Since at least some of you are in contact with bwk, and since I haven't seen it mentioned here, can someone please pass along a typo correction with some semantic value? The RTM worm was 1988, not '98. And when you do, please pass along my appreciation for his kind words about Mike Mahoney (my former thesis advisor, RIP) at the back when he was talking about his sources. And since Lee was mentioned in bwk's book...does anyone here know for sure that Lee and Melinda Varian are still alive, and would they have contact info for them they would be willing to share? I worked for Melinda for a while but have fallen out of touch. Adam On Wed, Oct 23, 2019 at 4:39 PM Warner Losh <imp(a)bsdimp.com> wrote:

That's similar but different in a couple of important ways. And it's not G.R. Emlin's, that's what reminded me of it. Here is the badge story as I heard it. Two MTS at Murray Hill were discussing their badges. It was routine to walk into the building, show the guard your badge, and keep walking. One guy said "They never look at those things!  I'll bet I could paste a picture of a monkey on my badge, and he'd never notice it!". The other guy said "You're on!". So the first guy pastes a monkey picture on his badge. The second guy tips off the guard, and watches from inside the building. The first guy comes into the building and flashes his monkey badge to the guard. No reaction, so he keeps on walking. A few second later, the guard calls after him. "Hey, come back here! Let me see your badge." The guy knows he's in trouble, but he comes back and hands the guard his badge. The guard looks at the badge. He looks at the employee. He looks at the badge. He looks at the employee. He looks at the badge. Handing the badge back to the employee, he says "OK, you can go!" On 10/28/19 3:09 PM, Jon Forrest wrote:

Mary Ann Horton wrote in <4caae9f3-a9dd-1a77-6f2b-633cba870562(a)mhorton.net>: |That's similar but different in a couple of important ways. And it's not |G.R. Emlin's, that's what reminded me of it. | |Here is the badge story as I heard it. | |Two MTS at Murray Hill were discussing their badges. It was routine to |walk into the building, show the guard your badge, and keep walking. | |One guy said "They never look at those things!  I'll bet I could paste a |picture of a monkey on my badge, and he'd never notice it!". The other |guy said "You're on!". | |So the first guy pastes a monkey picture on his badge. The second guy |tips off the guard, and watches from inside the building. | |The first guy comes into the building and flashes his monkey badge to |the guard. No reaction, so he keeps on walking. A few second later, the |guard calls after him. "Hey, come back here! Let me see your badge." The |guy knows he's in trouble, but he comes back and hands the guard his badge. | |The guard looks at the badge. He looks at the employee. He looks at the |badge. He looks at the employee. He looks at the badge. | |Handing the badge back to the employee, he says "OK, you can go!" Early side channel attack. --steffen | |Der Kragenbaer, The moon bear, |der holt sich munter he cheerfully and one by one |einen nach dem anderen runter wa.ks himself off |(By Robert Gernhardt)

Thanks to Jon's super response on the first story, we know it originally occurred at Ford Aerospace. Let me tell the other story. Perhaps someone will know some details. When I tell it, usually to nontechnical people, I prefix it by explaining that UNIX has 3 different grep programs, all of which find text in files. There is regular grep. There is fgrep, the "fixed grep", which is simpler and only looks for basic text. And there is egrep, the "enhanced grep", that will look for fancy patterns and is very powerful. You would expect that fgrep, being the simplest, would be the fastest, but as it turns out, egrep is the fastest and fgrep is the slowest. One day at a meeting at Bell Labs, an MTS came rushing into the meeting, all out of breath. "Sorry I'm late, I was grepping my apartment for my keys." Dryly, the boss replied "You should have used egrep. It's faster."