[TUHS] A man easter-egg (gimme gimme gimme)

[TUHS] A man easter-egg (gimme gimme gimme)

[Edouard KLEIN]

Hi all,

An easter-egg in the version of man that is installed on the most popular
Linux distros has recently been discovered after being there for 6 years:

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/405783/why-does-man-print-gimme-gimme-gimme-at-0030

It is for example discussed here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15747313

It makes man print 'gimme gimme gimme' if called at "Half past twelve", as
in the ABBA song.

I check on BSD, but man seems to be a shell script on FreeBSD, so it's
immune from the easter egg:
https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd/blob/master/usr.bin/man/man.sh

Do you have any UNIX easter-egg stories ? Putting some in, or discovering
one...

Was this kind of humor tolerated in the professional settings where UNIX
first circulated, or was it frowned upon ?
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[TUHS] A man easter-egg (gimme gimme gimme)

[Charles Anthony]

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On Tue, Nov 21, 2017 at 1:03 PM, Edouard KLEIN <edouardklein at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> An easter-egg in the version of man that is installed on the most popular
> Linux distros has recently been discovered after being there for 6 years:
>
> https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/405783/why-does-
> man-print-gimme-gimme-gimme-at-0030
>
> It is for example discussed here:
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15747313
>
> It makes man print 'gimme gimme gimme' if called at "Half past twelve", as
> in the ABBA song.
>
> I check on BSD, but man seems to be a shell script on FreeBSD, so it's
> immune from the easter egg:
> https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd/blob/master/usr.bin/man/man.sh
>
> Do you have any UNIX easter-egg stories ? Putting some in, or discovering
> one...
>
> Was this kind of humor tolerated in the professional settings where UNIX
> first circulated, or was it frowned upon ?
>
>
I didn't discover this one, but came across documentation of it when
researching the 3b2. (http://ferretronix.com/tech/3b2/):

The AT&T 3b2 (System V R3.2)

lboot prompts you with “Enter path name:”
> enter “magic mode”
> lboot replies “POOF!” “A hollow voice says (directory)”
> Instead of load-and-run, it loads the kernel
> and then breakpoints before entering with the message
> “You are standing inside of a large unexecuted /boot/KERNEL
> The only exit you see is at 0x108000”


It's in the source code: (/usr/src/uts/3b2/boot/lboot/subr.c)

                /*
                 * check for secret "magic mode" feature
                 */
                if (0 == strcmp(sp,"magic")) {
                    char *mp;

                    if ((mp=strtok((char*)NULL,"\r\n\t ")) == NULL || 0 !=
strcmp(mp,"mode"))
                        break;

                    MagicMode = TRUE;
                    printf("\nPOOF!");

                    if ((mp=strtok((char*)NULL,"\r\n\t ")) != NULL)
                        {
                        if (*mp == '/')
                            ++mp;

                        strcat(strcpy(slash_boot,"/"), mp);

                        printf("   A hollow voice says \"%s\".",
slash_boot);
                        }

                    printf("\n");
                    continue;
                }

-- Charles
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[TUHS] A man easter-egg (gimme gimme gimme)

[Dave Horsfall]

On Tue, 21 Nov 2017, Edouard KLEIN wrote:

> Was this kind of humor tolerated in the professional settings where UNIX 
> first circulated, or was it frowned upon ?

As a former developer and manager, I would be really pissed off if my 
programmers wasted their time on writing useless frippery instead of 
quality code, and I would certainly have a little chat with them...

Or is that just me?

And is some M$ malware still masquerading as easter eggs?  Simple enough 
to do: write it, wait for it to spread a bit, announce you've found a new 
egg (but it may not work for everyone (and will now))...

