back to article Python script saw students booted off the mainframe for sending one insult too many

The Register does not particularly like Mondays, but rather than shoot the whole day down we prefer to brighten it with a fresh instalment of Who, Me? in which Reg readers share tales of times the silicon chips inside their heads got switched to overload. This week's hero is a bloke we shall Regomize as "Rodney" who recalled …

  1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
    Happy

    OPERATOR != BOFH

    Evidently. Quicklime and carpets weren't involved in the sanction, for starters, nor was a cattle prod.

    1. Bebu
      Windows

      Re: OPERATOR != BOFH

      and also != Dinsdale Piranha [a hard man. Vicious but fair]

  2. EvaQ
    Holmes

    Python script in the early 1980's?!

    ... oh, Monty Python, not Python the language.

    1. Will Godfrey Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: Python script in the early 1980's?!

      Do keep up at the back there!

    2. chivo243 Silver badge
      Pint

      Re: Python script in the early 1980's?!

      I came to ask too...

    3. Antron Argaiv Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: Python script in the early 1980's?!

      Python (Monty)...as it says at the bottom of the film.

      Thanks for the (timesharing) memories. That was my experience in university. I had a job in the Computing Center, repairing Teletypes. Even had my own in my dorm room, which was very nice in the cold New England winter. Life was different at 110 baud...

      1. l8gravely

        Re: Python script in the early 1980's?!

        We had a row of VT100s hooked up to a DEC TOPS-20 when I arrived at Uni in the mid to late 80s. One of the more enterprising chaps had come up with a way to animate a choo choo train to scroll down all the terminals and then back again. Much fun to watch.

      2. herman Silver badge

        Re: Python script in the early 1980's?!

        Hmm, who else tried to edit a document at 75 baud?

        1. storner
          Mushroom

          Re: Python script in the early 1980's?!

          Pfui - not a problem unless you try to use those newfangled visual editors. 'ed' works fine on 75 baud.

    4. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge

      Re: Python script in the early 1980's?!

      It's suitably booby-trapped for LLMs to injest and if we start seeing the usual suspects stating that Python was around in the early '80s and running on Amdahl mainframes, we know where that originated from.

  3. Scott 53

    Did Matlab run on Amdahls?

    This may be where the "Invalid use of operator" message came from.

    1. Jedit Silver badge
      Devil

      "the "Invalid use of operator" message"

      Or possibly, depending on the exact contents of the insult database, the "operator use of invalid" message.

  4. aje21
    Windows

    Somehow became corrupted?

    I think the only way for that to happen is deliberately changing it. Perhaps as a lesson to understand what you are doing, not just blindly using something someone else wrote

    1. Michael Hoffmann Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: Somehow became corrupted?

      As we see, stackoverflow-ification is not a new thing!

    2. Caver_Dave Silver badge
      Boffin

      Re: Somehow became corrupted?

      "not just blindly using something someone else wrote"

      Or copied from the Internet as so much of the stuff from a certain large geographical region is.

      Irked as it often takes my team longer to fix the crap than it would have taken for us to write it correctly, and we would be a much happier team and be able to more positively retain excellent staff.

      1. H in The Hague

        Re: Somehow became corrupted?

        "Irked as it often takes my team longer to fix the crap than it would have taken for us to write it correctly, and we would be a much happier team and be able to more positively retain excellent staff."

        That, unfortunately, seems to be the way of the world these days. Or at least what management and procurement departments prefer.

        A certain large, local petroleum company used to have an in-house translation department which worked with specialist freelance translators. That worked well, the translators earned a good living and delivered good translations. Now they're working with larger, lowest cost translation companies. Well, apparently lower costs - unfortunately the company's engineers now have to revised the outsourced translations and the engineers' hourly rates are several times that of their former freelance translators. (I gather some of their current translators don't know the difference between 'insulation' and 'isolation'.) So any apparent savings are negated by increased costs elsewhere in the process. And one of my current customers seems to be using unrevised machine translations for some of their training materials - with unintended hilarious results.

        As one of their former freelance translators, and current shareholder, that makes me quite grumpy :(

        And it looks like this also happens in the IT industry - my commiserations.

        1. lglethal Silver badge
          Mushroom

          Re: Somehow became corrupted?

          Ahhh... the old Beancounter Syndrome.

          Beancounters tasked with reducing cost of Budget A. They do that, which drops quality and increases problems and costs elsewhere in the business. But that doesnt matter, because they were tasked with reducing the cost of Budget A, which they did. It doesnt matter that the costs to the whole business have increased and the increase in Budget B is now significantly higher than the saving in Budget A.

          Recently had a similar problem with purchasing. We needed an electrical housing for a test fixture. A one of purchase, which we went out, found what we needed, gave all the details to purchasing. Total item cost €50. What did purchasing do, spend 3 days (!?!) searching for a lower cost item, before finding a box that was €5 cheaper but didnt meet any of our requirements. The time wasted looking for an alternative set our project back (due to loss of the booking at the test facility), and it was still a fight to get them to order what we had already identified.

          But all those losses and delays were apparently fine by their boss, because they had followed procedure in finding alternatives... %/(&/)/=)%&/$&% (sometimes you wish there was a way to print a bunch of symbols to represent swearing like they did in the old Asterix comics...)

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Somehow became corrupted?

            Beancounters tasked with ...

            Along with the marketing droids, the scourge of any and all IT outfits, big or small.

            .

            1. Yes Me Silver badge
              FAIL

              Re: Somehow became corrupted?

              Once they have proved their ability, they get promoted to Corporate Travel. There's always a cheaper flight or hotel, and who cares if you end up 100 miles from the customer site?

          2. Jonathan Richards 1 Silver badge

            Re: Somehow became corrupted?

            > a way to print a bunch of symbols to represent swearing like they did in the old Asterix comics...

            Did you know that there is a word for that 'bunch of symbols'? The string of characters is a grawlix, plural grawlixes, probably pronounced "%*&!@~"

            1. FrogsAndChips Silver badge

              Re: grawlix

              Quite a fitting name for something appearing so often in the Asterix albums!

            2. lglethal Silver badge
              Trollface

              Re: Somehow became corrupted?

              I have learnt something new!

              So now how do I classify El Reg as a training provider and book this time to Further Education?

            3. dr.k

              Re: Somehow became corrupted?

              Thank you for enriching my vocabulary. Grawlix aka obscenicon according to Wikipedia. Nice portmanteau, I thought.

            4. jake Silver badge

              Re: Somehow became corrupted?

              "probably pronounced "%*&!@~""

              Properly speaking, %*&!@~ is pronounced "BEEP!".

              1. The man with a spanner

                Re: Somehow became corrupted?

                Which somehow is 1 character longer than the BEEP word. !!!!!!

                1. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: Somehow became corrupted?

                  > Which somehow is 1 character longer than the BEEP word. !!!!!!

                  A one character longer "BEEP" is "BLEEP".

                  ;-)

            5. Bebu
              Windows

              Re: Somehow became corrupted?

              Learn a new thing every day from the Vulture's carrion. :)

              As always there is a wiki article https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grawlix.

              I quite like its synonym obscenicon as sound very Lovecraftian when read the right way.

              I usually like the classical plural - grawlices* - but grawlixes is definitely more onomatopoeic and preferable.

              * could be a nasty insect infestation

            6. bemusedHorseman
              Trollface

              Re: Somehow became corrupted?

              "I'm the only one I know with a less colorful vocabulary than Beetle Bailey."

          3. Michael Strorm Silver badge

            Re: Somehow became corrupted?

            > %/(&/)/=)%&/$&% (sometimes you wish there was a way to print a bunch of symbols to represent swearing like they did in the old Asterix comics...)

            That's swearing? It looks like one of the regexes I wrote last week...

            1. Gene Cash Silver badge

              Re: Somehow became corrupted?

              I thought it was just a PERL script...

              1. lglethal Silver badge
                Joke

                Re: Somehow became corrupted?

                Well it IS the sound you make when you need to work with PERL, so....

                1. This post has been deleted by its author

              2. Someone Else Silver badge

                Re: Somehow became corrupted?

                I thought it was just a PERL script...

                No, no! it's an APL program to emulate LaTeX!

                1. Bebu
                  Coat

                  Re: Somehow became corrupted?

                  "it's an APL program"

                  That you Ken? Or someone else? :)

                  I haven't heard APL mentioned for decades about as obscure as the Griswolds' Icon language.

                  1. Someone Else Silver badge
                    Angel

                    Re: Somehow became corrupted?

                    That you Ken? Or someone else? :)

                    It's Someone Else....

              3. James Anderson

                Re: Somehow became corrupted?

                Definitely not perl ----

                Scalar found where operator expected at -e line 1, near "&/$&"

                (Missing operator before $&?)

                syntax error at -e line 1, near "%/("

                Execution of -e aborted due to compilation errors.

            2. CatBoy

              Re: Somehow became corrupted?

              I did a lot of swearing when I was trying to write regex last week..

            3. herman Silver badge

              Re: Somehow became corrupted?

              Looks like a sendmail script to me.

          4. jake Silver badge

            Re: Somehow became corrupted?

            "print a bunch of symbols to represent swearing like they did in the old Asterix comics..."

            Those actually go back to 1902, first appearing in a Katzenjammer Kids comic[0]. Much later, Beetle Bailey cartoonist Mort Walker gave them a name: grawlix. His 1980 tome "The Lexicon of Comicana" is worth keeping on your bookshelf. Note that in a cartoon, symbols are drawn, and so can contain non-ASCII characters such as tornadoes, spirals, stars, etc.

            After poking around a bit to find a link to the above cartoon, I've discovered that these go back even further ... to at least 1877. See:

            https://www.dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2019/02/27/that-gene-carr-and-his-grawlix/

            I've also heard them called a profanitype or obscenicon, but those always sound contrived and somewhat plastic to me.

            [0] http://wordpress-blog-assets-production.s3.amazonaws.com/e/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Screen-Shot-2017-12-01-at-1.44.31-PM.png

          5. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

            Re: Somehow became corrupted?

            Somehow there never seems to be a beancounter budget to which the costs of delays can be charged. Perhaps it might help if purchase requests are marked "THIS IS TIME CRITICAL".

            1. David Hicklin Bronze badge

              > Perhaps it might help if purchase requests are marked "THIS IS TIME CRITICAL".

              I worked as an apprentice in a machine shop for the first few weeks of my first job out of school (this is the late 1970's) before being packed of to tech college for a year. Every job came with a job card which described what it was and you filled in when it was done and how long it took

              EVERY job card was stamped "URGENT" in red ink, if it was genuinely "urgent" it got stamped "VERY URGENT".

          6. rcxb Silver badge

            Re: Somehow became corrupted?

            The time wasted looking for an alternative set our project back (due to loss of the booking at the test facility), and it was still a fight to get them to order what we had already identified.

            Did your purchase req. clearly specify "NO SUBSTITUTIONS", "EXPEDITE" and that it was a one-off purchase? Part of working for a large business is knowing how to fill-out the forms so the other groups will understand them... if not you personally, then your supervisor or manager should have the requisite knowhow & experience to get such requests through without trouble.

            1. Antron Argaiv Silver badge
              Thumb Up

              Re: Somehow became corrupted?

              Ugh.

              I got an email back from some accounting drone, asking all sorts of questions about some of my POs. Questions which could have been answered by reading the explanations I put in the "comments" fields of said POs. When that was mentioned to them, the response was "Oh, I don't have access to those fields."

              Words, of course, failed me. Of course, payment of the invoices related to those POs was being held up while these important questions were answered.

              Then there was the time that the beancounters insisted that attaching a copy of the parts order to the PO was not acceptable. Each line item, quantity, piece price, shipping and tax needed to be (re-)typed into the Corporate Purchase Order page (and, yes, the original order document still needed to be attached). Significant pushback on that one, and I'm not sure how or if it was resolved, as I retired.

          7. Terry 6 Silver badge

            Re: Somehow became corrupted?

            When the Great and Not Very Good want to have a dig at public services, and justify privatisation, often they point to alleged bureaucracy, expense and inefficiency in the public sector, compared to the efficiency of private enterprise.

            Then we see the reality. Private companies that routinely waste vast amounts by spending tons of dosh by spending on vanity projects, jumping on The Latest Best Thing and shifting costs to different accounts at additional but hidden expense, who are brought in to public roles, do a half-cocked job and charge through the nose for work that had always been done perfectly well by the in house team for just the costs of a moderate wage and a little bit of admin.

          8. Bebu
            Windows

            Re: Somehow became corrupted?

            "symbols to represent swearing"

            Bugger!

            I was trying to parse %/(&/)/=)%&/$&% as a regular expression... which I suppose it was... of disgust. ;)

        2. Evil Auditor Silver badge

          Re: Somehow became corrupted?

          That happens time and again. I faced it after the construction of a new office building. One example: the lowest bidders were selected for each, the door case, door leaf, and locking. Guess how well those three parts then worked together and what the maintenance costs were... The building didn't last 15 years.

        3. JT_3K

          Re: Somehow became corrupted?

          Reminds me of the excellent issue where someone sent a road sign to a colleague in a Welsh council so it could have both English and Welsh. Recieving back the colleague's out-of-office but assuming it to be the translation, the sign was installed, proudly proclaiming that it was out of office.

          Going to find the example, I've found a blog with a load more, including a humorous "Wines and Spirits" on a shop advising in Welsh that the location had "Wine and Ghosts", an offering of "Shear Madness" (a type of bird) advising of "Mad Sheep Shearing" and a warning that "Workers are Exploding".

          1. H in The Hague

            Re: Somehow became corrupted?

            "Going to find the example, I've found a blog with a load more, including a humorous "Wines and Spirits" on a shop advising in Welsh that the location had "Wine and Ghosts", an offering of "Shear Madness" (a type of bird) advising of "Mad Sheep Shearing" and a warning that "Workers are Exploding"."

            Likely to be unrevised machine translation.

            A reasonable human translator will realise when a sentence is ambiguous or the subject is too technical and will ask for clarification or suggest you use another translator. Machine translation does not have that reality check. I recently came across 'pin fuses' in a tender document about air conditioning. Turned out these were 'veerveiligheden = spring-loaded relief valves". (Unfortunately there are human, supposedly professional, translators out there who actually do worse than MT :(. )

            1. Someone Else Silver badge

              Re: Somehow became corrupted?

              Reminds me of a past experience when the company I was working at at the time was doing a job for a German outfit. Miles of specifications were translated, with some comical results. My favorite was when my boss was musing as to why a high-voltage circuit required the use of a used switch, as opposed to a new one. See, the spec called for a "second-hand switch", resulting in my boss's amusement (and bemusement). It was only when he went to ask the German folks about this when he found out that the requirement was supposed to call for a "2-hand switch".

              1. H in The Hague

                More translation mishaps

                "Miles of specifications were translated, with some comical results."

                Years ago there was a mishap at the Italian plant of a company a friend worked for. He commissioned a report by an expert, who wrote it in Italian, after which it was translated into English.

                My friend thought it all made sense, but some of the forces referred to seemed to be out by an order of magnitude. Eventually they realised the Italian used 'daN' i.e. a decanewton, 10 newton. The translator had interpreted that as 'da N' i.e. 'per newton'.

                A few European countries seem to use daN because it's conveniently close to 1 kg. That makes physicists shudder but technicians smile. The only example of this usage I've come across in the UK is Profi magazine (covers farm equipment) because the equipment tests for their reviews are carried out in Germany.

                1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

                  Re: More translation mishaps

                  I think this must be about the only occasion I've heard of deca/deka or the similar but opposite deci prefixes being used since I was at school over 40 years ago :-)

                  In a way, it's funny, metric being decimal, that on the whole we use units, 100's and 1000 mostly and completely ignore the 10's.

      2. herman Silver badge

        Re: Somehow became corrupted?

        A bulletin board maybe, not internet - Al Gore wasn’t even born yet.

    3. Evil Auditor Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: Somehow became corrupted?

      "Somehow became corrupted" was exactly what had happened to a little tool I was once asked to share. Miraculously, while in transfer, its Pascal code changed itself to add, if not already present, a certain string to autoexec.bat which would reboot (or shutdown - can't remember) the computer. Thinking of it, it would have been even funnier to automatically remove that string after one or two reboots and debugging would have been a real pain...

      1. doesnothingwell

        Re: Somehow became corrupted?

        I did one for a friend whose new boss was ex military and being a pain. A floppy that installed a hacked command.com and rebooted the system after 10 min, then erased the floppy. Without timing the reboots one could never tell if it was drivers or hardware and would eventually reinstall windows. The whole business went under within a year.

        1. JT_3K

          Re: Somehow became corrupted?

          Slightly unrelated but you've reminded me of a project car for (I think) Practical Classics magazine. They had a Ford Sierra which worked beautifully until after approximately 13 minutes would cut out. Restarting the car it'd happily run for another 13 minutes or so. One correspondent recalled being on the M25 at 70mph and having to restart the car whilst changing lanes.

          Turns out someone had used a heated rear window timed-relay for the fuel pump. Once replaced, no more issues.

