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Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class

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Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class

#191

Post by mywittyname »

Jtsummers wrote: post #2

For anyone still at or associated with a university, how would they react to behavior like this today? When I was in school (circa 2000), the IT offices were starting to crack down on students (with some threats of expulsion) for activities like this, though it wasn't yet typical or uniform. I know at GT there were a few computer labs that, if you paid a bit of attention, you could easily get ssh access to every comp…

My university had a lap specifically for computer security research. So you could do anything you wanted in there, including screw with network infrastructure (though, you were asked to plug all the machines back into the appropriate ports after you were done).

There were apparently scripts set up that would reset everything every Sunday.

Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class

#192

Post by BlueTemplar »

gsliepen wrote: post #139
kqr wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you essentially invented the spreadsheet. Nice work! > Part of the calculation involved sorting. I didn't know anything about sorting, so I implemented what I later learned was bubble sort. Because that's obviously how you'd do that. I would like to politely contest the authenticity of this specific detail. In my fairly strong collection of evidence, people just do not bubble sort without being told ho…

> I would like to politely contest the authenticity of this specific detail. In my fairly strong collection of evidence, people just do not bubble sort without being told how to do that. I taught a C programming class for first-year students for a few years at the end of the 90s, where one of the tasks was to sort an array of words, with no hints given as to what kind of algorithm they should implement. Most students…

I "trolled" the professor by doing a random sort...

Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class

#193

Post by nonbirithm »

jcims wrote: post #123
elengyel wrote: post #19

I'd like to clarify that my code was running only on machines that were otherwise idle. Not many people were in the lab late in the evenings. MPQS processing nodes could be added and removed dynamically, so if somebody needed a computer that was part of my cluster, they could just quit my program and everything would go back to normal. Also, once the number theory professor learned of what I had implemented, he worke…

Right about that exact same time I commandeered an entire lab (30-40?) of SGI Indigo 2's at Ohio State to do distributed raytracing. Wasn't nearly as educational or diplomatic but I did have fun with it until I got shut down for essentially using twice the storage in my home directory as the entire rest of the class. Between that, usenet (of course) and trolling cuseeme reflectors all over the world from the odd smel…

I hadn't heard of CU-SeeMe before. It's videoconferencing software from 1992 (!), around the time the Web had just barely been formed.

There seems to be a lot of interesting history surrounding it: https://sattlers.org/mickey/CU-SeeMe/internetTVwithCUSeeMe/c...

Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class

#194

Post by ok123456 »

linux_is_nice wrote: post #188
throwaway3699 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a few amusing tactics. Even with 'professional best practices' (debatable), the human element was still vulnerable. One example was that my school refused to give out the Wi-Fi password as a form of security, so they'd demand to manually type it in themselves on your machine. A simple keylogger and now the whole school just ignored that rule for a few months. Another is that while they tried to block things lik…

Hilariously, I'm thinking of doing that(using SSH over port 80) at my school.

I setup sshd on the pop3 port back in high school in the 90s, so I could connect to my home machine and chat on irc during study hall.

Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class

#195

Post by seg_lol »

WalterBright wrote: post #189
dreamcompiler wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hand them off to the secretary pool to type up This brought back a memory. In the late 80s I got a job at a very high-tech science and engineering firm. A colleague told me to be careful about writing code. His supervisor had walked by his office one day and saw him writing code on a terminal. He chewed him out for "typing" because "typing is for secretaries." Apparently the correct procedure was to hand-write your…

When I started using the Wang, I did get a bit of ribbing for doing "women's work". I laughed at that, and it didn't happen again. Heck, I'd been using a computer to write my papers in college (using DECUS' runoff program, similar to Unix's man formatting program). I can't remember the last time I hand wrote more than a few words.

I wonder how many of those women had to learn to code to fix the typos?

The level of structural sexism back then was off the charts, at least it was overt. Now we just tell people there is no glass ceiling and it must be their problem.

Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class

#196

Post by toomanyducks »

onion2k wrote: post #116
toomanyducks wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The web is broken. Someone's website wouldn't scroll (I don't remember the details, and I don't think I wanted to find out --- maybe it was overflow: hidden, but it could've been something else), and the only way I could figure out to deal with it was to open up the devtools responsive design mode and pretend the screen was bigger than it was so that the full page could show, and then use the browser's scrollbar from…

The web is broken. When an app on your computer or phone doesn't work well do you say Windows or iOS is broken, or do you say the app is broken? A broken website doesn't mean the web is broken.

> When an app on your computer or phone doesn't work well do you say Windows or iOS is broken

Yes. All the time. A good platform supports that which builds upon it.

Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class

#197

Post by WalterBright »

seg_lol wrote: post #195
WalterBright wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I started using the Wang, I did get a bit of ribbing for doing "women's work". I laughed at that, and it didn't happen again. Heck, I'd been using a computer to write my papers in college (using DECUS' runoff program, similar to Unix's man formatting program). I can't remember the last time I hand wrote more than a few words.

I wonder how many of those women had to learn to code to fix the typos? The level of structural sexism back then was off the charts, at least it was overt. Now we just tell people there is no glass ceiling and it must be their problem.

The Wang didn't allow for any coding.

Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class

#198

Post by abfan1127 »

I love the stories here. Mine isn't as cool or flashy, but did save me some money in college. My university implemented a $0.05/sheet of printed paper system. We found out that we didn't lock down the printers themselves. We could print a test sheet at the printer, get its IP address, then directly it add it to our personal machines. We saved a ton of money and hassle since buying printer credits was a pain.

Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class

#199

Post by tragomaskhalos »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #192
gsliepen wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would like to politely contest the authenticity of this specific detail. In my fairly strong collection of evidence, people just do not bubble sort without being told how to do that. I taught a C programming class for first-year students for a few years at the end of the 90s, where one of the tasks was to sort an array of words, with no hints given as to what kind of algorithm they should implement. Most students…

I "trolled" the professor by doing a random sort...

A better troll would have been Sleep Sort :)

Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class

#200

Post by MayeulC »

FabHK wrote: post #167
linux2647 wrote: post #7

Thread on a single page: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1389106103179378689.html

Single page, and accessible without JavaScript. Thanks.

I also like nitter for this. Of course, you have to use a non-ratelimited instance, but there are a few to pick from.
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