[TUHS] Happy New Year and an amusing story from the past

[TUHS] Happy New Year and an amusing story from the past

[Norman Wilson]

Dave Horsfall:

> At yet another, we had a Sun 3/50 window connected to a Convex, and acted 
> all innocent when various dweebs did the old "echo 99k2vp..." etc trick.

John Cowan:

  High-precision approximation to sqrt(2).  What's the trick?

======

Not really a trick, just a hoary old zero-order CPU benchmark:

	echo 99k2vp | time dc

You can see why letting people type that on a Convex thinking it was
a Sun 3/50 might have entertainment value.

Modern systems are far too fast for that to be worth while, though.
I still use a variant of it: a shell script called dc-N, containing

dc <<!
99k[2vszla1-dsa0<b]sb${1-500}salbx
!

meant to be invoked as

	time dc-N 10000

or the like.  (The internal default of 500 has long since gone
stale too, of course.)

Norman Wilson
Toronto ON

[TUHS] Happy New Year and an amusing story from the past

[John Cowan]

Norman Wilson scripsit:

> Dave Horsfall:
> 
> > At yet another, we had a Sun 3/50 window connected to a Convex, and acted 
> > all innocent when various dweebs did the old "echo 99k2vp..." etc trick.
> 
> You can see why letting people type that on a Convex thinking it was
> a Sun 3/50 might have entertainment value.

Ah.  I interpreted what Dave said as the other way around: you walked
up to the Convex but were teleported to the Sun, and ended up thinking
"Ghu, this Convex is slow".

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
Half the lies they tell about me are true.
        --Tallulah Bankhead, American actress

[TUHS] Happy New Year and an amusing story from the past

[Ronald Natalie]

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It was the old suntools lock program, which was nothing more than a full size window that covered up the screen.     You could use the hotkeys to iconify it but you had a fraction of a second before it replaced itself.     However, if you were fast you could as you kept iconifying it find a terminal  window, do a ps, and kill the screen saver.    You’d get like 2 characters typed on each iteration.

That was the time I scared all my old BRL buddies because the account they gave me was ron at hq.af.mil <mailto:ron at hq.af.mil>.      I don’t recall the root password that time, but the password on the cisco routers we were working on was “DickCheney” (this was back when he was secy of defense).

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[TUHS] Happy New Year and an amusing story from the past

[Diomidis Spinellis]

On 03/01/2015 02:49, Ronald Natalie wrote:
> I asked if I should knock down the screen saver and he said sure go at it.

At the university we were a few hundred undergraduates using two VAX 
780s through about 40 serial terminals.  They were running 4.3BSD.  It 
was common for students who would leave their terminal for a few minutes 
to lock(1) it, so that others wouldn't mess with their account. 
Sometimes terminals were forgotten with the lock program running, and 
then a staff member would come, type some magic characters, and exit the 
lock program.  Through shoulder surfing a student had found that magic 
sequence, and some of us were led into this secret.  What we didn't know 
at the time, was that the magic character sequence was the root password.

#ifndef lint
static char sccsid[] = "@(#)lock.c      8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93";
#endif /* not lint */

/*
  * Lock a terminal up until the given key is entered, until the root
  * password is entered, or the given interval times out.
  *

[TUHS] Happy New Year and an amusing story from the past

[Ronald Natalie]

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Never had to social engineer anything.    I think we cracked the Gould booth systems using the WIZ sendmail hack.

I remember another time IBM loaned me an RS6000 but didn’t send along the root password.   I left a message wanting to know if they knew the root password or should I just break in.   It took me about 20 minutes and I called back and told them I’d solved the problem (the RS6000 had a MAINTENANCE mode on the keyswitch that booted up a maintenance program as root which displayed documentation using more, which had a shell escape….).

I remember one day showing up at an office I had been working in the pentagon and I my sponsor was on the phone and I asked if I should knock down the screen saver and he said sure go at it.   After he realized that I actually could do that he told the guy on the phone that he needed to check on how I’d done that.

