Who invented the finger?

[[email protected]]

Les Earnest did:
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/2100-1035_11-6168685.html?tag=nl.e019

I raced in the Norcal/Nevada district in the early-mid 80s. Les (and
IIRC his wife) was a frequent official at bike racing events. I had
no idea his day job was so impressive. Thank you Les for coming out
on weekends to listen to sweaty guys argue over who got 6th place in
the cat 3 criterium around an industrial park.

[Tom Kunich]

> wrote in message
ups.com...
> Les Earnest did:
> http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/2100-1035_11-6168685.html?tag=nl.e019
>
> I raced in the Norcal/Nevada district in the early-mid 80s. Les (and
> IIRC his wife) was a frequent official at bike racing events. I had
> no idea his day job was so impressive. Thank you Les for coming out
> on weekends to listen to sweaty guys argue over who got 6th place in
> the cat 3 criterium around an industrial park.

Les has been everwhere and everything. It's a good thing we have people like
Les around to shake everything up once in awhile.

[Ryan Cousineau]

On Mar 23, 6:27 am, wrote:
> Les Earnest did:http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/2100-1035_11-6168685.html?tag=nl...
>
> I raced in the Norcal/Nevada district in the early-mid 80s. Les (and
> IIRC his wife) was a frequent official at bike racing events. I had
> no idea his day job was so impressive. Thank you Les for coming out
> on weekends to listen to sweaty guys argue over who got 6th place in
> the cat 3 criterium around an industrial park.

That's hilarious!

In my late-90s university days, my circle of friends were pretty
aggressive users of .plan files, which culminated in the concept of
the public read-write .plan files. You'd set your plan to be
writeable, and people woud just post any old dumb thing in there,
typically ending up with a few specific categories of dumb things in
each plan file.

I just checked: I still have a world-writeable .plan, and it's 13 kB
long.

Thanks, Les!

[Bob Schwartz]

wrote:
> Les Earnest did:
> http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/2100-1035_11-6168685.html?tag=nl.e019
>
> I raced in the Norcal/Nevada district in the early-mid 80s. Les (and
> IIRC his wife) was a frequent official at bike racing events. I had
> no idea his day job was so impressive. Thank you Les for coming out
> on weekends to listen to sweaty guys argue over who got 6th place in
> the cat 3 criterium around an industrial park.
>

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.bicycles.racing/browse_thread/thread/b560245cbc060571/b98c3b0c192f77bf?l#b98c3b0c192f77bf

Les didn't invent the internets, but he knew a lot of the players.

Bob Schwartz

[Bret]

On Mar 23, 8:58 am, "Ryan Cousineau" > wrote:
> On Mar 23, 6:27 am, wrote:
>
> > Les Earnest did:http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/2100-1035_11-6168685.html?tag=nl...
>
> > I raced in the Norcal/Nevada district in the early-mid 80s. Les (and
> > IIRC his wife) was a frequent official at bike racing events. I had
> > no idea his day job was so impressive. Thank you Les for coming out
> > on weekends to listen to sweaty guys argue over who got 6th place in
> > the cat 3 criterium around an industrial park.
>
> That's hilarious!
>
> In my late-90s university days, my circle of friends were pretty
> aggressive users of .plan files, which culminated in the concept of
> the public read-write .plan files. You'd set your plan to be
> writeable, and people woud just post any old dumb thing in there,
> typically ending up with a few specific categories of dumb things in
> each plan file.
>
> I just checked: I still have a world-writeable .plan, and it's 13 kB
> long.
>
> Thanks, Les!


Weird. I've been using finger on unix/solaris/linux for 22 years and I
only learn about .plan files today.

I once edited a collegue's /etc/motd file so that it would spew some
hard disk errors, sleep for a while, then spew some more errors. After
a few minutes of this, it printed the standard message about running
fsck, except that the text included a personal insult.

None of us had password protected logins at that company so we could
do anything we wanted as long as it didn't get us fired. If I knew
then what I know now, I would have been dangerous.

