From CENT%AI.AI.MIT.EDU at MINTAKA.LCS.MIT.EDU  Sat Dec 23 08:40:39 1989
From: CENT%AI.AI.MIT.EDU at MINTAKA.LCS.MIT.EDU (Pandora B. Berman)
Date: Dec 23 89 02:40:39 EST
Subject: yow
Message-ID: <682728.891223.CENT@AI.AI.MIT.EDU>

actually, it's not so surprising that some tourists can talk DDT too
obscurely for me to understand....
----------
From: "Stephen E. Robbins" <stever at ai.mit.edu>
Date: Dec 21 89 13:25:56 EST
To: CENT%AI.AI.MIT.EDU at mintaka.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: Where unix-haters-request is
   Date: Wed, 20 Dec 89 22:13:42 EST
   From: "Pandora B. Berman" <CENT%AI.AI.MIT.EDU at mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>
   ....Candidates for entry into this august body must either prove their
   worth by a short rant on their pet piece of unix brain death, or produce
   witnesses of known authority to attest to their adherence to our high
   moral principles..

Does knowing about :DDTSYM DPSTOK/-1 followed by $$^R qualify as attesting
to adherence of high moral principles?

- Stephen

From gls at think.com  Fri Dec 15 21:56:15 1989
From: gls at think.com (Guy Steele)
Date: Dec 15 89 15:56:15 EST
Subject: TTY MESSAGE FROM A UNIX WEENIE:  LOSSAGE?
In-Reply-To: Ed Schwalenberg's message of Fri, 15 Dec 89 14:56 EST <19891215195628.4.ED@PEREGRINE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Message-ID: <8912152056.AA29450@ungar.think.com>

   Date: Fri, 15 Dec 89 14:56 EST
   From: Ed Schwalenberg <Ed at ALDERAAN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>

       Date: Thu, 14 Dec 89 19:57:05 -0800
       From: David Vinayak Wallace <gumby at gang-of-four.stanford.edu>

       Those who never used TS BEAR may not recognise the message above, but
       those who do may be amused by how the cookie bear got permuted by the
       time the unix weenies heard about it.  Then again, note his last
       question...

       >From: kim at watsup.waterloo.edu (T. Kim Nguyen)
       Subject: "cookie"
       Date: 11 Dec 89 09:13:31 GMT

       While the machine was being dismantled, someone took a look inside and
       found this circuit board hooked into the machine.  Guess what was
       asking for cookies, and had not been found, even after people searched
       high and low through the software for the cookie monster...

   I heard this story when I entered MIT in September 1974.  The version I
   heard allegedly took place at Dartmouth, and the cookie monster wouldn't
   go away even after the OS was changed; it took a TTY33 repairperson to
   discover the hardware hack in the system console.

   I wrote a cookie program for the PDP-8 at MIT's Weather Radar group when
   I worked there in the summer of 1975, based on the story I had heard.
   I wasn't aware of TS BEAR until much later, although I don't know when
   it was written or what inspiration its author (who I think was GLS) had.

I wrote TS BEAR after hearing an oral description of a similar
hack on (as I recall) Multics.  Richard Feynman was perhaps its
most famous victim (it was I who sicced it on him--blush).

From Ed at alderaan.scrc.symbolics.com  Fri Dec 15 20:56:00 1989
From: Ed at alderaan.scrc.symbolics.com (Ed Schwalenberg)
Date: Dec 15 89 14:56 EST
Subject: TTY MESSAGE FROM A UNIX WEENIE:  LOSSAGE?
In-Reply-To: <8912150357.AA06208@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>
Message-ID: <19891215195628.4.ED@PEREGRINE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>

    Date: Thu, 14 Dec 89 19:57:05 -0800
    From: David Vinayak Wallace <gumby at gang-of-four.stanford.edu>

    Those who never used TS BEAR may not recognise the message above, but
    those who do may be amused by how the cookie bear got permuted by the
    time the unix weenies heard about it.  Then again, note his last
    question...

    >From: kim at watsup.waterloo.edu (T. Kim Nguyen)
    Subject: "cookie"
    Date: 11 Dec 89 09:13:31 GMT

    While the machine was being dismantled, someone took a look inside and
    found this circuit board hooked into the machine.  Guess what was
    asking for cookies, and had not been found, even after people searched
    high and low through the software for the cookie monster...

I heard this story when I entered MIT in September 1974.  The version I
heard allegedly took place at Dartmouth, and the cookie monster wouldn't
go away even after the OS was changed; it took a TTY33 repairperson to
discover the hardware hack in the system console.

I wrote a cookie program for the PDP-8 at MIT's Weather Radar group when
I worked there in the summer of 1975, based on the story I had heard.
I wasn't aware of TS BEAR until much later, although I don't know when
it was written or what inspiration its author (who I think was GLS) had.

From lekash at orville.nas.nasa.gov  Fri Dec 15 18:35:06 1989
From: lekash at orville.nas.nasa.gov (John Lekashman)
Date: Dec 15 89 09:35:06 PST
Subject: TTY MESSAGE FROM A UNIX WEENIE:  LOSSAGE?
Message-ID: <8912151735.AA21356@orville.nas.nasa.gov>

The answer is yes.
Either it really happened, or all of Seymour Papert's students
are on drugs is true.  (oooooeeeee-eeeee).  At least back in
the 70s.
				john

From gumby at gang-of-four.stanford.edu  Fri Dec 15 04:57:05 1989
From: gumby at gang-of-four.stanford.edu (David Vinayak Wallace)
Date: Dec 14 89 19:57:05 -0800
Subject: TTY MESSAGE FROM A UNIX WEENIE:  LOSSAGE?
Message-ID: <8912150357.AA06208@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU>

Those who never used TS BEAR may not recognise the message above, but
those who do may be amused by how the cookie bear got permuted by the
time the unix weenies heard about it.  Then again, note his last
question...

Makes one wonder what the loser who wrote the Canonical Losing Unix
Mailer thought he was writing.

>From: kim at watsup.waterloo.edu (T. Kim Nguyen)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: "cookie"
Message-ID: <KIM.89Dec11041331 at watsup.waterloo.edu>
Date: Dec 11 89 09:13:31 GMT

OK, here's another one I heard about.  This one (I was told) happened
at MIT, back in the 70s (oooooeeeee-ooooo), on some big network type
machine.  At the same time every day, a message would appear on
people's terminals, saying "Give me a cookie".  And if they did
nothing, the machine would burp and kill their process or something.
Eventually someone, in response to that message, typed "cookie", and
the machine said "thanks" and continued working normally.  For the
remainder of the machine's lifetime, people would type "cookie" at the
same time every day and take it for granted that they had to do this.

While the machine was being dismantled, someone took a look inside and
found this circuit board hooked into the machine.  Guess what was
asking for cookies, and had not been found, even after people searched
high and low through the software for the cookie monster...

So -- did this really happen, or are all of Seymour Papert's students
on drugs?  :-)

--
T. Kim Nguyen 				  kim at watsup.waterloo.{edu|cdn}
					        kim at watsup.uwaterloo.ca
			    {uunet|utzoo|utai|decvax}watmath!watsup!kim
Systems Design Engineering  --  University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada