COMPUTER SONGS AND POEMS =========== ------30-Dec-1992------- (Song and poem parodies with computer related subjects) collected & reformatted by Stefan Haenssgen The entries are formatted as follows, seperated by a line of "@"s : Title : The title of the parody Original : The title of the original Group : The one(s) who performed the original Author : Author of the parody Info : Additional Comments by the Author Song : The Parody itself I'd like to thank the following people for their contributions, suggestions and error corrections (in alphabetical order) Joerg Anslik David Barr Rob Beukers Nelson Bishop Frank Borger Tony Duell Jonathan Dursi Alan Cox Axel Eble Martin Emmerich Uli Fraus Greg Gerke Charlie Gibbs Andreas Gustafsson Thorbjoern Hansen Jonathan E. Katz Romain Kang Evan Kirshenbaum Thomas Koenig Rich Kulawiec Greg Lehey Mark Lottor Adrian Mariano Colin McCormack Keith Michaels Dipesh Navsaria Ove Ruben R Olsen Joel Polowin Robert E. Seastroms George Sicherman Boas Simon Ignatios Souvatzis Ellen Spertus Starship Trooper / Grey Wolf Russell Street The Unknown User Martin Welk Alan Winston This collection contains the following songs: [changes to the previous version (1.2e) are marked "+" for additions and "/" for edited songs] 0x0d2c 99 Buckets of Bits A Better Model + A Graphic Song A is for Apple Addicted To Vi + Addicted To News The Alternative Wall An Irish CPU Another Glitch in the Call / Another One + A Song of Computation A Time for DWIM Automation A Visit from Saint Woz BBN Superlisp + Berkelian Rhapsody + Berkeley California Berkeley 4.3 Boot It Both Ways, Now The Boys of HP + The Bug Came Back Bye Bye, UNIX CAMM (Crustified Ancient of Main Memory) Can't parse this The Computer Nevermore Core dumped blues CRASH! goes the System CRAY-S's coolant Cycles For Nothing The Day Bell System Died The DEC man cometh / DECman The Disks of UNIX Don't Call From Home Don't Have a Conniption + DP Man Emacs Wizard Every Cycle is Sacred + Fifty Ways to Hose Your Code Fork()ing on a Sun FORTRAN French Horn Concerto (for modem users) Friend of the System Gateway To Heaven Gateway To Net Ten + Girls just wanna defun HACKADU + The Hackers are Best The Hacker Song The Hacker's Song + Hacking Iron The HACTRN I Could Have Tooled All Night I'm Typing Backwards for Christmas I Want a New Bug I am the very model of a Genius Computational Into the Tube JES The mighty system Just remember that you're flying o'er a disk pack.... Lambda Bound Leavin' Fed'ral Express Little PC Lonely Users The Maven My Favorite Hacks Mr. Bossman My Data are Over the Ocean My Favourite Things Network Pie Not a Boolean Ode to Amy (or: The Frontend Shuffle) Our First Day on Usenet P-I-F-FO Please Release Me PLIate's Dream Poor Pure Percy P The Programmer's Blues The Programmer's Viewpoint Puff the Fractal Dragon Rawhide + The RSX Backup Song + The RSX Support Song + The RSX VMS Lovers Song Script for a Hacker's Tear SIGHUP Blues Software for Nothing Socket Man Song of the Certified Data Processor The Sound of FORTRAN The Sounds of Silence Structured Programmer's Soliloquy The Swapper + System Crash Take me Down to the SunLab Tap My Wire + Ten little Modulans + That old time PDP That was the HASP my friend The 12 computerised days of Xmas These are are a Few of Our Favorite Machines Treekiller The Underbull Badness Blues UNIBUS UNIX Unix Man Unix Quandry Unix Wizard VAX Raphosdy Waiting for The Sun The Wall 2 What is a Hacker? When I was a lad / When you try to get work from the data network The Worm before Christmas Write in C Yellow Subroutine One final remark: I collect postcards, so if you like this file and think I deserve a small favour, how about sending me a nice postcard? 8-) I'd appreciate it very much! Really! My address for the next few years is: Stefan Haenssgen Nuitsstr. 2c DW-7500 Karlsruhe 21 Germany PS: This file (and future updates) is also available via anonymous FTP at iraun1.ira.uka.de (129.13.10.90) in /pub/doc/computersongs-1.3.Z PPS: (So much for "One final remark" ;-) Comments, suggestions, further contributions and error corrections are always welcome! ...and here we go: @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : 0x0d2c Original : ? Group : ? Author : Bill Mitchell Intro : Song : 0x0d2c ------ May all your signals trap May your references be bounded All memory aligned Floats to ints be rounded Remember.... Nonzero is TRUE ++ adds one Arrays start with [0] NULL points to none For octal use zero 0x means in hex use = to set and == for a test Use -> for a pointer a dot if it's not ?: is confusing use this a lot a.out is your program there's no 'u' in foobar and char (*(*x())[])() is a function returning a pointer to an array of pointers to functions returning a char @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : 99 Buckets of Bits Original : 99 Bottles of Beer Group : ? Author : "Jonathan E. Katz" Intro : (of course 90 buckets of bits then becomes 8f buckets of bits...) buckets can also be replaced by bytes Song : 99 buckets of bits on the bus, 99 buckets of bits. take one down, short it to ground. 98 buckets of bits on the bus.. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : A Better Model Original : A Modern Major-General Group : Gilbert and Sullivan Author : Steven Levine at Apollo Computer Intro : Song : A Better Model ============== by Steven Levine at Apollo Computer Submitted by "Spam" Sung to the tune of "A Modern Major-General" by Gilbert and Sullivan I've built a better model than the one at Data General For data bases vegetable, animal, and mineral My OS handles CPUs with multiplexed duality; My PL/1 compiler shows impressive functionality. My storage system's better than magnetic core polarity, You never have to bother checking out a bit for parity; There isn't any reason to install non-static floor matting; My disk drive has capacity for variable formatting. Chorus: His disk drive has capacity for variable formatting, His disk drive has capacity for variable formatting, His disk drive has capacity for variable format-formatting. I feel compelled to mention what I know to be a gloating point: There's lots of room in memory for variables floating-point, Which shows for input vegetable, animal, and mineral I've built a better model than the one at Data General. Cho: Which shows for input vegetable, animal, and mineral He's built a better model than the one at Data General. The IBM new home computer's nothing more than germinal; At Prime they still have trouble with an interactive terminal; While Tandy's done a lousy job with operations Boolean, At Wang the byte capacity's too small to fit a coolie in. Intel's mid-year finances are something of the trouble sort; The Timex Sinclar crashes when you implement a bubble sort. All DEC investors soon will find they haven't spent their money well; And need I even mention Nixdorf, Univac, or Honeywell? Cho: And need he even mention Nixdorf, Univac, or Honeywell? And need he even mention Nixdorf, Univac, or Honeywell? And need he even mention Nixdorf, Univac, or Honey-Honeywell? By striving to eliminate all source code that's repetitive I've brought my benchmark standings to results that are competitive. In short, for input vegetable, animal, and mineral I've built a better model than the one at Data General. Cho: In short for input vegetable, animal, and mineral He's built a better model than the one at Data General. In fact when I've a floppy of a maximum diameter, When I can call a subroutine of infinite parameter, When I can point to registers and keep their current map around, And when I can prevent the need for mystifying wraparound, When I can update record blocks with minimum of suffering, And when I can afford to use a hundred K for buffering, When I've performed a matrix sort and tested the addition rate, You'll marvel at the speed of my asynchronous transmission rate. Cho: You'll marvel at the speed of his asynchronous transmission rate, You'll marvel at the speed of his asynchronous transmission rate, You'll marvel at the speed of his asynchronous transmission-mission rate. Though all my better programs that self-reference recursively Have only been obtained through expert spying, done subversively, But still for input vegetable, animal, and mineral, I've built a better model than the one at Data General. Cho: But still for input vegetable, animal, and mineral, He's built a better model than the one at Data General. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : A Graphic Song ("It's a commie plot") Original : "Catch a Wave" Author : ? Info : Kindly provided in source by Jim McGlinchey - from the RSX songbook Song : Lead: Nobody wants to try the greatest hack around Backup: Plot a wave, plot a wave Bass: Everybody tries it once Lead: Those who have just want to shut it down Backup: Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow, oh wow Lead: You cut some code, then compile and link, and then you - turn on the plotter, fill the pens with ink, Tutti: You gotta - Plot a wave and you're sittin' on top of the world. Lead: Not just DECgraph, 'cause it's been plotting on so long Backup: Plot a wave, plot a wave Bass: It's been going now for hours Lead: They said it wouldn't plot that long Backup: Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow, oh wow Lead: They'll eat their words with a forkin' VAX, just watch 'em - they rasterize in real time - it drags ass Tutti: You gotta - Plot a wave and you're sittin' on top of the world. Lead: So take a lesson from a top-notch hacker boy Backup: Plot a wave, plot a wave Bass: Get yourself RSX Lead: But don't you treat it like a toy Backup: Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow, oh wow Lead: So stick your plot, go ahead and whine, look fella - we don't plot 'round here, this is real time Tutti: You gotta - Plot a wave and you're sittin' on top of the world. Plot, plot, where the sun never shines Plot a wave and you're sittin' on top of the world. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : A is for Apple Original : A is for Apple Group : Traditional Author : Douglas Spencer Intro : Song : A is for Apple by Douglas Spencer Computer Systems Administrator, Anderman and Co Ltd A is for APPLE who sent us our Macs, D is for DEC, and they sold us a Vax. C is the language in which we write source, and B is our sort, which is BROKEN, of course. E is an ERROR when code is compiled, F is a FORK for creating a child, G is the GETTY that sits on the line, and H is a HANGUP whic:^?