new and all, and RSX11-M was about ER> version 3, I was working on a project with far too many people in a ER> long thin room. There were terminals and programmers jammed almost ER> shoulder to shoulder down both long walls. Some nameless smart-arse, I ER> wish it were me, but it wasn't, simultaneously discovered breakthrough ER> writes and direct cursor addressing. A somewhat similar stunt once caused the Enterprise to fly around the terminal room at Cambridge. -- C:>WIN | Directable Mirrors The computer obeys and wins. |A Better Way To Focus The Sun You lose and Bill collects. | licenses available - see: | http://www.sohara.org/ ###### Message-ID: <3FD112CB.3F9FCE1A@comcast.net> From: Charles Richmond Reply-To: richmond@nospam.plano.net Organization: Canine Computer Center X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7C-CCK-MCD {C-UDP; EBM-APPLE} (Macintosh; I; PPC) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 22 NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.1.126.198 X-Complaints-To: abuse@comcast.net X-Trace: attbi_s03 1070659537 24.1.126.198 (Fri, 05 Dec 2003 21:25:37 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 21:25:37 GMT Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 21:25:37 GMT Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!news.tesion.net!news.belwue.de!feed.news.tiscali.de!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!newsfeed.news2me.com!elnk-nf2-pas!newsfeed.earthlink.net!wn14feed!wn13feed!wn12feed!worldnet.att.net!204.127.198.203!attbi_feed3!attbi_feed4!attbi.com!attbi_s03.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156910 Nico de Jong wrote: > > "sircompwiz" skrev i en meddelelse > news:b9c0866f.0312031132.c0afa13@posting.google.com... > > Can anyone post some good computer practical jokes here? Thx! > > > When I was an operator in the late 60's, we had a collegue doing the > separating, bursting etc. And to be true, he wasnt very bright. > One day, he was bored a bit, so a collegue set him to work separating a box > of two way fanfold. As usual at the time, it had carbon paper between the > layers. Suddenly he stopped, and said "Look, there is no print on the paper, > and neither on the copy". "Well", he was told, "that is because we printed > this one with invisible ink" > Is this the same guy that you would ask to go punch out three boxes of blank cards... -- +----------------------------------------------------------------+ | Charles and Francis Richmond richmond at plano dot net | +----------------------------------------------------------------+ ###### Message-ID: <3FD11473.195C4E3A@comcast.net> From: Charles Richmond Reply-To: richmond@nospam.plano.net Organization: Canine Computer Center X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7C-CCK-MCD {C-UDP; EBM-APPLE} (Macintosh; I; PPC) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 19 NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.1.126.198 X-Complaints-To: abuse@comcast.net X-Trace: attbi_s04 1070659961 24.1.126.198 (Fri, 05 Dec 2003 21:32:41 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 21:32:41 GMT Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 21:32:41 GMT Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.belwue.de!feed.news.tiscali.de!tiscali!newsfeed1.ip.tiscali.net!newsfeed.bit.nl!newsfeed.bit.nl!newsgate.cistron.nl!amsnews01.chello.com!news-hub.cableinet.net!blueyonder!easynet-quince!easynet.net!peer01.cox.net!cox.net!cyclone1.gnilink.net!wn14feed!wn13feed!worldnet.att.net!204.127.198.203!attbi_feed3!attbi_feed4!attbi.com!attbi_s04.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156911 Randy Howard wrote: > > [... punishing practical joke story snipped ...] > > Then, the support team decided it was terribly funny, and he > decided it was not funny at all. > > Of course, I had already gone in and removed the offending > code about 5 minutes after the build completed, so it was > a one time deal (until the next build came out), but I don't > think he ever got over that one. > "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup." -- +----------------------------------------------------------------+ | Charles and Francis Richmond richmond at plano dot net | +----------------------------------------------------------------+ ###### From: Rupert Goodwins Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Message-ID: References: <1070578745snz@dsl.co.uk> X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.93/32.576 English (American) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 54 Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 22:52:37 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 82.35.99.165 X-Complaints-To: abuse@blueyonder.co.uk X-Trace: news-text.cableinet.net 1070664757 82.35.99.165 (Fri, 05 Dec 2003 22:52:37 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 22:52:37 GMT Organization: blueyonder (post doesn't reflect views of blueyonder) Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!luth.se!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!newsgate.cistron.nl!amsnews01.chello.com!news-hub.cableinet.net!blueyonder!internal-news-hub.cableinet.net!news-text.cableinet.net!53ab2750!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156913 On Thu, 4 Dec 2003 23:48:40 +0000 (UTC), bhk@dsl.co.uk (Brian {Hamilton Kelly}) wrote: >In article fcweed@mail.com "fcweed" writes: > >> The Sun SPARCs we used a few years ago shipped with an audio tool and >> demo audio files - toilet flushing, doorbell, applause, etc, and a > >I heard a tale back in the 1960s that at Ferranti's Wythenshawe factory >(where they made the Argus process-control computers) that someobe had >coupled up an interface to a standard reel-to-reel tape recorder, on >which various announcements had been recorded. Under program control, a >particular length of tape could be selected and played out. AIUI, the >Autocode interpreter had been hacked so that this mechanism was harnessed >instead of merely printing out an error message. So instead of seeing >"ERR 23 L218" the whole building heard, over the Tannoy, "Some stupid >bastard's tried to take the square root of a negative number". > >Our field circus engineer swore this was true. > >Of course, not so useful for diagnostic purposes without details of the >line at which the error was detected. A somewhat similar exercise was undertaken at Sinclair Research, where we had some samples of the ICL One Per Desk (OPD) - a rather strange contraption based around the Sinclair QL. That was odd enough already... but the OPD bolted on a modem, telephony and some other gubbins. One of the things it could do was answer the phone and play a message from a string of pre-recorded words held in ROM. These had to be chosen from a vocab of a couple of hundred words, all business-based, so you could make it say "I am away from my desk, please call my secretary on 01 484 3443". There was considerable competition to make it say something as rude as possible - "I am on my secretary under my desk, oh, oh, oh" greeted a few callers to the labs. Another fave was to edit the VT-220 escape sequence for screen alignment - which filled the screen with capital Es - into the file on VMS that greeted you when you hit enter before logging in. As this was very fast, you could string together two or three of those interspersed with clear screen sequences and get the screen to flash on and off in a most unexpected way for anyone used to more leisurely 9600bps refreshes. The result was With a flash of light, the mighty VAX responded: Username: Wasn't so effective for those still stuck with VT-100s, who just got a string of garbage... R ###### From: never+mail@panix.com.invalid (Michael Roach) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2003 23:08:59 +0000 (UTC) Organization: A small notepad underneath my in box Lines: 22 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: panix2.panix.com X-Trace: reader2.panix.com 1070665739 387 166.84.1.2 (5 Dec 2003 23:08:59 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2003 23:08:59 +0000 (UTC) X-Clueful-responder: echo "never-reply+panix=com" | tr "-+=" "+@." X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test76 (Apr 2, 2001) Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!snoopy.risq.qc.ca!headwall.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!panix!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156916 In article , Randy Howard wrote: >About 10 years ago I was working in a UNIX OS development team, >back when various computer companies were still rolling their own >implementation in the years before Linux. One of the tech support >guys (this particular one was a no-op) was mouthing off one day >about what a computer "security guru" he was when I walked by. > >I decided to bet him that I could break into his computer system, >no matter what precautions he took. He took the bait, in front of >a lot of witnesses, including his boss. I said it would take less >than 24 hours, max. When we were developing a proprietary network for our systems (using 100 pin cables for connectors!), one guy decided he could make it secure. He hammered and hammered at it, but I broke into his machine every day. I just went through the false ceiling, over the wall to his office, and opened up his system enough to get a protected file out of it. -- APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of the future for the problems of the past: it creates a new generation of coding bums. ###### X-Trace-PostClient-IP: 68.147.131.211 From: Brian Inglis Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Organization: Systematic Software Reply-To: Brian.Inglis@SystematicSw.ab.ca Message-ID: <9m92tvkp8omk6tmmq60cs5muge29nc6913@4ax.com> References: <3FCEC045.B85660A2@comcast.net> <3FD0AB52.5F316C4F@sun.com> X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.93/32.576 English (American) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 43 Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2003 01:06:44 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.71.223.147 X-Complaints-To: abuse@shaw.ca X-Trace: pd7tw1no 1070672804 24.71.223.147 (Fri, 05 Dec 2003 18:06:44 MST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 18:06:44 MST Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!ecngs!feeder.ecngs.de!63.218.45.11.MISMATCH!newshosting.com!news-xfer2.atl.newshosting.com!167.206.3.103.MISMATCH!news3.optonline.net!pd7cy1no!shaw.ca!pd7tw1no.POSTED!53ab2750!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156917 On Fri, 05 Dec 2003 10:59:14 -0500 in alt.folklore.computers, Eric Sosman wrote: >Howard Shubs wrote: >> >> In article , >> "Barry in Indy" wrote: >> >> > I did something similar, only the logoff happened every other >> > time he tried to log on. So he'd call someone over to see what >> > had happened, he'd try to log on, and it would work! And the next >> > time, it wouldn't. >> >> We did it so that it'd do something (seemingly) nasty, then delete >> itself. As this was on VMS, the previous version would then resume >> operation the next time the user logged in. No traces. > > This was particularly easy to achieve on CMS, whose >file "modes" included a type intended for temporary files. >A mode-3 file was CMS' equivalent of Mission Impossible's >"This tape will self-destruct:" as soon as you read the >file, the system would delete it for you. It became a >bit of a game to plant mode-3 login profile scripts in >people's accounts. The victim would log in, something >peculiar would happen, and the evidence would disappear >automatically. Had a summer student working as an operator who wrote a script blasting YOU'VE BEEN NUKED in printer header block caps on random user screens, and copyied his script, called VMTUIL EXEC to cause confusion with the systems' VMUTIL EXEC, into users directories with the same name as a command in the system wide login profile, also keeping copies of his script available in various executable directories, to ensure worm-like propagation and repetition: can't remember all the details of the stunt after so long. Once we heard of and saw an example of this happening, did some profile hardening to prevent it from happening again and added some deworming code to remove the annoyance globally as people logged in. -- Thanks. Take care, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada Brian.Inglis@CSi.com (Brian dot Inglis at SystematicSw dot ab dot ca) fake address use address above to reply ###### X-Trace-PostClient-IP: 68.147.131.211 From: Brian Inglis Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Organization: Systematic Software Reply-To: Brian.Inglis@SystematicSw.ab.ca Message-ID: <0hb2tvglncjbrr17osa7mv2q63od5bieqs@4ax.com> References: X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.93/32.576 English (American) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 33 Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2003 01:26:09 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.71.223.147 X-Complaints-To: abuse@shaw.ca X-Trace: pd7tw2no 1070673969 24.71.223.147 (Fri, 05 Dec 2003 18:26:09 MST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 18:26:09 MST Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!ecngs!feeder.ecngs.de!63.218.45.11.MISMATCH!newshosting.com!news-xfer2.atl.newshosting.com!167.206.3.103.MISMATCH!news3.optonline.net!pd7cy1no!shaw.ca!pd7tw2no.POSTED!53ab2750!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156919 On Fri, 5 Dec 2003 13:38:18 -0600 in alt.folklore.computers, "William" wrote: >"sircompwiz" wrote in message >news:b9c0866f.0312031132.c0afa13@posting.google.com... >> Can anyone post some good computer practical jokes here? Thx! >> >> Here's one: With a DOS computer, put a line in AUTOEXEC.BAT that says: >> >> PROMPT FATAL DISK ERROR >> >> ROFLOL! > >Best reaction was from >one guy who shoved himself, in his chair, straight out the office door. >Well developed reflexes there. This one's not a joke, but was a funny incident at the time, with a chair. Guy had a habit of rocking far back in his office chair when thinking; a bunch of us were talking one day in front of his desk (lucky for us), when he gives a good rock, there's a loud noise from his chair, he falls backwards in it then out of it, and something goes shooting across the room and shatters his plastic box of business cards into bits with a hell of a racket and a scattering of pieces. He'd burst the tensioner that adjusts the tilt angle, and the adjustment bolt was propelled by the spring across the room at just the right angle for a spectacular one-two effect. -- Thanks. Take care, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada Brian.Inglis@CSi.com (Brian dot Inglis at SystematicSw dot ab dot ca) fake address use address above to reply ###### From: Aki Rossi Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2003 03:34:22 +0200 Organization: Helsinki Television Lines: 17 Message-ID: References: <3FCEC045.B85660A2@comcast.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: cs78236189.pp.htv.fi Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: nyytiset.pp.htv.fi 1070673832 6330 62.78.236.189 (6 Dec 2003 01:23:52 GMT) X-Complaints-To: newsmaster@pp.htv.fi NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2003 01:23:52 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Pan/0.14.0 (I'm Being Nibbled to Death by Cats!) Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.belwue.de!feed.news.tiscali.de!uninett.no!news.eunet.no!fi.sn.net!newsfeed2.fi.sn.net!nyytiset.pp.htv.fi!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156918 On Thu, 04 Dec 2003 12:51:05 +0000, Joe Morris wrote: > On mainframes: > [snip] > * Get into supervisor mode (far too easy on early versions of OS/360) > and ring the console bell. [snip] I got all of them except this. I presume the console bell on a mainframe is, hmm, equally heavyweight to the rest of the system? Or does it make all of the connected terminals beep? -- Aki Rossi ###### From: "J.Clarke" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2003 20:53:03 -0500 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com Lines: 32 Message-ID: <20031205205303.3a62d8b2.jclarke@nospam.invalid> References: <3FD11473.195C4E3A@comcast.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: p-335.newsdawg.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Newsreader: Sylpheed version 0.8.11claws (GTK+ 1.2.10; i686-pc-linux-gnu) User-Agent: Hamster-Pg/1.9 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!npeer.de.kpn-eurorings.net!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!pln-e!spln!dex!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!enews2 Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156943 On Fri, 05 Dec 2003 21:32:41 GMT Charles Richmond wrote: > Randy Howard wrote: > > > > [... punishing practical joke story snipped ...] > > > > Then, the support team decided it was terribly funny, and he > > decided it was not funny at all. > > > > Of course, I had already gone in and removed the offending > > code about 5 minutes after the build completed, so it was > > a one time deal (until the next build came out), but I don't > > think he ever got over that one. > > > "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, > for you are crunchy and good with ketchup." I thought that was dragons. > > -- > +----------------------------------------------------------------+ > | Charles and Francis Richmond richmond at plano dot net | > +----------------------------------------------------------------+ -- -- --John Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net (was jclarke at eye bee em dot net) ###### From: "Michael N. LeVine" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 18:12:23 -0800 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: References: <1070578745snz@dsl.co.uk> User-Agent: MT-NewsWatcher/3.2 (PPC Mac OS X) X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 64 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.belwue.de!news.uni-stuttgart.de!npeer.de.kpn-eurorings.net!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!sn-xit-02!sn-xit-01!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!mlevine Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156922 In article , Rupert Goodwins wrote: > On Thu, 4 Dec 2003 23:48:40 +0000 (UTC), bhk@dsl.co.uk (Brian > {Hamilton Kelly}) wrote: > > >In article fcweed@mail.com "fcweed" writes: > > > >> The Sun SPARCs we used a few years ago shipped with an audio tool and > >> demo audio files - toilet flushing, doorbell, applause, etc, and a > > > >I heard a tale back in the 1960s that at Ferranti's Wythenshawe factory > >(where they made the Argus process-control computers) that someobe had > >coupled up an interface to a standard reel-to-reel tape recorder, on > >which various announcements had been recorded. Under program control, a > >particular length of tape could be selected and played out. AIUI, the > >Autocode interpreter had been hacked so that this mechanism was harnessed > >instead of merely printing out an error message. So instead of seeing > >"ERR 23 L218" the whole building heard, over the Tannoy, "Some stupid > >bastard's tried to take the square root of a negative number". > > > >Our field circus engineer swore this was true. > > > >Of course, not so useful for diagnostic purposes without details of the > >line at which the error was detected. > > > A somewhat similar exercise was undertaken at Sinclair Research, where > we had some samples of the ICL One Per Desk (OPD) - a rather strange > contraption based around the Sinclair QL. That was odd enough > already... but the OPD bolted on a modem, telephony and some other > gubbins. One of the things it could do was answer the phone and play a > message from a string of pre-recorded words held in ROM. These had to > be chosen from a vocab of a couple of hundred words, all > business-based, so you could make it say "I am away from my desk, > please call my secretary on 01 484 3443". There was considerable > competition to make it say something as rude as possible - "I am on my > secretary under my desk, oh, oh, oh" greeted a few callers to the > labs. > > Another fave was to edit the VT-220 escape sequence for screen > alignment - which filled the screen with capital Es - into the file on > VMS that greeted you when you hit enter before logging in. As this was > very fast, you could string together two or three of those > interspersed with clear screen sequences and get the screen to flash > on and off in a most unexpected way for anyone used to more leisurely > 9600bps refreshes. The result was > > > With a flash of light, the mighty VAX responded: > > Username: > > Wasn't so effective for those still stuck with VT-100s, who just got a > string of garbage... > > R I liked to send another user's terminal a <^S>(Control S) to lock it up. It took <^Q> or a power cycle to unfreeze -- Michael LeVine - mlevine@redshift.com "Thirty days hath September, April, June and November. All the rest have thirty one except for Gypsy Rose Lee and every one knew what she had" - Mel Blanc ###### From: arargh312NOSPAM@NOW.AT.arargh.