My old boss (Steve Wolff later of NSFNet and Cisco fame) volunteered me for the Army Tiger Team.   Mostly they were physical security guys so I was about the only computer guy with them, but we had a lot of fun, some through breaking UNIX security and others just physical games.    I was down at White Sands Missile Range one time and had already pretty much gotten into all the systems there when someone had noticed the physical security guys wandering around and put a warning in MOTD (of course I let them know right away that they were on to them).    I heard years later that anytime a machine went down at WSMR they still blamed me.

[TUHS] Happy New Year and an amusing story from the past

[Gregg Levine]

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Hello!
Dave can you explain how all of you managed to connect a Sun 3/50
window to a Convex? I can of course imagine how those dweebs did that
trick.

As for annoying marketing droids, I did that myself back when the
original RS/6000 came out. Interesting contraption and I never did
appreciate what it grew up into.
-----
Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com
"This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."


On Fri, Jan 2, 2015 at 2:49 PM, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:
> On Thu, 1 Jan 2015, Ronald Natalie wrote:
>
>> I guess y’all aren’t with the baptists.
>
> Hilarious!
>
> The AUUG conferences seem pretty tame by comparison; one year, we used the
> menu holders as catapults (I don't know where we got the rubber bands) and
> dotted the ceiling with toothpicks (they were still there at a subsequent
> conference).  Or am I confusing that with a Caving conference?
>
> At another (Warren will remember this one, as he was involved) we refaced
> a Pyramid poster (KNOW UNIX, THINK PYRAMID) to "NO UNIX IN PYRAMID", with
> the strategic application of napkins and some gaffer tape that we'd dug up
> from somewhere...  Gary Jackson took it well.
>
> At an early one, when Gould first came out, we social-engineered their
> booth-marketoid into giving us root access; the buggers never did pay the
> bounty, claiming that we'd cheated.  Well, yeah...
>
> At yet another, we had a Sun 3/50 window connected to a Convex, and acted
> all innocent when various dweebs did the old "echo 99k2vp..." etc trick.
>
> Sigh; I miss the AUUG conferences.
>
>> People took it pretty tongue in cheek when they were presented.  All
>> except Redman who flew off the handle.
>
> Some people have no sense of humour.  Did anyone actually, err, avail
> themselves of this unique opportunity?
>
> --
> Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Bliss is a MacBook with a FreeBSD server."
> http://www.horsfall.org/spam.html (and check the home page whilst you're there)
> _______________________________________________
> TUHS mailing list
> TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs
>

[TUHS] Happy New Year and an amusing story from the past

[John Cowan]

Dave Horsfall scripsit:

> At an early one, when Gould first came out, we social-engineered their 
> booth-marketoid into giving us root access; the buggers never did pay the 
> bounty, claiming that we'd cheated.  Well, yeah...

In a former life, my employer was looking to have its Internet connection
audited by an outside party, and brought in Bellcore.  As the insider
most concerned with such things (which was why they didn't trust me),
I sat in on the kickoff meeting.  After they detailed the list of
penetration attacks they were going to use, I raised my hand and said
"What about social engineering?"  I feel morally certain that nobody
from $EMPLOYER except me and my boss knew what that was.

The Bellcore rep did, however:  "Oh, we never do that."

"Why not?"

"It always succeeds, so it doesn't form the basis of actionable
recommendations."

> At yet another, we had a Sun 3/50 window connected to a Convex, and acted 
> all innocent when various dweebs did the old "echo 99k2vp..." etc trick.

High-precision approximation to sqrt(2).  What's the trick?

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
If I read "upcoming" in [the newspaper] once more, I will be downcoming
and somebody will be outgoing.

