back to article Sysadmin sank IBM mainframe by going one VM too deep

Welcome to another glimpse inside the dark-curtained (in)box that is "Who, me?" – El Reg's confessional column in which readers seek penance for sins of the past. This week, meet "George", who many years ago was one of two sysadmins in the office products division of a three-letter computer company. And was bored. Bored, bored …

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            1. Nigel Campbell

              That was standard operating procedure in BBC Micro land. The boot script on a floppy was called !BOOT (pling-boot). I heard it called Pling long before I ever heard of a Bang-Path.

              1. jake Silver badge

                Wasn't pling-boot from Acorn RISC OS land? Probably late 1980s.

          1. Martin-73 Silver badge

            Every single one except me. I still sometimes call it a 'gate' symbol because that's what it looks like

        1. John70

          what-tag?

          Octothorpetag doesnt quite roll off the tongue as easily as hashtag does.

        2. PeterCapek

          Actually, not true. At least for a short while, in the earliest days of Touch-Tone phones, octothorpe was the official name for that symbol. An octothorpe is a particular kind of thatched hut which, from the top, looks like a hash. i think the word is defined in the OED, but mine isn't handy.

          1. jake Silver badge

            "An octothorpe is a particular kind of thatched hut which, from the top, looks like a hash."

            New one on me ... anybody have any idea where/when this version first appeared? (It's not in my OED).

            Another not true story of the octothorp origin is the "thorp" is from the old English place-name suffix. The symbol supposedly resembled a small village (or thorp) surrounded by 8 fields. Bringing it back somewhat on-topic, did anybody reading this live in Scunthorp and have an AOL account back when AOL was attempting to invent naughty-word filtering?

        3. JimboSmith Silver badge

          We do call £ "pound" and this weekend I had to tell someone about the pound/shilling/pence system, as he was wondering about the "weird 3 part prices" in his vintage catalog.

          There was a clothing shop in a Devon town that had a load of old stock in it. It was one of those shops that was filled with walls of glass fronted drawers from years ago. I had a retiring colleague tell me during the handover week about it and that he knew the owner of it. He said I should visit whilst I was on holiday in the South West. Apparently if you could find any stock in pounds, schillings and pence you could buy it at that price.

        4. Robert Brockway

          Octothorpe

          We can distinguish between the name of a symbol (arguably octothorpe) and its pronounciation as 'hash' , 'pound' or 'number sign'. This is analagous to the '&' character which is known as an ambersand but pronounced as 'and'.

          Fun fact: ambersand used to be counted as the 27th letter of the English language. We've lost other letters over the centuries too but anyone interested should use their favourite search engine to read the fascinating story of the English Alphabet.

          1. onefang
            Headmaster

            Re: Octothorpe

            "This is analagous to the '&' character which is known as an ambersand but pronounced as 'and'."

            I thought that was ampersand? My spell checker agrees with me.

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Octothorpe

            "Ampersand", not "ambersand" (which is what you might find on the beaches in the Seychelles). The word derives from "and, per se, and".

        5. Wzrd1 Silver badge

          "My US keyboard "has" a pound sign, as Shift-3 is #, but Shift-4 is still $, and we don't have a "£" key, so I had to copy-paste it from your post."

          There's a unicode for it, which I'm entirely too lazy to look up and alas, I failed to import the lookup script from my other computer as of yet. As it's nearly midnight, that's a tomorrow afternoon job.

          "We do call £ "pound" and this weekend I had to tell someone about the pound/shilling/pence system, as he was wondering about the "weird 3 part prices" in his vintage catalog."

          Then, the question arises, "What is a quid" and assorted other slang terms, which turns into an hour long question and answer session. Leaving production at Fanny Adams.

          Yeah, never thought you'd hear that old expression from across the pond!

          1. Peter Gathercole Silver badge

            Keyboards with #. £ and $ started appearing in the UK at about the same time as 8-bit characters were becoming popular on mini-computers and PCs (the very early '80s). See my earlier post about keyboards and 7-bit ASCII to understand what happened before that time.