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 20:24:26 -0600 Organization: Not Really! Lines: 29 Message-ID: References: <3FCEC045.B85660A2@comcast.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: tcr75.dynip.ripco.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: e250.ripco.com 1070677456 27498 209.100.226.75 (6 Dec 2003 02:24:16 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ripco.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2003 02:24:16 +0000 (UTC) X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.92/32.572 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!enews.sgi.com!news-out.superfeed.net!propagator2-maxim!feed-maxim.newsfeeds.com!gail.ripco.com!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156923 On Sat, 06 Dec 2003 03:34:22 +0200, Aki Rossi wrote: >On Thu, 04 Dec 2003 12:51:05 +0000, Joe Morris wrote: > >> On mainframes: >> >[snip] >> * Get into supervisor mode (far too easy on early versions of OS/360) >> and ring the console bell. >[snip] > >I got all of them except this. I presume the console bell on a mainframe >is, hmm, equally heavyweight to the rest of the system? Or does it make >all of the connected terminals beep? I believe that some or all of the early SYS360's had some kind of loud obnoxious noise device to be used for certain classes of errors. In the case of a 360/50, it was a horn, IIRC, that was sounded on a machine check or a parity error. If the front panel switches were dirty, and you used them to display a memory address, HOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNK -- Arargh312 at [drop the 'http://www.' from ->] http://www.arargh.com BCET Basic Compiler Page: http://www.arargh.com/basic/index.html To reply by email, remove the garbage from the reply address. ###### From: SpamTrap@spamcop.com (Edgar Wolphe) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: 05 Dec 2003 23:21:38 EST Organization: Concentric Internet Services Lines: 25 Message-ID: <3fd154c3.256621392@news.grassyhill.com> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: 66.238.152.38 X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.21/32.243 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.belwue.de!feed.news.tiscali.de!uninett.no!news.algonet.se!algonet!newsfeed1!bredband!newsfeed2.fi.sn.net!fi.sn.net!newsfeed1.fi.sn.net!newsfeed1.funet.fi!newsfeeds.funet.fi!nntp.inet.fi!inet.fi!ash.uu.net!newsfeed-3001.bay.webtv.net!nntp-out.svc.us.xo.net!nntp1-feeder.SJ.svc.us.xo.net!newsfeed.concentric.net!sjc1.nntp.concentric.net!nntp-master.svc.us.xo.net Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156927 Furiously scratching in the sand, dwilson0000@yahoo.com (sircompwiz) wrote: >Can anyone post some good computer practical jokes here? Thx! Back in the 80's, I spent a couple of years in a computer store in a large mall. We always removed, of course, the Format and FDISK programs from the display systems, but that never stopped nascent hackers from trying to sabotage the hard drives. I finally got a little tired of chasing these guys out of the store, and slapped a FORMAT.BAT file on all the systems that basicly consisted of about 75 commands that "rang the bell" on the system's pathetic internal speaker, and also printed an insulting message on the screen. After a couple of weeks of blushing faces skulking quickly out of the store-- accompanied by gales of laughter from the store's staff-- we ceased to have any more "attacks" on the displays. EW Reality is nothing more than a mathematical abstraction... or a really good steak. ###### Lines: 35 X-Admin: news@aol.com From: mensanator@aol.compost (Mensanator) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: 06 Dec 2003 04:59:46 GMT References: Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Message-ID: <20031205235946.13711.00000166@mb-m10.aol.com> Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!ecngs!feeder.ecngs.de!63.218.45.11.MISMATCH!newshosting.com!news-xfer2.atl.newshosting.com!216.166.71.118.MISMATCH!small1.nntp.aus1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!cyclone1.gnilink.net!ngpeer.news.aol.com!audrey-m1.news.aol.com!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156928 >Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes >From: "William" Reply@NewsGroup.Please >Date: 12/5/2003 1:38 PM Central Standard Time >Message-id: > >"sircompwiz" wrote in message >news:b9c0866f.0312031132.c0afa13@posting.google.com... >> Can anyone post some good computer practical jokes here? Thx! >> >> Here's one: With a DOS computer, put a line in AUTOEXEC.BAT that says: >> >> PROMPT FATAL DISK ERROR >> >> ROFLOL! > >Only tangentally related to computers, but a couple of times I've used a >magician's flame shooter to good effect (it's a small device that shoots >an impressive, but relatively harmless, ball of fire from your hand). I palm >it, then reach around to the back of their monitor saying something like, >"Say, what's this loose wire here? " Best reaction was from >one guy who shoved himself, in his chair, straight out the office door. >Well developed reflexes there. -Wm > Just as effective is sneaking up behind someone who's inserting a power cord into a recepticle and doing a loud hand clap. Never fails to make them jump. And if you pull this on the guy with well developed reflexes, you'll get an elbow in the ribs. -- Mensanator Ace of Clubs ###### From: "Frank Pajerski" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers References: <3fd154c3.256621392@news.grassyhill.com> Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Lines: 17 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1158 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1165 Message-ID: <33hAb.1754$rP6.370@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net> Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2003 09:11:27 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.165.44.162 X-Complaints-To: abuse@earthlink.net X-Trace: newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net 1070701887 209.165.44.162 (Sat, 06 Dec 2003 01:11:27 PST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2003 01:11:27 PST Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!news.f.de.plusline.net!feed.news.tiscali.de!easynet-quince!easynet.net!peer01.cox.net!cox.net!newshosting.com!news-xfer2.atl.newshosting.com!140.99.99.194.MISMATCH!newsfeed1.easynews.com!easynews.com!easynews!elnk-pas-nf1!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.pas.earthlink.net!newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net.POSTED!7de7bad8!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156933 In the early days of Macintosh fanaticism, it was always fun to slip some code onto a friend's Mac that would produce at its next boot .... a dark screen on which was only displayed a flashing C:> Being reminded of this makes me want to search for my copy of "Stupid Mac Tricks" which documented this and much more fun efforts. --- Frank "Edgar Wolphe" wrote in message news:3fd154c3.256621392@news.grassyhill.com... > Furiously scratching in the sand, dwilson0000@yahoo.com (sircompwiz) > wrote: > > >Can anyone post some good computer practical jokes here? Thx! > ###### From: jimmydevice Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2003 02:38:11 -0800 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <3fd154c3.256621392@news.grassyhill.com> <33hAb.1754$rP6.370@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net> In-Reply-To: <33hAb.1754$rP6.370@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 26 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!snoopy.risq.qc.ca!chi1.webusenet.com!sjc70.webusenet.com!news.webusenet.com!sn-xit-02!sn-xit-03!sn-xit-04!sn-xit-06!sn-post-02!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156934 > "Edgar Wolphe" wrote in message > news:3fd154c3.256621392@news.grassyhill.com... > >>Furiously scratching in the sand, dwilson0000@yahoo.com (sircompwiz) >>wrote: >> >> >>>Can anyone post some good computer practical jokes here? Thx! >> > An possibly apocryphal story involved a quite cute female IBM1130 computer operator and the abuse she received from the senior male staff at Portland State. The story was that a program was written that repeatedly fired the hammers on the 1403 printer without linefeed. eventually cutting paper dolls out of the fanfold and falling into the printer. This was a year before my time, I never saw the program. Even if it was just folklore, it was still funny. Jim Davis. Victim: I was set up by a friend from Benson HS on the HP2000F, You could write a program that would defeat the break key, by sending a seqnence of characters to the ASR33. I was trying to get on all day, I finally got on and stupidly executed his joke. I walked over to his school during lunch and throttled him. I think it was a stream of nulls. ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes References: <0cgoqb.4ea2.ln@via.reistad.priv.no> <696.469T220T5883769@kltpzyxm.invalid> Organization: me From: Morten Reistad X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test76 (Apr 2, 2001) Originator: mrr@via.reistad.priv.no (Morten Reistad) Message-ID: Lines: 22 Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2003 12:30:02 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 193.217.4.55 X-Complaints-To: abuse@tele2.no X-Trace: juliett.dax.net 1070713802 193.217.4.55 (Sat, 06 Dec 2003 13:30:02 MET) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2003 13:30:02 MET Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!npeer.de.kpn-eurorings.net!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!newsfeed1.swip.net!swipnet!dax.net!juliett.dax.net!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156938 In article <696.469T220T5883769@kltpzyxm.invalid>, Charlie Gibbs wrote: >In article <0cgoqb.4ea2.ln@via.reistad.priv.no> >firstname@lastname.pr1v.n0 (Morten Reistad) writes: > > > >>Unfortunatly he deleted this program from his system >>before we had a chance to take a copy. It would have >>made a nice addition to the BSOD screensaver. > >Oh, you mean Windows 98? I always considered the screensaver >to be a proper subset of the BSOD. At least my Win98 box got >a lot more stable once I disabled the screensaver. No, the Linux BSOD screensaver. It displays _very_ accurate crash images from a dozen or more machines. It has got the mangled videobuffers e.g. of Sun's right, and lots of nifty detail. -- mrr ###### Message-ID: <3FD25352.9EE68FC4@comcast.net> From: Charles Richmond Reply-To: richmond@nospam.plano.net Organization: Canine Computer Center X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7C-CCK-MCD {C-UDP; EBM-APPLE} (Macintosh; I; PPC) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes References: <3FD11473.195C4E3A@comcast.net> <20031205205303.3a62d8b2.jclarke@nospam.invalid> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 29 NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.1.126.198 X-Complaints-To: abuse@comcast.net X-Trace: attbi_s54 1070741594 24.1.126.198 (Sat, 06 Dec 2003 20:13:14 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2003 20:13:14 GMT Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2003 20:13:14 GMT Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!enews.sgi.com!arclight.uoregon.edu!newshub.sdsu.edu!elnk-nf2-pas!newsfeed.earthlink.net!wn14feed!wn13feed!wn12feed!worldnet.att.net!204.127.198.203!attbi_feed3!attbi_feed4!attbi.com!attbi_s54.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156946 "J.Clarke" wrote: > > On Fri, 05 Dec 2003 21:32:41 GMT > Charles Richmond wrote: > > > Randy Howard wrote: > > > > > > [... punishing practical joke story snipped ...] > > > > > > Then, the support team decided it was terribly funny, and he > > > decided it was not funny at all. > > > > > > Of course, I had already gone in and removed the offending > > > code about 5 minutes after the build completed, so it was > > > a one time deal (until the next build came out), but I don't > > > think he ever got over that one. > > > > > "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, > > for you are crunchy and good with ketchup." > > I thought that was dragons. > I got the quote from a "fortune" database file...so it may have been mangled... -- +----------------------------------------------------------------+ | Charles and Francis Richmond richmond at plano dot net | +----------------------------------------------------------------+ ###### Message-ID: <3FD25409.B319B325@comcast.net> From: Charles Richmond Reply-To: richmond@nospam.plano.net Organization: Canine Computer Center X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7C-CCK-MCD {C-UDP; EBM-APPLE} (Macintosh; I; PPC) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes References: <3fd154c3.256621392@news.grassyhill.com> <33hAb.1754$rP6.370@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 13 NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.1.126.198 X-Complaints-To: abuse@comcast.net X-Trace: attbi_s54 1070741776 24.1.126.198 (Sat, 06 Dec 2003 20:16:16 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2003 20:16:16 GMT Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2003 20:16:16 GMT Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.belwue.de!feed.news.tiscali.de!easynet-quince!easynet.net!peer01.cox.net!cox.net!cyclone1.gnilink.net!wn14feed!wn13feed!wn12feed!worldnet.att.net!204.127.198.203!attbi_feed3!attbi_feed4!attbi.com!attbi_s54.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156947 Frank Pajerski wrote: > > In the early days of Macintosh fanaticism, it was always fun to slip > some code onto a friend's Mac that would produce at its next boot .... > a dark screen on which was only displayed a flashing C:> > Now you should rig up the same trick for Windows XP... -- +----------------------------------------------------------------+ | Charles and Francis Richmond richmond at plano dot net | +----------------------------------------------------------------+ ###### From: Manuel Viet Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: 6 Dec 2003 20:46:16 GMT Organization: BSD canal hysterique Lines: 25 Message-ID: References: <3fd154c3.256621392@news.grassyhill.com> <33hAb.1754$rP6.370@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net> <3FD25409.B319B325@comcast.net> Reply-To: manuel@m-viet.net NNTP-Posting-Host: aph-aug-103-1-2-29.w193-251.abo.wanadoo.fr Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-15 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: news-reader1.wanadoo.fr 1070743576 19232 193.251.45.29 (6 Dec 2003 20:46:16 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@wanadoo.fr NNTP-Posting-Date: 6 Dec 2003 20:46:16 GMT User-Agent: slrn/0.9.7.3 (OpenBSD) Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!solnet.ch!solnet.ch!newsfeed.tiscali.ch!tiscali!newsfeed1.ip.tiscali.net!proxad.net!wanadoo.fr!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156948 Le Sat, 06 Dec 2003 20:16:16 GMT, Charles Richmond écrivait: > Frank Pajerski wrote: >> >> In the early days of Macintosh fanaticism, it was always fun to slip >> some code onto a friend's Mac that would produce at its next boot .... >> a dark screen on which was only displayed a flashing C:> >> > Now you should rig up the same trick for Windows XP... There's an easter egg of that kind in PalmOS 3.5 ; start the giraffe game, put the pen on the top bar, then press the down button. The display will turn to : Not ready reading drive C Abort, Retry, Fail ? Tap to exit. -- Manuel * mailto:manuel@m-viet.net Sed quid igitur sum ? Res cogitans. Quid est hoc ? Nempe dubitans, intelligens, affirmans, negans, volens, nolens, imaginans quoque & sentiens. -- Descartes ###### From: Joe Morris Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2003 21:29:53 +0000 (UTC) Organization: The MITRE Organization Lines: 31 Message-ID: References: <3FCEC045.B85660A2@comcast.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: jmorris-pc.mitre.org X-Trace: newslocal.mitre.org 1070746193 28606 128.29.24.210 (6 Dec 2003 21:29:53 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@mitre.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2003 21:29:53 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: nn/6.6.4 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.belwue.de!feed.news.tiscali.de!newsfeed.freenet.de!newsfeed.news2me.com!arclight.uoregon.edu!news.tufts.edu!newstransit.mitre.org!news.mitre.org!jcmorris Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156949 Aki Rossi writes: >On Thu, 04 Dec 2003 12:51:05 +0000, Joe Morris wrote: >> On mainframes: >> >[snip] >> * Get into supervisor mode (far too easy on early versions of OS/360) >> and ring the console bell. >[snip] >I got all of them except this. I presume the console bell on a mainframe >is, hmm, equally heavyweight to the rest of the system? Or does it make >all of the connected terminals beep? "Bell" as in "would work well as a fire alarm". Mounted inside the cabinet; the intent was that a failure that caused the bell to ring would be announced in such a way that operators could not be unaware of it. If the bell rang you knew that the system, and maybe the hardware, had just blown. The system design placed the bell interface in the console I/O adapter, so with the appropriate CCW all you needed to do to ring it was to get into supervisor mode and issue an SIO to the console (usually 01F) with the CAW pointing to the "ring bell" CCW. If you dig through some of the very old sources for OS/360 you'll find an entry point (in the CVT, I think) commented as "Ring bell and enter wait state". Joe Morris ###### Sender: CStacy@BOHR Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes References: <3fd154c3.256621392@news.grassyhill.com> <33hAb.1754$rP6.370@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net> <3FD25409.B319B325@comcast.net> From: cstacy@dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) Message-ID: Lines: 23 User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2003 23:36:18 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 68.163.138.194 X-Complaints-To: abuse@verizon.net X-Trace: nwrddc01.gnilink.net 1070753778 68.163.138.194 (Sat, 06 Dec 2003 18:36:18 EST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2003 18:36:18 EST Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!solnet.ch!solnet.ch!newsfeed.freenet.de!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!news-out1.nntp.be!propagator2-sterling!news-in.nuthinbutnews.com!cyclone1.gnilink.net!spamkiller.gnilink.net!nwrddc01.gnilink.net.POSTED!53ab2750!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156951 >>>>> On 6 Dec 2003 20:46:16 GMT, Manuel Viet ("Manuel") writes: Manuel> Le Sat, 06 Dec 2003 20:16:16 GMT, Charles Richmond écrivait: >> Frank Pajerski wrote: >>> >>> In the early days of Macintosh fanaticism, it was always fun to slip >>> some code onto a friend's Mac that would produce at its next boot .... >>> a dark screen on which was only displayed a flashing C:> >>> >> Now you should rig up the same trick for Windows XP... Manuel> There's an easter egg of that kind in PalmOS 3.5 ; start the Manuel> giraffe game, put the pen on the top bar, then press the Manuel> down button. Manuel> The display will turn to : Manuel> Not ready reading drive C Manuel> Abort, Retry, Fail ? Manuel> Tap to exit. This works in the latest PalOS on my m505. ###### X-Trace-PostClient-IP: 24.83.56.193 From: genew@mail.ocis.net (Gene Wirchenko) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Reply-To: genew@mail.ocis.net Message-ID: <3fd29cfa.29796637@shawnews> References: <3fd154c3.256621392@news.grassyhill.com> <33hAb.1754$rP6.370@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net> X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.21/32.243 Lines: 23 Date: Sun, 07 Dec 2003 03:30:20 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.69.255.206 X-Complaints-To: abuse@shaw.ca X-Trace: pd7tw2no 1070767820 24.69.255.206 (Sat, 06 Dec 2003 20:30:20 MST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2003 20:30:20 MST Organization: Shaw Residential Internet Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.belwue.de!feed.news.tiscali.de!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!c03.atl99!news.webusenet.com!diablo.voicenet.com!news3.optonline.net!pd7cy1no!shaw.ca!pd7tw2no.POSTED!53ab2750!