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

[TUHS] A man easter-egg (gimme gimme gimme)

[Charles Anthony]

On Tue, Nov 21, 2017 at 1:03 PM, Edouard KLEIN <edouardklein at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> An easter-egg in the version of man that is installed on the most popular
> Linux distros has recently been discovered after being there for 6 years:
>
> https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/405783/why-does-
> man-print-gimme-gimme-gimme-at-0030
>
> It is for example discussed here:
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15747313
>
> It makes man print 'gimme gimme gimme' if called at "Half past twelve", as
> in the ABBA song.
>
> I check on BSD, but man seems to be a shell script on FreeBSD, so it's
> immune from the easter egg:
> https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd/blob/master/usr.bin/man/man.sh
>
> Do you have any UNIX easter-egg stories ? Putting some in, or discovering
> one...
>
> Was this kind of humor tolerated in the professional settings where UNIX
> first circulated, or was it frowned upon ?
>
>
I remember back in the late 90's, the man page for syslogd had a section
about dealing with network attacks on syslogd servers; several approaches
described, the last one reading something like

....if all else fails, find a three for length of sucker rod* and have a
> discussion with the user.
>


 *Sucker rod: 3/4 threaded steel rod, used in oil drilling.


It looks like someone edited it out of the man pages since then.

-- Charles
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[TUHS] A man easter-egg (gimme gimme gimme)

[George Michaelson]

man woman
make love
cat "tin of catfood"

the first two were easter eggs. the last one was just assonance from
"cannot open" error message.

I think they were always tolerated.

But.. then not. The ADA compiler verification committee made York take

"congratulations, you have just invoked the most abstruse element of
the ADA specification"

out of the compiler messages section: it was tickling the test harness
and didn't meet compliance (or so I was told)

On Wed, Nov 22, 2017 at 7:07 AM, Charles Anthony
<charles.unix.pro at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 21, 2017 at 1:03 PM, Edouard KLEIN <edouardklein at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> An easter-egg in the version of man that is installed on the most popular
>> Linux distros has recently been discovered after being there for 6 years:
>>
>>
>> https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/405783/why-does-man-print-gimme-gimme-gimme-at-0030
>>
>> It is for example discussed here:
>> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15747313
>>
>> It makes man print 'gimme gimme gimme' if called at "Half past twelve", as
>> in the ABBA song.
>>
>> I check on BSD, but man seems to be a shell script on FreeBSD, so it's
>> immune from the easter egg:
>> https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd/blob/master/usr.bin/man/man.sh
>>
>> Do you have any UNIX easter-egg stories ? Putting some in, or discovering
>> one...
>>
>> Was this kind of humor tolerated in the professional settings where UNIX
>> first circulated, or was it frowned upon ?
>>
>
> I remember back in the late 90's, the man page for syslogd had a section
> about dealing with network attacks on syslogd servers; several approaches
> described, the last one reading something like
>
>> ....if all else fails, find a three for length of sucker rod* and have a
>> discussion with the user.
>>
>>
>>
>>  *Sucker rod: 3/4 threaded steel rod, used in oil drilling.
>
>
> It looks like someone edited it out of the man pages since then.
>
> -- Charles
>
>

[TUHS] A man easter-egg (gimme gimme gimme)

[Henry Bent]

On 21 November 2017 at 18:07, Charles Anthony <charles.unix.pro at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> I remember back in the late 90's, the man page for syslogd had a section
> about dealing with network attacks on syslogd servers; several approaches
> described, the last one reading something like
>
> ....if all else fails, find a three for length of sucker rod* and have a
>> discussion with the user.
>>
>
>
>  *Sucker rod: 3/4 threaded steel rod, used in oil drilling.
>
>
> It looks like someone edited it out of the man pages since then.
>

It's still in sysklogd, and the manpage is here:
https://linux.die.net/man/8/syslogd

-Henry
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[TUHS] A man easter-egg (gimme gimme gimme)

[Dave Horsfall]

On Wed, 22 Nov 2017, George Michaelson wrote:

> man woman
> make love
> cat "tin of catfood"
>
> the first two were easter eggs. the last one was just assonance from 
> "cannot open" error message.