            Once 8-bit code-pages became popular, the lower 128 (well, 95 really because of the 33 non-printing characters) code points of almost all internationalized code-pages were the same as US ASCII (X3.4-1986), and any character not in US ASCII was pushed into the top 128 (well, 127 really, because position 255 was normally delete or something).

            This meant that there were many, many code pages to cope with different characters for different languages, not just the UK, and a corresponding set of keyboards. Here is an interesting page from IBM, who IMHO were the first company to really start standardizing keyboard layouts for different countries (the 'enhanced' keyboard many of us will be typing on is basically an IBM layout from the PC-AT era, although DEC's international LK-201 keyboards were of a similar time-frame).

            Note the references to the 101, 102 and 106 keyboards pre-date the addition of the 'windows' keys.

        6. david 12 Silver badge

          The decision to make $ and £ different ASCII and ISO characters, and hence different keys, was deliberate, so that telegraphic messages didn't automagically read $100 on one side of the atlantic, and £100 on the other. Any currency messages comming accross with £ show up as #, not $.

          Also deliberate was the recognition that people could use different characters to represent the $ and £ placeholder, if they weren't using $ or £. So the Americans simply replace the unused pound (LSD) symbol with the local pound (Hash) symbol.

          Which is why my TV subtitles routinely indicate singing by bracketing it with £ symbols ...

          1. onefang

            "Which is why my TV subtitles routinely indicate singing by bracketing it with £ symbols ..."

            Do the make you pay per verse?

        7. aqk
          Headmaster

          No... I also use the term "octothorpe".

          And pedantically, I also pronounce Kilometer the proper (and Canadian) way: KILO METRE.

          Not the silly American Kill ommiter....

      1. MonkeyCee

        pound

        "What do US people call a real pound (currency) symbol?"

        I assume when they see it, a pound. Or a funny L :)

        Generally it only exists on UK keyboards.

        1. jcitron

          Re: pound

          Yeah us Yanks have to fiddle with the Character Map thing in Windows (if one uses Windows) to get the real pound symbol.

          ALT-key plus 0163 = £

          I got used to doing this when I worked in desktop publishing. My old Varityper was easier to use because had special escape sequences to create ligature characters such as ü ö, etc., as needed. The £ symbol was {command-key} and L at the same time. There was no need to do the cumbersome ALT+code.

          Back when I was a tech working on video terminals, there were some that had a compose key which made special characters even easier.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        'What do US people call a real pound (currency) symbol?'

        they call it a squiglyfibbles.

        </blackadder-prince-george-quote>

      3. The Oncoming Scorn Silver badge
        FAIL

        Its also known as the pound or sometimes the number key on phone systems in Canada.

      4. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        On my UK keyboard, I have a pound symbol (Shift+3=£) , a dollar symbol (Shift+4=$) and a hash key (#)

        --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

        'hash'? I've never heard it called that.

        'pound', occasionally

        'number sign' or 'number', most often and as long as I can remember

        'octothorpe', courtesy of the phone company when pushbutton phones came in

        ... I'm sure there was another I remembered, but not at the moment... AHA - 'sharp' as in C#, the computer language.

        Poking around finds a reminder that it is a number sign in #6, and a pound sign in 23#.

        And, of course:

        # = root prompt

        1. onefang

          "'sharp' as in C#, the computer language."

          That was borrowed from the musical symbol # for a sharp, so C# could refer to a particular musical note.

      5. onefang
        Coat

        "On my UK keyboard, I have a pound symbol (Shift+3=£) , a dollar symbol (Shift+4=$) and a hash key (#). What does a US keyboard have? What do US people call a real pound (currency) symbol?"

        When they have to produce one, they just pound the keyboard until it produces one, or make a complete hash of it, which then costs them dollars to replace.