{^Zo^?{bD^]NO CARRIER I is the INTERCONNECTION of kit, J is the JOY when the cables all fit. K is for KERMIT, to copy a file, and L are the LINES that we drop all the while. M is the MODEM we use from our home, N are the NIGHTS which we spend on the 'phone, O is the OUTPUT we get from the host, and P are the 'PHONE BILLS we get in the post. Q for SIGQUIT makes our process abort, R is the REASON sigquit should be caught. S is the SIGNAL we catch and ignore, and T is the TRAP which we miss, and dump core. U is for UNIX -- I hope that is clear, V is the VISUAL editor here. W stands for the WINDOWS we use, and X for the windowing system we choose. Y is for YACC, quite a specialist tool, Z for the snores from the programming pool. Written while waiting while dinner was cooking submitted by chiyo to funny@looking. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Addicted to News Original : Addicted To Love Group : Robert Palmer Author : Elf Sternberg Intro : Song : The lights are on-- 'cause you're at home. Your brain's wired to your phone. Alt.sex, and talk.bizarre, You his 'reply,' start a flamewar! You don't sleep, you drink Coke, You can't stop, you might choke. Know what, you crave the most? Talk.religion, with unread posts! You like to think you've figured out drieux! Oh yeah? A day without net access is a day with the blues, You're gonna have to face it, you're addicted to News. Pirate clari, you've got it all. Local news, e'en from Nepal? 'End of newsgroups' is your key, To join *.advocacy! A fido gate's your latest fun, Mailing lists, every one. A one-track mind, you can't be pried, From your keyboard, until you've died! Just when you think you've figured out drieux! Oh, yeah! A day without net access is a day with the blues, You're gonna have to face it, you're addicted to News. The lights are on, 'cause your at home. Your brain's wired to your phone. Alt.slack, talk.pol.misc, You've never felt a real live kiss! Elf !!! @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Addicted To Vi Original : Addicted To Love Group : Robert Palmer Author : Chuck Musciano Intro : After thinking about that poor wretch who has become addicted to vi, I was inspired to compose the following ditty, sung to the tune of "Addicted To Love" by Robert Palmer. As you sing this, it may help the effect to imagine a dozen women, all of whom resemble Bill Joy, dressed in black and dancing sinuously. Song : Addicted To Vi (with apologies to Robert Palmer) You press the keys with no effect, Your mode is not correct. The screen blurs, your fingers shake; You forgot to press escape. Can't insert, can't delete, Cursor keys won't repeat. You try to quit, but can't leave, An extra "bang" is all you need. You think it's neat to type an "a" or an "i"-- Oh yeah? You won't look at emacs, no you'd just rather die You know you're gonna have to face it; You're addicted to vi! You edit files one at a time; That doesn't seem too out of line? You don't think of keys to bind-- A meta key would blow your mind. H, J, K, L? You're not annoyed? Expressions must be a Joy! Just press "f", or is it "t"? Maybe "n", or just "g"? Oh--You think it's neat to type an "a" or an "i"-- Oh yeah? You won't look at emacs, no you'd just rather die You know you're gonna have to face it; You're addicted to vi! Might as well face it, You're addicted to vi! You press the keys without effect, Your life is now a wreck. What a waste! Such a shame! And all you have is vi to blame. Oh--You think it's neat to type an "a" or an "i"-- Oh yeah? You won't look at emacs, no you'd just rather die You know you're gonna have to face it; You're addicted to vi! Might as well face it, You're addicted to vi! @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : The Alternative Wall Original : The Wall Group : Pink Floyd Author : Alan Cox , Leon Thrane, Jim Finnis, Alec Muffet & (?) Intro : Here's a set of pseudosongs which is the result of several long drunken nights talking on a bulletin board between London & Aberystwyth (220+ miles apart)... circa 1988. Song : The Alternative Wall:- Established by:- Anarchy, Atropos, White, Roadrunner>>>++>>, & Giant Hogweed. Nobody On --------- I got keyboard corns on my fingers, I got a Ethernet Pad for a brain, I got a VDU to prop up my mortal remains. My programs always fail, I got a strong urge to MAIL But I got no-one to MAIL to, MAIL to, MAIL to.. Oh, babe, when I send down the phone, There's still nobody on... The Alternative Wall, Part Two. Does anybody here remember DEC? Remember how the manual Was useless to me In every way. UNIX, what has become of you? Can any other O/S be quite as slow as you... The Alternative Wall, Part Three. The Trial --------- Good Morning, ROOT, your honour, The dump will plainly show the user who now stands before you Was caught red-handed in the system Crudely hacking in a truly vicious nature This will not do! CALL THE LOGFILE! "I always said he'd come to no good didn't I, ROOT, your honour, If they let me have my way I'd have him banned from the VAX! But my hands were tied, The bleeding hearts and artists Not to mention the Dave Prices Wouldn't let me throw him off!" -- Dedicated to Atropos The Wanderer. The Alternative Wall, Part Four. The UNIX Login Software ----------------------- Is there anybody out there? (repeat ad nauseam) The Alternative Wall, Part Five. One of My Hacks --------------- Log onto the system On that lurid green screen You'll find there's no response! Don't look so frightened, this is just a passing crash, One of my bad hacks! Would you like to watch TV, Well, that's no use to me I want to watch you squirm As you try to get logged on! Do you want to call the OPS, Do you think it's time I stopped? Why are you running away? The Alternative Wall, Part Six. Filled Up Spaces / What Shall We Do Now? ---------------------------------------- What shall we use to trash The filled up spaces on the archive tape? How should I hack and leave no traces, How shall the system completely fall? The Alternative Wall, Part Seven. Uncomfortably Numb ------------------ Hello, is there anybody on here? I'm here but can you see me? Is there anyone at home? C'mon now, I hear that MIST is down, I can ease the pain, maybe bring it up again. Relax, I need some information first, Just the basic facts, have you hacked the system Snurt? There is no shell, your call is clearing, The distant chips smoke on the breadboard, You are only coming through off pads, Your fingers move but I can't see what you're typing. When I was a child I caught a virus, My filebase swelled just like two balloons Now I've got that feeling once again, I can't explai(core dumped), you would not understand, This is not how I am. I have become uncomfortably numb. The Alternative Wall, Part Eight. In a Flash ---------- So ya Thought ya Might like to Go to the show To feel the thrill of board hacking, That luminescent glow. I've got some bad news for you, sunshine OPS not around, 'cos Node 5 is down, And they sent us along, they've gone to the bar, And we're going to find out who you guys Really are. Have we got any oppos on the system tonight? Grep 'em up against the wall. There's one on Bullet, He don't look right to me, Grep him up agaist the wall. That one's called Badger, And that one's Tyrone, Who let all this riffraff on their own; There's one smoking a joint and Another with sandals? If I had my way I'd have all of you shot. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : An Irish CPU Original : An Irish Ballad Group : Tom Lehrer Author : Sarah Elizabeth Miller Intro : Song : AN IRISH CPU (to An Irish Ballad by Tom Lehrer) by Sarah Elizabeth Miller About a CPU I sing, Sing rickity, tickity, tin. About a CPU I sing Who sat around compi-a-ling And wouldn't do another thing For anyone else logged in, logged in, For anyone else logged in. Old programs it would just ignore, Sing rickity, tickity, tin. Old programs it would just ignore And leave them rotting in the core, Not caring what they all were for Except those in "user/bin", "user/bin", Except those in "user/bin". This CPU was lots of fun, Sing rickity, tickity, tin. This CPU was lots of fun Until one wanted programs run And if one tried to get them done It typed back "You're not logged in, logged in." It typed back "You're not logged in." Long processes it would not do, Sing rickity, tickity, tin. Long processes it would not do And, rather than to run them through, Would ask to have some Irish stew And a couple of cases of gin, of gin, And a couple of cases of gin. And then it would raise hellish toasts, Sing rickity, tickity, tin. And then it would raise hellish toasts And make a few obnoxious boasts, Not only could it drink the most, It knew many more ways to sin, to sin. It knew many more ways to sin. To prove its point to all the world, Sing rickity, tickity, tin. To prove its point to all the world It let the magtape fall in curls And wrap around some foxy girl And slowly rewind her in, her in, And slowly rewind her in. This sordid tale I won't prolong, Sing rickity, tickity, tin. This sordid tale I won't prolong And, if you do not enjoy my song, You've got Abe to blame if it's too long. He should never have let me begin, begin. He should never have let me begin. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Another Glitch in the Call Original : Another Brick in the Wall Group : Pink Floyd Author : Knappy 8350428 @ UWAVM Intro : Song : Another Glitch in the Call ========================== (Sung to the tune of a similar Pink Floyd song.) (Contributed By Knappy 8350428 @ UWAVM) We don't need no indirection We don't need no flow control No data typing or declarations Hey! You! Leave those lists alone! Chorus: All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call. We don't need no side effect-ing We don't need no scope control No global variables for execution Hey! You! Leave those args alone! (Chorus) We don't need no allocation We don't need no special nodes No dark bit-flipping in the functions Hey! You! Leave those bits alone! (Chorus) We don't need no compilation We don't need no load control No link edit for external bindings Hey! You! Leave that source alone! (Chorus, and repeat) @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Another One Original : Santa Claus Is Coming to Town Group : ? Author : ? Intro : Not quite the usual parody, but nice for all UNIX fans among us :-) Song : better !pout !cry better watchout lpr why santa claus town cat /etc/passwd >list ncheck list ncheck list cat list | grep naughty >nogiftlist cat list | grep nice >giftlist santa claus town who | grep sleeping who | grep awake who | egrep 'bad|good' for (goodness sake) { be good } better !pout !cry better watchout lpr why santa claus town cat /etc/passwd >list ncheck list ncheck list cat list | grep naughty >nogiftlist cat list | grep nice >giftlist santa claus town who | grep sleeping who | grep awake who | grep bad || good for (goodness sake) { be good; } @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : A Song of Computation Author : Tony Duell Original : A Song of Reproduction Group : Flanders and Swann Intro : The processor 'of storage 4 k byte' is (of course) a Philips P850, a minicomputer noted for its limited memory (4 k bytes was the maximum), RISC-like instruction set, and total lack of speed. After that, the PDP11/45 was a great improvement EI set = Extended Instruction Set, i.e. the XOR, Multiply and Divide instructions etc DW11-B was a DEC option to use Q-Bus cards on a UNIBUS PDP11. They are much desired by PDP11 enthusiasts, although they can cause problems NXM error = Non eXistant Memory error - what happens if there is a bus time-out during a DMA transfer Don't try to make too much sense of the spoken part in the middle It makes more sense than the original, anyway Song : I had a little processor With storage 4 K byte And with an octal program It ran throughout the night And then they optimised it It was much faster then And we loaded Fortran Programs To make it slow again Today for computation I'm as eager as can be Count me among the faithful fans of high end P - D - P High end PDP 45's the one for me With cartridge disk and EI set and 6 foot rack mount cabinet floating point boards too complete with M M U All the lowest bits either clear or set What they mean now I quite forget Still there's enough range there for national debt With my high end PDP (spoken) Who configured this for you anyway? DEC field service ?!?!? Ooooh what a shoddy job they made of it! Suprised they let you run that configuration on this processor, the priorities are all wrong. If you move the tape drive down the bus after the console port, and then re-assign the address of the system disk, then you'll still only get adequate performance if you run modified software I see you've got your system disk on the Q-Bus! Take that though a DW11-B bus convertor, and via your A-leg Mux into the ALU, If you're running multi-user, you're going to loose grants. Try to load the OS that way and what'll you get A NXM error! High end PDP RSX version 3 I've a shell right here that you won't escape On miles of 9-track recording tape 18 bit address Will prove a great success With the console switch, at a single touch The lisiting comes in double dutch But I never did care for data much With my high end PDP @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : A Time for DWIM Original : A Time for Us Group : theme song from Romeo and Juliet Author : Guy L. Steele Jr. Intro : Song : A Time for DWIM [to be sung to the tune of A Time for Us (theme song from Romeo and Juliet)] A time for DWIM There'll never be; No clever code This losing mode Can UNDO for me. This "golden hope" (To be denied) Could never Correctly fix the bugs my programs hide. A way for bugs There'll never be To fix with generality. So to this DWIM Let's say farewell; The crocks therein Prove it can't win And ring its knell: Do What I Mean Is just a ruse -- It really Means only: Fix How Teitelman doth Lose! -- The Great Quux (with apologies to Rota, Kusik, and Snyder) @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Automation Original : Fascination Group : Jane Morgan (???) Author : Alan Sherman (singer), transcribed by Russell Street (russells@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz) Info : The music Sherman used had be re-arranged from the "original" of the song I have. Song : It was automation, I know, That was what was making the factory go. It was IBM, it was UNIVAC, It was all those gears going clickerty-clack, dear I thought automation was keen, 'Till you were replaced by a ten tonne machine. It was that computer that tore us apart, dear Automation broke my heart. There's an RCA 503 Standing next to me, dear, where you used to be. Doesn't have your smile, doesn't have your shape. Just a lot a bunch of punch cards and light bulbs and tape, dear. Your a girl whose soft, warm and sweet. But your only human and that's obselete. Though I'm very fond of that new 503, dear. Automation's not for me. "It was automation", I'm told That's why I got fired and I'm out in the cold How could I have known, when the 503, Started into blink, it was winking at me, dear. I thought it was just some mishap. When it sidled over and sat on my lap But when it said "I love you" and gave me a hug, dear That's when I pulled out it's plug @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : A Visit from Saint Woz Original : The Night Before Christmas (A Visit from St. Nick?) Group : ? Author : Marty Knight Intro : Song : A VISIT FROM SAINT WOZ by Marty Knight 'Twas the night before Christmas, no sound in the house. My GS is dusty and so is my mouse. My dealer's gone Mac; he's too brainwashed to care. Apple marketing smells like that old dairy-air. My children are nestled, all snug in their beds, while visions of Mac LCs (ugh) dance in their heads. The GS is dead, I've heard them all say. They might just be right; things look pretty gray. When all of a sudden a great noise I did hear. I woke with a start and fell flat on my rear. Awakened from slumber I jumped up to see tripped over the cat and twisted my knee. The moon brightly shone on the new fallen snow. I looked but saw nothing, then turning to go, stopped short... What's that?... Is that synthLAB I hear? Why yes! Yes it is! That's good reason to cheer! I jumped and I shouted and I danced then because I knew right away that it must be Saint Woz. More rapid than Zip Chip, old Wozniak came. He whistled and shouted and called out by name: "Now Quickie! Now Allison! Now AppleWorks GS! Go Claris! On SuperConvert! I love you Vitesse! Platinum Paint is so cool! Twilight Screen Blanker rules! Who needs those old Macs when you've got Apple IIs? "If you have been true I've got presents to dole, but if you're like inCider you'll get lumps of coal." So up to the housetop with the Green Team he flew; Jim Merritt, Andy Nicholas, and Saint Wozniak, too. I kept very quiet so that I might hear SoundSmith tunes softly playing, spreading Apple II cheer. Then I heard a slight scrape and as I turned 'round down the chimney Saint Wozniak came with a bound. He wore blue jeans and sneakers and a T-shirt that said II-Infinitum ... II-Forever... I had nothing to dread! A sack of great software he had slung on his back and he looked like a hacker there searching his pack. His eyes twinkled brightly, his dimples so merry, his cheeks red as apples, his nose like a cherry. His droll little mouth smiled a smile oh so grand. And a full bearded chin, GDL labels in hand. A thick slice of pizza he held tight in his teeth and the steam from it circled his head like a wreath. A plump little face and a round little belly. He laughed and it shook like a bowl of grape jelly. He was chubby and plump; a right jolly old elf. I laughed when I saw him, for he looked like myself. He winked right at me then he twisted his head, so I knew deep inside I had nothing to dread. He said not a word. He went straight to work programming in ORCA, then he turned with a jerk. Then placing his finger on top of that mess, and giving a nod... GAMES for the GS! He jumped to his sleigh and it rose from the ground. But before it took off I saw him turn 'round and I heard him exclaim, 'ere he flew out of sight, "Apple II Forever, and to all a good night!" Copyright 1990 by Marty Knight @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : BBN Superlisp Original : Jesus Christ Superstar Group : from Jesus Christ Superstar Author : Guy L. Steele Jr. Intro : Song : BBN Superlisp [to be sung to the tune of Jesus Christ Superstar] Every time I look at you I don't understand Why you think "Do What I Mean" is so cool and grand; You'd have managed better if you'd thought it through, Why'd you pick such an awkward way your bugs to undo? Your hairy feature will not be the last revolution, It's clear "Mean What I Do" is the ultimate solution! Don't you get me wrong, Don't you get me wrong, Don't you get me wrong, now, Don't you get me wrong, I only want to hack, I only want to hack, I only want to hack, I only want to hack. BBN! BBN! Some people think you're the living end! BBN! BBN! Some people think you're the living end! BBN! SuperLISP! Can "Do What I Mean" measure up to this? BBN! SuperLISP! Can "Do What I Mean" measure up to this? Tell us what you think about your friends at the top, Who d'you think besides yourself's the pick of the crop? Is LISP 1.5 where it's at? Is it where you are? Does Stanford's LISP have features too or is that just PR? Do you have the breakpoint scheme that MACLISP is known for, Or is that just the kind of kludge the user's on his own for? Don't you get me wrong, Don't you get me wrong, Don't you get me wrong, now, Don't you get me wrong, I only want to hack, I only want to hack, I only want to hack, I only want to hack. BBN! BBN! Some people think you're the living end! BBN! BBN! Some people think you're the living end! BBN! SuperLISP! Can "Do What I Mean" measure up to this? BBN! SuperLISP! Can "Do What I Mean" measure up to this? -- The Great Quux (with apologies to Rice and Webber) @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Berkelian Rhapsody Original : Bohemian Rhapsody Group : Queen Author : R. Anderson Intro : I have a real gem for you, if you're