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156955 jimmydevice wrote: [snip] >Victim: I was set up by a friend from Benson HS on the HP2000F, >You could write a program that would defeat the break key, by sending >a seqnence of characters to the ASR33. I was trying to get on all day, >I finally got on and stupidly executed his joke. I walked over to his >school during lunch and throttled him. I think it was a stream of nulls. On HP 2000F BASIC, that was the BRK() function. BRK(1) Enable break. BRK(0) Disable break. BRK(-1) Return break status. Sincerely, Gene Wirchenko Computerese Irregular Verb Conjugation: I have preferences. You have biases. He/She has prejudices. ###### NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 07 Dec 2003 11:22:51 -0600 From: "William" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers References: <20031205235946.13711.00000166@mb-m10.aol.com> Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Sun, 7 Dec 2003 11:22:49 -0600 X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2720.3000 X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 Message-ID: Lines: 21 X-Trace: sv3-Tv5eVGRydkG9O7IO5m9FjNcP4cXh9OEGs3T6S88s5GzY1DrGhoDGa/MtcjtW2Bs67wDOPu3VTdowLXR!bIPk783LrhgRDIV4k883q25jXCh+2385lT3tjLE03HSFlrxU0ONoSusO2cgNBzM= X-Complaints-To: abuse@giganews.com X-DMCA-Notifications: http://www.giganews.com/info/dmca.html X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.1 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!enews.sgi.com!hammer.uoregon.edu!canoe.uoregon.edu!newshub.sdsu.edu!small1.nntp.aus1.giganews.com!border3.nntp.aus1.giganews.com!intern1.nntp.aus1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!news.giganews.com.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156969 "Mensanator" wrote in message news:20031205235946.13711.00000166@mb-m10.aol.com... > > Just as effective is sneaking up behind someone who's inserting a power > cord into a recepticle and doing a loud hand clap. Never fails to make them > jump. > > And if you pull this on the guy with well developed reflexes, you'll get an > elbow in the ribs. I like it. Also works if you learn to imitate a 60 Hz buzz (50 Hz in the UK) loudly and wait for someone to have their hand inside a computer case... (There's probably a psychology paper to be written on why a loud mains-frequency sound triggers the danger reflexes so effectively.) -Wm ###### From: Witchy Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Sun, 07 Dec 2003 20:09:17 +0000 Lines: 22 Message-ID: References: <1070578745snz@dsl.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: vorbis.demon.co.uk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: news.demon.co.uk 1070827783 18186 62.49.16.88 (7 Dec 2003 20:09:43 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@demon.net NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 7 Dec 2003 20:09:43 +0000 (UTC) X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.92/32.572 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!kibo.news.demon.net!news.demon.co.uk!demon!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156970 On Fri, 05 Dec 2003 22:52:37 GMT, Rupert Goodwins wrote: >A somewhat similar exercise was undertaken at Sinclair Research, where >we had some samples of the ICL One Per Desk (OPD) - a rather strange >contraption based around the Sinclair QL. That was odd enough >already... but the OPD bolted on a modem, telephony and some other >gubbins. One of the things it could do was answer the phone and play a >message from a string of pre-recorded words held in ROM. These had to >be chosen from a vocab of a couple of hundred words, all >business-based, so you could make it say "I am away from my desk, >please call my secretary on 01 484 3443". There was considerable >competition to make it say something as rude as possible - "I am on my >secretary under my desk, oh, oh, oh" greeted a few callers to the >labs. I've done that with the OPDs I've got in the museum. The best one up to now is "I'm away on holiday getting head from my secretary" :) -- cheers, witchy/binarydinosaurs ###### From: Julian Thomas Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Sun, 07 Dec 2003 16:25:04 -0500 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: <3fd39b28$1$wg$mr2ice@news.fltg.net> References: X-Newsreader: MR/2 Internet Cruiser Edition for OS/2 v2.40/37 X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 26 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!sn-xit-03!sn-xit-01!sn-post-02!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156971 In , on 12/04/03 at 09:36 AM, Evan Platt may have used oatmeal boxes, old string, and new, used, and recycled electrons to say (at least in part): >How about >Echo Y | format C: /u /q Legend or fact? At a user group meeting in the distant past, someone was demonstrating a speech recognition program on DOS. Someone in the audience hollered: Format C colon and several others said (in chorus) Yes -- Julian Thomas: jt@jt-mj.net http://jt-mj.net In the beautiful Finger Lakes Wine Country of New York State! Boardmember of POSSI.org - Phoenix OS/2 Society, Inc http://www.possi.org -- -- Madness takes its toll. Please have exact change. ###### From: "Charlie Gibbs" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: 07 Dec 03 14:07:57 -0800 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com Lines: 28 Message-ID: <1354.471T2869T8475978@kltpzyxm.invalid> References: <3fd154c3.256621392@news.grassyhill.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: p-323.newsdawg.com X-Newsreader: THOR 2.5a (Amiga;TCP/IP) Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!syros.belnet.be!news.belnet.be!newsfeed.stanford.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!pln-w!spln!dex!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!enews1 Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156976 In article <3fd154c3.256621392@news.grassyhill.com> SpamTrap@spamcop.com (Edgar Wolphe) writes: >I finally got a little tired of chasing these guys out of the store, >and slapped a FORMAT.BAT file on all the systems that basicly >consisted of about 75 commands that "rang the bell" on the >system's pathetic internal speaker, and also printed an insulting >message on the screen. The FORMAT.BAT trick went beyond a joke to merely practical in many shops, to avoid damage when a user wanting to format a floppy disk would type simply "FORMAT" instead of "FORMAT A:". Since the default was to format the hard drive, we lost a few systems before we thought to rename FORMAT.COM to something else (e.g. TAMROF.COM), and make up a FORMAT.BAT which consisted of the single line "TAMROF A:". The practical joke in those days was played by Microsoft on users, even if they were smart enough to read the warning message and realize that their hard drive was about to be wiped - because some versions of FORMAT, when they said "Press any key to continue", meant _any_ key. Including control-C. Grrr... -- /~\ cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs) \ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way. X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855. / \ HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored. Join the ASCII ribbon campaign! ###### From: "Charlie Gibbs" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: 07 Dec 03 14:36:31 -0800 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com Lines: 41 Message-ID: <1966.471T1590T8765099@kltpzyxm.invalid> References: <3fd154c3.256621392@news.grassyhill.com> <33hAb.1754$rP6.370@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: p-344.newsdawg.com X-Newsreader: THOR 2.5a (Amiga;TCP/IP) Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!ucberkeley!pln-w!spln!dex!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!enews1 Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156975 In article jimmydevice@hotmail.com (jimmydevice) writes: >An possibly apocryphal story involved a quite cute female IBM1130 >computer operator and the abuse she received from the senior male >staff at Portland State. The story was that a program was written that >repeatedly fired the hammers on the 1403 printer without linefeed. >eventually cutting paper dolls out of the fanfold and falling >into the printer. >This was a year before my time, I never saw the program. Even if it >was just folklore, it was still funny. Back in school we heard that the 1403's ribbon only moved while the paper was being advanced. Hence the following FORTRAN program: 10 WRITE (6,1) 1 FORMAT ('+THIS PROGRAM CHEWS UP THE PRINTER RIBBON') GOTO 10 END As for firing hammers, there are many stories about figuring out the pattern of characters that would make all of a line printer's hammers fire at once, which made quite a loud bang (and could blow fuses or damage hardware on some printers). A friend of mine worked in a Burroughs shop; their printer seemed sufficiently robust to stand up to a little program that he wrote to keep the night-shift operator awake. This program would quietly slip into the background and sleep for a few hours. Then, just when the operator was probably nodding off, it would wake up and print that magic line on the printer with a loud bang, then go back to sleep. The operator would look around, see nothing happening, and go back to sleep himself. A few minutes later the program would cause the printer to emit another bang. Several minutes later the printer would bang twice - and then go into its best imitation of a machine gun. -- /~\ cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs) \ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way. X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855. / \ HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored. Join the ASCII ribbon campaign! ###### From: jimmydevice Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Sun, 07 Dec 2003 22:18:44 -0800 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <20031205235946.13711.00000166@mb-m10.aol.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 34 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!npeer.de.kpn-eurorings.net!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!sn-xit-02!sn-xit-01!sn-post-02!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156981 William wrote: > "Mensanator" wrote in message > news:20031205235946.13711.00000166@mb-m10.aol.com... > >>Just as effective is sneaking up behind someone who's inserting a power >>cord into a recepticle and doing a loud hand clap. Never fails to make > > them > >>jump. >> >>And if you pull this on the guy with well developed reflexes, you'll get > > an > >>elbow in the ribs. > > > I like it. > > Also works if you learn to imitate a 60 Hz buzz (50 Hz in the UK) loudly and > wait for someone to have their hand inside a computer case... (There's > probably a psychology paper to be written on why a loud mains-frequency > sound triggers the danger reflexes so effectively.) -Wm > > > Off topic: When I worked in the aluminum smelter industry, cameras were verboten. I didn't understand the ban, until I experienced a buss bar short to ground. Everyone ran, as fast and as far as possible. It looks just like a photoflash, Only 1000 times larger. It's hard to gauge distance in a room 1 KM long. Jim Davis. ###### From: dgriffi@cs.csbuak.edu Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: 8 Dec 2003 08:53:19 GMT Organization: CSUnet Lines: 15 Message-ID: References: <20031205235946.13711.00000166@mb-m10.aol.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: pegasus.cs.csubak.edu User-Agent: tin/pre-1.4-19990216 ("Styrofoam") (UNIX) (OSF1/V4.0 (alpha)) Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!solnet.ch!solnet.ch!newsfeed.freenet.de!news.tu-darmstadt.de!news.belwue.de!newsfeed01.sul.t-online.de!newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!enews.sgi.com!news-out.superfeed.net!propagator2-maxim!news-in-maxim.spamkiller.net!news.usc.edu!newshub.csu.net!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156983 William wrote: > Also works if you learn to imitate a 60 Hz buzz (50 Hz in the UK) loudly and > wait for someone to have their hand inside a computer case... (There's > probably a psychology paper to be written on why a loud mains-frequency > sound triggers the danger reflexes so effectively.) -Wm I watched someone do that to another person whos hands were in a wiring closet. The result was a flinch which then caused actual contact with live AC current. -- David Griffith dgriffi@cs.csbuak.edu <-- Switch the 'b' and 'u' ###### From: ab528@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Heinz W. Wiggeshoff) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: 8 Dec 2003 09:45:47 GMT Organization: The National Capital FreeNet Lines: 16 Message-ID: References: <20031205235946.13711.00000166@mb-m10.aol.com> Reply-To: ab528@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Heinz W. Wiggeshoff) NNTP-Posting-Host: smeagol X-Trace: freenet9.carleton.ca 1070876747 15580 134.117.136.48 (8 Dec 2003 09:45:47 GMT) X-Complaints-To: complaints@ncf.ca NNTP-Posting-Date: 8 Dec 2003 09:45:47 GMT X-Given-Sender: ab528@smeagol.carleton.ca (Heinz W. Wiggeshoff) Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!peernews3.colt.net!news0.de.colt.net!news.ipv6.iphh.net!iphh.net!news.space.net!news.m-online.net!news-FFM2.ecrc.net!nntp1.roc.gblx.net!nntp.gblx.net!nntp.gblx.net!xcski.com!freenet-news!FreeNet.Carleton.CA!ab528 Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156984 jimmydevice (jimmydevice@hotmail.com) writes: > Off topic: When I worked in the aluminum smelter industry, cameras were > verboten. I didn't understand the ban, until I experienced a buss bar > short to ground. Everyone ran, as fast and as far as possible. It looks > just like a photoflash, Only 1000 times larger. It's hard to gauge > distance in a room 1 KM long. This reminds of an Alcan Arvida story about the unfortunate forklift operator transporting a length of aluminum in the alley formed by two lines of pots (aka Hall-Herault cells). Apparently heart pacemakers were not allowed in the smelter. This was clear to me after working on the MAGFLD program, used to calculate magnetic fields created by the huge current going through the pots. ###### From: jimmydevice Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 05:48:01 -0800 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <20031205235946.13711.00000166@mb-m10.aol.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 39 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!ecngs!feeder.ecngs.de!63.218.45.11.MISMATCH!newshosting.com!news-xfer2.atl.newshosting.com!sn-xit-03!sn-xit-04!sn-xit-01!sn-post-02!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156988 Heinz W. Wiggeshoff wrote: > jimmydevice (jimmydevice@hotmail.com) writes: > > >>Off topic: When I worked in the aluminum smelter industry, cameras were >>verboten. I didn't understand the ban, until I experienced a buss bar >>short to ground. Everyone ran, as fast and as far as possible. It looks >>just like a photoflash, Only 1000 times larger. It's hard to gauge >>distance in a room 1 KM long. > > > This reminds of an Alcan Arvida story about the unfortunate > forklift operator transporting a length of aluminum in the > alley formed by two lines of pots (aka Hall-Herault cells). > > Apparently heart pacemakers were not allowed in the smelter. > This was clear to me after working on the MAGFLD program, > used to calculate magnetic fields created by the huge current > going through the pots. Your forklift story reminds me of another accident, this one at Goldendale aluminum ( at the time harvey aluminum ) A cutout utility truck, used to remove defective cells in the potline had been positioned to apply a bypass to the bussbars. The system was suspose to shunt 80KA current to the next pot. Unfortunately, the hydraulics system somehow failed after the buss work was removed from the pot, creating an open circuit. The rectaformer room had overvoltage protection, but that had been defeated with the installation of springs that had a higher compression force then the required components. The breakers could not open, and the line voltage soared. The results where spectacular. The line voltage immediately went from 4 volts to line voltage ( somthing from a hi-tension line) A 60 cycle buzz ( this was unfiltered, just 1/2 wave ac ) invaded the pot room with "a sound you could never forget" The cutout truck was incinerated, looking like an ACME product in an roadrunner cartoon, Holes were blown in the 100 foot roof. Jim Davis. ###### NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 08:26:11 -0600 From: "Russ Holsclaw" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers References: <3FCEC045.B85660A2@comcast.net> Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2003 07:27:07 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1158 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1165 Message-ID: Lines: 35 NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.8.170.25 X-Trace: sv3-8RA/jUDlVdjOLk1MJF8ZHGWKkNbFuPTfEQ5JAIJuQDaWGZQYt4HrH8GY6N4SJNr9VpVQ7Ec0hmHtS10!oPb8LyHsfTJj49qMKzviX0r15ki1cj9XbLUhGc6fTo/BwB70YI4UQOYE6dg= X-Complaints-To: abuse@comcast.net X-DMCA-Complaints-To: dmca@comcast.net X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.1 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!tiscali!newsfeed1.ip.tiscali.net!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!diablo.theplanet.net!mephistopheles.news.clara.net!news.clara.net!small1.nntp.aus1.giganews.com!border1.nntp.aus1.giganews.com!intern1.nntp.aus1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!nntp.comcast.com!news.comcast.com.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156989 > >> * Get into supervisor mode (far too easy on early versions of OS/360) > >> and ring the console bell. > >[snip] > > > >I got all of them except this. I presume the console bell on a mainframe > >is, hmm, equally heavyweight to the rest of the system? Or does it make > >all of the connected terminals beep? > I believe that some or all of the early SYS360's had some kind of loud > obnoxious noise device to be used for certain classes of errors. > > In the case of a 360/50, it was a horn, IIRC, that was sounded on a > machine check or a parity error. If the front panel switches were > dirty, and you used them to display a memory address, The console alarm on all the 360 models was a bell, like the type used in schools to signal the end of class, and just as loud. I heard, however, that some military installations found that the standard IBM-issue bell sounded too much like the fire alarm bells, and found that they could replace them with an electrically-equivalent submarine "Dive" klaxon. Perhaps yours was one of those? It seemed quite fitting, since the alarm meant that the system was "going down". The CCW op code, by the way, was X'0B'. ###### NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 10:15:37 -0600 From: "William" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers References: <20031205235946.13711.00000166@mb-m10.aol.com> Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2003 10:15:33 -0600 X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2720.3000 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 Message-ID: Lines: 27 X-Trace: sv3-y1I1DjP64fro8dVyL1559awFiCIqPaxagPH0sXioU4Ga3AeDsLG4e2Ux9PCwelSOBrNyprZQBrTKeXU!jsflPgqSHS+XQEGtFLw0nljg2VcN9DFhCXZKIdq7WpEoTVSPhdstT+l/9ZHbokI= X-Complaints-To: abuse@giganews.com X-DMCA-Notifications: http://www.giganews.com/info/dmca.html X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.1 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.belwue.de!feed.news.tiscali.de!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!newshosting.com!news-xfer2.atl.newshosting.com!216.166.71.118.MISMATCH!small1.nntp.aus1.giganews.com!border3.nntp.aus1.giganews.com!intern1.nntp.aus1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!news.giganews.com.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156991 wrote in message news:br1e5v$5543i$1@hades.csu.net... > William wrote: > > > Also works if you learn to imitate a 60 Hz buzz (50 Hz in the UK) loudly and > > wait for someone to have their hand inside a computer case... (There's > > probably a psychology paper to be written on why a loud mains-frequency > > sound triggers the danger reflexes so effectively.) -Wm > > I watched someone do that to another person whos hands were in a wiring > closet. The result was a flinch which then caused actual contact with > live AC current. Practical jokes are like sex, there's a time and a place but some folks don't get that... I had an uncle like that: once, while my cousin and I were trying to light a smoke bomb, he set a cherry bomb (a REAL one, not the wimpy U.S. legal kind) off right behind us. (Hmm, in retrospect, that was a pretty good time and place :-) -Wm ###### From: lee.gleason@halliburton.com (Lee K. Gleason) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: 8 Dec 2003 10:19:16 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Lines: 27 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: 64.154.26.251 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1070907556 27165 127.0.0.1 (8 Dec 2003 18:19:16 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2003 18:19:16 +0000 (UTC) Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!npeer.de.kpn-eurorings.net!