Bret

[John Forrest Tomlinson]

On 23 Mar 2007 06:27:13 -0700, wrote:

>Les Earnest did:
>http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/2100-1035_11-6168685.html?tag=nl.e019
>
>I raced in the Norcal/Nevada district in the early-mid 80s. Les (and
>IIRC his wife) was a frequent official at bike racing events. I had
>no idea his day job was so impressive.
Wow.

Thought I thought Kunich invented most of the various internet
protocols, when he wasn't racing cars and working for naval force
intelligence and designing high-tech composites for NASA.
--
JT
****************************
Remove "remove" to reply
Visit http://www.jt10000.com
****************************

[Howard Kveck]

In article >, Bob Schwartz
> wrote:

> wrote:
> > Les Earnest did:
> > http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/2100-1035_11-6168685.html?tag=nl.e019
> >
> > I raced in the Norcal/Nevada district in the early-mid 80s. Les (and
> > IIRC his wife) was a frequent official at bike racing events. I had
> > no idea his day job was so impressive. Thank you Les for coming out
> > on weekends to listen to sweaty guys argue over who got 6th place in
> > the cat 3 criterium around an industrial park.
> >
>
>
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.bicycles.racing/browse_thread/thread/b560245cbc060571/b98c3b0c192f77bf?l#b98c3b0c192f77bf
>
> Les didn't invent the internets, but he knew a lot of the players.

One of the reasons that thread is so great is the Dave Bailey response to AA:

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.bicycles.racing/msg/8c2f4571b760e792

--
tanx,
Howard
Never take a tenant with a monkey.
remove YOUR SHOES to reply, ok?

[John Forrest Tomlinson]

On Fri, 23 Mar 2007 18:26:28 -0500, John Forrest Tomlinson
> wrote:

>
>Thought I thought Kunich invented

Excuse me -- I have to apologize for that dig on Kunich -- it was
uncalled for in this instance.

Sorry.
--
JT
****************************
Remove "remove" to reply
Visit http://www.jt10000.com
****************************

[Mike Jacoubowsky]

> http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/2100-1035_11-6168685.html?tag=nl.e019
>
> I raced in the Norcal/Nevada district in the early-mid 80s. Les (and
> IIRC his wife) was a frequent official at bike racing events. I had
> no idea his day job was so impressive. Thank you Les for coming out
> on weekends to listen to sweaty guys argue over who got 6th place in
> the cat 3 criterium around an industrial park.

Les is quite a guy. Would be nice to believe we could be civil enough here
that he might visit more often.

Interesting to read about how things started, and the "bulletin board wars"
of which he didn't elaborate. We ran a bicycle bulletin board from about
1980 until the day of the Loma Prieta earthquake, when it was knocked off
the shelf and stopped working. A Heathkit H8 with a pair of 400k disk
drives, running HDOS operating system. We had maybe 20 users a day at that
time, which seemed like quite a few. People mostly left messages about where
& when they'd be riding.

--Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReactionBicycles.com

[Jim Flom]

"John Forrest Tomlinson" > wrote in message
...
> On Fri, 23 Mar 2007 18:26:28 -0500, John Forrest Tomlinson
> > wrote:
>
>>
>>Thought I thought Kunich invented
>
> Excuse me -- I have to apologize for that dig on Kunich -- it was
> uncalled for in this instance.
>
> Sorry.
> --
> JT

And here I was, thinking, "Wow. JT just ripped Kunich. That's so unlike
JT." And then you APOLOGIZE. What I want to know is an instance when a JT
rip on Kunich IS (or would be, hypothetically speaking) justified.

That Bailey rip was a classic.

J "if not now... " F

[John Forrest Tomlinson]

On Sat, 24 Mar 2007 06:28:37 GMT, "Jim Flom"
> wrote:

> What I want to know is an instance when a JT
>rip on Kunich IS (or would be, hypothetically speaking) justified.

