Xref: utzoo rec.humor:18944 comp.misc:5146
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mitel!sce!cognos!emoffatt
From: emoffatt@cognos.uucp (Eric Moffatt)
Newsgroups: rec.humor,comp.misc
Subject: Re: Looking for Computer Folklore
Keywords: Obtaining Passwords...
Message-ID: <5267@cognos.UUCP>
Date: 13 Feb 89 16:04:21 GMT
References: <7143@pyr.gatech.EDU> <4744@sfsup.UUCP> <2887@sybase.sybase.com> <1912I78BC@CUNYVM> <1036@tutor.tut.fi> <6761@pogo.GPID.TEK.COM>
Reply-To: emoffatt@cognos.UUCP (Eric Moffatt)
Followup-To: comp.misc
Organization: Cognos Inc., Ottawa, Canada
Lines: 33

> From: curtc@pogo.GPID.TEK.COM (Curtis Charles)
> 
> [ stuff about how all jobs were submitted deleted ]
> 
> We're talking CDC hardware here, so various combinations of 6-7-8-9 or
> 7-8-9 punches indicated End of Job, or End of Record.  Well, there was
> a magic combination (6-8-9?) that was interpreted as "read binary, and
> ignore other control punches except the magic combination."
> 
> 
This reminds me of a particularly nasty trick we (myself and a fellow named
Mike something) played in High School(1972?). In our FORTRAN course all of the
students card decks were packed in boxes and shipped out to run at some
magic computer elsewhere in the city, turnaround was about 2 days. Well,
Mike was somewhat of a system hack and had "discovered" that there was a
way to read all other JCL (yep, IBM) in a deck as data. We just had to try
it out :-).

I wrote a super simple parser (scan a line for READ, WRITE, DO...) and an
output formatter which did a fair job of duplicating the real compiler's
output. We just slipped the "special" JCL in at the start of the deck and
viola...the student's received realistic looking compiles but with fake
error messages like "READ statement in wrong place" or "You cannot WRITE
here". Well, the instructor just didn't know what to make of this (he was
new to this stuff too) and we finally had to 'fess up. As I remember it
I got one of my very few detentions for costing the class a whole computer
run but it was worth it to see the teacher's face.

-- 
Eric (Pixel Pusher) Moffatt - Cognos Incorporated: 3755 Riverside Drive
Voice: (613)738-1440 (Research) FAX: (613)738-0002 P.O. Box 9707
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