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!news-out.visi.com!petbe.visi.com!newsfeed2.dallas1.level3.net!news.level3.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156993 dwilson0000@yahoo.com (sircompwiz) wrote in message news:... > Can anyone post some good computer practical jokes here? Thx! > > Here's one: With a DOS computer, put a line in AUTOEXEC.BAT that says: > > PROMPT FATAL DISK ERROR > > ROFLOL! The DEC VT220 terminal had a "soft" character set - different fonts could be downloaded into them. We edited up a special font that was identical to the normal one, except each character was upside down and backwards. We'd put the commands to load the new font into newbie's login.com, and wait for the hilarity to ensue. We also wrote a program that would queue an AST to change someone's DCL command prompt. We'd wait until someone was in one of the many DEC utilities that have command prompts in the form XYZ>, and then change their DCL prompt to be the same...when they would exit the utility, DCL would emit the same prompt they'd been seeing...they'd go nuts trying to exit some more...someitmes they'd call and report that they were "stuck in the XYZ utility". Lee K. Gleason N5ZMR Control-G Consultants lgleason@houston.rr.com ###### From: alan@wylie.me.uk (Alan J. Wylie) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 19:15:24 +0000 Organization: very little Message-ID: References: <20031205235946.13711.00000166@mb-m10.aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii User-Agent: Gnus/5.1002 (Gnus v5.10.2) Emacs/21.3 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:oEGzkYFqyjG5fEveKKNNysvNXJs= Lines: 21 NNTP-Posting-Host: 82.68.155.89 X-Trace: 1070910932 lovejoy.zen.co.uk 14065 82.68.155.89 X-Complaints-To: abuse@zen.co.uk Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!zen.net.uk!lovejoy.zen.co.uk.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156994 On 8 Dec 2003 09:45:47 GMT, ab528@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Heinz W. Wiggeshoff) said: > This reminds of an Alcan Arvida story about the unfortunate forklift > operator transporting a length of aluminum in the alley formed by > two lines of pots (aka Hall-Herault cells). > Apparently heart pacemakers were not allowed in the smelter. This > was clear to me after working on the MAGFLD program, used to > calculate magnetic fields created by the huge current going through > the pots. There is also a reported incident about a mountaineer visiting the aluminium smelter at Fort William (the smelter is at the foot of the highest mountain in the British Isles). His compass ended up being magnetised backwards (so that north and south were reversed). -- Alan J. Wylie http://www.wylie.me.uk/ "Perfection [in design] is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but rather when there is nothing left to take away." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery ###### From: D.J. Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 14:16:01 -0600 Organization: TychoTown Tycho Crater Ice Cream Parlour Message-ID: <6um9tvsh8hmegk7lenifvep8vehm5gdai6@4ax.com> Distribution: world Reply-To: blue7green@wowserscrosswinds.net References: <3FD11473.195C4E3A@comcast.net> <20031205205303.3a62d8b2.jclarke@nospam.invalid> <3FD25352.9EE68FC4@comcast.net> X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.93/32.576 English (American) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 23 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!snoopy.risq.qc.ca!chi1.webusenet.com!sjc70.webusenet.com!news.webusenet.com!sn-xit-02!sn-xit-01!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:156997 Charles Richmond wrote: ] "J.Clarke" wrote: ] > ] > On Fri, 05 Dec 2003 21:32:41 GMT ] > Charles Richmond wrote: ] > > "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, ] > > for you are crunchy and good with ketchup." ] > ] > I thought that was dragons. ] > ] I got the quote from a "fortune" database file...so it ] may have been mangled... I've seen various versions on buttons, the kind that pins to a shirt. JimP. -- djim70 at tyhe cableone dot net. Disclaimer: Standard. My Web pages Updated: Nov 24, 2003: http://blue7green.crosswinds.net/crestar/index.html Registered Linux user#185746 ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers From: Jan van den Broek Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Organization: Bond van Verdronken Zeelieden References: Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 21:51:15 MET Message-ID: X-No-Ahbou: yes X-Timestamp: 3FD4E443 X-Newsreader: Jan's fantastische newsreader X-mas: in 17 days. Reply-By: Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 X-Order: Two pints of lager and a packet of crisps, please. X-Question: never, never known not even by many to exist X-rays: Do not expose this message to X-rays. X-Answer: 42 X-Message-Flag: Your mailbox is corrupt. Upgrade your mail software. X-Face: "fuW8I]DqAx-xKokQCuu#ifVcPFa|PmyK5)[@yLy}l~Y*pG>\ZlCAm5AEYTKThYtzk_|r3[75^"2:;]XW%lnP! Originator: balglaas@xs1.xs4all.nl (Jan van den Broek) Lines: 29 NNTP-Posting-Date: 08 Dec 2003 22:49:39 CET NNTP-Posting-Host: 194.109.21.2 X-Trace: 1070920179 news.xs4all.nl 202 [::ffff:194.109.21.2]:4404 X-Complaints-To: abuse@xs4all.nl Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!npeer.de.kpn-eurorings.net!news.cambrium.nl!news.cambrium.nl!news.cambrium.nl!newsgate.cistron.nl!binary.news.xs4all.nl!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157001 Thu, 04 Dec 2003 09:36:05 -0800 Evan Platt schrieb: >How about >Echo Y | format C: /u /q Am I the only one getting: $ Echo Y | format C: /y/  /q sh: Echo: not found sh: format: not found Not really a practical joke, but in the w95 days I used to replace the "You may shut your computer down"-screen with one reading "Game over", which led users to call the helpdesk, thinking they had a virus. I stuck a small program once in /etc/profile which printed "the temperature in your office is now N degrees", N between 25 and 35 degrees Celcius, this made one user call the union about working circumstances. Also not intended as a practical joke, but imho very funny, was an error- message by a predecessor stating "There's nothing on this empty line!" -- The chicken stops here --> Jan van den Broek \|/ balglaas@xs4all.nl \|/ | | ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers From: Jan van den Broek Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Organization: Bond van Verdronken Zeelieden References: Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 22:11:14 MET Message-ID: X-No-Ahbou: yes X-Timestamp: 3FD4E8F2 X-Newsreader: Jan's fantastische newsreader X-mas: in 17 days. Reply-By: Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 X-Order: Two pints of lager and a packet of crisps, please. X-Question: never, never known not even by many to exist X-rays: Do not expose this message to X-rays. X-Answer: 42 X-Message-Flag: Your mailbox is corrupt. Upgrade your mail software. X-Face: "fuW8I]DqAx-xKokQCuu#ifVcPFa|PmyK5)[@yLy}l~Y*pG>\ZlCAm5AEYTKThYtzk_|r3[75^"2:;]XW%lnP! Originator: balglaas@xs1.xs4all.nl (Jan van den Broek) Lines: 25 NNTP-Posting-Date: 08 Dec 2003 22:49:39 CET NNTP-Posting-Host: 194.109.21.2 X-Trace: 1070920179 news.xs4all.nl 204 [::ffff:194.109.21.2]:4405 X-Complaints-To: abuse@xs4all.nl Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!eusc.inter.net!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!newsgate.cistron.nl!binary.news.xs4all.nl!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157002 Thu, 04 Dec 2003 23:39:46 -0500 Howard Shubs schrieb: [Schnipp] >My best one didn't require internals, just knowledge of the VT220. I >designed a font to replace the VT220's "A" and "S" characters with an >upside-down "A" and a swapped left-for-right "S". Took the victim a few >minutes to figure out what the heck had happened. I had[1] a tool to remove key-caps of cash-registers, very usefull to swap to keys on a keyboard. Or, in places with lots of machines next to each other, swapping keyboards or mice. Off-topic, but once, on a late evening alone in the building, I put a mouse[2] in a mousetrap that I found in some corner. [1] or may still have [2] mechanical -- The chicken stops here --> Jan van den Broek \|/ balglaas@xs4all.nl \|/ | | ###### From: Joe Morris Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2003 00:22:35 +0000 (UTC) Organization: The MITRE Organization Lines: 19 Message-ID: References: <20031205235946.13711.00000166@mb-m10.aol.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: jmorris-pc.mitre.org X-Trace: newslocal.mitre.org 1070929355 1974 128.29.24.210 (9 Dec 2003 00:22:35 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@mitre.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2003 00:22:35 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: nn/6.6.4 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!ucberkeley!newstransit.mitre.org!news.mitre.org!jcmorris Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157006 jimmydevice writes: >Unfortunately, the hydraulics system somehow failed after the >buss work was removed from the pot, creating an open circuit. >The rectaformer room had overvoltage protection, but that >had been defeated with the installation of springs that had a >higher compression force then the required components. >The breakers could not open, and the line voltage soared. The >results where spectacular. The line voltage immediately went >from 4 volts to line voltage ( somthing from a hi-tension line) >A 60 cycle buzz ( this was unfiltered, just 1/2 wave ac ) >invaded the pot room with "a sound you could never forget" >The cutout truck was incinerated, looking like an ACME product >in an roadrunner cartoon, Holes were blown in the 100 foot roof. And (putting on safety officer hat) what was the excuse given for the screwup with the overvoltage cutouts? Joe Morris ###### From: Jdavis Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 16:59:18 -0800 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <20031205235946.13711.00000166@mb-m10.aol.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 14 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!switch.ch!takemy.news.telefonica.de!telefonica.de!newsfeed.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!newsgate.cistron.nl!news.cambrium.nl!news.cambrium.nl!news.cambrium.nl!ecngs!feeder.ecngs.de!peer02.cox.net!cox.net!pd7cy1no!shaw.ca!sn-xit-03!sn-xit-04!sn-xit-06!sn-post-02!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157010 Joe Morris wrote: > jimmydevice writes: > > And (putting on safety officer hat) what was the excuse given > for the screwup with the overvoltage cutouts? > > Joe Morris I believe the company that manufactured the electrical yard equipment was found to be at fault. A large, European manufacturer with a funny name had installed the wrong equipment, It had hever been tested until that day. Jim Davis. ###### From: "Michael N. LeVine" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 18:16:37 -0800 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: References: User-Agent: MT-NewsWatcher/3.2 (PPC Mac OS X) X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 50 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!sn-xit-03!sn-xit-04!sn-xit-06!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!mlevine Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157013 In article , lee.gleason@halliburton.com (Lee K. Gleason) wrote: > dwilson0000@yahoo.com (sircompwiz) wrote in message news:... > > Can anyone post some good computer practical jokes here? Thx! > > > > Here's one: With a DOS computer, put a line in AUTOEXEC.BAT that says: > > > > PROMPT FATAL DISK ERROR > > > > ROFLOL! > > The DEC VT220 terminal had a "soft" character set - different fonts > could be downloaded into them. We edited up a special font that was > identical to the normal one, except each character was upside down and > backwards. We'd put the commands to load the new font into newbie's > login.com, and wait for the hilarity to ensue. > > We also wrote a program that would queue an AST to change someone's > DCL command prompt. We'd wait until someone was in one of the many > DEC utilities that have command prompts in the form XYZ>, and then > change their DCL prompt to be the same...when they would exit the utility, > DCL would emit the same prompt they'd been seeing...they'd go nuts > trying to exit some more...someitmes they'd call and report that they > were "stuck in the XYZ utility". > > > Lee K. Gleason N5ZMR > Control-G Consultants > lgleason@houston.rr.com The soft font's capability of the VT220 reminds me of an incident that happend several years ago when I was working at a Navy base. After seeing the downloadable font capability of the VT220, I wrote a font editor to create new fonts for it. A cow orker of mine asked me to build him a cyrillic font to play with on his terminal. Some time later, with the local sales rep was due in for a meeting, along with his supervisor from the district office, he set up a VT220 in the conference room and downloaded the Cyrillic font to it. When they arrived, he then complained to the sales rep that in our last order of terminals were a few that were in cyrillic. This was during the cold war, and that sales rep kept saying that this coould not have happened, DEC did not make cyrillic terminals, etc etc etc. He kept going till his supervisor remarked ---"How can you tell when a salesman is lying?" at which point he realized he had been had. -- Michael LeVine - mlevine@redshift.com "Thirty days hath September, April, June and November. All the rest have thirty one except for Gypsy Rose Lee and every one knew what she had" - Mel Blanc ###### From: arargh312NOSPAM@NOW.AT.arargh.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 21:48:44 -0600 Organization: Not Really! Lines: 37 Message-ID: <35hatv4e6096gi7bbi6sumgern5etf14l1@4ax.com> References: <3FCEC045.B85660A2@comcast.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: tcr92.dynip.ripco.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: e250.ripco.com 1070941707 8783 209.100.226.92 (9 Dec 2003 03:48:27 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ripco.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2003 03:48:27 +0000 (UTC) X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.92/32.572 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.belwue.de!newsfeed.arcor-online.net!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!news-out1.nntp.be!propagator2-sterling!in.nntp.be!gail.ripco.com!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157014 On Mon, 8 Dec 2003 07:27:07 -0700, "Russ Holsclaw" wrote: >> I believe that some or all of the early SYS360's had some kind >of loud >> obnoxious noise device to be used for certain classes of >errors. >> >> In the case of a 360/50, it was a horn, IIRC, that was sounded >on a >> machine check or a parity error. If the front panel switches >were >> dirty, and you used them to display a memory address, > >The console alarm on all the 360 models was a bell, like the type >used in schools to signal the end of class, and just as loud. I remember it as a horn. But, then it was 30 years ago. > >I heard, however, that some military installations found that the >standard IBM-issue bell sounded too much like the fire alarm >bells, and found that they could replace them with an >electrically-equivalent submarine "Dive" klaxon. Perhaps yours >was one of those? Nope. Large insurance company, in Chicago, IL. > >It seemed quite fitting, since the alarm meant that the system >was "going down". > >The CCW op code, by the way, was X'0B'. Maybe they had a bell for that op code, and the horn was for machine checks, which was what I was getting. -- Arargh312 at [drop the 'http://www.' from ->] http://www.arargh.com BCET Basic Compiler Page: http://www.arargh.com/basic/index.html To reply by email, remove the garbage from the reply address. ###### From: Howard Shubs Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Tue, 09 Dec 2003 00:12:53 -0500 Organization: ='SEQUENTIAL' Lines: 16 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: p-316.newsdawg.com Mail-Copies-To: nobody User-Agent: MT-NewsWatcher/3.2 (PPC Mac OS X) X-Face: "S"r{U%bs].&Ud}Pc~~~0a]M:t5l>>EN\1Faw10M9NK1Xq59wo7-"s0S+[{etQorO /Nf-Ci"i9v'MT!R8)J]N[4|2&x1r^Iq&{SB"6dknr0=+6UFb.>+{zMn_1=rw&/V+"d@* ZS5\LoW_ Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!npeer.de.kpn-eurorings.net!news.cambrium.nl!news.cambrium.nl!news.cambrium.nl!newsgate.cistron.nl!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!news.he.net!cyclone-sf.pbi.net!129.250.175.17!pln-w!spln!dex!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!howard Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157017 In article , lee.gleason@halliburton.com (Lee K. Gleason) wrote: > The DEC VT220 terminal had a "soft" character set - different fonts > could be downloaded into them. We edited up a special font that was > identical to the normal one, except each character was upside down and > backwards. We'd put the commands to load the new font into newbie's > login.com, and wait for the hilarity to ensue. Heh. So I wasn't the only one. I developed a utility to design the characters. It probably would have had more general use, but I never thought of a real use for the soft character set. -- You are what you eat, therefore, I'm a vegetable! Cows and chickens and Pop Tarts are too. ###### From: Howard Shubs Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Tue, 09 Dec 2003 00:17:40 -0500 Organization: ='SEQUENTIAL' Lines: 15 Message-ID: References: <20031205235946.13711.00000166@mb-m10.aol.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: p-333.newsdawg.com Mail-Copies-To: nobody User-Agent: MT-NewsWatcher/3.2 (PPC Mac OS X) X-Face: "S"r{U%bs].&Ud}Pc~~~0a]M:t5l>>EN\1Faw10M9NK1Xq59wo7-"s0S+[{etQorO /Nf-Ci"i9v'MT!R8)J]N[4|2&x1r^Iq&{SB"6dknr0=+6UFb.>+{zMn_1=rw&/V+"d@* ZS5\LoW_ Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!news.he.net!cyclone-sf.pbi.net!129.250.175.17!pln-w!spln!dex!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!howard Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157016 In article , Jdavis wrote: > I believe the company that manufactured the electrical yard equipment > was found to be at fault. A large, European manufacturer with a funny > name had installed the wrong equipment, It had hever been tested until > that day. So, it failed its acceptance test, you might say? :-0 Hopefully, no one was hurt! -- You are what you eat, therefore, I'm a vegetable! Cows and chickens and Pop Tarts are too. ###### X-Trace-PostClient-IP: 68.147.131.211 From: Brian Inglis Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Organization: Systematic Software Reply-To: Brian.Inglis@SystematicSw.ab.ca Message-ID: References: X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.93/32.576 English (American) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 40 Date: Tue, 09 Dec 2003 09:05:49 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.71.223.147 X-Complaints-To: abuse@shaw.ca X-Trace: pd7tw2no 1070960749 24.71.223.147 (Tue, 09 Dec 2003 02:05:49 MST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 09 Dec 2003 02:05:49 MST Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!enews.sgi.com!hammer.uoregon.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!newshub.sdsu.edu!elnk-nf2-pas!elnk-pas-nf1!newsfeed.earthlink.net!pd7cy1no!shaw.ca!pd7tw2no.POSTED!53ab2750!