        I'll get my coat, it's the one with a pound of hash in the pocket that I bought for a dollar.

      6. Wzrd1 Silver badge

        "What do US people call a real pound (currency) symbol?"

        Most US citizens are astonishingly ignorant and call it a "funny L symbol". I call it a Pound (currency) symbol and get asked what nation uses that currency.

        Seriously!

        I think that the ancient Athenians had the right of it, denying the idios the vote.

        1. jake Silver badge

          "Most US citizens are astonishingly ignorant and call it a "funny L symbol". I call it a Pound (currency) symbol and get asked what nation uses that currency."

          Odd. Here in California, I have never had anybody ask me what £ means.

      7. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        What do US people call a real pound (currency) symbol?

        This thing, £? One of my munchkins said it looked like a deformed E. Another one said something about a "fancy Olde English L with a penis". It was all I could do to be thankful I didn't spill my beverage laughing.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      because hashland would sound silly.

      1. hplasm
        Coat

        "...hashland would sound silly."

        And hashworld would go bust...

        1. Dave 126 Silver badge

          Re: "...hashland would sound silly."

          And as a counterpoint to the Octothorpe which survived because it was on typewriters, here's the history of a punctiob mark that whilst recognised by Webster's hasn't been widely adopted. The interrobang, a cross between a question mark and an exclamation mark. Curiously, it was offered by Corona typewriters as an optional upgrade.

          https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/interrobang/

          1. Deimos

            Re: "...hashland would sound silly."

            Interrobang would be used at the end of the sentence

            “You shut down the what “.

            1. Scroticus Canis
              Happy

              Re: "⸘You shut down the what‽"

              FTFY

          2. tim 13

            Re: "...hashland would sound silly."

            My sister keeps using interrobangs on Facebook

          3. Wzrd1 Silver badge

            Re: "...hashland would sound silly."

            "The interrobang, a cross between a question mark and an exclamation mark."

            I remember that in the later 1970's there was an attempt to resurrect the thing. It flew like the proverbial lead balloon.

          4. Intractable Potsherd

            Re: "...hashland would sound silly." @Dave 126

            Another great source of information on punctuation and symbols is "Shady Characters" -

            https://shadycharacters.co.uk. Have a look if you are at all interested in this sort of stuff!

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: "...hashland would sound silly."

          > And hashworld would go bust...

          Not in Oregon it wouldn't.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: "...hashland would sound silly."

            Beg to differ, but there is a huge oversupply of the green green grass of toke on Oregon, and a lot of stores and growers are going to be bogarted over the next 24 months or so. Unless you know your weed, and have reasonable economies of scale or are an integrated operation, and a good business acumen, you are going to flame out.

        3. DJ Smiley

          Re: "...hashland would sound silly."

          I'm just trying to figure out what poundbrowns would taste like....

        4. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

          Re: "...hashland would sound silly."

          And hashworld would go bust...

          I really, really wouldn't want to eat a corned beef meal meade there. Or eat the browns.

        5. Ken 16 Silver badge
          Holmes

          Re: "...hashland would sound silly."

          you mean "get busted"

      2. VinceH

        "because hashland would sound silly."

        Not really - it sounds like an ideal name for the go to shop for a certain recreational substance.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          they need to open a branch here all we can get now is weed.

      3. John G Imrie
        Happy

        Re: hashland

        Nothing wrong with hashland, it's where I get some of my best ... er ideas from

      4. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        hashland?

        Hashland, thats the Nederlands is it not :)

    2. jake Silver badge

      Just to mudddy the waters a trifle ...

      ... 1975's arrival of ken at Berkeley brought with it the rather wide-spread use of the word "octothorpe" for the # symbol. This spread pretty much everywhere Berkeley un*x did over the next couple decades.

      Note that the British term "hash" is also a product of the 1970s, while the Yank term "pound" goes back into the mid-1800s ... and is probably derived from the Roman symbol for libra pondo, ℔.