When he starts with the nonsense (which happens often enough), but in
this thread I saw he was nice.
--
JT
****************************
Remove "remove" to reply
Visit http://www.jt10000.com
****************************

[Donald Munro]

John Forrest Tomlinson wrote:
> When he starts with the nonsense (which happens often enough), but in
> this thread I saw he was nice.

Please report this bug to the relevant authority.

[Bob Schwartz]

Donald Munro wrote:
> John Forrest Tomlinson wrote:
>> When he starts with the nonsense (which happens often enough), but in
>> this thread I saw he was nice.
>
> Please report this bug to the relevant authority.

There is a degree of randomness to the ToneOfConversation
function. The center of the bell curve is pretty sour, but
occasionally you get something from the tail that almost
sounds reasonable.

Notice he got right back to global warming.

Bob Schwartz

[Tom Kunich]

"Les Earnest" > wrote in message
...
> Howard Kveck wrote:
>> In article >, Bob Schwartz
>> > wrote:
>>
>>
wrote:
>>>
>>>>Les Earnest did:
>>>>http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/2100-1035_11-6168685.html?tag=nl.e019
>>>>
>>>>I raced in the Norcal/Nevada district in the early-mid 80s. Les (and
>>>>IIRC his wife) was a frequent official at bike racing events. I had
>>>>no idea his day job was so impressive. Thank you Les for coming out
>>>>on weekends to listen to sweaty guys argue over who got 6th place in
>>>>the cat 3 criterium around an industrial park.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>> http://groups.google.com/group/rec.bicycles.racing/browse_thread/thread/b560245cbc060571/b98c3b0c192f77bf?l#b98c3b0c192f77bf
>>
>>>Les didn't invent the internets, but he knew a lot of the players.
>>
>>
>> One of the reasons that thread is so great is the Dave Bailey response
>> to AA:
>>
>> http://groups.google.com/group/rec.bicycles.racing/msg/8c2f4571b760e792
>
> Thanks to all for the kind words. However if you read the first article
> carefully you will see that the use of Finger as a blogging service was
> accidental rather than something I planned. Another unplanned use of the
> Plan files was to disseminate public keys for private communications. They
> were used in both ways for about 20 years before the Web came into
> existence in the mid-1990s
>
> Incidentally, one university reportedly banned the use of Finger under
> that name on the grounds that it was a dirty word. They supposedly chose a
> more politically correct name but I now forget what it was.

May the Schwartz be with you.

[Les Earnest]

Howard Kveck wrote:
> In article >, Bob Schwartz
> > wrote:
>
>
wrote:
>>
>>>Les Earnest did:
>>>http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/2100-1035_11-6168685.html?tag=nl.e019
>>>
>>>I raced in the Norcal/Nevada district in the early-mid 80s. Les (and
>>>IIRC his wife) was a frequent official at bike racing events. I had
>>>no idea his day job was so impressive. Thank you Les for coming out
>>>on weekends to listen to sweaty guys argue over who got 6th place in
>>>the cat 3 criterium around an industrial park.
>>>
>>
>>
> http://groups.google.com/group/rec.bicycles.racing/browse_thread/thread/b560245cbc060571/b98c3b0c192f77bf?l#b98c3b0c192f77bf
>
>>Les didn't invent the internets, but he knew a lot of the players.
>
>
> One of the reasons that thread is so great is the Dave Bailey response to AA:
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/rec.bicycles.racing/msg/8c2f4571b760e792

Thanks to all for the kind words. However if you read the first article
carefully you will see that the use of Finger as a blogging service was
accidental rather than something I planned. Another unplanned use of the
Plan files was to disseminate public keys for private communications.
They were used in both ways for about 20 years before the Web came into
existence in the mid-1990s

Incidentally, one university reportedly banned the use of Finger under
that name on the grounds that it was a dirty word. They supposedly chose
a more politically correct name but I now forget what it was.