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157023 On Tue, 09 Dec 2003 00:12:53 -0500 in alt.folklore.computers, Howard Shubs wrote: >In article , > lee.gleason@halliburton.com (Lee K. Gleason) wrote: > >> The DEC VT220 terminal had a "soft" character set - different fonts >> could be downloaded into them. We edited up a special font that was >> identical to the normal one, except each character was upside down and >> backwards. We'd put the commands to load the new font into newbie's >> login.com, and wait for the hilarity to ensue. > >Heh. So I wasn't the only one. I developed a utility to design the >characters. It probably would have had more general use, but I never >thought of a real use for the soft character set. IBM GDDM generated soft character sets on the fly to produce colour "Programmed Symbols" graphics on 3279-3 display, 3287-2C printer terminals in the days before addressable raster graphics and mice. Used the GDDM utilities to design versions of the company logo and letterhead font, incorporate the logo and font into charts for display, print drafts on dot matrix 3287-2C, and plot good versions on HP-7475 and HP-7550 pen plotters, using a Maersk Data plotting package (MD-Plot), spooling output to RSCS, talking on a coax cable with some kind of Centronics parallel interface box on the end -- perhaps from Agile? IIRC. ISTR at RSCS startup sending some setup sequences to the HP-7550 to reallocate memory from the vector buffer to the I/O buffer to allow double buffering, increasing the plot speed from a slow chunk-whirr to a machine gun like rat-scree-rat-scree-rat. That noise drove the operators crazy, especially at month end, when one of them had to update the monthly data and produce about thirty plots of usage, budget, etc. for management to review the next day. -- Thanks. Take care, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada Brian.Inglis@CSi.com (Brian dot Inglis at SystematicSw dot ab dot ca) fake address use address above to reply ###### From: Brian W Spoor Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Tue, 09 Dec 2003 09:37:56 +0000 Organization: Ye 'Ol Disorganized NNTPCache groupie Lines: 52 Message-ID: <1070962631.882589@ananke.eclipse.net.uk> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: nnrp1.phx1.gblx.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net 1070962678 169934 64.214.31.40 (9 Dec 2003 09:37:58 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@gblx.net NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2003 09:37:58 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20030225 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en In-Reply-To: Cache-Post-Path: ananke.eclipse.net.uk!unknown@81.168.14.122 X-Cache: nntpcache 2.4.0b5 (see http://www.nntpcache.org/) Cache-Post-Path: nnrp1.phx1.gblx.net!212.104.129.36 X-Cache: nntpcache 2.4.0b5 (see http://www.nntpcache.org/) Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!news-out.visi.com!petbe.visi.com!nntp1.roc.gblx.net!nntp.gblx.net!nntp.gblx.net!news.globalcrossing.net!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157026 Lee K. Gleason wrote: > dwilson0000@yahoo.com (sircompwiz) wrote in message news:... > >>Can anyone post some good computer practical jokes here? Thx! >> >>Here's one: With a DOS computer, put a line in AUTOEXEC.BAT that says: >> >>PROMPT FATAL DISK ERROR >> >>ROFLOL! > > > The DEC VT220 terminal had a "soft" character set - different fonts > could be downloaded into them. We edited up a special font that was > identical to the normal one, except each character was upside down and > backwards. We'd put the commands to load the new font into newbie's > login.com, and wait for the hilarity to ensue. > > We also wrote a program that would queue an AST to change someone's > DCL command prompt. We'd wait until someone was in one of the many > DEC utilities that have command prompts in the form XYZ>, and then > change their DCL prompt to be the same...when they would exit the utility, > DCL would emit the same prompt they'd been seeing...they'd go nuts > trying to exit some more...someitmes they'd call and report that they > were "stuck in the XYZ utility". > > > Lee K. Gleason N5ZMR > Control-G Consultants > lgleason@houston.rr.com When I worked for ICL in the George 2+ (batch operating system for ICL 1900 mainframes) development team, one of my colleagues, as an 'April Fool' joke amended the 'banner heading' code in a similar manner. The print from a batch job stream was headed by a page of large letters formed by the letter 'W' to aid the splitting of batches. He amended the code so that before midday on April 1st, the page woul be printed upside down using the letter 'M' - the desired effect being that the header page would be on the back of the previous print. Unfortunately, he forgot to set the 'ready to print' flag in the spooler sub-file so that the print spooler would not pick the job up to print it. That year April 1st was a bank holiday and one of the end-users was running a special shift and nothing would print and they didn't see the funny side of it. Of course, nobody else on the team knew anything about it (not that we would admit it), but the code was very neat, just a few innocuous looking instructions (in assembler). He had an unpleasant meeting with a senior manager, and the incident wasn't talked about again. ###### NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 09 Dec 2003 11:50:56 -0600 From: Evan Platt Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Tue, 09 Dec 2003 09:50:57 -0800 Organization: none Reply-To: evan@theobvious.espphotography.com Message-ID: References: X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.91/32.564 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 15 NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.135.64.135 X-Trace: sv3-vfI+iGGQjvMKzQ+AXI5eyDZIMy2asN6lScnoo3s7vXJBvDIcA0npCJ/HwqgD83KJumE0IgZQKFOBGzS!sCi2dS4MaT2nOMIMfEr85A3FUgert2mSdylZEaJNGXaf4BNmYht51ASSQvbD9VI0HNgmDgbwmQcS!xWo+u7weIclyOE9c X-Complaints-To: abuse@alink.net X-DMCA-Complaints-To: abuse@alink.net X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.1 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!fu-berlin.de!peer01.cox.net!cox.net!border3.nntp.aus1.giganews.com!intern1.nntp.aus1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!nntp.alink.net!news.alink.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157037 On Mon, 08 Dec 2003 21:51:15 MET, Jan van den Broek wrote: >>How about >>Echo Y | format C: /u /q > >Am I the only one getting: > >$ Echo Y | format C: /y/  /q >sh: Echo: not found >sh: format: not found DOS. :) To e-mail me, remove theobvious from my e-mail address. ###### X-Trace-PostClient-IP: 68.147.131.211 From: Brian Inglis Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Organization: Systematic Software Reply-To: Brian.Inglis@SystematicSw.ab.ca Message-ID: References: X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.93/32.576 English (American) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 24 Date: Tue, 09 Dec 2003 19:55:10 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.71.223.147 X-Complaints-To: abuse@shaw.ca X-Trace: pd7tw2no 1070999710 24.71.223.147 (Tue, 09 Dec 2003 12:55:10 MST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 09 Dec 2003 12:55:10 MST Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.belwue.de!feed.news.tiscali.de!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!newshosting.com!news-xfer2.atl.newshosting.com!167.206.3.103.MISMATCH!news3.optonline.net!pd7cy1no!shaw.ca!pd7tw2no.POSTED!53ab2750!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157044 On Tue, 09 Dec 2003 09:50:57 -0800 in alt.folklore.computers, Evan Platt wrote: >On Mon, 08 Dec 2003 21:51:15 MET, Jan van den Broek > wrote: > >>>How about >>>Echo Y | format C: /u /q >> >>Am I the only one getting: >> >>$ Echo Y | format C: /y/  /q >>sh: Echo: not found >>sh: format: not found > >DOS. :) Denial of Service? Did you mean dosemu? -- Thanks. Take care, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada Brian.Inglis@CSi.com (Brian dot Inglis at SystematicSw dot ab dot ca) fake address use address above to reply ###### From: Joe Morris Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 00:25:03 +0000 (UTC) Organization: The MITRE Organization Lines: 38 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: jmorris-pc.mitre.org X-Trace: newslocal.mitre.org 1071015903 4309 128.29.24.210 (10 Dec 2003 00:25:03 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@mitre.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 00:25:03 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: nn/6.6.4 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.belwue.de!feed.news.tiscali.de!news.netplace.de!news-FFM2.ecrc.net!logbridge.uoregon.edu!arclight.uoregon.edu!news.tufts.edu!newstransit.mitre.org!news.mitre.org!jcmorris Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157057 "Michael N. LeVine" writes: >he set up a VT220 in the conference room and downloaded the Cyrillic font >to [a VT220] >When they arrived, he then complained to the sales rep that in our last >order of terminals were a few that were in cyrillic. This was during >the cold war, and that sales rep kept saying that this coould not have >happened, DEC did not make cyrillic terminals, Not a hardware stunt, but related... Many years ago a friend of mine who worked at a Very Publicity-Shy Agency here in the Washington DC area reported an event there that generated a bit of a flap. This shop used lots of IBM mainframes, and like most IBM shops it had a subscription for delivery of program listings microfiche. Nothing too interesting (yet). One day a new package comes in from PID with the latest microfiche cards. It goes to the receiving department where the blocks are being removed from the crumpled-up newspaper used as packing material...when the clerk realizes that the newspaper used for packing was Pravda. Remember that this is a facility where secrecy and paranoia (sometimes justified!) are SOP, and the new, improved, peace-friendly Russia of the post-USSR era was many, many years in the future. The clerk immediately contacted security, which promptly had a litter of kittens. It turned out that the contractor used by IBM to print and mail the microfiche had a summer hire working in the shipping department. He was studying Russian and had a subscription to Pravda...and when he saw where the box was addressed he couldn't resist the temptation. Joe Morris ###### From: ab528@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Heinz W. Wiggeshoff) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: 10 Dec 2003 02:03:16 GMT Organization: The National Capital FreeNet Lines: 13 Message-ID: References: Reply-To: ab528@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Heinz W. Wiggeshoff) NNTP-Posting-Host: smeagol X-Trace: freenet9.carleton.ca 1071021796 16395 134.117.136.48 (10 Dec 2003 02:03:16 GMT) X-Complaints-To: complaints@ncf.ca NNTP-Posting-Date: 10 Dec 2003 02:03:16 GMT X-Given-Sender: ab528@smeagol.carleton.ca (Heinz W. Wiggeshoff) Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!news-out.visi.com!petbe.visi.com!nntp1.roc.gblx.net!nntp.gblx.net!nntp.gblx.net!xcski.com!freenet-news!FreeNet.Carleton.CA!ab528 Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157063 Joe Morris (jcmorris@mitre.org) writes: > ... > It turned out that the contractor used by IBM to print and mail > the microfiche had a summer hire working in the shipping department. > He was studying Russian and had a subscription to Pravda...and when > he saw where the box was addressed he couldn't resist the temptation. To complete the scenario, the kid included the fiche for the latest Russian knock-off of IBM 360. B-) ###### From: jpdavis Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Tue, 09 Dec 2003 22:50:53 -0800 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <20031205235946.13711.00000166@mb-m10.aol.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 22 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!sn-xit-03!sn-xit-04!sn-xit-06!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157071 Howard Shubs wrote: > In article , > Jdavis wrote: > > >>I believe the company that manufactured the electrical yard equipment >>was found to be at fault. A large, European manufacturer with a funny >>name had installed the wrong equipment, It had hever been tested until >>that day. > > > So, it failed its acceptance test, you might say? :-0 > I didn't hear all the details on the equipment failure, I think the faulty equipment was installed during PM or upgrade. > Hopefully, no one was hurt! > No one was hurt during that accident. Unfortunately, more than a few workers have received fatal injuries at the now idle plant. Jim Davis. ###### Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 08:32:49 +0100 From: Steve O'Hara-Smith Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Message-ID: <20031210083249.2d53159b.steveo@eircom.net> References: X-Newsreader: Sylpheed version 0.9.7 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i386-portbld-freebsd4.9) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 13 Organization: Wanadoo NNTP-Posting-Date: 10 Dec 2003 18:00:17 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: p0494.nas1-asd6.dial.wanadoo.nl X-Trace: 1071079217 willi.euronet.nl 169 62.234.209.240:2641 X-Complaints-To: abuse@wanadoo.nl Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.belwue.de!newsfeed.arcor-online.net!npeer.de.kpn-eurorings.net!news.cambrium.nl!news.cambrium.nl!news.cambrium.nl!news2.euro.net!postnews1.euro.net!news.wanadoo.nl!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157096 On Wed, 10 Dec 2003 00:25:03 +0000 (UTC) Joe Morris wrote: JM> He was studying Russian and had a subscription to Pravda...and when JM> he saw where the box was addressed he couldn't resist the temptation. That would be nearly impossible to resist. -- C:>WIN | Directable Mirrors The computer obeys and wins. |A Better Way To Focus The Sun You lose and Bill collects. | licenses available - see: | http://www.sohara.org/ ###### From: Rupert Goodwins Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Message-ID: References: <3fd39b28$1$wg$mr2ice@news.fltg.net> X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.93/32.576 English (American) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 41 Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 02:35:00 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 82.35.99.165 X-Complaints-To: abuse@blueyonder.co.uk X-Trace: news-text.cableinet.net 1071110100 82.35.99.165 (Thu, 11 Dec 2003 02:35:00 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 02:35:00 GMT Organization: blueyonder (post doesn't reflect views of blueyonder) Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!ecngs!feeder.ecngs.de!news.cambrium.nl!news.cambrium.nl!news.cambrium.nl!amsnews01.chello.com!news-hub.cableinet.net!blueyonder!internal-news-hub.cableinet.net!news-text.cableinet.net!53ab2750!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157125 On Sun, 07 Dec 2003 16:25:04 -0500, Julian Thomas wrote: >In , on 12/04/03 > at 09:36 AM, Evan Platt may have >used oatmeal boxes, old string, >and new, used, and recycled electrons to say (at least in part): > >>How about >>Echo Y | format C: /u /q > >Legend or fact? At a user group meeting in the distant past, someone was >demonstrating a speech recognition program on DOS. Someone in the >audience hollered: > >Format C colon > >and several others said (in chorus) >Yes > I first heard that when the Apricot Portable was doing the rounds for review - a DOS machine with speech recognition that got a lot of attention but never really worked. The standard joke was that you could yell out, like a football chant, FORMAT SPACE C COLON YES YES YES. We tried it. It didn't work. Then we tried all the things that the manual said you could do, and they didn't work either. One recent joke that does work on any Windows machine: wait for the legitimate user to be absent, and then take a screenshot of the desktop (Print Scrn, paste clipboard into Paint, save). Then make that image the desktop wallpaper. Then retire to a safe distance, and wait for confusion to set in. Not big and not clever, but very funny... R ###### From: Rupert Goodwins Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Message-ID: References: <20031210083249.2d53159b.steveo@eircom.net> X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.93/32.576 English (American) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 20 Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 02:45:34 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 82.35.99.165 X-Complaints-To: abuse@blueyonder.co.uk X-Trace: news-text.cableinet.net 1071110734 82.35.99.165 (Thu, 11 Dec 2003 02:45:34 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 02:45:34 GMT Organization: blueyonder (post doesn't reflect views of blueyonder) Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!proxad.net!proxad.net!news-hub.cableinet.net!blueyonder!internal-news-hub.cableinet.net!news-text.cableinet.net!53ab2750!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157127 On Wed, 10 Dec 2003 08:32:49 +0100, Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote: >On Wed, 10 Dec 2003 00:25:03 +0000 (UTC) >Joe Morris wrote: > >JM> He was studying Russian and had a subscription to Pravda...and when >JM> he saw where the box was addressed he couldn't resist the temptation. > > That would be nearly impossible to resist. A similar jape was perpetrated by some Royal Air Force pilots... http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=109999 (the Nimrod is a British intelligence/sub hunter/SAR jet. The rest of the banter you can work out for yourself...) R ###### Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 07:44:54 +0100 From: Steve O'Hara-Smith Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Message-ID: <20031211074454.30ac4a0d.steveo@eircom.net> References: <3fd39b28$1$wg$mr2ice@news.fltg.net> X-Newsreader: Sylpheed version 0.9.7 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i386-portbld-freebsd4.9) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 17 Organization: Wanadoo NNTP-Posting-Date: 11 Dec 2003 06:52:48 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: p0541.nas3-asd6.dial.wanadoo.nl X-Trace: 1071125568 maya.euronet.nl 21385 62.234.218.33:2673 X-Complaints-To: abuse@wanadoo.nl Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!newsgate.cistron.nl!news.cambrium.nl!news.cambrium.nl!news.cambrium.nl!news2.euro.net!postnews1.euro.net!news.wanadoo.nl!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157136 On Thu, 11 Dec 2003 02:35:00 GMT Rupert Goodwins wrote: RG> One recent joke that does work on any Windows machine: wait for the RG> legitimate user to be absent, and then take a screenshot of the RG> desktop (Print Scrn, paste clipboard into Paint, save). Then make that RG> image the desktop wallpaper. Then retire to a safe distance, and wait RG> for confusion to set in. Not big and not clever, but very funny... Any experienced Windows user would just reboot at the third failed click :) -- C:>WIN | Directable Mirrors The computer obeys and wins. |A Better Way To Focus The Sun You lose and Bill collects. | licenses available - see: | http://www.sohara.org/ ###### From: "Nico de Jong" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers References: <6YOzb.11432$ws.1059224@news02.tsnz.net> Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Lines: 35 X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 Message-ID: Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 11:34:38 +0100 NNTP-Posting-Host: 129.142.193.202 X-Complaints-To: abuse@get2.net X-Trace: news.get2net.dk 1071138778 129.142.193.202 (Thu, 11 Dec 2003 11:32:58 CET) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 11:32:58 CET Organization: get2net Internet Kunde Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!newsfeed3.funet.fi!newsfeed1.funet.fi!newsfeeds.funet.fi!uio.no!newsfeed1.uni2.dk!news.get2net.dk.POSTED!53ab2750!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157145 "Brian Boutel" skrev i en meddelelse > I was told by a former British Army Officer that he had worked around > 1960 at an army computer centre, where the programmers were corporals > (it's just clerical, isn't it?), but the operators were officers (in > charge of expensive equipment). Of course, officers had to wear Mess > Kit, including swords, after 8pm, even while working on the night shift > in the computer room! > We can find a parallel situation today, although not in the IT environment. I am hobbying as an NBC specialist in the danish Army Reserve. We therefore often see that Privates advise majors and colonels on what to do. In the danish Defence, this is not a problem, but when we work with officers from other countries, especially former Warszaw Pact, this _is_ a problem. They always look at your shoulder, to see what is present. Normally nothing at all. It even happened (although I havnt seen it in person), that a NATO officer went to the colonel in charge, and asked if he was aware that mere Privates were doing officers work. The colonel assured him that there was no problem, so the Nato guy came back, and asked politely how long we had been doing this kind of work. Well, a sergent said, I have been doing it for about 20 years, and the colleague you can see over there, for about the same time. However, the guy in that corner (and there he pointed somewhere else), is still considered to be in training. He has been with us for only 12 years. The Nato guy thought he was being pissed on, but noone laughed or was even amused, so he walked away, mumbling and shaking his head. There were no more problems with him. Jeez, how I like being a specialist in something which others look at with awe, or consider it black magic. Nico ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes References: <6YOzb.11432$ws.1059224@news02.tsnz.net> Organization: me From: Morten Reistad X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test76 (Apr 2, 2001) Originator: mrr@via.reistad.priv.no (Morten Reistad) Message-ID: Lines: 99 Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 14:50:07 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 193.217.4.55 X-Complaints-To: abuse@tele2.no X-Trace: juliett.dax.net 1071154207 193.217.4.55 (Thu, 11 Dec 2003 15:50:07 MET) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 15:50:07 MET Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.belwue.de!feed.news.tiscali.de!uninett.no!uio.no!193.216.69.35.MISMATCH!dax.net!juliett.dax.net!