15 Oct
2002
15 Oct
'02
6:08 a.m.
On Monday, 14 October 2002 at 23:40:56 -0400, Dennis Ritchie wrote:
Garcia is correct to praise the Hafner/Markoff
account
of the worm incident. There were some details about
the kids' accounts and exploits that Markoff decided
to elide; by the time he wrote that chapter he had
become rather sympathetic with the Morris family.
Interesting stuff. While you're in historic reminiscences mode, can
you shed any light on the "Peter Weinberger stencil" incident? My
understanding of the story, gleaned from multiple sources, is
something like this:
At some point, presumably round the time of the appearance of AT&T's
death star logo, Peter Weinberger was promoted from techie to some
kind of management position. Somebody came across the idea of
making a large stencil of his face in death-star like technology,
and used it to paint an image of him on a nearby water tower.
Allegedly the costs were charged to Peter's department.
Some years later, this stencil arrived in Greg Rose's office in
Australia from an anonymous sender. Greg has a suspicion who the
sender was, but no proof, so he doesn't want to comment. He gave it
to our own Warren Toomey, who still has it in his garage.
At some point, Peter Salus suggested that the image was of Rob Pike,
not of Peter Weinberger, but both Rob and Greg R. have denied this
version.
Things that intrigue me about this story are:
1. Who made the stencil, and why?
2. What was the time frame?
3. Who sent it to Greg Rose, and why?
I suppose that even now it's possible that this information should not
be made public, and I can accept that. But if there is anything which
can be used to fill it in, I'm sure I wouldn't be the only person to
find it interesting.
Greg
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