familiar at all with Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody", recently re-popularized over here in the states by the movie "Wayne's World", a cinematic production with which most Europeans will not identify, being culturally different than we are (and, I might add, more advanced in their cultures). Song : BERKELIAN RHAPSODY (to the tune of "Bohemian Rhapsody") Is this in real time? Is this in memory? Caught in a for(;;) loop, no escape from this subroutine... open() your files, branch through the do{}while()s and see I'm just the kernel, I need no libraries Because you boot me up, load and go Branch from high, store to low Any way the thread flows Doesn't really matter to me To me. unlink() just killed a file Filled it's data up with NULLs, cleared the inode, closed the holes vfork(), life had just begun Then kill(0, SIGKILL) blew it all away mmap(), ooooooh, didn't mean to make it die if (the parent process doesn't fork again) { carry on, carry on, as if nothing really matters; } Too late, init has died Flush my buffers out from core, then reboot() and try once more panic ("freeing free block"); I've got to crash Got to enter kdb and see the truth Init, ooooooooh (Any way the thread flows) I've lost my tty I wish my page hadn't been swapped out at all... I see the signal trap vectors into core Interrupt! Overrun! It will do a fandango Data's skrogged like lightning, very very frightening me Dennis Ritchie? Kenneth Thompson? Kirk McKusick? Eric Allman Someone help me! Robert Pike? Oh, Kernighan (-an -an -an -an -an) I'm just a quick hack, nobody uses me He just makes sockets in his address family Spare him a buffer in high memory bind(); accept(); msg_send(); will it let me go? munmap(); NO! It will not let you go (LET IT GO!) munmap() just will not let you go (LET IT GO!) munmap() just will not let you go (LET IT GO!) Will not let you go (LET IT GO!) Will not let you go Will not let you go oh, oh, oh, oh No, no, no, no, no, no, no! kill(0, SIGKILL), exit(0); exit(0); let me go! BSDi has a daemon set aside for me, for me, for meeeeeeeeeeeeee So you think you can stomp on my stack space and text? .. Skrog my image and data by calling exec()? Ohh, page-d, can't do this to me page-d Just gotta switch out, just context switch right out of here Nothing really hashes, anyone can see Every process thrashes, every disk drive crashes On me Any way the thread flows... - Music by Queen Lyrics by R. Anderson with posthumous apologies to Freddie Mercury @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Berkeley California Original : Hotel California Group : The Eagles Author : David Barr Intro : I remember getting a collection of computer songs of yours a while ago. Here's a song 3 of us made up recently in light of the recent lawsuit between AT&T and BSDI, as well as the shift by Sun (and others) away from Good Ol' BSD towards System V. Song : "Berkeley California" (Sung to the tune "Hotel California" by the Eagles) In a dark dim machine room Cool A/C in my hair Warm smell of silicon Rising up through the air Up ahead in the distance I saw a Solarian(tm) light My kernel grew heavy, and my disk grew slim I had to halt(8) for the night The backup spun in the tape drive I heard a terminal bell And I was thinking to myself This could be BSD or USL Then they started a lawsuit And they showed me the way There were salesmen down the corridor I thought I heard them say Welcome to Berkeley California Such a lovely place Such a lovely place (backgrounded) Such a lovely trace(1) Plenty of jobs at Berkeley California Any time of year Any time of year (backgrounded) You can find one here You can find one here Their code was definately twisted But they've got the stock market trends They've got a lot of pretty, pretty lawyers That they call friends How they dance in the courtroom See BSDI sweat Some sue to remember Some sue to forget So I called up Kernighan Please bring me ctime(3) He said We haven't had that tm_year since 1969 And still those functions are calling from far away Wake up Jobs in the middle of the night Just to hear them say Welcome to Berkeley California Such a lovely Place Such a lovely Place (backgrounded) Such a lovely trace(1) They're livin' it up suing Berkeley California What a nice surprise What a nice surprise (backgrounded) Bring your alibies Windows NT a dreaming Pink OS on ice And they said We are all just prisoners here Of a marketing device And in the judges's chambers They gathered for the feast They diff(1)'d the source code listings But they can't kill -9 the beast Last thing I remember I was restore(8)'ing | more(1) I had to find the soft link back to the path I was before sleep(3) said the pagedaemon We are programmed to recv(2) You can swap out any time you like But you can never leave(1) [ substitute whirring of disk and tape drives for guitar solo ] Written by David Barr and Ken Hornstein and a little help from Greg Nagy and thanks to the lyrics archive at cs.uwp.edu @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Berkeley 4.3 Original : Yellow Submarine Group : Beatles Author : Jim Finnis Intro : [fragment] Song : In the RAM where I was forked, lived a ROM, who sailed the C... And he told, me of his life, in the Berkeley, 4.3... We all live in the Berkeley 4.3, Berkeley 4.3, Berkeley 4.3. We all live in the Berkeley 4.3, Berkeley 4.3, Berkeley 4.3. ((c) White the Wizard productions Ltd, 1987) @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Boot It Original : Beat it Group : Michael Jackson Author : ? Intro : Song : Boot It You're processing some words when your keyboard goes dead, Ten pages in the buffer, should have gone to bed, The system just crashed, but don't lose your head, Just BOOT IT, just BOOT IT. Better think fast, better do what you can, Read the manual or call your system man, Don't want to fall behind in the race with Japan, So BOOT IT, Get the system manager to BOOT IT, BOOT IT, Even though you'd rather shoot it. Don't be upset, it's only some glitch. All that you do is flip a little switch. BOOT IT, BOOT IT, Get right down and restitute it. Don't get excited, all is not lost. CP/M, UNIX or MS/DOS Just BOOT IT, boot it, boot it, boot it... You gotta have your printout for the meeting at two, The system says your jobs at the head of the queue, Right then the thing dies but you know what to do, BOOT IT. You always get so worried when the system runs slow, And when it finally crashes, man you feel so low, But computers make mistakes (they're only human you know) So BOOT IT, Call the local guru to BOOT IT, BOOT IT, Go ahead re-institute it. If you're not lucky, get the book off the shelf, But if you are, it'll do itself. BOOT IT, BOOT IT, Then go find the guy who screwed it! Operating systems are built to bounce back, Whether it's a Cray or a Radio Shack. BOOT IT, BOOT IT @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Both Ways, Now Original : Both Sides, Now Group : Joni Mitchell Author : Guy L. Steele Jr. Intro : Song : Both Ways, Now [to be sung to the tune of Both Sides, Now] Decimal digits in a row, Just set the dials and let 'er go. The ENIAC was grossly slow -- I used to code that way, But then this Fortran came along; I danced and sang a happy song: So natural -- what could go wrong? I little knew, that day! I've looked at Fortran both ways, now, At II and IV, and still somehow, It's rows of numbers I recall; I really don't know Fortran at all. Fortran IV is real good stuff, But business hackers have it tough; For them this Fortran's not enough -- Then Cobol saved the day! But now I sing a sad refrain; This Cobol loss is no one's gain, And writing programs is a pain (I get writer's cramp that way!) I've looked at Cobol both ways, now, I code in it, and still somehow, It's FORMAT statements I recall; I really don't know Cobol at all. Cobol will for business do; Accounts and payroll make it through (And bills for zero dollars too -- I get them every day!) But those who hack symbolic frobs Cannot make do with Cobol jobs, And now I sing through anguished sobs, But Lisp is here to stay. I've looked at Lisp code both ways, now, At lambda forms, and still somehow, It's Cobol statements I recall; I really don't know Lisp at all. -- The Great Quux (with apologies to Joni Mitchell) @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : The Boys of HP Original : The Boys of Summer Group : Don Henley Author : Adam Sah Intro : This reminds me of something we printed here in C.S. Major Magazine regarding our beloved Hewlett-Packard 300 Series... Song : The Boys of HP (sung to the tune 'The Boys of Summer' by Don Henley) -------------- (csfs1 = Comp. Sci File Server 1) Nobody in the room no cursor on the screen I feel it in the air 'csfs1 not responding' empty disk, empty screen, the server goes down alone I was logged into my account and I know you have no phone. I can see it the workstation's collecting dust You've got your 'console long:' and your blank screen, baby. And I can tell you I'll never get my source by dawn once the boys from HP have gone. I'll never forget those night. I wonder if I ever got to sleep? Remember how you made me crazy Remember how _you_ made _me_ scream? I don't understand what happened to my source If I can't ever get it back, I'm sure you have no remorse. I can see it the system crashing on me you've got your pinstriped suit and your corporate paranoia, baby. And I can tell you my love for this will still be strong after the boys of HP have gone Out in the corridors I saw a bunch of lost programmers A little voice inside my head say, "Don't buy more, you should never buy more" I thought I knew where my source was What did I know? Those servers are gone forever, I should just let them go, but- I can see it- your drives eating my work You've got that salesman's pitch and your demo running baby. and I can tell you- my love for CS will still be strong even after the boys from HP have gone. (c) 1991 by Adam Sah @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : The Bug Came Back Original : The Cat Came Back Group : Harry Miller Author : Joel Polowin Intro : I'd like to submit the following for your consideration. Copyright (C) 1991 by Joel Polowin. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce this material in any non-profit medium provided that its content is not altered and that this notice is appended. I would appreciate receiving a copy of any publication in which it appears: Joel Polowin / 205 Toronto St. / Kingston,Ontario / CANADA / K7L 4A9 polowin@silicon.chem.QueensU.CA, polowinj@qucdn.QueensU.CA Song : The Bug Came Back ----------------- (Copyright 1991 by Joel Polowin. Music: "The Cat Came Back" by Harry Miller) The program wasn't complex, and it wasn't very long, Though it seemed a bit erratic, its results were seldom wrong. But that little error nagged us, so we stayed up late one night - Found a missing comma, and we thought that fixed it right - (Chorus:) But the bug came back, the very next day The bug came back, we thought it was a gonner But the bug came back, it just wouldn't stay away. We put away our documents, rewrote the code from scratch To find out where the new and older versions didn't match. A subtle shift of logic showed where we had gone astray; We felt a bit embarrassed, but at least it ran okay - (Chorus) We wrote in other languages, from FORTH to APL And ev'ry one ran ev'ry time - just sometimes not too well. Translation to assembler didn't give us any clue; The COBOL version crashed on ev'ry system it went through - (Chorus) We gave it to the hacker squad - the folks who code for fun - And asked them if they couldn't get the stupid thing to run. But less than one week later, they no longer wished to play - Three paranoids... one suicide... and six who ran away... (Chorus) We got a summer student in to check the code by hand, With paper, pen and calculator, run through each command, But suddenly the lights went out -- the air went thin and queer -- A sudden FLASH! of lightning -- and the student... disappeared..? (Chorus) (Last verse and corresponding alternate chorus are optional:) We set up an experiment that Schrodinger inspired: A box; a cat; some poison; a computer system wired Such that IF the program failed, the little moggy would be gassed. A quasar was - almost - the only remnant of the blast... But the cat came back the very next day The bug came back, we thought they were a gonner But they both came back, they just wouldn't stay away @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Bye Bye, Unix Original : American Pie Group : Don Mclean Author : Cathy Flint, Eric Griswold, Scott Neugroschl Intro : I went back to my old alma-mader, UC Santa Cruz, a week ago. Things there always seem to be getting worse, although everybody admits it's still better than Berkeley. Anyway, the current rage is to make fun of the CIS (Computer & Informational Sciences) department political situation through song verses. The following is a typical example, even though some of it isn't true...... Song : American Pie --- Hacker Style Long, long, time ago, I can still remember How UNIX used to make me smile... And I knew that with a login name That I could play those UNIX games And maybe hack some programs for a while. But February made me shiver With every program I'd deliver Bad news on the doorstep, I couldn't take one more spec... I can't remember getting smashed When I heard about the system crash And all the passwords got rehashed The Day That UNIX Died... And I was singing: Bye, bye, nroff, rogue and vi Gave my program to Phil Levy but Phil Levy was high, The boys on the board were sayin' "fuck this, goodbye." Singin' this'll be the day that I die... This'll be the day that I die Did you write the new games shell And do you have faith in the manual? If b:dennie tells you so... Well, do you believe in UNIX C Can hacking save you memory And can you tell me why vi's so slow Well, I know that you're in love with C 'Cause I saw your code on UNIX B You just kicked off your shoes Man, you cleaned up every kludge! I was a lonely young computer geek With a program due 'most every week But I guess that I was meant to freak The Day That UNIX Died And I was singin: (chorus) Well, for ten weeks we've been in this class The professor really is an ass. But that's not how it used to be... When Ira Pohl taught in CIS 12 And user limits could go to hell And there was still space on UNIX C. And while the board was looking 'round The Chancellor brought the budget down The classes were adjourned Evaluations weren't returned And while Huffman read a book by Pohl The CIS board made some prof's heads roll And we wrote programs that weren't whole The Day That UNIX Died And we were singin'... (chorus) Helter skelter in the summer swelter I went in the lab to find some shelter Ninety degrees and risin' faaaaaasst!!! C stayed up for ten whole days The hackers really were amazed Wonderin' how long it all would last. Well, both the forums were really great Nobody got us all irate We had a stroke of luck The system was not fucked 'Cause the hackers kept their code real clean The UNDR-shell was really keen Do you recall what was the scene The Day That UNIX Died And we were singin... (chorus) Our programs were all in one place, UNIX had run out of space With no time left to start again... So, Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Use every programming trick 'Cause UNIX may soon crash again... And as I watched the system fill My login process would be killed. The system just went down Consternation up at Crown!!!! The hours went on into the night And all that we could do was rite I saw Dennie laughing with delight The Day That UNIX Died And he was singin'... (chorus) I met a girl who sang the blues And I asked her for some stat lab news But she just cursed and said "grow up" I went down through the stat lab door Where I'd learned of UNIX years before But the man there said that UNIX wasn't up And in the halls the students screamed, The majors cried and the hackers dreamed, But not a word was spoken The Vaxes all were broken And the three folks I admire most The Father, Frank, and a.g.'s ghost They caught the last train for the coast The Day That UNIX Died And they were singin... So bye, bye, nroff, rogue and vi Gave my program to Phil Levy but Phil Levy was high. The boys on the board were sayin' "fuck this, goodbye" Singin' this'll be the day that I die... (with apologies to Don McLean) -- Cathy Flint Eric Griswold Scott Neugroschl @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title: CAMM (Crustified Ancient of Main Memory) Original: Justified Ancients of Moo Moo Groyp: KLF Author: Jonathan Dursi (dursi@clavius.stmarys.ca) Intro: C CAMM - Crustified Ancient of Main Memory. C C This came out of the depths of despair while I was modifying C A *really* old, *really* big (IMHO) FORTRAN program, that C is CPU intensive and *seriously* inefficient. C C It just sort of appeared in my editor while I was working C on the thing. And it produced fewer compilation errors C than the rest of it... C C My sincerest of apologies to the KLF. C - Jonathan Dursi C dursi@clavius.stmarys.ca Song: Over a Meg of old FORTRAN! Over a Meg of old FORTRAN! Hey! Hey, Hey! Over a Meg of old FORTRAN! (cruftified!) Hey, Hey! Over a Meg of old FORTRAN! It's cruftified, and it's ancient, and it loves to use up RAM. (from 1K to the top!) It's cruftified, and it's ancient, and it's code I don't understand. (and it's big, and it's BIG, and it's *BIG* now!) He pulled me out of class, you see, He said, "Dursi, _you_ know FORTRAN! I doubt that you'll like what you're *going* to do, But you'd better start now, because we need it soon!" (Bring my 'C' back!) Hey, Hey! Over a Meg of old FORTRAN! (cruftified!) Hey, Hey! Over a Meg of old FORTRAN! old FORTRAN! old FORTRAN! Over a Meg of old FORTRAN! It's cruftified, and it's ancient, and it eats CPU, that CAMM... (at least a GigaFLOP!) It's cruftified, and it's ancient, "But sir, I had other plans..." (That's too bad, that's too bad, that's too bad now!) The last compile started half hour ago, And the users are starting to mob! Over a Meg of old FORTRAN, Then someone started screaming, turn off that job! (give the keyboard back!) Hey, Hey! Over a Meg of old FORTRAN! (cruftified!) Hey, Hey! Over a Meg of old FORTRAN! (Cruftified and ancient, Ancient and it's cruftified, Will not compile though I've tried and tried, With the errors in the go-tos, Common Blocks and Do-loops In the hundred thousand lines of the CAMM. I'd really like to take a nap, 'Cuz I know what time it is, But I think it will compile if I change this line... Oops, well, guess not, looks like I'll be Fishing through the listings all night. Fishing through the listings all night! Hey! Fishing through the listings all night! Hey! Fishing through the listings, Fishing through the listings, Fishing through the listings all night! Hey! VAX Pascal! Starting to look pretty good. VAX FORTRAN? Bring my 'C' Back!) Hey, Hey! Over a Meg of old FORTRAN! Hey, Hey! Over a Meg of old FORTRAN! old FORTRAN! old FORTRAN! Over a Meg of old FORTRAN! old FORTRAN! old FORTRAN! Over a Meg of old FORTRAN! old FORTRAN! old FORTRAN! Over a Meg of old FORTRAN! @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Can't parse this Original : U Can't Touch This Group : MC Hammer Author : patrick widener Intro : rap it to the tune of "U Can't Touch This" by MC Hammer, and watch your phrasing.... :) Song : can't parse this my assignments hit me so hard make me say, "oh my lord thank you for blessin me with a load to code and a 2 hype seat" right here, in front of a Sparc looks good in the light, looks better in the dark but it tells me - in a manner quite harsh "This is a string I can't parse" (I told ya, kludge-boy) Can't Parse This (yea, a fatal error and you know) Can't Parse This (look at that code, maaaan) Can't Parse This (yo lemme bust some funky diagnostics) "fresh new bugs, and errors your code is more than compiler terror it's rotten - to the core i don't like it but you know i'll get more than i can handle hold on identifier not found or your semicolon's gone step back - step back can't you see i'm developing a crack in my hardware - your code's a farce cause this is a string I Can't Parse" (yo i told ya) Can't Parse This (why you sittin there, man) Can't Parse This (yo, sound the terminal bell, ya got mail, sucka) compile-time bugs disrupt my rhythm it's tellin me trash is what i'm givin him it's garbage, in and out but instead