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157162 In article , Nico de Jong wrote: >"Brian Boutel" skrev i en meddelelse >> I was told by a former British Army Officer that he had worked around >> 1960 at an army computer centre, where the programmers were corporals >> (it's just clerical, isn't it?), but the operators were officers (in >> charge of expensive equipment). Of course, officers had to wear Mess >> Kit, including swords, after 8pm, even while working on the night shift >> in the computer room! >> >We can find a parallel situation today, although not in the IT environment. >I am hobbying as an NBC specialist in the danish Army Reserve. We therefore >often see that Privates advise majors and colonels on what to do. In the >danish Defence, this is not a problem, but when we work with officers from >other countries, especially former Warszaw Pact, this _is_ a problem. They >always look at your shoulder, to see what is present. Normally nothing at >all. I was in the Norwegian Navy from jan 84 until apr 85, after finishing college with Bachelor, Business related stuff and IT; plus lots of banking and programming experience. After basic training (classic boot camp) I was "discovered" and send to the Navy command as a "clerk"; really doing advanced personell functions. (The unit was FO/SST/P3-D) They had a desperate shortage of qualified personell, and they solved it by looking in the rolls of draftees. There was a thin veneer of "grunt credibility" in that we were to man the "perimeter defence force"; with instructions to destroy all documents and computer records if the building was ever in danger of being compromised. With access to unlimited amounts of hand grenades it was possible to obliterate computer records in record time. But this task took around 2 days per month worth of drills. The real work was keeping the personell systems running. We were assigned to top brass as secretaries, to take minutes of meetings, and to massage the databases for them, as well as doing the major office work. Programming was included. In total there were around 30 draftees in such roles. We all reported to a team of two junior leutenants and a Senior Captain (navy equivalent of Junior Colonel). The computer functions performed was amazingly advanced. They were constantly modelling personell allocation and performance with advanced programming models, and there could be pretty advanced discussions between Privates (OK, after a year we made corporal) and senior officers. All production stuff required signoff from our boss, but he acted as any QA officer would in a normal corporataion. We had rules that privates were to salute officers inside the secure perimter only before 0900; unless they were visitors or had rank of general or above. Otherwise the saluting would get in the way of actually doing work. Senior officers were everywhere; and some quarters like OBS rooms etc were pretty cramped. The only time I "unexpectedly" sprang to attention was when I was mentally deep inside a 20 year old, over-maintained 360 assembler routine; and then I heard someone at the door and saw a four-star general enter. He was lost in our navy backwaters of the high command, but after getting directions he asked what I was doing; and after informing that the task was documenting XXXXXX routine, he commented "Oh, we've been wondering if that code is quite sane. Get back to work; I won't disturb anymore. And get a copy of that documentation to my secretary". >It even happened (although I havnt seen it in person), that a NATO >officer went to the colonel in charge, and asked if he was aware that >mere Privates were doing officers work. The colonel assured him that >there was no problem, so the Nato guy came back, and asked politely >how long we had been doing this kind of work. Well, a sergent said, I >have been doing it for about 20 years, and the colleague you can see >over there, for about the same time. However, the guy in that corner >(and there he pointed somewhere else), is still considered to be in >training. He has been with us for only 12 years. For our work the alternative would have been unionized civilians. But the work was bona-fide military assignments, so using privates was OK'ed. The "real" MP guard force was a constant source of friction. It didn't help that the "programmer team" consistently outperformend them in the shooting range, and had a LOT better service record.. (I even got the sharp-shooter distinction in silver after a very successful round). You could only get to this posting with a _perfect_ service record; any little infraction and you would be in the express lane to a frigate posting. >The Nato guy thought he was being pissed on, but noone laughed or was even >amused, so he walked away, mumbling and shaking his head. There were no more >problems with him. > >Jeez, how I like being a specialist in something which others look at with >awe, or consider it black magic. This bit was solved with having the draftee act as a secretary and general footman for a staff officer in NATO functions. This was acceptable to the NATO brass. Even if the private was the one actually doing the work. It was also odd to travel to outlying forts and bases; where we got a lot more respect from the officers than from the privates. The officers recognised that we were posted at the unit that held their next posting in their hands; but for the privates we were just grunts from another unit. (This was clearly indicated on the uniform). -- mrr ###### From: "Russ Holsclaw" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers References: <3FCEC045.B85660A2@comcast.net> <35hatv4e6096gi7bbi6sumgern5etf14l1@4ax.com> Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Lines: 75 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1158 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1165 Message-ID: Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 16:41:21 -0700 NNTP-Posting-Host: 216.38.216.149 X-Trace: news.uswest.net 1071186262 216.38.216.149 (Thu, 11 Dec 2003 17:44:22 CST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 17:44:22 CST Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!tiscali!newsfeed1.ip.tiscali.net!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!news-out.visi.com!petbe.visi.com!feed.news.qwest.net!news.uswest.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157180 > >The CCW op code, by the way, was X'0B'. > Maybe they had a bell for that op code, and the horn was for machine > checks, which was what I was getting. No, sorry. There was no horn on IBM-issue Model 50s. I spent a good 8 weeks attending school on the Model 50 at the IBM plant in Kingston, NY, and then maintained several of them in Washington, DC, as an IBM CE. If there was a horn, it was because someone had replaced the bell with one. As I said, I had heard of this being done, due to the similarity of the bell-sound to that of a fire alarm in some buildings (notably the Pentagon). Admittedly, that was only a story I heard, because I never serviced systems in the Pentagon. IBM had a separate branch office for Defense Department accounts. My territory was in downtown DC proper: civilian government agencies such as Agriculture, the FBI, the National Center for Health Statistics at HEW, and the FDIC. I mention those in particular because they all had Model 50s. However, to the best of my knowledge, all the models of the 360 used the same type of bell, and they all sounded exactly alike: very loud. The bell was a pretty conventional one, driven by 48VDC, IIRC. It was probably not hard to find other noise-making devices with compatible electrical requirements. IBM used 48 volts for pretty much any electro-mechanical devices, such as relays and alarm bells. In fact, a number of public schools at the time were still equipped with IBM clocks ringing the hallway bells. The 360 alarms sounded so much like a school bell, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that they used the same supplier. Hardware-wise, all a machine-check did was to initiate a machine-check interrupt, a noiseless software event. The bell-ringing was strictly an operating-system response. OS/360 itself never rang the bell except for a system-wide fatal condition, such as a machine check, or from certain kinds of system errors that where it was deemed impossible to continue. (An I/O error trying to fetch an SVC module from SYS1.SVCLIB was one such case.) In the case of machine-checks, the bell only sounded if the Machine-check interrupt handler was allowed to run. This could be prevented by setting the "Check Control" switch on the console to "Stop". The normal setting was "Process". Then, a machine check would stop the CPU cold and display the error in the lights. The error lights were only visible when the roller switches for the lights were set to show the error-condition labels (printed with a red background on the roller). However, all the machine-check and channel-check errors were OR-ed together into an actual red light labelled "Master Check" on the right side of the console. A lot of operators mistakenly believed that a "Master Check" was a particular type of CPU error, but it was actually an all-purpose error indication telling you to spin the rollers around to show which light indicated the true source of the error. The alarm bell was physically attached to the sheet-metal enclosure for the power supplies at the rear of the CPU frame. It was controlled by the control unit for the 1052 console typewriter. That control unit consisted of a pair of SLT boards mounted near the front of the machine near the bottom. There was only one command for ringing the bell, and it was a CCW opcode of X'0B'. There was no second alarm device, nor a command-code to operate one. I mention all this details to demonstrate that I know what I'm talking about when it comes to the inner workings of the IBM 360 Model 50 (machine type 2050). I still have my old CE toolbag (brown attache-case style). ###### From: arargh312NOSPAM@NOW.AT.arargh.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 18:48:24 -0600 Organization: Not Really! Lines: 40 Message-ID: References: <3FCEC045.B85660A2@comcast.net> <35hatv4e6096gi7bbi6sumgern5etf14l1@4ax.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: tcr126.dynip.ripco.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: e250.ripco.com 1071190081 2339 209.100.226.126 (12 Dec 2003 00:48:01 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ripco.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 00:48:01 +0000 (UTC) X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.92/32.572 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!zen.net.uk!news-xfer.cox.net!peer01.cox.net!cox.net!newshosting.com!news-xfer2.atl.newshosting.com!diablo.voicenet.com!newsfeed.hal-mli.net!feeder1.hal-mli.net!news.mbo.net!gail.ripco.com!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157181 On Thu, 11 Dec 2003 16:41:21 -0700, "Russ Holsclaw" wrote: >> >The CCW op code, by the way, was X'0B'. >> Maybe they had a bell for that op code, and the horn was >for machine >> checks, which was what I was getting. > >No, sorry. There was no horn on IBM-issue Model 50s. I spent >a good 8 weeks attending school on the Model 50 at the IBM >plant in Kingston, NY, and then maintained several of them >in Washington, DC, as an IBM CE. > >If there was a horn, it was because someone had replaced the >bell with one. >I mention all this details to demonstrate that I know what >I'm talking about when it comes to the inner workings of the >IBM 360 Model 50 (machine type 2050). I still have my old CE >toolbag (brown attache-case style). I can't/won't argue about the above. All I ever did with a 50, was push buttons. I can distinctly remember what happened. I was running a stand alone program - (Online OS - from the contributed program library, and I still have the tapes, if they are readable) - and it stopped. I don't remember just why. Then I used the console lever switches to select a display address, and hit the display button. Then I got the *noise*. All I really remember is that it was loud and obnoxious. ISTR that later the diagnostic printout showed parity errors of some kind. But, that too is dim. BTW, I still have two card saws in my tool kit. :-) -- Arargh312 at [drop the 'http://www.' from ->] http://www.arargh.com BCET Basic Compiler Page: http://www.arargh.com/basic/index.html To reply by email, remove the garbage from the reply address. ###### From: "Russ Holsclaw" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers References: <3FCEC045.B85660A2@comcast.net> <35hatv4e6096gi7bbi6sumgern5etf14l1@4ax.com> Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Lines: 55 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1158 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1165 Message-ID: Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 14:28:58 -0700 NNTP-Posting-Host: 216.38.216.149 X-Trace: news.uswest.net 1071264719 216.38.216.149 (Fri, 12 Dec 2003 15:31:59 CST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 15:31:59 CST Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!tiscali!newsfeed1.ip.tiscali.net!proxad.net!news-out.visi.com!petbe.visi.com!feed.news.qwest.net!news.uswest.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157292 > I can distinctly remember what happened. I was running a stand alone > program - (Online OS - from the contributed program library, and I > still have the tapes, if they are readable) - and it stopped. I don't > remember just why. Then I used the console lever switches to select a > display address, and hit the display button. Then I got the *noise*. > All I really remember is that it was loud and obnoxious. ISTR that > later the diagnostic printout showed parity errors of some kind. But, > that too is dim. Aha! That would be dirty contacts on the address switches! Believe it or not, the parity on the address and data switches was actually generated through an extra set of contacts on each switch. The parity-generation was done through a set of dpdt contacts that were wired so as to reverse or un-reverse a pair of lines that ran down the row of switches, thus producing a parity signal. Unless the switches were flipped up and down from time to time, they'd collect dust on the contacts and then using the switches could actually produce a parity error. If you got one of those, and then hit Start to let the machine run, the parity-check latch would still be set and you'd get a machine-check interrupt. This would only happen if you'd hit one of the buttons that caused the switch settings to be used, such as when displaying or altering memory locations ("Display" or "Store"), or setting the instruction counter to a new address ("Set IC"). The machine-check interrupt handler for BPS (Basic Programming Support: the minimal "supervisor" program IBM supplied for stand-alone bootable code) would only ring the console alarm and go into an uninterruptable wait-state. The remedy was either to fiddle with the address switches a lot to keep those contacts clean, or to set the Check Control switch to "Ignore" (or was it "Disable"?) so as to avoid get a machine-check before using the switches to display/alter storage, set the instruction counter, or whatever. In my territory, I used to flip all the switches back and forth several times as part of my preventive maintenance routine. > BTW, I still have two card saws in my tool kit. :-) Mine still comes in handy ... good for removing paper jams in printers and copiers. ###### From: arargh312NOSPAM@NOW.AT.arargh.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 16:16:12 -0600 Organization: Not Really! Lines: 34 Message-ID: <46fktvs88301nr6jo6venamkaanl6n1ghf@4ax.com> References: <3FCEC045.B85660A2@comcast.net> <35hatv4e6096gi7bbi6sumgern5etf14l1@4ax.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: tcr34.dynip.ripco.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: e250.ripco.com 1071267347 25717 209.100.226.34 (12 Dec 2003 22:15:47 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ripco.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 22:15:47 +0000 (UTC) X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.92/32.572 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!enews.sgi.com!arclight.uoregon.edu!hammer.uoregon.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!pln-w!extra.newsguy.com!lotsanews.com!feedwest.aleron.net!aleron.net!news.mainstreet.net!newsfeed2.dallas1.level3.net!news.level3.com!crtntx1-snh1.gtei.net!news.gtei.net!newsfeed1.easynews.com!easynews.com!easynews!newsfeed.hal-mli.net!feeder2.hal-mli.net!news.mbo.net!gail.ripco.com!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157293 On Fri, 12 Dec 2003 14:28:58 -0700, "Russ Holsclaw" wrote: >("Display" or "Store"), or setting the instruction counter >to a new address ("Set IC"). Display is probably what I used. >The machine-check interrupt handler for BPS (Basic >Programming Support: the minimal "supervisor" program IBM >supplied for stand-alone bootable code) would only ring the >console alarm and go into an uninterruptable wait-state. That's what Online-OS probably used. >In my territory, I used to flip all the switches back and >forth several times as part of my preventive maintenance >routine. I tried that, that night, but it didn't solve the problem. Must have been too dirty. I was probably the first person to use the switches in months or years. :-) >> BTW, I still have two card saws in my tool kit. :-) > >Mine still comes in handy ... good for removing paper jams >in printers and copiers. Yep, used one to remove a lot of sticky labels from a printer that I was given as broken. Works pretty good, now. -- Arargh312 at [drop the 'http://www.' from ->] http://www.arargh.com BCET Basic Compiler Page: http://www.arargh.com/basic/index.html To reply by email, remove the garbage from the reply address. ###### From: Joe Morris Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 22:23:10 +0000 (UTC) Organization: The MITRE Organization Lines: 32 Message-ID: References: <3FCEC045.B85660A2@comcast.net> <35hatv4e6096gi7bbi6sumgern5etf14l1@4ax.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: jmorris-pc.mitre.org X-Trace: newslocal.mitre.org 1071267790 15497 128.29.24.210 (12 Dec 2003 22:23:10 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@mitre.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 22:23:10 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: nn/6.6.4 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!ucberkeley!newstransit.mitre.org!news.mitre.org!jcmorris Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157294 arargh312NOSPAM@NOW.AT.arargh.com writes: >I can distinctly remember what happened. I was running a stand alone >program - (Online OS - from the contributed program library, and I >still have the tapes, if they are readable) - and it stopped. I don't >remember just why. Then I used the console lever switches to select a >display address, and hit the display button. Then I got the *noise*. >All I really remember is that it was loud and obnoxious. ISTR that >later the diagnostic printout showed parity errors of some kind. But, >that too is dim. For some reason, the design of the operator control panel on the S/360 used mechanical contacts to generate the parity bit for the address and data switches. (On the early systems there was one lever switch per bit, so each switch had a DPDT function to route the parity lines, and the last switch selected one or the other based on its position). If the switches were interrogated while any of them were partially operated the parity bit might be forced to zero or one; if that didn't match the data bits a machine check event occurred. For systems without both software and hardware recovery features, this usually resulted in a panic stop with the console alarm ringing. I had to handle this when I wrote a routine to allow programs to read the switch positions -- we used it to allow the operator to control the sysin/sysout spooling utility that supported our 7040. The routine replaced the MCNPSW when it started, and if nothing happened restored it at exit; if a MC interrupt occurred it had to flush any secondary MC interrupts (I never figured out why they occurred, but they did) and return to the caller with a failure flag. Joe Morris ###### From: lucvdv Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 13:53:57 +0100 Organization: . Message-ID: <4u1mtvsvm440jooeqtmn0ad53vui5tg14q@4ax.com> References: X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.93/32.576 English (American) X-No-Archive: yes MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 24 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!snoopy.risq.qc.ca!newsfeed.news2me.com!sn-xit-02!sn-xit-04!sn-xit-06!sn-post-01!supernews.com!news.supernews.com!