[TUHS] Happy New Year and an amusing story from the past

[Larry McVoy]

On Sat, Jan 03, 2015 at 06:49:14AM +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> On Thu, 1 Jan 2015, Ronald Natalie wrote:
> 
> > I guess y???all aren???t with the baptists.
> 
> At an early one, when Gould first came out, we social-engineered their 
> booth-marketoid into giving us root access; the buggers never did pay the 
> bounty, claiming that we'd cheated.  Well, yeah...

Wasn't that Guy Harris?  He noticed root had dot in their path and wrote
an ls that dumped core if (!getuid()) and else tried to stash away a 
setuid shell only to realize that Gould had killed setuid so he had to
copy the file (/usr/lib/secure or something like that) and chmod it so
he could read it.  As I recall it said "Gould makes fire breathing 
secure systems" or similar.

The reason I remember all of this is I blasted gould on comp.unix-wizards
for not coming through with the prize, I thought that was lame in the 
extreme.

Funny ending to that story is that I actually interviewed at Gould and when
I showed up there everyone's head was sticking out of their office to see
the asshole who had the balls to show up and ask for a job.  Much to my 
surprise, after an uncomfortable day of interviews, they offered me one.
Didn't take it, went to work for Lachman instead which turned out better
for me, had a blast.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	     lm at mcvoy.com             http://www.mcvoy.com/lm 

[TUHS] Happy New Year and an amusing story from the past

[Dave Horsfall]

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On Thu, 1 Jan 2015, Ronald Natalie wrote:

> I guess y’all aren’t with the baptists.

Hilarious!

The AUUG conferences seem pretty tame by comparison; one year, we used the 
menu holders as catapults (I don't know where we got the rubber bands) and 
dotted the ceiling with toothpicks (they were still there at a subsequent 
conference).  Or am I confusing that with a Caving conference?

At another (Warren will remember this one, as he was involved) we refaced 
a Pyramid poster (KNOW UNIX, THINK PYRAMID) to "NO UNIX IN PYRAMID", with 
the strategic application of napkins and some gaffer tape that we'd dug up 
from somewhere...  Gary Jackson took it well.

At an early one, when Gould first came out, we social-engineered their 
booth-marketoid into giving us root access; the buggers never did pay the 
bounty, claiming that we'd cheated.  Well, yeah...

At yet another, we had a Sun 3/50 window connected to a Convex, and acted 
all innocent when various dweebs did the old "echo 99k2vp..." etc trick.

Sigh; I miss the AUUG conferences.

> People took it pretty tongue in cheek when they were presented.  All 
> except Redman who flew off the handle.

Some people have no sense of humour.  Did anyone actually, err, avail 
themselves of this unique opportunity?

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Bliss is a MacBook with a FreeBSD server."
http://www.horsfall.org/spam.html (and check the home page whilst you're there)

[TUHS] Happy New Year and an amusing story from the past

[Lyndon Nerenberg]

On Jan 1, 2015, at 4:46 PM, Wesley Parish <wes.parish at paradise.net.nz> wrote:

> And nobody thought to pronounce the word UNIX (EUNUCHS) to the Very Reverend Baptist-folk? :)

"Are you the police?"

"No ma'am, we're UNIX."

[TUHS] Happy New Year and an amusing story from the past

[Wesley Parish]

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And nobody thought to pronounce the word UNIX (EUNUCHS) to the Very Reverend Baptist-folk? :)

That would've made it even funnier!

Quoting scj at yaccman.com:

> Oh that brings back memories! It seems that every Baptist read Usenix
> as
> Unisex (Freud would have something to say about that...). Families with
> children would pass up an elevator rather than get on it with Usenix
> folks...
> 
> 
> > Love it. IIRC that was the conference a number of us with BSD daemon
> > t-shirts were accosted for the wearing them.
> >
> > A story I like to tell was in the early 1980s at the Toronto USENIX.
> This
> > was just as when the US was going through AIDS reaction similar to
> the
> > current ebola over-worries. I was wearing a "Sex, Drugs & UNIX"
> button
> > when I got on the hotel elevator with Mike Krueger when your basic
> midwest
> > family of 4 or 5 got on at the same time. The mother sees my button
> and
> > asks, what's "UNIX." Krueger looks at her and replies: "It's like AIDS
> --
> > only worse."
> >
> > She immediately takes her kids and cowers in the corner while I'm
> > alternating being wanting to kick Krueger and laughing.
> >
> > On Thu, Jan 1, 2015 at 6:44 AM, Ronald Natalie <ron at ronnatalie.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> A prosperous New Years to all us old UNIX farts.
> >>
> >> Years ago the USENIX conference was in Atlanta. It was a stark
> >> contrast
> >> between us and the Southern Baptists who were in town for their
> >> conference
> >> as well (punctuated at some goofball Baptist standing up in the
> middle
> >> of
> >> one of the restaurants to sing God Bless America or some such).
> >>
> >> Anyhow, right before the conference someone (I think it was Dennis)
> made
> >> some comment about nobody ever having asked him for a cast of his
> >> genitals. A couple of friends decided we needed to issue genital
> >> casting
> >> kits to certain of the UNIX notables. I went out to an art supply
> >> store
> >> and bought plaster, paper cups, popsicle sticks to mix with, etc…
> >> Gould
> >> computers let me use one of their booth machines and a printer to
> print
> >> out
> >> the instructions. I purloined some bags from the hotel. It was
> >> pointed
> >> out that you need vaseline in order for the plaster to not stick to
> the
> >> skin. Great, I head into the hotel gift shop and grab ten tiny jars
> >> of
> >> vaseline. As I plop these on the counter at the cashier, she looks
> at
> >> me
> >> for a minute and then announces…
> >>
> >> I guess y’all aren’t with the baptists.
> >>
> >> People took it pretty tongue in cheek when they were presented. All
> >> except Redman who flew off the handle.
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> TUHS mailing list
> >> TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org
> >> https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs
> >>
> > _______________________________________________
> > TUHS mailing list
> > TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org
> > https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs
> >
> 
> 
> __________________ _____________________________
> TUHS mailing list
> TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuh s
>  

[TUHS] Happy New Year and an amusing story from the past

[scj]

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Oh that brings back memories!  It seems that every Baptist read Usenix as
Unisex (Freud would have something to say about that...).  Families with
children would pass up an elevator rather than get on it with Usenix
folks...


> Love it.  IIRC that was the conference a number of us with BSD daemon
> t-shirts were accosted for the wearing them.
>
> A story I like to tell was in the early 1980s at the Toronto USENIX.  This
> was just as when the US was going through AIDS reaction similar to the
> current ebola over-worries.  I was wearing a "Sex, Drugs & UNIX" button
> when I got on the hotel elevator with Mike Krueger when your basic midwest
> family of 4 or 5 got on at the same time.   The mother sees my button and
> asks, what's "UNIX." Krueger looks at her and replies:  "It's like AIDS --
> only worse."
>
> She immediately takes her kids and cowers in the corner while I'm
> alternating being wanting to kick Krueger and laughing.
>
> On Thu, Jan 1, 2015 at 6:44 AM, Ronald Natalie <ron at ronnatalie.com> wrote:
>
>> A prosperous New Years to all us old UNIX farts.
>>
>> Years ago the USENIX conference was in Atlanta.    It was a stark
>> contrast
>> between us and the Southern Baptists who were in town for their
>> conference
>> as well (punctuated at some goofball Baptist standing up in the middle
>> of
>> one of the restaurants to sing God Bless America or some such).
>>
>> Anyhow, right before the conference someone (I think it was Dennis) made
>> some comment about nobody ever having asked him for a cast of his
>> genitals.   A couple of friends decided we needed to issue genital
>> casting
>> kits to certain of the UNIX notables.    I went out to an art supply
>> store
>> and bought plaster, paper cups, popsicle sticks to mix with, etc…
>> Gould
>> computers let me use one of their booth machines and a printer to print
>> out
>> the instructions.   I purloined some bags from the hotel.   It was
>> pointed
>> out that you need vaseline in order for the plaster to not stick to the
>> skin.    Great, I head into the hotel gift shop and grab ten tiny jars
>> of
>> vaseline.   As I plop these on the counter at the cashier, she looks at
>> me
>> for a minute and then announces…
>>
>> I guess y’all aren’t with the baptists.
>>
>> People took it pretty tongue in cheek when they were presented.    All
>> except Redman who flew off the handle.
>> _______________________________________________
>> TUHS mailing list
>> TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org
>> https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs
>>
> _______________________________________________
> TUHS mailing list
> TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs
>