of a nice little a.out i get feedback fed back to me by this here RISC machine no fun what's it gonna take in the 90s to run these programs 4GLs? either learn those or wind up in hell that's longWORD because you know Can't Parse This Can't Parse This top-down! Stop! Compile Time! go with the flow it is said if you can't write in C then you probably are dead so wave K&R in the air waste a few nights, run your fingers thru your hair this is it no dinner - code like this and you'll surely get thinner sitting on your rump watch your machine cause it's gonna do a dump dump dump dump (core dumped) Can't Parse This Can't Parse This (ya better get Turbo cause I can't) I Can't Parse This (ring the bell, your mail's been returned) shutdown! Stop! Link Time! Can't Parse This Can't Parse This Can't Parse This slowdown! Stop! Run Time! every time I program it complains about my code maybe i'm in the wrong book or Emacs is in the wrong mode now i know that i'll never stop doing this cause our 3rd party software keeps on giving us fits i did an RTFM read K&R all day it's "Error!" "Big Error!" "Nasty Error!" "FATAL ERROR!" so instead i'll go and play Can't Parse This Can't Parse This I Can't Parse This (yeah) Can't Parse This (i told ya, wahoos,) Can't Parse This (too many symbols) Can't Parse This (yo, we're outa here) Can't P-- bus error (core dumped) (c) 1991 Radio Free Lerxstwood @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : The Computer Nevermore Original : The Raven Group : Edgar Allan Poe Author : ? Intro : Song : Once upon a midnight dreary, fingers cramped and vision bleary, System manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor Longing for the warmth of bedsheets, Still I sat there, doing spreadsheets; Having reached the bottom line, I took a floppy from the drawer. Typing with a steady hand, then invoked the SAVE command But I got a reprimand: it read RAbort, Retry, Ignore.S Was this some occult illusion? Some maniacal intrusion? These were choices Solomon himself had never faced before. Carefully, I weighed my options. These three seemed to be the top ones. Clearly I must now adopt one: Choose RAbort, Retry, Ignore.S With my fingers pale and trembling, SLowly toward the keyboard bending, Longing for a happy ending, hoping all would be restored, Praying for some guarantee Finally I pressed a key-- But on the screen what did I see? Again: RAbort, Retry, Ignore.S I tried to catch the chips off-guard-- I pressed again, but twice as hard. Luck was just not in the cards. I saw what I had seen before. Now I typed in desperation Trying random combinations Still there came the incantation: Choose: RAbort, Retry, Ignore.S There I sat, distraught exhausted, by my own machine accosted Getting up I turned away and paced across the office floor. And then I saw an awful sight: A bold and blinding flash of light-- A lightning bolt had cut the night and shook me to my very core. I saw the screen collapse and die ROh no--my data base,S I cried I thought I heard a voice reply, RYouUll see your data Nevermore!S To this day I do not know The place to which lost data goes I bet it goes to heaven where the angels have it stored But as for productivity, well I fear that IT goes straight to hell And thatUs the tale I have to tell Your choice: RAbort, Retry, Ignore.S @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Core dumped blues Original : ? Group : ? Author : ? Intro : (from Fortune file on IBM RISC 6000) Song : Well, my terminal's locked up, and I ain't got no Mail And I can't recall the last time my Program didn't fail; I've got stacks in my structs, I've got array in my queues, I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues. If you think that's nice that you get what you C, Then go : illogical statment with your whole family, 'Cause the Supreme Court ain't the only place with : Bus error views. I've got the : Segmentation violatien -- Core dumped blues. On a PDP-11, life should be a breeze, But with VAXen in the house even magnetic tape would freeze, Now you might think that unlike VAXen I'd know who I abuse, I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : CRASH! goes the System Original : POP goes the weasel Group : ? Author : ? Intro : Here's one my father wrote some years ago. It used to hang on the door to the computer room in building 2 at Goddard Space Flight Center (NASA). Song : CRASH! goes the System Two specks of dust on a Winchester disk No use to hope you missed them That's the way computing goes-- CRASH! goes the system. Go exchange the circuit boards Try and use your wisdom No way will you catch that bug-- CRASH! goes the system. Our pride and joy has features galore It takes a day to list them And none of them can be used any more-- CRASH! goes the system. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : CRAY-S's coolant Original : Octopusse's Garden Group : Beatles Author : aem@aber.ac.uk (Alec David Muffett) Intro : [fragment] Song : I'd like to be under the sea, in a CRAY1-S's coolant in the shade This freon gas will freeze my ass, in a CRAY1-S's coolant in the shade... @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Cycles For Nothing Original : Money For Nothing Group : Dire Straits Author : Matt Crawford Intro : Song : Cycles For Nothing (i want my i want my i want my X-MP!) Now look at them yo-yo's that's the way you do it You run the fortran on the X-MP That ain't hackin' that's the way you do it Cycles for nothin', gigabits for free Now that ain't hackin' that's the way you do it Lemme tell ya them guys ain't dumb Maybe Monte Carlo on a three-quark system Maybe design a little neutron bomb We gotta install microwave uplinks Custom fuzzballs for everyone We gotta link up DDS circuits BERT and loopback tests to run See the kid professor with the blue jeans and the necktie Yeah buddy that's his own hair That kid professor got his Nobel prize now That kid professor he's a millionaire We gotta install microwave uplinks Custom fuzzballs for everyone We gotta link up DDS circuits BERT and loopback tests to run I shoulda stuck to writing in fortran I shoulda kept that old 029 Look at that output, he got it stacked up to the ceilin' I bet he ain't read one line And in there, what's that? A hundred postdocs? Bangin' on the keyboards like some chimpanzees That ain't hackin' that's the way you do it Cycles for nothin', gigabits for free We gotta install microwave uplinks Custom fuzzballs for everyone We gotta link up DDS circuits BERT and loopback tests to run by Matt Crawford @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : The Day Bell System Died Original : American Pie Group : Don Mclean Author : Lauren Weinstein Intro : Greetings. With the massive changes now taking place in the telecommunications industry, we're all being inundated with seemingly endless news items and points of information regarding the various effects now beginning to take place. However, one important element has been missing: a song! Since the great Tom Lehrer has retired from the composing world, I will now attempt to fill this void with my own light-hearted, non-serious look at a possible future of telecommunications. This work is entirely satirical, and none of its lyrics are meant to be interpreted in a non-satirical manner. The song should be sung to the tune of Don Mclean's classic "American Pie". I call my version "The Day Bell System Died"... Song : *==================================* * Notice: This is a satirical work * *==================================* "The Day Bell System Died" Lyrics Copyright (C) 1983 by Lauren Weinstein (To the tune of "American Pie") (With apologies to Don McLean) ARPA: vortex!lauren@LBL-CSAM UUCP: {decvax, ihnp4, harpo, ucbvax!lbl-csam, randvax}!vortex!lauren Long, long, time ago, I can still remember, When the local calls were "free". And I knew if I paid my bill, And never wished them any ill, That the phone company would let me be... But Uncle Sam said he knew better, Split 'em up, for all and ever! We'll foster competition: It's good capital-ism! I can't remember if I cried, When my phone bill first tripled in size. But something touched me deep inside, The day... Bell System... died. And we were singing... Bye, bye, Ma Bell, why did you die? We get static from Sprint and echo from MCI, "Our local calls have us in hock!" we all cry. Oh Ma Bell why did you have to die? Ma Bell why did you have to die? Is your office Step by Step, Or have you gotten some Crossbar yet? Everybody used to ask... Oh, is TSPS coming soon? IDDD will be a boon! And, I hope to get a Touch-Tone phone, real soon... The color phones are really neat, And direct dialing can't be beat! My area code is "low": The prestige way to go! Oh, they just raised phone booths to a dime! Well, I suppose it's about time. I remember how the payphones chimed, The day... Bell System... died. And we were singing... Bye, bye, Ma Bell, why did you die? We get static from Sprint and echo from MCI, "Our local calls have us in hock!" we all cry. Oh Ma Bell why did you have to die? Ma Bell why did you have to die? Back then we were all at one rate, Phone installs didn't cause debate, About who'd put which wire where... Installers came right out to you, No "phone stores" with their ballyhoo, And 411 was free, seemed very fair! But FCC wanted it seems, To let others skim long-distance creams, No matter 'bout the locals, They're mostly all just yokels! And so one day it came to pass, That the great Bell System did collapse, In rubble now, we all do mass, The day... Bell System... died. So bye, bye, Ma Bell, why did you die? We get static from Sprint and echo from MCI, "Our local calls have us in hock!" we all cry. Oh Ma Bell why did you have to die? Ma Bell why did you have to die? I drove on out to Murray Hill, To see Bell Labs, some time to kill, But the sign there said the Labs were gone. I went back to my old CO, Where I'd had my phone lines, years ago, But it was empty, dark, and ever so forlorn... No relays pulsed, No data crooned, No MF tones did play their tunes, There wasn't a word spoken, All carrier paths were broken... And so that's how it all occurred, Microwave horns just nests for birds, Everything became so absurd, The day... Bell System... died. So bye, bye, Ma