But can I get F1 on my BT account
Long ago, in a country far far away, well Durham University to be precise, they shared a mainframe with Newcastle Uni. The mainframe was a old IBM 360, and ran a system called MTS. Now MTS, fun as it was, had a few holes in it. Once of these meant that if you attempted to mount a disk pack that didn't belong to you, but do it in a certain way that has invalid syntax, your console was left god like privileges.
Friend and I then figured out the way to write to the operators consoles. These were in the bowels of the Newcastle Uni computing centre and run by quite serious operators who had undergone a humour bypass, as we found out. What we did was write in large, bold letters the following to four adjacent terminals:
"BIG" "BROTHER" "IS" "WATCHING".
Cue the operators calling their union rep over, who announced this was a gross intrusion on the privacy of the operators, who then walked out.
The prank was quickly traced to the Durham terminal room, and the Durham head of Operations rushed in along with the Prof of the department. So, yes, I too know "that stare".
Biting the hand that feeds IT