[TUHS] Happy New Year and an amusing story from the past

[Clem Cole]

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Love it.  IIRC that was the conference a number of us with BSD daemon
t-shirts were accosted for the wearing them.

A story I like to tell was in the early 1980s at the Toronto USENIX.  This
was just as when the US was going through AIDS reaction similar to the
current ebola over-worries.  I was wearing a "Sex, Drugs & UNIX" button
when I got on the hotel elevator with Mike Krueger when your basic midwest
family of 4 or 5 got on at the same time.   The mother sees my button and
asks, what's "UNIX." Krueger looks at her and replies:  "It's like AIDS --
only worse."

She immediately takes her kids and cowers in the corner while I'm
alternating being wanting to kick Krueger and laughing.

On Thu, Jan 1, 2015 at 6:44 AM, Ronald Natalie <ron at ronnatalie.com> wrote:

> A prosperous New Years to all us old UNIX farts.
>
> Years ago the USENIX conference was in Atlanta.    It was a stark contrast
> between us and the Southern Baptists who were in town for their conference
> as well (punctuated at some goofball Baptist standing up in the middle of
> one of the restaurants to sing God Bless America or some such).
>
> Anyhow, right before the conference someone (I think it was Dennis) made
> some comment about nobody ever having asked him for a cast of his
> genitals.   A couple of friends decided we needed to issue genital casting
> kits to certain of the UNIX notables.    I went out to an art supply store
> and bought plaster, paper cups, popsicle sticks to mix with, etc…   Gould
> computers let me use one of their booth machines and a printer to print out
> the instructions.   I purloined some bags from the hotel.   It was pointed
> out that you need vaseline in order for the plaster to not stick to the
> skin.    Great, I head into the hotel gift shop and grab ten tiny jars of
> vaseline.   As I plop these on the counter at the cashier, she looks at me
> for a minute and then announces…
>
> I guess y’all aren’t with the baptists.
>
> People took it pretty tongue in cheek when they were presented.    All
> except Redman who flew off the handle.
> _______________________________________________
> TUHS mailing list
> TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs
>
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[TUHS] Happy New Year and an amusing story from the past

[Ronald Natalie]

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A prosperous New Years to all us old UNIX farts.

Years ago the USENIX conference was in Atlanta.    It was a stark contrast between us and the Southern Baptists who were in town for their conference as well (punctuated at some goofball Baptist standing up in the middle of one of the restaurants to sing God Bless America or some such).

Anyhow, right before the conference someone (I think it was Dennis) made some comment about nobody ever having asked him for a cast of his genitals.   A couple of friends decided we needed to issue genital casting kits to certain of the UNIX notables.    I went out to an art supply store and bought plaster, paper cups, popsicle sticks to mix with, etc…   Gould computers let me use one of their booth machines and a printer to print out the instructions.   I purloined some bags from the hotel.   It was pointed out that you need vaseline in order for the plaster to not stick to the skin.    Great, I head into the hotel gift shop and grab ten tiny jars of vaseline.   As I plop these on the counter at the cashier, she looks at me for a minute and then announces…

I guess y’all aren’t with the baptists.

People took it pretty tongue in cheek when they were presented.    All except Redman who flew off the handle.