Never saw the easter egg, but "man woman" on FreeBSD/Mac/Penguin says "No 
manual entry for woman" which I guess will have to do...

(Well, someone had to try it, so it may as well be me.)

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

[TUHS] A man easter-egg (gimme gimme gimme)

[arnold]

Edouard KLEIN <edouardklein at gmail.com> wrote:

> Do you have any UNIX easter-egg stories ? Putting some in, or discovering
> one...

I suspect that Easter Eggs are more common in Open Source / Free Software,
where people feel free to "play" on stuff they do for fun / as volunteers.
Try:

	gawk --nostalgia

sometime. :-)  For a long time setting WHINY_USER in the environment
caused gawk to loop over arrays in sorted index order. That's long gone,
now that it can be done under program control.

> Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2017 10:00:42 +1100 (EST)
> From: Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org>
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] A man easter-egg (gimme gimme gimme)
> > first circulated, or was it frowned upon ?
>
> As a former developer and manager, I would be really pissed off if my 
> programmers wasted their time on writing useless frippery instead of 
> quality code, and I would certainly have a little chat with them...

I think that this is totally appropriate for code being developed
for a paid product.

Arnold

[TUHS] A man easter-egg (gimme gimme gimme)

[Andreas Kusalananda Kähäri]

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On Wed, Nov 22, 2017 at 01:48:30AM -0700, arnold at skeeve.com wrote:
> Edouard KLEIN <edouardklein at gmail.com> wrote:
[cut]
> > Subject: Re: [TUHS] A man easter-egg (gimme gimme gimme)
> > > first circulated, or was it frowned upon ?
> >
> > As a former developer and manager, I would be really pissed off if my 
> > programmers wasted their time on writing useless frippery instead of 
> > quality code, and I would certainly have a little chat with them...
> 
> I think that this is totally appropriate for code being developed
> for a paid product.
> 
> Arnold

Hmm... As a manager, I'd be more annoyed if the code did not perform
according to spec than I would be if single programmer spent half an
hour amusing themselves.  Being pedantic about time is a surefire way of
demotivating a dev team.

No matter who pays (or not pays) for the code to be produced, the end
user, no matter it's clinical staff in a hospital or your uncle's son,
need to be guaranteed that the code doesn't trigger unexpected behaviour
when used.  The risk of that is usually smaller if the product does not
contain any easter eggs.

-- 
Andreas Kusalananda Kähäri,
National Bioinformatics Infrastructure Sweden (NBIS),
Uppsala University, Sweden.

[TUHS] A man easter-egg (gimme gimme gimme)

[Ian Zimmerman]

On 2017-11-22 01:48, arnold at skeeve.com wrote:

> Try:
> 
> 	gawk --nostalgia

~$ gawk --nostalgia
awk: bailing out near line 1
Aborted

Maybe it still needs a program?

-- 
Please don't Cc: me privately on mailing lists and Usenet,
if you also post the followup to the list or newsgroup.
To reply privately _only_ on Usenet, fetch the TXT record for the domain.

[TUHS] A man easter-egg (gimme gimme gimme)

[arnold]

Ian Zimmerman <itz at very.loosely.org> wrote:

> On 2017-11-22 01:48, arnold at skeeve.com wrote:
>
> > Try:
> > 
> > 	gawk --nostalgia
>
> ~$ gawk --nostalgia
> awk: bailing out near line 1
> Aborted
>
> Maybe it still needs a program?

No, that was the joke. Early Unix awk used to say exactly that
message, on almost any problem, often followed by a core dump.

(I never claimed the easter egg was non-lame.)