      "hashtag" is a johnney-come-lately, invented by kids who weren't interested in history ... or seemingly that the thing they thought they were inventing had already existed for a couple decades.

      1. Dave 126 Silver badge

        Re: Just to mudddy the waters a trifle ...

        I've just been listening to a podcast about the # octothorpe / pound sign / hash / chess checkmate symbol / Swedish cartography symbol for a lumber yard:

        https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/octothorpe/

        And yeah, it has the same Latin root as Pound before its meaning bifurcated. We Brits call it hash, US the pound sign. It survived into the computer age because it was found on typewriters.

        When touch tone phones were developed by Bell Labs, they realised that a couple of symbols in addition to 0 - 9 would be useful, and their management wanted new, abstract symbols. However the case was made that touch tone phones might interact with computerised menu systems, so symbols already found on keyboards would be better. It is from then that the term Octothorpe was coined by engineers because that's how their sense of humour works.

        1. /dev/null

          Octothorpe / pound sign / hash / chess checkmate symbol etc etc...

          Not to mention "medical shorthand symbol for a fracture".

      2. Peter Gathercole Silver badge

        Re: Just to mudddy the waters a trifle ...

        That's interesting. I never thought about the roots of the words (although there is something similar about pound weight and lb as a symbol).

        I always assumed it was because in the early days of terminal, the US 7-bit ASCII table only had space for 96 characters, and were filled with characters suitable for US data processing. This did not include currency symbols for other geographies.

        For many terminals and printers intended for use in the UK, there was a toggle or DIP switch, or sometimes a menu setting that normally replaced the # symbol with a £ symbol (although some replaced $ with £). Same numeric code, different presentation. This is what I thought was the basis for hash/pound.

        I remember writing shell scripts with comments that appeared with the £ symbol at the front. In hindsight, it must have looked very strange, but at the time, it was just normal.

        When 8-bit ascii with extended character sets started being used, life was a nightmare, because the number of different code-pages (CP437 and ISO8859-1 and -15 anybody) proliferated, with different code pages on different devices, making inter-operabillity extremely difficult.

        I don't know how other OS's dealt with this, but IBM came up with quite complicated input and output methods on AIX for most devices that allowed you to specify a translation table that could be used to make it all work, but setting these up was quite complicated, and not many customers actually used them correctly (or in some cases, at all!)

        It was only the adoption of various Unicode UTF character encoding schemes that things started working a little easier.

        1. Mark 85

          Re: Just to mudddy the waters a trifle ...

          Your first paragraph nudged my curiosity about lb and it's origins:

          http://mentalfloss.com/article/52058/why-are-%E2%80%9Cpound%E2%80%9D-and-%E2%80%9Counce%E2%80%9D-abbreviated-%E2%80%9Clb%E2%80%9D-and-%E2%80%9Coz%E2%80%9D

        2. Martin-73 Silver badge
          Pint

          Re: Just to mudddy the waters a trifle ... (@peter Gathercole)

          ECHO OFF

          MODE CON: COLS=80

          CHCP 437

          PATH C:\DOS

          thought i'd recycled those neurons years ago

      3. LenG

        Re: Just to mudddy the waters a trifle ...

        The £ is actually a fancied up L, from the Latin. Pre-decimal pennies were denoted by "d" (for denarii). The middle item, shillings, was postfixed s (solidi) and the currency was frequently referred to as Lsd.

        We should have stuck with it. It was really fun to watch foreigners struggle. Maybe we can switch back after brexit.

        <computer angle> - early computers had such a hard time handling 3-element mixed base currency (12 pence to the shilling, 20 shillings to the pound) that they often had hard-wired pound-shilling-pence conversion units. I believe those could also handle halfpennies and fathings (quarter=pennies).

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Just to mudddy the waters a trifle ...

          "and the currency was frequently referred to as Lsd."

          <JOKE>

          So you Brits were running your economy off of LSD for years? That explains a bit...

          </JOKE>

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