-Les Earnest

[Jim Flom]

"Donald Munro" > wrote in message
om...
> John Forrest Tomlinson wrote:
>> When he starts with the nonsense (which happens often enough), but in
>> this thread I saw he was nice.
>
> Please report this bug to the relevant authority.

If it's anything like the bugs in my Windows Vista OS, it's rife.

[Bob Schwartz]

Jim Flom wrote:
> "Donald Munro" > wrote in message
> om...
>> John Forrest Tomlinson wrote:
>>> When he starts with the nonsense (which happens often enough), but in
>>> this thread I saw he was nice.
>> Please report this bug to the relevant authority.
>
> If it's anything like the bugs in my Windows Vista OS, it's rife.

Dumbass,

Obviously you can't tell the difference between a bug and a feature.

Bob Schwartz

[[email protected]]

On Mar 24, 9:38 pm, Les Earnest > wrote:

> Incidentally, one university reportedly banned the use of Finger under
> that name on the grounds that it was a dirty word. They supposedly chose
> a more politically correct name but I now forget what it was.

dumbass,

for a project a friend of mine wrote a version of finger which he
called "middle finger". he even designed a middle finger icon.

[[email protected]]

On Mar 24, 6:38 pm, Les Earnest > wrote:
> >http://groups.google.com/group/rec.bicycles.racing/browse_thread/thre...
>
> >>Les didn't invent the internets, but he knew a lot of the players.
>
> > One of the reasons that thread is so great is the Dave Bailey response to AA:
>
> >http://groups.google.com/group/rec.bicycles.racing/msg/8c2f4571b760e792
>
> Thanks to all for the kind words. However if you read the first article
> carefully you will see that the use of Finger as a blogging service was
> accidental rather than something I planned. Another unplanned use of the
> Plan files was to disseminate public keys for private communications.
> They were used in both ways for about 20 years before the Web came into
> existence in the mid-1990s
>
> Incidentally, one university reportedly banned the use of Finger under
> that name on the grounds that it was a dirty word. They supposedly chose
> a more politically correct name but I now forget what it was.
>
> -Les Earnest

Blogs are annoying; Les, you might be condemned to
some circle of TCP/IP hell for that, except that I
always liked the use of finger for remote monitoring
of Coke machines. (This was before webcams, you
young whippersnappers.) Sadly, finger
no longer reports Coke on hand and temperature, but
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~coke/history_long.txt
has the history.

Ben
Oh Lord won't you buy me a PDP-10
Oh Lord won't you buy me a PDP-10
My friends all have VAXes and I must make amends

[Donald Munro]

wrote:
> for a project a friend of mine wrote a version of finger which he
> called "middle finger". he even designed a middle finger icon.

Presumably the client was going to be called gspot.

[Donald Munro]

Jim Flom wrote:
>> If it's anything like the bugs in my Windows Vista OS, it's rife.

Bob Schwartz wrote:
> Obviously you can't tell the difference between a bug and a feature.

I always though of Rumsfeld as being a walking incarnation of a Windows OS.

[Ryan Cousineau]

On Mar 24, 6:38 pm, Les Earnest > wrote:
> Howard Kveck wrote:
> > In article >, Bob Schwartz
> > > wrote:
>
> wrote:
>
> >>>Les Earnest did:
> >>>http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/2100-1035_11-6168685.html?tag=nl...
>
> >>>I raced in the Norcal/Nevada district in the early-mid 80s. Les (and
> >>>IIRC his wife) was a frequent official at bike racing events. I had
> >>>no idea his day job was so impressive. Thank you Les for coming out
> >>>on weekends to listen to sweaty guys argue over who got 6th place in
> >>>the cat 3 criterium around an industrial park.
>
> >http://groups.google.com/group/rec.bicycles.racing/browse_thread/thre...
>
> >>Les didn't invent the internets, but he knew a lot of the players.
>
> > One of the reasons that thread is so great is the Dave Bailey response to AA:
>
> >http://groups.google.com/group/rec.bicycles.racing/msg/8c2f4571b760e792
>
> Thanks to all for the kind words. However if you read the first article
> carefully you will see that the use of Finger as a blogging service was
> accidental rather than something I planned. Another unplanned use of the
> Plan files was to disseminate public keys for private communications.
> They were used in both ways for about 20 years before the Web came into
> existence in the mid-1990s

I think that unanticipated uses of a tool are usually a sign that it's
a good, flexible tool. You can think of finger as one of the first
(probably THE first, but I'm not nerd-history major) personal-info
publishing tools on any internet, much less the big-I Internet.