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157378 Jan van den Broek wrote: > >How about > >Echo Y | format C: /u /q > > Am I the only one getting: > > $ Echo Y | format C: /y/  /q > sh: Echo: not found > sh: format: not found And this one doesn't work here: C:\>ls -l > /dev/kmem The system cannot find the path specified. > Also not intended as a practical joke, but imho very funny, was an error- > message by a predecessor stating "There's nothing on this empty line!" I once patched DOS's command.com to say "too many fingers on keyboard" instead of "command or executable file not found" (or what was the exact wording) and installed it on a few systems. ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes References: <4u1mtvsvm440jooeqtmn0ad53vui5tg14q@4ax.com> From: Pascal Bourguignon Date: 13 Dec 2003 17:22:58 +0100 Message-ID: <87u144n0v1.fsf@thalassa.informatimago.com> User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.3 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Lines: 18 Organization: [posted via Easynet Spain] NNTP-Posting-Host: 62.93.174.79 X-Trace: DXC=CWXR;ElR`_8_e?aL07^4^:0mDM\=e`Rh8m9FY3?HjZ50 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!switch.ch!takemy.news.telefonica.de!telefonica.de!fu-berlin.de!feed.news.tiscali.de!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!nntp.theplanet.net!inewsm1.nntp.theplanet.net!easynet-monga!easynet.net!easynet-post2!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157400 lucvdv writes: > I once patched DOS's command.com to say "too many fingers on keyboard" > instead of "command or executable file not found" (or what was the > exact wording) and installed it on a few systems. :-) I can see people pulling hands out of keyboards! -- __Pascal_Bourguignon__ . * * . * .* . http://www.informatimago.com/ . * . .* There is no worse tyranny than to force * . . /\ () . * a man to pay for what he does not . . / .\ . * . want merely because you think it .*. / * \ . . would be good for him. -- Robert Heinlein . /* o \ . http://www.theadvocates.org/ * '''||''' . SCO Spam-magnet: postmaster@sco.com ****************** ###### From: freddy1X Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers References: Lines: 23 User-Agent: KNode/0.6.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit Message-ID: Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 16:57:29 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 68.248.131.12 X-Complaints-To: abuse@earthlink.net X-Trace: newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net 1071334649 68.248.131.12 (Sat, 13 Dec 2003 08:57:29 PST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 08:57:29 PST Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!newsfeed.freenet.de!newsfeed.news2me.com!elnk-nf2-pas!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.pas.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net.POSTED!41226605!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157405 Michael Roach wrote: > In article , > sircompwiz wrote: >>Can anyone post some good computer practical jokes here? Thx! > > Our vendor decided to change "Press Any Key" to "Kiss Keyboard" in > standard output on April 1. Thus, "Press Any Key to Continue" becomes > "Kiss Keyboard to Continue". This didn't just affect the application; in > scripts, echo "Press Any Key to Exit" would also be modified. Try switching two of the neighboring keys on your mark's keyboard. Or if possoble, borrow a duplicate key from a spare keyboard. For a time, on the office computer that I used there were two "D"'s and no "F". More than once, I would notice a coworker pausing over those keys. There used to be some Dataproducts printers where you could swap the "line feed" and "form feed" buttons. There are light bulbs that are used in stereo systems that look exactly like those little glass cartridge fuses. Swap one of those in and the mackine doesn't work and the "fuse" is glowing brightly. ###### From: Vlad Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 11:02:07 +0100 Organization: . Message-ID: References: X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.93/32.576 English (American) X-No-Archive: yes MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 47 Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!eusc.inter.net!priapus.visi.com!orange.octanews.net!news.octanews.net!news-out.visi.com!petbe.visi.com!sn-xit-02!sn-xit-01!sn-post-01!supernews.com!news.supernews.com!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157468 freddy1X wrote: > Try switching two of the neighboring keys on your mark's keyboard. Or if > possoble, borrow a duplicate key from a spare keyboard. For a time, on the > office computer that I used there were two "D"'s and no "F". More than > once, I would notice a coworker pausing over those keys. This can even be a problem to a touch typist. I'm used to both AZERTY and QWERTY layout: I live in a country where AZERTY is the norm, but I've been using computers since before those could be found with anything but QWERTY, and I still prefer that layout for my own machines (because it's better(*), not because it's what I learned to type on: I touch typed on AZERTY before I saw a computer for the first time). I can now use either kind of keyboard on a computer that's configured for the other, but as soon as I look down at the keyboard while I'm typing, I start producing errors. Side Q: did you ever disassemble your keyboard (remove all the caps) for cleaning, and put eveything back in place without using another keyboard as model? I do it at least once a year. When I doubt about the exact location to place a cap, I just type a phrase or a fragment of C code that requires it (blind, on an unconnected keyboard). The only ones I keep swapping around, because I rarely use them, are the / and * on the numeric keypad. (*) Better, because on average it requires less keystrokes to type the same. For example: no shift key required for . and , and digits. It often strikes me that people used to AZERTY keyboards always either use the numeric keypad for digits, even in the middle of alphabetic text, or KEEP THE CAPS LOCK ON so the top row remains numeric. For example, about half of the e-mails my department head sends are in ALL CAPS, but that doesn't mean he's shouting at me. At least not always ;) That's why I have a theory that some people who SHOUT all the time in newsgroups are just using non-US keyboard layouts, and trying to reduce the number of keystrokes in a message. ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers From: Mikko Nahkola Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes References: Reply-To: mnahkola@trein.ntc.nokia.com Message-ID: User-Agent: slrn/0.9.7.4 (Linux) Lines: 49 Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 12:00:27 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 172.22.119.80 X-Complaints-To: newsmaster@nokia.com X-Trace: news1.nokia.com 1071489627 172.22.119.80 (Mon, 15 Dec 2003 14:00:27 EET) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 14:00:27 EET Organization: Nokia Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!npeer.de.kpn-eurorings.net!fr.ip.ndsoftware.net!217.209.241.197.MISMATCH!news-stoc.telia.net!news-stoa.telia.net!telia.net!nntp.inet.fi!inet.fi!newsfeed1.nokia.com!news1.nokia.com!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157619 In article , Vlad wrote: > freddy1X wrote: >> Try switching two of the neighboring keys on your mark's keyboard. Or if >> possoble, borrow a duplicate key from a spare keyboard. For a time, on the >> office computer that I used there were two "D"'s and no "F". More than >> once, I would notice a coworker pausing over those keys. > This can even be a problem to a touch typist. > I'm used to both AZERTY and QWERTY layout: I live in a country where > ....... > I can now use either kind of keyboard on a computer that's configured > for the other, but as soon as I look down at the keyboard while I'm > typing, I start producing errors. I think I've read something about a helpdesk call or some such with the user not being able to log in while standing, but when sitting down it worked - and the cause was that the user could touch type while sitting down or something. I wonder where it was. Probably could be found with a search engine, somewhere on the 'net. > Side Q: did you ever disassemble your keyboard (remove all the caps) > for cleaning, and put eveything back in place without using another > keyboard as model? After a cat had urinated on it, yes. (removed _everything_ and washed all the parts ...) > It often strikes me that people used to AZERTY keyboards always either > use the numeric keypad for digits, even in the middle of alphabetic > text, or KEEP THE CAPS LOCK ON so the top row remains numeric. Oh. I did know the AZERTY is weird but I hadn't expected _that_ weird ... > That's why I have a theory that some people who SHOUT all the time in > newsgroups are just using non-US keyboard layouts, and trying to > reduce the number of keystrokes in a message. I don't think that's all _that_ likely. I mean, I've used a bunch of different non-US keyboard layouts and none of those had that "feature". Never actually seen an AZERTY, though... a bunch of different QWERTY layouts and some QWERTZ. -- Mikko Nahkola #include #Not speaking for my employer. No warranty. YMMV. ###### From: Lon Stowell Reply-To: LonDot.Stowell@ComcastPeriod.Net User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 40 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: 67.170.229.36 X-Complaints-To: abuse@comcast.net X-Trace: attbi_s53 1071519328 67.170.229.36 (Mon, 15 Dec 2003 20:15:28 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 20:15:28 GMT Organization: Comcast Online Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 20:15:28 GMT Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!newspeer.monmouth.com!newshosting.com!news-xfer1.atl.newshosting.com!diablo.voicenet.com!prodigy.com!prodigy.com!attbi_feed4!attbi.com!attbi_s53.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157669 Roughly 12/15/03 04:00, Mikko Nahkola's monkeys randomly typed: > In article , Vlad wrote: >> freddy1X wrote: > >>> Try switching two of the neighboring keys on your mark's keyboard. Or if >>> possoble, borrow a duplicate key from a spare keyboard. For a time, on the >>> office computer that I used there were two "D"'s and no "F". More than >>> once, I would notice a coworker pausing over those keys. > >> This can even be a problem to a touch typist. >> I'm used to both AZERTY and QWERTY layout: I live in a country where >> ....... >> I can now use either kind of keyboard on a computer that's configured >> for the other, but as soon as I look down at the keyboard while I'm >> typing, I start producing errors. > > I think I've read something about a helpdesk call or some such with the > user not being able to log in while standing, but when sitting down it > worked - and the cause was that the user could touch type while sitting > down or something. I wonder where it was. Probably could be found with > a search engine, somewhere on the 'net. There is the folkloric service call where a terminal operator would experience continual lockup issues when standing in front of the terminal. This may have become folklore due to a few genuine incidents with the Holiday Inn "Holidex" terminals of the 2970 variety, as they had the IBM keyboards that would effectively disable all other keys if the space bar was depressed. This terminal was frequently mounted on a stand at the inn's front desk area, every now and then the stand would place the terminal keyboard at exactly the right height to cause the lockup when well endowed female clerks got a bit too close and their breasts ended up on the space bar. -- Fan of the dumbest team in America. ###### From: never+mail@panix.com.invalid (Michael Roach) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 20:33:35 +0000 (UTC) Organization: A small notepad underneath my in box Lines: 17 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: panix1.panix.com X-Trace: reader2.panix.com 1071520415 13975 166.84.1.1 (15 Dec 2003 20:33:35 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 20:33:35 +0000 (UTC) X-Clueful-responder: echo "never-reply+panix=com" | tr "-+=" "+@." X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test76 (Apr 2, 2001) Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!npeer.de.kpn-eurorings.net!news-xfer.cox.net!peer02.cox.net!cox.net!panix!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157675 In article , freddy1X wrote: >Try switching two of the neighboring keys on your mark's keyboard. Or if >possoble, borrow a duplicate key from a spare keyboard. For a time, on the >office computer that I used there were two "D"'s and no "F". More than >once, I would notice a coworker pausing over those keys. I once had a keyboard where the 's' key (not the cap) was broken. The tech wouldn't give me another keyboard, so I disabled the '=' and '3' keys (with bits of paper), told him the 's', '=', and '3' keys were broken, and I needed to add "s = 3" to a program. Well, not really a joke as I did this to get work done, and I did get my replacement keyboard. -- Quigley's Law: Whoever has any authority over you, no matter how small, will atttempt to use it. ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers From: William Hamblen Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes References: User-Agent: slrn/0.9.8.0 (Linux) Lines: 7 Message-ID: Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2003 02:41:49 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.69.50.198 X-Complaints-To: abuse@earthlink.net X-Trace: newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net 1071542509 207.69.50.198 (Mon, 15 Dec 2003 18:41:49 PST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 18:41:49 PST Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!newsfeed.stanford.edu!headwall.stanford.edu!newshub.sdsu.edu!elnk-nf2-pas!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.pas.earthlink.net!newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net.POSTED!1f1d1bd7!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:157724 On 2003-12-15, Michael Roach wrote: > I once had a keyboard where the 's' key (not the cap) was broken. The > tech wouldn't give me another keyboard ... That'_ a _illy way to do bu_ine__. That tech needed hi_ a__ kicked. ###### From: "S.C.Sprong" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: 22 Dec 2003 19:40:59 GMT Lines: 19 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: salto.student.utwente.nl (130.89.167.45) X-Trace: news.uni-berlin.de 1072122059 10759499 130.89.167.45 ([21098]) X-Orig-Path: not-for-mail Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.belwue.de!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!salto.student.utwente.NL!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:158333 sircompwiz wrote: >Can anyone post some good computer practical jokes here? Thx! The sad thing is that if such stunts are pulled nowadays (post 2000): 1) Your basic user thinks that it's a malfunction, such as a 'virus' and retries, reboots, or reinstalls. If they can they whine at the admins. 2) Your basic 'admin' thinks and acts the same, but they whine at their administrative superiors instead. 3) The (un)happy few with a clue immediately suspect the knowledgable ones, e.g. this author, who may end up in deep trouble (suspension, disbarment[?]). No, funny computer practical jokes are for a large part a thing of the past. scs ###### From: Pete Verdon Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 22:44:35 +0000 Organization: University of Warwick, UK Lines: 26 Message-ID: References: Reply-To: usenet@verdonet.organisation.unitedkingdom NNTP-Posting-Host: host217-42-38-172.range217-42.btcentralplus.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit X-Trace: wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk 1072133076 18242 217.42.38.172 (22 Dec 2003 22:44:36 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@csv.warwick.ac.uk NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 22:44:36 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: KNode/0.7.2 X-No-Archive: Yes Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.belwue.de!newsfeed.arcor-online.net!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!lnewsoutpeer00.lnd.ops.eu.uu.net!lnewsinpeer00.lnd.ops.eu.uu.net!emea.uu.net!server1.netnews.ja.net!warwick!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:158351 S.C.Sprong wrote: > funny computer practical jokes are for a large part a thing of the past. I dunno. This thread has inspired me to write a booby-trapped (shell-script) version of ls(1) to put into a friend's ~/bin next time he leaves his session logged-on in the Sun Lounge[1]. At present, two out of three times it just calls ls (passing the arguments through). Otherwise, it calls ls but prints messages as well, first at the top of the listing, then at the bottom (where it's more obvious), then into $PS1 (and spawns a new shell to show it), and finally it generates an entirely fake "humorous" ls-response and a large and unmissable message. It uses a dotfile to keep track of how far it's got through this process. I realise that this is almost embarrassingly unsophisticated - does anyone have any amusing (but harmless) suggestions? Pete [1] One of the two "terminal rooms"[2] in the Computer Science Department at Warwick, the other being the Penguin Pit. Just to confuse matters, the Sun Lounge actually contains Linux machines too, since they replaced the characterful old Suns with boring plastic PCs. [2] Our department is in a fairly new building. These would never have had terminals in. ###### From: jeffj@panix.com (Jeff Jonas) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: 30 Dec 2003 07:14:48 -0500 Organization: Jeff's House of Electronic Parts Lines: 34 Message-ID: References: <33hAb.1754$rP6.370@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net> <1966.471T1590T8765099@kltpzyxm.invalid> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix5.panix.com X-Trace: reader2.panix.com 1072786488 9097 166.84.1.5 (30 Dec 2003 12:14:48 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 12:14:48 +0000 (UTC) Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!zen.net.uk!in.100proofnews.com!in.100proofnews.com!newsfeed.hal-mli.net!feeder1.hal-mli.net!dfw-feed.news.verio.net!stl-feed.news.verio.net!newsreader.wustl.edu!gumby.it.wmich.edu!aanews.merit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!panix!panix5.panix.com!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:158836 >>An possibly apocryphal story involved a quite cute female IBM1130 >>computer operator and the abuse she received from the senior male >>staff at Portland State. The story was that a program was written that >>repeatedly fired the hammers on the 1403 printer without linefeed. >>eventually cutting paper dolls out of the fanfold and falling >>into the printer. My school's IBM 1130 had the slower 1132 printer, which sounded like marching men at a fast pace when firing ALL hammers at ALL positions (which usually required halting the machine with the print buffer all set). I didn't think of tape recording the sounds of the machines, for who would have predicted that punched cards would totally disappear after about 100 years of use and impact printers would become so scarce? Printer designers wised up and made things harder to break, depending on the printer design. - Some didn't use the solenoid to directly print, but to engage a clutch so a rotating rod attached to a STRONG MOTOR providing the power to strike the character. - Chain, belt or rod printers were limited to what character was at the print position, and some intentionally scanned from one side to the other to give the drivers a rest. Some chain printers had a hammer for every 2 print positions, so they printed all odd characters on the line, then all even positions. >As for firing hammers, there are many stories about figuring out >the pattern of characters that would make all of a line printer's >hammers fire at once, which made quite a loud bang (and could blow >fuses or damage hardware on some printers). Or play music, printers allegedly did that too (I never witnessed that personally). ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. References: <33hAb.1754$rP6.370@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net> <1966.471T1590T8765099@kltpzyxm.invalid> X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Date: Tue, 30 Dec 03 13:56:20 GMT Lines: 20 Message-ID: <3ff1950f$0$4756$61fed72c@news.rcn.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.122.233.40 X-Trace: 1072796944 reader3.news.rcn.net 4756 209.122.233.40:1027 X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!news-out.visi.com!petbe.visi.com!rcn!feed3.news.rcn.net!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:158848 In article , jeffj@panix.com (Jeff Jonas) wrote: >>As for firing hammers, there are many stories about figuring out >>the pattern of characters that would make all of a line printer's >>hammers fire at once, which made quite a loud bang (and could blow >>fuses or damage hardware on some printers). > >Or play music, printers allegedly did that too >(I never witnessed that personally). I had print jobs for the 407 that had a beat I couldn't resist dancing to. But then I was always partial to good drumming. /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. ###### Message-ID: <3FF1B3E3.8EAEBEF7@earthlink.net> From: jchausler X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (Win95; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes References: <33hAb.1754$rP6.370@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net> <1966.471T1590T8765099@kltpzyxm.invalid> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 29 Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 17:24:52 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 63.178.105.141 X-Complaints-To: abuse@earthlink.net X-Trace: newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net 1072805092 63.178.105.141 (Tue, 30 Dec 2003 09:24:52 PST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 09:24:52 PST Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!enews.sgi.com!hammer.uoregon.edu!canoe.uoregon.edu!newshub.sdsu.edu!elnk-nf2-pas!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.pas.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net.POSTED!2fb3b9aa!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:158859 Jeff Jonas wrote: > Some chain printers had a hammer for every 2 print positions, > so they printed all odd characters on the line, then all even positions. So did some drum printers. I ran into one connected to a GE-PAC 4010 in 1974 which did this. It would print all the odd characters and then shift the entire paper carriage, print the even characters, linefeed, print all the even characters on the next line, shift the paper carriage, print the odd characters, ... You get the picture. This was very hard on the paper, particularly because the customer insisted on using green bar made of newsprint (I still have some listings on this stuff after all these years). Paper jams were common. I don't recall the manufacturer of the printer. It was of course, rebranded GE. Slow too! BTW, I have the front panel from the 4010, which I replaced with a network of PC's in 1993. Chris AN GETTO$;DUMP;RUN,ALGOL,TAPE $$ > Or play music, printers allegedly did that too > (I never witnessed that personally). At least percussion (RCA 501)... ###### Message-ID: <3FF1D6C8.8B200853@comcast.net> From: Charles Richmond Reply-To: richmond@nospam.plano.net Organization: Canine Computer Center X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7C-CCK-MCD {C-UDP; EBM-APPLE} (Macintosh; I; PPC) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes References: <33hAb.1754$rP6.370@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net> <1966.471T1590T8765099@kltpzyxm.invalid> <3FF1B3E3.8EAEBEF7@earthlink.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 30 NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.1.126.198 X-Complaints-To: abuse@comcast.net X-Trace: attbi_s51 1072806880 24.1.126.198 (Tue, 30 Dec 2003 17:54:40 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 17:54:40 GMT Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 17:54:40 GMT Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!in.100proofnews.com!in.100proofnews.com!cycny01.gnilink.net!cyclone1.gnilink.net!attbi_feed3!attbi.com!attbi_s51.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:158871 jchausler wrote: > > Jeff Jonas wrote: > > > Some chain printers had a hammer for every 2 print positions, > > so they printed all odd characters on the line, then all even positions. > > So did some drum printers. I ran into one connected to a GE-PAC > 4010 in 1974 which did this. It would print all the odd characters and > then shift the entire paper carriage, print the even characters, linefeed, > print all the even characters on the next line, shift the paper carriage, > print the odd characters, ... You get the picture. This was very hard > on the paper, particularly because the customer insisted on using green bar > made of newsprint (I still have some listings on this stuff after all these > years). Paper jams were common. I don't recall the manufacturer of > the printer. It was of course, rebranded GE. Slow too! BTW, I > have the front panel from the 4010, which I replaced with a network > of PC's in 1993. > Back in the late 1970's, my college had a DEC-20 with a "drum printer". I liked to use it...even though it was only 300 lines per minute printer. The font was more interesting than our Harris line printer that was connected to the IBM 370. Some of my fondest memories are of working on that DEC-20... -- +----------------------------------------------------------------+ | Charles and Francis Richmond richmond at plano dot net | +----------------------------------------------------------------+ ###### From: mwilson@the-wire.com (Mel Wilson) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Message-ID: References: <33hAb.1754$rP6.370@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net> <1966.471T1590T8765099@kltpzyxm.invalid> Lines: 12 X-Newsreader: VSoup v1.2.9.37Beta [95/NT] Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 15:02:27 -0500 NNTP-Posting-Host: 205.206.39.46 X-Trace: nnrp1.uunet.ca 1072834381 205.206.39.46 (Tue, 30 Dec 2003 20:33:01 EST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 20:33:01 EST Organization: WorldCom Canada Ltd. News Reader Service Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!in.100proofnews.com!tdsnet-transit!newspeer.tds.net!cyclone.bc.net!news.uunet.ca!nnrp1.uunet.ca.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:158904 In article , jeffj@panix.com (Jeff Jonas) wrote: >Or play music, printers allegedly did that too >(I never witnessed that personally). Around '64 or '65 our high-school math teacher showed a few of us around the Univ. of Waterloo and I, personally, heard a 7090 (or maybe a 7094) play _Anchors Aweigh_ on a line printer. Hammers on paper played the tune, and the paper advance did the percussion in time. Regards. Mel. ###### From: "L0nD0t.$t0we11" <"L0nD0t.$t0we11"@ComcastDot.Net> Reply-To: "L0nD0t.$t0we11"@ComcastDot.Net User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes References: <33hAb.1754$rP6.370@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net> <1966.471T1590T8765099@kltpzyxm.invalid> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 54 Message-ID: <7imIb.79042$VB2.160238@attbi_s51> NNTP-Posting-Host: 67.170.229.36 X-Complaints-To: abuse@comcast.net X-Trace: attbi_s51 1072820483 67.170.229.36 (Tue, 30 Dec 2003 21:41:23 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 21:41:23 GMT Organization: Comcast Online Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 21:41:23 GMT Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.belwue.de!feed.news.tiscali.de!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!c03.atl99!chi1.webusenet.com!news.webusenet.com!cyclone1.gnilink.net!attbi_feed4!attbi.com!attbi_s51.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:158893 Roughly 12/30/03 04:14, Jeff Jonas's monkeys randomly typed: >>>An possibly apocryphal story involved a quite cute female IBM1130 >>>computer operator and the abuse she received from the senior male >>>staff at Portland State. The story was that a program was written that >>>repeatedly fired the hammers on the 1403 printer without linefeed. >>>eventually cutting paper dolls out of the fanfold and falling >>>into the printer. > > My school's IBM 1130 had the slower 1132 printer, which sounded like > marching men at a fast pace when firing ALL hammers at ALL positions > (which usually required halting the machine with the print buffer all set). > I didn't think of tape recording the sounds of the machines, > for who would have predicted that punched cards would totally disappear > after about 100 years of use and impact printers would become so scarce? > > Printer designers wised up and made things harder to break, > depending on the printer design. > - Some didn't use the solenoid to directly print, > but to engage a clutch so a rotating rod attached to a STRONG MOTOR > providing the power to strike the character. And some just ran a 48 volt power supply with almost a full farad of capacitance attached to the coils that drove the print hammers. The hammer fire signal was run thru a small fuse of about 2-3 amps so it would blow in milliseconds if a hammer fire circuit or driver decided to try to fire the hammer continuosly. This sorta took the fun out of printers as you no longer could expect the big bluegreen ball of flame as the amazing power stored in a farad at 48 volts tried to discharge thru a small solenoid. Most of the drum printers "rippled" the hammer fires across the drum to extend bearing life as well as cut the bounce on the hammer fire power supply. Kinda sad, as the old "fire all barrels" Analex based drum printers made pretty good percussion sources. Virtually impossible to do Bolero well on the ripplefire drums. On the other hand, the ripple fires didn't need to have their drum bearings replaced every year when printing scientific study outputs with lotsa zeros all fired at once. > > - Chain, belt or rod printers were limited to what character was at > the print position, and some intentionally scanned from one side > to the other to give the drivers a rest. Or had multiple identical character sets. -- Fan of the dumbest team in America. ###### Sender: gregm@europa.pienet Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes References: <33hAb.1754$rP6.370@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net> <1966.471T1590T8765099@kltpzyxm.invalid> From: Greg Menke Message-ID: Lines: 18 User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: 31 Dec 2003 12:08:40 -0500 NNTP-Posting-Host: 162.33.158.68 X-Complaints-To: abuse@toad.net X-Trace: news.abs.net 1072890520 162.33.158.68 (Wed, 31 Dec 2003 12:08:40 EST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 12:08:40 EST Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!news-FFM2.ecrc.net!nntp.abs.net!news.abs.net!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:158949 mwilson@the-wire.com (Mel Wilson) writes: > In article , > jeffj@panix.com (Jeff Jonas) wrote: > >Or play music, printers allegedly did that too > >(I never witnessed that personally). > > Around '64 or '65 our high-school math teacher showed a > few of us around the Univ. of Waterloo and I, personally, > heard a 7090 (or maybe a 7094) play _Anchors Aweigh_ on a > line printer. Hammers on paper played the tune, and the > paper advance did the percussion in time. > > Regards. Mel. What did the printout look like afterwards? Gregm ###### From: mensanator@aol.com (mensanator) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: 31 Dec 2003 10:54:55 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Lines: 23 Message-ID: References: <33hAb.1754$rP6.370@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net> <1966.471T1590T8765099@kltpzyxm.invalid> NNTP-Posting-Host: 64.144.30.11 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1072896895 9120 127.0.0.1 (31 Dec 2003 18:54:55 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 18:54:55 +0000 (UTC) Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!news.linkpendium.com!news-out.visi.com!petbe.visi.com!newsfeed2.dallas1.level3.net!news.level3.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:158965 mwilson@the-wire.com (Mel Wilson) wrote in message news:... > In article , > jeffj@panix.com (Jeff Jonas) wrote: > >Or play music, printers allegedly did that too > >(I never witnessed that personally). > > Around '64 or '65 our high-school math teacher showed a > few of us around the Univ. of Waterloo and I, personally, > heard a 7090 (or maybe a 7094) play _Anchors Aweigh_ on a > line printer. Hammers on paper played the tune, and the > paper advance did the percussion in time. > > Regards. Mel. A programmer told me this story, don't know if it's true: On one of the computers being delivered to the Navy, some programmer got the printer to play _Anchors Aweigh_ and was subsequently yelled at by his supervisor. The sympathetic Navy rep then changed the specification so that the Navy would not accept any computer that couldn't play _Anchors Aweigh_. ###### From: mwilson@the-wire.com (Mel Wilson) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Message-ID: References: <33hAb.1754$rP6.370@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net> <1966.471T1590T8765099@kltpzyxm.invalid> Lines: 22 X-Newsreader: VSoup v1.2.9.37Beta [95/NT] Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 12:49:05 -0500 NNTP-Posting-Host: 205.206.39.95 X-Trace: nnrp1.uunet.ca 1073015561 205.206.39.95 (Thu, 01 Jan 2004 22:52:41 EST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2004 22:52:41 EST Organization: WorldCom Canada Ltd. News Reader Service Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!logbridge.uoregon.edu!newshub.sdsu.edu!cyclone.bc.net!news.uunet.ca!nnrp1.uunet.ca.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:159125 In article , Greg Menke wrote: >mwilson@the-wire.com (Mel Wilson) writes: > >> In article , >> jeffj@panix.com (Jeff Jonas) wrote: >> >Or play music, printers allegedly did that too >> >(I never witnessed that personally). >> >> Around '64 or '65 our high-school math teacher showed a >> few of us around the Univ. of Waterloo and I, personally, >> heard a 7090 (or maybe a 7094) play _Anchors Aweigh_ on a >> line printer. Hammers on paper played the tune, and the >> paper advance did the percussion in time. > >What did the printout look like afterwards? That's the bad part. I never saw. When I was a kid, I didn't know about computer folklore. IIRC we moved on to something else while it was still playing. Regards. Mel. ###### From: never+mail@panix.com.invalid (Michael Roach) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 20:30:55 +0000 (UTC) Organization: A small notepad underneath my in box Lines: 18 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: panix5.panix.com X-Trace: reader2.panix.com 1072989055 6234 166.84.1.5 (1 Jan 2004 20:30:55 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 20:30:55 +0000 (UTC) X-Clueful-responder: echo "never-reply+panix=com" | tr "-+=" "+@." X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test76 (Apr 2, 2001) Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!panix!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:159087 In article , Greg Menke wrote: >mwilson@the-wire.com (Mel Wilson) writes: >> Around '64 or '65 our high-school math teacher showed a >> few of us around the Univ. of Waterloo and I, personally, >> heard a 7090 (or maybe a 7094) play _Anchors Aweigh_ on a >> line printer. Hammers on paper played the tune, and the >> paper advance did the percussion in time. >> >> Regards. Mel. > >What did the printout look like afterwards? I once saw a printout of a ship in a bottle. -- At a recent meeting in Snowmass, Colorado, a participant from Los Angeles fainted from hyperoxygenation, and we had to hold his head under the exhaust of a bus until he revived. ###### Message-ID: <3FF4B875.DE625470@comcast.net> From: Charles Richmond Reply-To: richmond@nospam.plano.net Organization: Canine Computer Center X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7C-CCK-MCD {C-UDP; EBM-APPLE} (Macintosh; I; PPC) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 23 NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.1.126.198 X-Complaints-To: abuse@comcast.net X-Trace: attbi_s52 1072995725 24.1.126.198 (Thu, 01 Jan 2004 22:22:05 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2004 22:22:05 GMT Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2004 22:22:05 GMT Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!in.100proofnews.com!in.100proofnews.com!prodigy.com!prodigy.com!attbi_feed3!attbi.com!attbi_s52.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:159103 Michael Roach wrote: > > In article , > Greg Menke wrote: > >mwilson@the-wire.com (Mel Wilson) writes: > >> Around '64 or '65 our high-school math teacher showed a > >> few of us around the Univ. of Waterloo and I, personally, > >> heard a 7090 (or maybe a 7094) play _Anchors Aweigh_ on a > >> line printer. Hammers on paper played the tune, and the > >> paper advance did the percussion in time. > >> > >> Regards. Mel. > > > >What did the printout look like afterwards? > > I once saw a printout of a ship in a bottle. > How did they get the printout of the ship into the bottle??? ;-) -- +----------------------------------------------------------------+ | Charles and Francis Richmond richmond at plano dot net | +----------------------------------------------------------------+ ###### From: never+mail@panix.com.invalid (Michael Roach) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2004 03:36:54 +0000 (UTC) Organization: A small notepad underneath my in box Lines: 13 Message-ID: References: <3FF4B875.DE625470@comcast.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix1.panix.com X-Trace: reader2.panix.com 1073014614 13869 166.84.1.1 (2 Jan 2004 03:36:54 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2004 03:36:54 +0000 (UTC) X-Clueful-responder: echo "never-reply+panix=com" | tr "-+=" "+@." X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test76 (Apr 2, 2001) Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!nntp-out.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!newsswitch.lcs.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!panix!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:159123 In article <3FF4B875.DE625470@comcast.net>, Charles Richmond wrote: >Michael Roach wrote: >> I once saw a printout of a ship in a bottle. >> >How did they get the printout of the ship into the bottle??? ;-) Rolled it up, stuck it in, and put a cork in it! -- Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of APL, I shall fear no evil, for I can string six primitive monadic and dyadic operators together. -- Steve Higgins ###### From: jdallen2000@yahoo.com (James Dow Allen) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Computer Practical Jokes Date: 4 Jan 2004 05:12:11 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Lines: 14 Message-ID: <266426e1.0401040512.22c24f48@posting.google.com> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: 203.113.45.168 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1073221931 30130 127.0.0.1 (4 Jan 2004 13:12:11 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2004 13:12:11 +0000 (UTC) Path: redlance.franklin.ch!pfaff2.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!eusc.inter.net!priapus.visi.com!orange.octanews.net!news.octanews.net!news-out.visi.com!petbe.visi.com!newsfeed2.dallas1.level3.net!news.level3.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail Xref: redlance.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:159446 lee.gleason@halliburton.com (Lee K. Gleason) wrote in message news:... > The DEC VT220 terminal had a "soft" character set - different fonts > could be downloaded into them. We edited up a special font that was > identical to the normal one, except each character was upside down and > backwards. We'd put the commands to load the new font into newbie's > login.com, and wait for the hilarity to ensue. On 370's, FE's often used the console terminal to debug the CPU. The printcodes were easy to change so when the "repairmen" looked too sleepy I sometimes reversed "0" and "F". "My Gawd! The whole Z register's gone inverted!!" James