    4. KayJ

      Re: Somehow became corrupted?

      Somehow, OPERATOR returned.

    5. DS999 Silver badge

      Yes things could "somehow" become corrupted

      This was a LONG time ago, before error correction or even checksums were common.

      I even know of a similar thing happening. Back when I was in high school, my dad worked at a university which had several HP 2000A computers, and he let me use his account since he didn't use it much. There were some various people on it who had installed primitive games, a BBS, etc. on their accounts. I heard rumors some of the people could somehow get hold of people's passwords, and when I got to know a few of them better I found out it was true.

      There was a certain program that if you LISTed it (which was the command to show the lines in the BASIC program) it would essentially show you the current contents of the core memory. So if there was a command like "hello-b123,passwd" (the login command) typed at the time you LISTed that program, there was a good chance you'd see that command, including the password. Ditto for a program which had a password and did something like 'IF P$="passwd"'. The only way to protect yourself was to put the password in a file, and have the program read the password out of the file and compare it what you input.

      But how did that program come to exist? According to the guys I talked to, one of the long time users had executed a "CSAVE" command which saved a program in semi-compiled form (so it would run a bit faster) but there was a power failure at the same time. I guess they didn't have that HP2000A on a UPS, or maybe the UPS faulted I don't know the specifics. All I know is the result. The corrupted program didn't run, so I guess he listed it and was smart enough to figure out was going on.

      Because of the way the program was created, while you could make copies on the HP 2000A it existed on it was impossible to copy it to the other HP2000As. They tried, but apparently the way the operators copied programs between systems did not preserve whatever special magic it had. The copy on the remote system was just corrupt, still didn't run but also didn't generate any output when you tried to LIST it. So the other HP 2000A were safe, but the passwords for everyone (including system operators personal accounts) on the system it lived on was vulnerable. The only exception was apparently A000 the "root" account, maybe they only logged into it on the console at system startup - when other users weren't logged in so that corrupted program couldn't be used.

      At some point later on someone was caught logging in to some special account (not sure if it was one of the sysops or some other important person) and they were asked how they got hold of the password, and he spilled the beans. Apparently the sysops played a game of whack a mole deleting copies of that program when they found it, but I guess they didn't have the ability to do a "find" on the whole filesystem to look for it so there were always others squirreled away. I think the 2000As were decommissioned pretty soon after that which I guess solved the problem!

  5. LionelB Silver badge

    Confession: while working as a programmer for a well-known UK telecoms company in the early-mid 80s, I wrote a small script which sent the unfeasibly noisy line printer in the print room next to Accounts a sequence of characters that clacked out the rhythm of the Birdie Song in a loop: drr drr drr drr drr drr DRRR, drr drr drr drr drr drr DRRR, drr drr drr drr drr drr DRRR DRRR DRRR DRRR DRRR, etc. Much mirth ensued.

    1. jake Silver badge

      Line printer, punch card and tape music is an old, tried and true art form. Dad says it goes back to the '50s ...

      My confession: I used to start and stop the four line printers I had control of at DEC according to how close one of the minions of the Campus Boss was standing to them. The closer he got, the more printers I'd have running. As he retreated, I'd turn 'em off again, one by one. Took about two weeks, but eventually I trained the nosy prick to avoid the floor the printers were on entirely. The idiot never even noticed what I was doing.

      Sadly, it took me about another year to realize that he was a symptom of an even larger problem.

      RIP, DEC.

      1. collinsl Silver badge

        > Line printer, punch card and tape music is an old, tried and true art form. Dad says it goes back to the '50s

        So does printing out risqué ASCII art of various ladies - an example here from CuriousMarc

        1. Red Sceptic
          Pint

          Trip down memory lane here with all the punched cards - thanks for posting this!

        2. This post has been deleted by its author

        3. jake Silver badge

          No, that's not my 1401 that the dirty old men are playing with.

          I have six card decks from the early '70s labeled TITS01 through TITS06. I must remember to ask them for trades ... And for you folks who prefer other entertainment, I also have DICK01 through DICK04 from the same era. (The mix of men to women running computers at SLAC was roughly 50-50 back then, with a very slight nod towards the female side, so I'm not sure why the discrepancy.)

          1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

            Average is only 5, deviation either way is only 1, Difficult to see much of a discrepancy there.