One famous, unmentioned use of .plan files was as the primary info
source from id Software about in-development projects. John Carmack
and many of the other main developers had regularly-updated .plan
files, and used them to discuss what they were working on. There were
some famous spats that played out there.

Last updated in 2005, John Carmack's .plan now just has a URL that
points at his irregularly-updated blog:
http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/johnc/Recent%20Updates

id Software is famous for its Doom and Quake games, which pretty much
set the benchmarks for first-person shooters for a decade or so.

> Incidentally, one university reportedly banned the use of Finger under
> that name on the grounds that it was a dirty word. They supposedly chose
> a more politically correct name but I now forget what it was.
>
> -Les Earnest

It takes a rather dirty mind to see "finger," even in its verb form,
primarily as a dirty word. I trust they also banned log files,
nslookup, child processes, kill, daemons...

I sense .projection,

[Bret]

On Mar 25, 5:49 pm, "Ryan Cousineau" > wrote:

> It takes a rather dirty mind to see "finger," even in its verb form,
> primarily as a dirty word. I trust they also banned log files,
> nslookup, child processes, kill, daemons...

I once worked for a company that sold EDA work stations running BSD
4.2. We had a customer in Texas complain about the daemon processes
and lobbied hard for us to rename them. "Sorry, but we can't do that".

Bret

[Donald Munro]

Bret wrote:
> I once worked for a company that sold EDA work stations running BSD
> 4.2. We had a customer in Texas complain about the daemon processes
> and lobbied hard for us to rename them. "Sorry, but we can't do that".

If they were worried about the daemons, I wonder what they thought about
the zombies.

[RonSonic]

On Mon, 26 Mar 2007 09:11:05 +0200, Donald Munro >
wrote:

>Bret wrote:
>> I once worked for a company that sold EDA work stations running BSD
>> 4.2. We had a customer in Texas complain about the daemon processes
>> and lobbied hard for us to rename them. "Sorry, but we can't do that".
>
>If they were worried about the daemons, I wonder what they thought about
>the zombies.

I don't know if they backed off from it, but LA County was insisting that all of
its vendors not use cruel words like "Master" and "Slave" to describe the
relationship between various electronic devices. They also prohibited the use of
"Male" and "Female" to describe the connectors used between them.

Ron

[MMan]

wrote:
>Re: Who invented the finger?

I thought this was going to be a thread about Judith Arndt.

Never mind.

[Michael Press]

In article
om>,
"Bret" > wrote:

> On Mar 25, 5:49 pm, "Ryan Cousineau" > wrote:
>
> > It takes a rather dirty mind to see "finger," even in its verb form,
> > primarily as a dirty word. I trust they also banned log files,
> > nslookup, child processes, kill, daemons...
>
> I once worked for a company that sold EDA work stations running BSD
> 4.2. We had a customer in Texas complain about the daemon processes
> and lobbied hard for us to rename them. "Sorry, but we can't do that".

A short trip to the dictionary may have helped.
Definition 2 is obviously what the framers had in mind.
Obviously definition 3 was hung on post facto
by a conquering religion. Originally, pagan and
heathen purely meant `heath dweller.' Friday the
thirteenth was once considered lucky.

1. (Gr. Antiq.) A spirit, or immaterial being, holding a
middle place between men and deities in pagan mythology.
The demon kind is of an inmediate nature between the
divine and the human. Sydenham.

