<div dir="ltr"><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small">Egad! Back in the day all of the /dev/tty entries were world writable.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small">I used to troll CMU CS Rogue players (when I wasn't playing) from time to time by sending a string to their tty that grabbed the cursor, moved it to where the messages appeared (upper left corner?) and typing "The dangling modifier struck!"</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small">That's all it did. I got a lot of pleasure when I overheard two faculty members comparing notes on their experiences with the dangling modifier.</div><br clear="all"></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small">Best,</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small">Marc</div></div><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div>=====<br><a href="http://nygeek.net" target="_blank">nygeek.net</a></div><div><a href="https://www.mindthegapdialogs.com/home" target="_blank">mindthegapdialogs.com/home</a><br></div></div></div></div><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Dec 13, 2024 at 10:53 AM Larry McVoy <<a href="mailto:lm@mcvoy.com">lm@mcvoy.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">I loved talk when CS was running BSD on a VAX. You could see who was on<br>
and talk them. Very handy and it was sort of social.<br>
<br>
It's crazy how things were back then, open ports listening for all sorts<br>
of things. I think we were pretty unaware of how nasty the internet would<br>
get.<br>
<br>
On Fri, Dec 13, 2024 at 10:22:22AM -0500, Clem Cole wrote:<br>
> As for the motivation -- it was simple. UCB is on a hill. I lived at the<br>
> base of hill and I only wanted to walk up it once a day. Our office was a<br>
> big pool of about 20 of us next to the CAD machine room on the second floor<br>
> of Cory Hall. Somebody was usually in the office most nights, but not<br>
> everyone. We all had modems and terminals at home, but only one phone<br>
> line. We had 3 Vaxes in the CAD group, plus my Array Processor. So I<br>
> wanted to be able to ask someone like Peter or TQ to reset the AP for me if<br>
> I hosed it when I was working from home when I was debugging it. Plus<br>
> the obvious social aspects -- "hey you want go get a Pizza/Beer etc..."<br>
> But since we might be working on a different system, Kipps' hack was<br>
> useless.<br>
> ???<br>
> ???<br>
> ???<br>
> ???<br>
> <br>
> On Fri, Dec 13, 2024 at 10:14???AM Clem Cole <<a href="mailto:clemc@ccc.com" target="_blank">clemc@ccc.com</a>> wrote:<br>
> <br>
> > Yes -- I can give this history.<br>
> > Kipp wrote an early version for 4.1BSD - but it is not the version in the<br>
> > releases. It ran on Ernie and did not do as much.<br>
> > I had used a different program on the PDP-10's and the ARPANET and I<br>
> > started over when Joy added sockets for 4.1A. I also made the infamous use<br>
> > of vax integers instead of network integers (and I knew better - but really<br>
> > did not think about until a few years later when I was at Masscomp and<br>
> > compiled it for the 68000 -- ugh). That version still had a couple of bugs<br>
> > in it (i.e. hung in the 4.1A networking code occasionally), but worked well<br>
> > enough on the CAD systems. I went away to a USENIX conference and while I<br>
> > was gone, my officemate Peter (Moore) took my code and fixed the problem,<br>
> > plus he put it into RCS. I gave that to Sam and that's the version that<br>
> > went out in 4.1C and beyond.<br>
> ><br>
> > Clem<br>
> ><br>
> ><br>
> > ???<br>
> > ???<br>
> ><br>
> > On Fri, Dec 13, 2024 at 9:29???AM Dan Cross <<a href="mailto:crossd@gmail.com" target="_blank">crossd@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
> ><br>
> >> I'm curious if anyone has any history they can share about the BSD<br>
> >> "talk" program.<br>
> >><br>
> >> I was fond of this back when it was still (relatively) common, but<br>
> >> given the way it's architected I definitely see why it fell out of use<br>
> >> as the Internet grew. Still, does anybody know what the history behind<br>
> >> it is? Initially, I thought it was written by Mike Karels, but that<br>
> >> was just my speculation from SCCS spelunking, and looking at the<br>
> >> sources from 4.2, I see RCS header strings that indicate it was<br>
> >> written by "moore" (Peter Moore?). talk.c says, "Written by Kipp<br>
> >> Hickman".<br>
> >><br>
> >> It seems to have arrived pretty early on with respect to the<br>
> >> introduction of TCP/IP in BSD: the README alludes to some things<br>
> >> coming up in 4.1c. Clem, you seem to have had a hand in it, and are<br>
> >> credited (along with Peter Moore) for making it work on 4.1a.<br>
> >><br>
> >> So I guess the question is, what was the motivation? Was it just to<br>
> >> have a more pleasing user-to-user communications experience, or was<br>
> >> discussion across the network an explicit goal? There's a note in<br>
> >> talk.c ("Modified to run between hosts by Peter Moore, 8/19/82") that<br>
> >> suggests this wasn't the original intent. Who thought up the<br>
> >> character-at-a-time display mode?<br>
> >><br>
> >> Thanks for any insights.<br>
> >><br>
> >> - Dan C.<br>
> >><br>
> ><br>
<br>
-- <br>
---<br>
Larry McVoy Retired to fishing <a href="http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat</a><br>
</blockquote></div>