          2. Yes Me Silver badge
            Angel

            F*** WYLBUR

            So, getting back to insulting OPERATOR, if you were at SLAC, you must have been aware of what WYLBUR did if you typed FUCK WYLBUR. Of course that was long after the 1401 era.

      2. Antron Argaiv Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        I worked at their Westfield plant for two summers (test tech on the RK-06 disk drive line) while in grad school. Gathered enough parts the first summer to build from scratch (some repairs required) my own personal VT-05 terminal, which took me from 110 baud (see above) to 300 baud!

        Badge #47349

        (still have the badge...the terminal was sold to a guy at MIT years ago)

        1. Vometia has insomnia. Again. Silver badge

          About a quarter of my badge number! I had to hand mine back but the photo was bloody awful anyway. I still have my VaxStation, tho'...

      3. nintendoeats Silver badge

        Was this before or after the board stabbed Ken in the back?

    2. WonkoTheSane
      Terminator

      I humbly direct your attention to the YouTube channel of Paweł Zadrożniak, creator of the Floppotron.

      A collection of assorted computer hardware and peripherals, repurposed to produce much the similar results to your printer script

  6. Michael Strorm Silver badge

    I'm the OPERATOR...

    ...with my pocket calculator.

    1. ITMA Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: I'm the OPERATOR...

      And so is my wife!

      :)

    2. NXM Silver badge

      Re: I'm the OPERATOR...

      By pressing down this special key it plays a little melody.

      I did actually have a Casio calculator which did that, in 1974.

      1. Fr. Ted Crilly Silver badge

        Re: I'm the OPERATOR...

        Endless - endless....

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A number of things wrong with this account

    First, it could not have been Python which did not yet exist.

    OPERATOR means this system was running VM/370 with users using CMS. The command language at the time was REXX, which did not use %varname% variables.

    There is no way a script got corrupted by sending it from one user to another. Perhaps this was a prank, but there is no possible way for what was described to actually happen.

    The whole thing reeks of bogosity and fading memories.

    1. ttlanhil

      Re: A number of things wrong with this account

      As other have said above - it's a Python of the Monty kind (if you read through carefully you'll find that it's actually explained)

      If OPERATOR was the account name, then yes it narrows it down a lot; if it's just the job title of the computer operator then not so much

      And of course a script can be corrupted when sending to another person, particularly when it's a joke script that gets corrupted by the jokester sending it to someone else.

      Hard to say exactly how it happened (maybe, just maybe, it was done with a text editor), but it certainly can

      1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

        Re: A number of things wrong with this account

        Do you know there are snakes called pythons?

    2. I Am Spartacus
      Flame

      Re: A number of things wrong with this reply

      A lot of University mainframes in the 70's and 80's ran the Michigan Terminal System (MTS). This was a time sharing O/s from University of Michigan. It has several advantages over TSO or VM/CMS from IBM. First it could run a lot of cheap terminals, rather than the IBM 3270 consoles; and secondly is was considerably cheaper and came with source code.

      This did NOT use REXX. But it did have a shell script of sorts, but I agree not Python.

      It did however have a feature that could send a message to the operators console. It was meant for things like "Please load tape VT12345 on Tape Drive 4 with ring in".

      This was used by my University colleagues to write a small assemble program that could send ASCII art messages to the OPERATOR. It was oh so funny when someone sent BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING to the operator in the remote data centre.

      It was somewhat less funny when the operators decided it was a message that management were watching their every activity and, as good union members, all walked out, shutting the mainframe down in the process.

      Even less fun was the poor undergraduates who authored the hack having to grovel to the operators.

      1. Chris Gray 1
        Meh

        Re: A number of things wrong with this reply

        "A lot of University mainframes"?????? My alma mater ran MTS (lots of memories of software built), and my recollection is that there were something like *four* universities which ran it.

        But yes, it was a good system. Supported lots of terminals connected through a terminal concentrator (e.g. DECWriters), but also supported IBM-3270's and clones. I believe the number of active interactive users could range up to 500 and beyond. Ours was originally on an actual IBM box with 32Meg of RAM, but that eventually got upgraded to an Amdahl 470(?).

        1. The Oncoming Scorn Silver badge
          Alert

          Re: A number of things wrong with this reply

          In another career in my youth (80's), someone used the message service to send a message to all the terminals that "The MD of our car dealership to can go Fuck Himself", then apparently crashed the system by inverting the keyboard & putting it face down on the worksurface so he couldn't be traced.