2. One's genius; a tutelary spirit or internal voice; as,
the demon of Socrates. [Often written dæmon.]

3. An evil spirit; a devil.
--
Michael Press

[Tom Kunich]

"Les Earnest" > wrote in message
...
>
> Incidentally, one university reportedly banned the use of Finger under
> that name on the grounds that it was a dirty word. They supposedly chose a
> more politically correct name but I now forget what it was.

Well, Les, I'm perfectly willing to give you the Finger.

[Ryan Cousineau]

On Mar 26, 12:11 am, Donald Munro > wrote:
> Bret wrote:
> > I once worked for a company that sold EDA work stations running BSD
> > 4.2. We had a customer in Texas complain about the daemon processes
> > and lobbied hard for us to rename them. "Sorry, but we can't do that".
>
> If they were worried about the daemons, I wonder what they thought about
> the zombies.

I believe that computer nerds of all creeds are united in their desire
to kill zombies under all possible circumstances.

[Michael Press]

In article
. com>,
"Ryan Cousineau" > wrote:

> On Mar 26, 12:11 am, Donald Munro > wrote:
> > Bret wrote:
> > > I once worked for a company that sold EDA work stations running BSD
> > > 4.2. We had a customer in Texas complain about the daemon processes
> > > and lobbied hard for us to rename them. "Sorry, but we can't do that".
> >
> > If they were worried about the daemons, I wonder what they thought about
> > the zombies.
>
> I believe that computer nerds of all creeds are united in their desire
> to kill zombies under all possible circumstances.

Zombies cannot be killed. That is in the definition. It
has already terminated.
--
Michael Press

[Donald Munro]

Ryan Cousineau
>> I believe that computer nerds of all creeds are united in their desire
>> to kill zombies under all possible circumstances.

Michael Press wrote:
> Zombies cannot be killed. That is in the definition. It
> has already terminated.

Perhaps he meant prevent instead of kill.

We need to reboot the rbr universe if we want to get rid of our zombies,
although our voodoo priest Schwartz will probably revive them.

[Curtis L. Russell]

On Thu, 29 Mar 2007 13:12:30 +0200, Donald Munro
> wrote:

>We need to reboot the rbr universe if we want to get rid of our zombies,
>although our voodoo priest Schwartz will probably revive them.

To be clear, to make a Zombie, the Livedrunk group starts with two
kinds of rum; the medical nerd side starts with a dead body.

Curtis L. Russell
Odenton, MD (USA)
Just someone on two wheels...

[Davey Crockett]

* Michael Press > a écrit
> In article
> . com>,
> "Ryan Cousineau" > wrote:
>
>> On Mar 26, 12:11 am, Donald Munro > wrote:
>> > Bret wrote:
>> > > I once worked for a company that sold EDA work stations running BSD
>> > > 4.2. We had a customer in Texas complain about the daemon processes
>> > > and lobbied hard for us to rename them. "Sorry, but we can't do that".
>> >
>> > If they were worried about the daemons, I wonder what they thought about
>> > the zombies.
>>
>> I believe that computer nerds of all creeds are united in their desire
>> to kill zombies under all possible circumstances.
>
> Zombies cannot be killed. That is in the definition. It
> has already terminated.

Right - without getting too tecnical Zombies _must_ exist after
termination so that the process that called them can read their exit
status

They should eventually disappear after the parent checks the exit
status to free up the spot in the process id table

--
Le vent à Dos
Davey Crockett [No 4Q to reply]

[Donald Munro]

Davey Crockett wrote:

> They should eventually disappear after the parent checks the exit
> status to free up the spot in the process id table

But some parents are neglectful and others die young.

[Davey Crockett]

* Donald Munro > a écrit
> Davey Crockett wrote:
>
>> They should eventually disappear after the parent checks the exit
>> status to free up the spot in the process id table
>
> But some parents are neglectful and others die young.
>

Right you are

But a process whose parent has died is an "orphan" which is quite
different from a "zombie"

--
Le vent à Dos
Davey Crockett [No 4Q to reply]