Arnold

[TUHS] A man easter-egg (gimme gimme gimme)

[arnold]

Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Nov 22, 2017 at 9:11 AM, <arnold at skeeve.com> wrote:
>
> > Ian Zimmerman <itz at very.loosely.org> wrote:
> >
> > > On 2017-11-22 01:48, arnold at skeeve.com wrote:
> > >
> > > > Try:
> > > >
> > > >     gawk --nostalgia
> > >
> > > ~$ gawk --nostalgia
> > > awk: bailing out near line 1
> > > Aborted
> > >
> > > Maybe it still needs a program?
> >
> > No, that was the joke. Early Unix awk used to say exactly that
> > message, on almost any problem, often followed by a core dump.
> >
> > (I never claimed the easter egg was non-lame.)
> >
>
> There were T-Shirts of this at early conferences as well. Showed a picture
> of a vaguely puffin-like bird baling  of an airplane made up of what looked
> like ascii characters {}()|/... Google is unable find one though, so my
> memory may be rusty here...
>
> Warner

I have such a shirt. Maybe I can scan it. :-)

Arnold

[TUHS] A man easter-egg (gimme gimme gimme)

[Ron Natalie]

Years ago at BRL, we had a division chief that typed with only two fingers.     One of my coworkers modded the "stty" command to include "two-finger" in the list of modes when that user ran it.
Of course, it was slightly laughable when he discovered it and found there was no way to disable it.

The "make love" harkens back to TECO which would print "NOT WAR?" 

Years ago, Milo Medin found that there was a "backdoor" password into the Proteon routers that he discovered running "strings" on the binary.    After making a stink about it, Proteon removed (or just changed) the password.    However, if you ran strings on the binary, about the same place you'd have found the original backdoor password was a string "Not so easy this time, eh Milo?"

[TUHS] A man easter-egg (gimme gimme gimme)

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Ron,

> Years ago at BRL, we had a division chief that typed with only two
> fingers.

Being able to touch-type is a boon to the programmer, but I did work
with one old-timer used to writing and having someone else do the
punching.

When forced to use one of these fangled electronic keyboards, he would
sit and think for a while and then hunt-and-peck out up to a dozen
lines, no editing required, then resume thinking.  I suppose it was the
equivalent of not having to rub out what he'd just written.

Ian Fleming, I think, being a hack first before a novelist, said
something about not starting to type a sentence until you know how it's
going to end.  Typing-correction fluid was probably the start of the
slippery slope.

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.
https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy

[TUHS] A man easter-egg (gimme gimme gimme)

[George Michaelson]

On Wed, Nov 22, 2017 at 8:51 AM, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:
> On Wed, 22 Nov 2017, George Michaelson wrote:
>
>> man woman
>> make love
>> cat "tin of catfood"
>>
>> the first two were easter eggs. the last one was just assonance from
>> "cannot open" error message.
>
>
> Never saw the easter egg, but "man woman" on FreeBSD/Mac/Penguin says "No
> manual entry for woman" which I guess will have to do...
>
> (Well, someone had to try it, so it may as well be me.)
>
>
> --
> Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will
> suffer."

[TUHS] A man easter-egg (gimme gimme gimme)

[Nemo]

On 24 November 2017 at 10:11, Nemo <cym224 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 22 November 2017 at 03:48,  <arnold at skeeve.com> wrote (in part):
>>> As a former developer and manager, I would be really pissed off if my
>>> programmers wasted their time on writing useless frippery instead of
>>> quality code, and I would certainly have a little chat with them...
>>
>> I think that this is totally appropriate for code being developed
>> for a paid product.
>
> I would say this is context-sensitive (industry, customers, ...).  One
> version of MS Word had an animation of a cartoon monster crushing "WP'
>  (somewhere in the credits, I recall).
>
> N.

I really must be more careful with replies.  The above was meant for
TUHS, not just Arnold.

N.

[TUHS] A man easter-egg (gimme gimme gimme)

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: "Ron Natalie"

    > After making a stink about it, Proteon removed (or just changed) the
    > password.

We added a 'disable field service password' option to the configuration (for
those who wanted to keep FS out), changed the password (since the old one was
blown), and stored the new one in encrypted form - hence the message! :-)

	  Noel