        2. Chris Gray 1

          Re: A number of things wrong with this reply

          Replying to myself. The MTS consortium had 8 members. A few others dabbled. Still not "a lot". See the Wikipedia article:

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_Terminal_System

          System didn't actually include email. A fellow in the math department wrote an email system, "show:mail".

      2. jake Silver badge

        Re: A number of things wrong with this reply

        At Stanford we had a 360/67 running ORVYL (and WYLBUR), which had been developed at SLAC in the mid to late 1960s. Later it also ran on a System/370 ... but at that point, I was slumming it in the BSD world.

    3. Philo T Farnsworth Bronze badge

      Re: A number of things wrong with this account

      Actually, there were a couple of scripting languages available on VM/CMS prior to the introduction of REXX (which had certain pythonish characteristics, if memory serves).

      The two that were most often used were EXEC and EXEC 2, both of which could be unfavorably compared to PC DOS .bat files in terms of expressivity and ease of use (and I know, having written easily thousands of lines in EXEC 2 before REXX came on the scene).

      The %varname% symantic doesn't ring a bell in any case, though I admit I haven't touched a 3277 terminal in better than 40 years, so memory is a bit hazy in that respect.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: A number of things wrong with this account

        "unfavorably compared to PC DOS .bat files"

        Ouch!

        Of course, it turns out that .bat files are so brain-dead stupid that they'll accept almost anything for a variable name. Including something like array[4].hash{"cat"}. (That's not a reference to an element in a hash in an array, it's the name of a single scalar variable.) So it's sorta possible - but highly not recommended! - to build data structures in it. Sorta. Watch your array indices!

      2. Vometia has insomnia. Again. Silver badge

        Re: A number of things wrong with this account

        There was CLIST (I think) on MVS whose variables were &THINGY IIRC. And Rexx went on to be the main scripting language on the Amiga, too. 30+ years after being refused a VM account because I couldn't make a business case (everything had to be paid for where IBM big iron was concerned; compared to our department's herd of SysV boxes, which had fairly sophisticated accounting too, but it was only used for capacity planning rather than sending monthly bills to every department that used them. I felt a bit disappointed that my creative lying let me down on that occasion tho') I've been intending to learn Rexx as it looks interesting and I've been swearing about Bash for years, so an alternative that isn't Python would be nice, but I still haven't got round to it.

  8. Martin an gof Silver badge

    VMS

    At the polytechnic in the 1980s we used VT220s connected to various VAXen. A classmate worked out that the "chat" function (similar to that used in the story) had no sanity checking on its input, so as well as annoying other users by sending them "BELL" characters, you could also send "STOP" (not sure of the terminology), which had the effect of freezing the display on the receiving terminal. I have no idea what happened to him in the long term, but he did fall foul of the local BOFHs several times and had his computer login suspended at least once.

    Shout out to "Sir Kit Breaker" if you're out there...

    M.

    1. GeekyOldFart

      Re: VMS

      At a major London medical school around that same time frame "Invite them to come talk to us" was a euphemism for locking their account...

    2. PB90210 Bronze badge

      Re: VMS

      ^S = x-off (^S/^Q = software flow control)

  9. Dizzy Dwarf

    If Rodney quests long enough ...

    ... he should find his teluma

  10. The Oncoming Scorn Silver badge
    Pint

    This Weeks Regonomizor

    We can deduce that Rodney is called Dave.

    For the benefit of Left Pondians...

    Rodney: Trigger - why d'you call me Dave? My name's not Dave - my name's Rodney.

    Trigger: I thought it was Dave!

    Rodney: No, it's Rodney.

    Trigger: You sure?

    Rodney: Yeah, I'm positive. I've looked it up on me birth certificate and passport and everything! It is definitely Rodney!

    Trigger: Oh well, you live 'n' learn - so what's Dave, a nickname like?

    Rodney: No. You're the only one who calls me Dave. Everybody else calls me Rodney, and the reason they call me Rodney is because Rodney is my name.

    Trigger: Oh well, I shall have to get used to calling you Rodney!

    Rodney: Thank you.

    Trigger: (Calling to the Chairman) Here Basil. You gonna get this meeting started?? Me and Dave ain't got all night!

  11. TimMaher Silver badge
    Pint

    Boomtown Rats

    I see what you did there @Matthew..

