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Destroying Godzilla and other tales?
5. $Destroy *FTN OK
The May 1996 issue of the UM IT Digest (the farewell to MTS issue) under the heading "Some Days Were Better Than Others" told this story: A professor was giving some visitors a tour of the Computing Center facilities one day and paused at the system console. Wanting to demonstrate some of the failsafe features that were designed into the system, he said, "Watch what happens when I try to destroy the Fortran compiler." Unfortunately, the system was not as failsafe as he anticipated, and the Fortran compiler was indeed destroyed. This impromptu lesson uncovered a bug that the MTS programmers were able to fix and thus avoid subsequent disasters. --Bernard Galler This was before my time, but I had heard a similar story elsewhere. But the story I remember was a little different. The person involved wasn't a "professor", but someone on the Merit staff, possibly Dick Wagman. And I'm not sure that the problem was at the Operators' console. Don Boettner has a better memory than I do: Originally, the destroy command was just " Andy Goodrich and Mike Alexander remember this pretty much the same as Don. Mike says it didn't have anything to do with the operators' console and he suspects that there were a few rebates given out that day.$destroy xxx " and then it would ask you to confirm this before it would do it. Many (impatient) users complained at this, so Mike added the immediate option "$destroy xxx ok " which would just do it without asking for confirmation. Unfortunately, his addition bypassed the place where it checked if you had access to do this (this was before shared files, so I think it was just checking if it was a public (*xxx) file that the user was "MTS" or some such).It was indeed Dick Wagman who decided to test this by issuing " $DESTROY *FTN OK " and then was appalled when it did it. I remember that Bartels [UM Computing Center Director] was so infuriated by such irresponsibility (in picking such an important file) that he ordered Wagman's account suspended immediately. After the usual Wailing and Gnashing of Teeth, *FTN was restored and eventually Wagman's account was too. [Bernie, Dick, Don, Andy, Mike, and I (Jeff) are or were all from UM.] |
4. A few more stories: Grebler, Jokes, jjj, Jon Nightingale's travels, ...
I don't think I ever saw this myself, but Don Boettner confirms that in the early days of MTS, if you tried to use the $DESTROY command with a device rather than a file name, you'd get the message "IBM frowns on the willful destruction of hardware". For a time at least the MTS Editor had a " jjj " command that when entered would respond with "Take a break ". According to Andy Goodrich who added the command, "jjj was Jill Janice Jackson, who when Clark Lubbers would get riled up would always say 'Clark, take a break' ". And before the justify command was implemented in the MTS editor, entering the command would give the response "No way Tolkin ". Again according to Andy, this "was a play off of Don Boettner's place holder for commands, which was 'Not yet, Rosen, not yet', because Bob Rosen was always asking him for new commands. Steve [Tolkin, a member of the UM Computing Center staff] bugged me for the justify command, so I put in the initial response for it before the code was there, but only for Steve's userID."For Scott Gerstenber's userID (WSG.) when lines were deleted from a file, the editor would display "1 line is pushing up daisies" or "<n> lines are pining for the fjords" rather than the usual boring messages that the editor displayed for everyone else. And I remember: $DISPLAY GRELBER (which would get you one of a large number of insults)$DISPLAY JOKE (which would display one of a large number of {really | mostly} poor jokes)Grelber started out as a program. It think it came from UBC. Later it was added as an option on the $DISPLAY command. Grelber is the insulting inhabitant of a log in the enchanted forest in the Broom-Hilda comic strip and on TV. Some examples of GRELBER and JOKE output are included below. Only $DISPLAY GRELBER and $DISPLAY JOKE are still present in MTS, c. 1996. Although if I remember correctly, a few of the jokes had to be edited or removed because they were considered to be in poor taste.And this next item isn't a joke or a bug, but ... : # $DESTROY GOD "GOD" does not exist or is unavailable, enter replacement or cancel. ? [Don, Andy, Clark, Steve, Scott, and I (Jeff) are or were all from UM.] Still more storiesIn the stories that follow Ralph and Jon are from UBC, Gavin is from UM by way of Durham. Ralph remembers ...
From: Ralph Sayle
Date: November 6, 2010 4:26:00 PM EDT |
3. Other true stories: Spelling lessons, politeness, analog time, pizza delivery, halloween, and a nod to Star Trek
The stories that follow are all from Josh Simon's "Michigan Terminal System: Anecdotes" Web page. I think all of them are true. Do others agree?
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2. Even MTS can't divide by zero
From: Doug Wade <@UBC> This message is still displayed in MTS, c. 1996.Date: September 20, 2010 2:40:04 AM EDT To: Jeff Ogden Subject: Re: MTS - I need help One thing I forgot to mention: There have been comments about *pizzadelivery and the command $destroy godzilla but nobody has commented about what happens if you entered the command $calc x/0. I laughed when it said "Even MTS cannot divide by zero". |
1. GODZILLA is invincible and cannot be destroyed!
There are several stories on Josh Simon's "Anecdotes" page that I recognize, but I didn't recognize this one and wondered if it was true. It still isn't clear. In MTS, the $DESTROY command was used to
destroy (remove, delete) files. However, if you had a file named
GODZILLA, you couldn't actually get rid of it in one step: Tom Valerio and Don Boettner both believe that this story is true. Don also points out that #$DESTROY GODZILLA "GODZILLA" is invincible and cannot be destroyed!
# To remove this file, you had to $RENAME it first. $DESTROY #GODZILLA , where # is the
file name character, would allow the invincible GODZILLA to be
destroyed without the need to rename. And I'd guess that putting the
ccid explicitly on the front of the file name would work too ($DESTROY ccid:GODZILLA ). George Helffrich, Andy Goodrich, Mike Alexander, Alan Ballard, and I don't remember this. We know that MTS c. 1996 does not operate this way. Mike Alexander searched the MTS D2.0 to D5.0 distribution "tapes" looking for the string GODZILLA and didn't find anything. Mike also looked at the source code for the $DESTROY command in these distributions and didn't see anything along these lines. So at this point it is unclear if this is a true story or an urban legend. Personally I'm leaning toward urban legend. [Tom, Don, George, Andy, Mike, and I (Jeff) are or were all from UM. Alan is or was from UBC.] |
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