  12. Marty McFly Silver badge
    Pint

    1989, which pre-dates "Acceptable Use Policies"

    Proudly one of the first three students to get access to the "Internet". 1200 baud dial-up modem, Telnet, FTP, Pine, Elm were my tools.

    Found a script for sending email from a fake address. All good fun with my buddies, until a fake email was sent to a favorite professor....who just happened at the time to be getting on-line instruction from the administrator.

    Ooops.

    After directories & logs were searched, I not-so-proudly became one of the first two students to have Internet access revoked.

    1. Vometia has insomnia. Again. Silver badge

      Re: 1989, which pre-dates "Acceptable Use Policies"

      I remember almost being chucked out of college for that sort of malarky the year before. I was a horrible teenager.

    2. jake Silver badge

      Re: 1989, which pre-dates "Acceptable Use Policies"

      "1989, which pre-dates "Acceptable Use Policies""

      Nah. We kicked a kid off the Stanford network for the rest of the calendar quarter for policy violations after he sent a "Wanna Buy My Bike?" message to every email address on campus in about 1982.

      Every Datacenter in the Mainframe World had rules and regs about what was proper and what was not. The rules changed if you were on or off campus ... and if you were a part of the company who owned (or leased) the Mainframe, or were accessing it as a service bureau or (later) as a timeshare. Some of these rules were quite complex.

      We had an AUP (of sorts) for the ARPANET in the early 1970s, although I could make a case for there being one as soon as the first bits were sent and received between two University campuses in 1969 ("Proper use of University Equipment" and "Sharing of Research between Universities" or similar went back decades before this).

      Almost all BBSes had AUPs. Almost :-) [0]

      Delphi had an AUP in 1983, BIX in 1984, AOL (as QLink) in 1985. The granddaddy of all of 'em all, CI$, by at least 1979, possibly as early as 1969.

      [0] The AUP of mine read "Anything that unnecessarily increases jake's workload will get you terminated permanently. Other than that, have fun!" I never had to terminate anybody.

  13. CatBoy

    Sounds very familiar...

    Hmm.. this sounds decidedly like a group of myself and fellow student friends who abused the computers which I think were housed at another London location (UCL ?) from the green terminals in SELTEC. We got a good slap around the head for being generally slightly naughty students and abusing the poor operators ... I remember the general cry of "F%$^I)% Off" that could be heard after a small bleep of the terminal and yet another insult came across the RS-232 link to brighten up your coding woes.

    Oh what fun good old fashioned text could be. :-)

  14. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

    Was the operator

    the father of our most beloved BOFH, who was twisted by tales of dealing with lusers from the get go, before decending into the spirit of pure malevolence we all know and fear?

  15. Persona Silver badge

    God Save the Queen

    The OPERATOR of my college mainframe did have a great sense of humor. For curious reasons our mainframe was shut down every evening. Having been made in the US as it was shutting down it played the US national anthem on it's claxon. He decided it would be much more fun if it played "God Save the Queen". Back in those days this was not the simple matter of substituting one music file for another. He had to write the program from scratch using the claxon interface documentation. The only way to test it was at shutdown. It was immediately apparent that something was wrong, at first it sounded like the claxon was playing a single note, but after a long while it changed to the second note. The problem was that he had made a timing parameter error and it was playing at a small fraction of its proper speed. Being run as part of the shutdown process he had no way to interrupt it. He and the other people present just had to wait out the dirge being played very very slowly and loudly for an hour or so before they could turn off the power, lock up and go home.

    1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

      Re: God Save the Queen

      Standing to attention...

  16. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

    A seeming eon ago..

    When I was young and foolish (one of those conditions has cured itself..) my wife and I were mainframe programmers using VM/CMS to write code for IBM big iron. In a fit of depression, I knocked together a script for the ready prompt that, every time you pressed enter, it changed the prompt for how many years, months and days until retirement [1].

    It became quite popular, especially with the older staff..

    Management deleted it for "being too defeatist and not showing the progressive spirit expected of staff". Ho hum.

    [1] In those long-ago summer days our company pension was set to 55 [2]. Then, when said company departed this Sceptered Isle, the pension was handed over to a whole succession of dodgy pension management companies - to the extent that my anticipated pension went from about £12k/year to the current value of £900/pa

    [2] Then my next one was 60. Current one is the same as national pension age (currently 67) so I have just over 7 years before I can join the gainfully unemployed.

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