Bell, why did you die? We get static from Sprint and echo from MCI, "Our local calls have us in hock!" we all cry. Oh Ma Bell why did you have to die? Ma Bell why did you have to die? We were singing: Bye, bye, Ma Bell, why did you die? We get static from Sprint and echo from MCI, "Our local calls have us in hock!" we all cry. Oh Ma Bell why did you have to die? @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : The DEC Man cometh Original : The Gas Man cometh Group : Michael Flounders and Donald Swan Author : Russell Street (russells@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz) Info : Ever have one of those days... Song : Twas on the Monday morning the DEC man came to call The VAX wouldn't boot -- we weren't getting VAX at all He tore out all the cables winding around the VAX And we had to call the hardware guys in to put them back again. Oh it all makes work for the working man to do Twas on the Tuesday morning their technician came 'round He soldered and he tested and said "Look what I've found" "Your ROMs are all the old versions, but I'll put them all to right" Then he shorted out a cable, and out down all the Suns Was on a Wednesay morning the Sun technican came He called me Mr Sanderson which isn't quite me name He couldn't fix the server without our CD drive And as root on the SG he typed 'unlink /', so we called SGI in Was on the Thursday morning the SGI rep came along With his mini-root tapes and his manuals and his merry SGI song He reinstalled the system -- it took no time at all But we had to get the Next people in to come and fix the NFS Was on a Friday morning the Next man made a start With mounts and exports he crossmounted every disk Every machine and every directory, but I found when he was gone He changed some IP addresses, and our VAX had gone! On Saturday and Sunday they do no work at all So was on the Monday morning that the VAX man came to call... @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : DECman Original : The Gas Man Cometh Group : Flanders and Swann Author : Tony Duell Intro : This is dedicated to all those who called out DEC field service for a simple problem, and wished you hadn't.......... Song : It was on a Monday morning The DEC man came to call, My system wouldn't boot There was no prompt at all He pulled out all my SPC's To try a new backplane And I had to get the hardware guys to put them back again Oh it all makes work for field service men to do! It was on a Tuesday morning The hardware man came round He soldered and he fiddled And he said 'Look what I've found' 'Your ECOs are years behind' 'But I'll put it all to rights' Then he shorted out the power supply and out went all the lights Oh it all makes work for field service men to do! It was on a Wednesday morning The power supply came 'It's newer and it's better' 'But it works just the same' He could not fit the unit without stripping half the rack then he dropped my boot HDA so He called Peripherals back Oh it all makes work for field service men to do! It was on a Thursday morning The HDA came along with a blocklist and a cable and a list of what goes wrong He put it into my drive It took no time at all But I had to get the software guys to come and re-install Oh it all makes work for field service men to do It was on a Friday morning That Software made a start With BACKUP and SYSGEN He configured every part Every track and every sector But I found when he was gone He had overwritten the boot track and I couldn't turn it on On saturday and Sunday They do no work at all So It was on a Monday morning that the DEC man came to call @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : The Disks of UNIX Original : Sound of Silence Group : Simon and Garfunkel Author : ? Malcolm Dickinson Intro : Song : The Disks of UNIX ================= Submitted by Malcolm Dickinson Sung to the Tune of "Sounds of Silence" by Simon and Garfunkel Hello comix my old friend. I've come to program you again. because a student softly creeping, guessed my password while I was sleeping. And the programs with just remnants in my brain, don't remain, upon the disks... of UNIX. In flick'ring lights I type along. Load my program, what was wrong? Letters haloed by my squinting, at the program that I was lint-ing. For my eyes were blurred by the flash of the cathode beam, term'nal screen, and all the C... on UNIX. And in the fuzzy light I saw 10,000 hackers, maybe more: Hackers staring without blinking, hackers typing without thinking. Hackers writing code that programs never shared. (No one dared, disturb the disks... of UNIX.) "Fools," said I, "you do not know. Kludges make the d.u. grow. Comment functions that I might read them. Update man-files 'cause I might need them." But my words like unread printout fell, (Oh well...) An echo, On the disks... of UNIX. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Don't Call From Home Original : The Man's Too Strong Group : Dire Straits Author : Jonathon Luning Intro : Song : Don't Call From Home ==================== by Jonathon Luning Sung to the Tune of "The Man's Too Strong" by Dire Straits I'm just an ageing hacker-boy And in the days I used to play And I've called the tune To many a system's ruin. Now they say I am a real criminal And I'm hiding away. Just one more terminal session. I have simplified robbery With my PCs. I have called in the money And it's now overseas. I have re-written bank accounts With thousands on my books; Made up identities Without changing my looks. And I can still hear the touch-tones And the clicks on the phone. Don't call too long. Don't call from home. Well I've cracked IBM And I've cracked NSA And I've cracked every network In the whole USA. I have called out on Sprint And from any payphone; Billed to people I never have known. And I can still hear the touch-tones And the clicks on the phone. Don't call too long. Don't call from home. Well the sun comes in my office And they all did hear him say "You're really too much for us, You're worth more than we can pay. You may still hear from Burroughs But I ask you now today: Won't you please work with us At the good old CIA?" Now I run all surveillance From LA to Kremlin's dome. Don't call too long. Don't call from home. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : DP Man Original : Piano Man Group : Billy Joel Author : Greg Gerke Intro : A revision of an old favorite ... Song : DP Man (sung to the tune "Piano Man" by Billy Joel) It's eight o'clock on a Monday, The programming crowd staggers in, There's a user by my terminal, With drool running off of his chin. He says, "Son, can you code me some processing, I'm not really sure what I want, But it's short and it's sweet and it's NP-complete And it has to be finished by lunch." Chorus: They say, "Write us some code, you're the DP man, Write us some code today, 'Cause we need this report for the CEO, And he wants it by yesterday." Now, Tim at the console's a friend of mine, He bumps up my priority, And he'll bum me a smoke or some Twinkies and Coke, But there's someplace that he'd rather be. He said, "Paul, I believe it's a dead-end here," As the smile ran away from his face, "But I'm sure I could find work with IBM, If I could get out of this place." Now, Mark is a frustrated racing man, Whose license is riding on luck, And he's talking with Jeff who scares mopeds to death, With those forty-inch tires on his truck. Well, it's pretty good code for a Monday, And my team leader gives me a smirk, 'Cause he knows that it's me they'll be coming to see, When they find out that it didn't work. And the keyboard, it clicks like a tickertape And the CRT screams like a jet, And they walk by my cube and throw pens at my tube, And say, "Man, ain't they fixed that thing yet ?" And the old hands are screaming to standardize, As the patches and kludges pile up, 'Cause this place is a hacker's own paradise: It's a string-handling-in-Fortran shop. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Don't Have a Conniption Original : Walk Like an Egyptian Group : Bangles Author : Brent C.J. Britton Intro : Song : Don't Have a Conniption ======================= by Brent C.J. Britton Sung to the tune of "Walk Like an Egyptian" by the Bangles All the system ops in this place, They monitor me, just for fun. If I logon here, (ohwayoh) They force me off 'fore my profile runs. 'Cause I have a reputation For doing things which I shouldn't be, Like running CHATS, (ohwayoh) And bootlegging Lotus-123. So you see, when they yell at me, I say, (wayohwayoh, wayohwayoh) "Don't have a conniption..." Found how to change all my privs; I didn't know that I broke a rule. I forced the op, (ohwayoh) I dropped the link, then I purged the spool. All the sys ops, so sick of me, They don't let my databases run. I broke CP, (ohwayoh) They had a big fat connip-tion. When they NOLOG my account, I say (wayohwayoh, wayohwayoh) "Don't have a conniption..." They've hated me since I stored Inside the real PSW. We crashed hard you know, (ohwayoh) I guess I forgot a bit or two. If you want to find software cops, They're hanging out in the software shops. They kick your pants, (ohwayoh) And give the boot to your VMBLOCK. I ran my Turing Machine; Another one was assembl'in. And it crunched all night, (ohwayoh) The system op had connip'tions. To software cops in the software shops, I say (wayohwayoh, wayohwayoh) "Don't have a conniption..." "Don't have a conniption." @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Emacs Wizard Original : Pinball Wizard Group : The Who Author : ? Intro : Complete with formatting and all :-) Song : \documentstyle[twocolumn,12pt]{article} \begin{document} \begin{verse} Ever since I was a young boy\\ I've played with each O.S.\\ From Unix down to Kronos \\ I've crashed them I confess\\ But I ain't seen nothing like him\\ Not even in VMS\\ That set-mark and bind kid\\ Sure strokes a mean Emacs. He sits there never blinking\\ Becomes part of the machine\\ Controls with either pinkie\\ A virtual typing stream\\ He optimizes keystrokes\\ Swamps your Microvax\\ That set-mark and bind kid\\ Sure strokes a mean Emacs. He's an Emacs wizard \\ Without a binding list\\ An Emacs wizard \\ s' got such a calloused wrist. How do you think he does it? I don't know!\\ What makes him so good? \newpage He ain't got no distractions\\ He refuses warning bells\\ He heeds no cursor flashing\\ Plays by sense of smell\\ He never needs to undo\\ Knows all of Stallman's hacks\\ That set-mark and bind kid\\ Sure strokes a mean Emacs. I thought I was \\ The keyboard-macro kid\\ But I just handed\\ My Emacs crown to him. Even my usual bindings\\ He prefixed all my best\\ His disciples feed him Coke\\ And he just does the rest\\ He's got super-meta-fingers\\ Never hits the cracks\\ That set-mark and bind kid\\ Sure strokes a mean Emacs. \end{verse} \end{document} @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Every Cycle is Sacred Original : Every Sperm is Sacred Group : Monty Python (Meaning of Life) Author : Tony Duell Intro : Song : There are Suns in this world, there are Apples, There are Sequents and Goulds and then, There are those who clone I B M, BUT I've never been one of them. For I'm an 11/45 and have been since the day I was made And the one thing they say about PDP's is They'll run no matter what they said, You don't have to be in a six-footer, You don't have to have a 9-slot backplane You don't have to have Memory Management, You're booted the moment DCLO came, For Every Cycle is Sacred, Every Cycle is Great, If a cycle gets wasted, DEC gets quite irate! {Repeat} Let the others waste them, On floating-point multiply DEC shall make them pay for Each add able to be skipped by. Every cycle is wanted Every cycle is good Every cycle is needed In your neighbourhood Intel, Sun and Zilog Branch their's just anywhere DEC loves those who write Their Microcode with more care Every cycle is useful Every cycle is fine DEC saves everybody's Time and Time and Time. Other systems waste theirs while fetching o'er t'backplane DEC shall strike them down for each cycle thats run in vain Every cycle is sacred, Every cycle is great, If a cycle gets wasted, DEC GETS QUITE IRATE!!! @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Fifty Ways to Hose Your Code Original : Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover Group : Paul Simon Author : Al Pena Intro : Song : Fifty Ways to Hose Your Code ----- ---- -- ---- ---- ---- The problem's all inside your code she said to me; Recursion is easy if you take it logically. I'm here to help you if you're struggling to learn C, There must be fifty ways to hose your code. She said it's really not my habit to #include, And I hope my files won't be lost or misconstrued; But I'll recompile at the risk of getting screwed, There must be fifty ways to hose your code. Just blow up the stack Jack, Make a bad call Paul, Just hit the wrong key Lee, And set your pointers free. Just mess up the bus Gus, You don't need to recurse much, You just listen to me. She said it greives me to see you compile again. I wish there were some hardware that wasn't such a pain. I said I appreciate that and could you please explain, About the fifty ways. She said why don't we both just work on it tonight, And I'm sure in the morning it'll be working just right. Then she hosed me and I realized she probably was right, There must be fifty ways to hose your code. Just lose the address Les, Clear the wrong Int Clint, Traverse the wrong tree Lee, And set your list free. Just mess up the bus Gus, You don't need to recurse much, You just program in C. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Fork()ing on a Sun Original : Seasons in the Sun Group : Terry Jacks Author : aem@aber.ac.uk (Alec David Muffett) Intro : Here's a little ditty I penned back in 1987 when I was first getting to grips with IP (and killing the machine at the same time). If you don't recognise the words well enough to get the tune, you weren't born... as for pronunciation, pronounce "vi" as "vye" - that way, the song scans properly. No flames, please... The chorus is a wonderful thing to sing in pubs (bars) when you and a group of hackers get together, because it is eminently recog- nisable, but no-one outside your group will have the foggiest idea what you're on about... [fragment] Song : Goodbye my shell, it's hard to "vi", I cannot socket(), even though I try, Everything keeps going wrong... It needs a bind() to carry on, Proc' table's been full for too long. Chorus: We had Joy, We had fun, We were fork()ing on a Sun, but the joy is all gone, 'til the processes are Done [1]. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : FORTRAN Original : Pressure Group : Billy Joel Author : Thomas Koenig Intro : A little song about one of the joys of scientific computation [second revision] Song : FORTRAN You have to learn to pace yourself FORTRAN You're just like everybody else FORTRAN You've only had to write Pascal So far But you will come to the day When the only thing that counts Are megaflops on a Cray And you'll have to deal with FORTRAN You used to call me paranoid FORTRAN But even you can not avoid FORTRAN You swore that ENTRY's a sure road to ruin Now here you are with old code COMMON blocks are misaligned Assigned GOTOs disturb your mind And you cannot handle FORTRAN All grown up and no place to go Pascal, Prolog, What do you know? All your life is a Lisp machine, Linked lists, quicksort, What does it mean? FORTRAN FORTRAN Don't ask me for help You're all alone FORTRAN You'll have to code it On your own FORTRAN I'm sure you'll have some cosmic rationale But here's your program, incomplete, Two weeks late, three times too slow Nothing to do but log on now And write all your code in FORTRAN FORTRAN All your life is Byte Magazine I read it too What does it mean? FORTRAN I'm sure you'll have some cosmic rationale But here you are with old code COMMON blocks are misaligned Assigned GOTOs disturb your mind And you have to code in FORTRAN FORTRAN, FORTRAN One, two, three, four FORTRAN @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : French Horn Concerto (for modem users) Original : French Horn Concerto No 4 for French Horn by Motzart, based on the arrangment and lyrics by... Group : Micheal Flounders and Donald Swan Author : Russell Street (russells@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz) Info : The original starts: I once had a whim and I had to obey it To by a french horn in a second hand shop I polished it up and I started to play it Inspite of my neighbour who begged me to stop The music was rearranged for a piano, so these lyrics may not fit any orchestral version of the "original". Song : I once had a whim and I had to obey it To by a modem from a second hand shop I made up a cable and I started to use it In spite of my girlfriend who begged me to stop To use my modem, I had to change my sleeping habits I found that I could only get on at night So many boards abound -- to give you a world, a beatuiful world so rich and round Oh the hours I had to spend before I got onto them it in the end But that was yesterday and just to day I looked in the the usual place There was the modem, but the cable itself was missing Where can it have gone? Haven't you -- hasn't anyone seen my cable Where can it have gone? What a blow, know I know I'm unable to read my net news Who wipped that cable? I bet you a quid somebody did. Knowing I had found a news group and wanted to read it Afraid of my talents in talk.bizzare For early today to my utter dismay it had vanished away to the ???? morn I've lost that cable. I know I was using it yesterday I've lost that cable, lost that cable, found that cable -- gorn There's not much else to say -- I had better delay a report (?) I know some party folk whose party jokes pretending to hunt with quart (?) Gone away -- gone away -- was it one of them took it away? Would you kindly return that serial cable -- where is the devil who pinched my cable? I took it to the net.police -- I want that serial cable back I miss my news more and more and more With out that chat I'm feeling sad and so forlorn Oh oh oh oh oh oh.... I found a board and wanted to play use it to display my talents in talk.bizzare But early to day to my utter dismay it had totally vanished away I thought up some stuff and I wanted to send it, but somebody took it away I thought up some stuff and was longing to send it, but somebody took it away My girlfriend is a sleep in her bed. I will soon make her wish I was dead I'll take up nethack instead Whaaa, whaaa @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Friend of the System Original : Friend of the Devil Group : Jerry Garcia & Robert Hunter Author : Larry Stone Intro : Song : Friend of the System ==================== By Larry Stone Submitted by Jeff Brandenburg Sung to the tune of "Friend of the Devil" by Jerry Garcia & Robert Hunter I logged on to the Ed-VAX, left a trail of coffee grounds. Didn't get to sleep that night 'til the morning came around. Chorus: Said I'll run my program but it will take some time; A friend of the System is a friend of mine. If I get done before daylight, I just might write some code tonight. Ran into the System, baby, and it tried to blow me off. Spent the evening learning Pascal but still all it does is scoff! (chorus) I tried to run the editor, but the System caught me there; It took my FORTRAN program and it vanished in the air! (chorus) Got two reasons why I stay awake each night and day; The first one's name I can't pronounce, but he is my TA. The second one's my college Dean, 'cause I'm about to fail! She says if I don't pass C.S. I won't be long at Yale. Got a program in T-Lisp, baby, and one in FORTRAN IV. The first one has a hundred bugs but the other one has more! (chorus) @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Gateway To Heaven Original : Stairway To Heaven Group : Led Zeppelin Author : EileenET Tronolone Intro : I just had to send it in, fellas. I'm sorry. I could not let all that stuff go by and not send it in. Song : Gateway To Heaven There's a lady who knows All the systems and nodes And she's byteing a Gateway to Heaven She telnets there, she knows All the ports have been closed With a nerd she can get Files she came for Woohoohoo Woo Hoo Hoo HooHoo And she's byteing a Gateway to Heaven There's an motd But she wants to be sure Cos she knows sometimes hosts have Two domains In a path by the NIC There's a burdvax that pings Sometimes all of our flames are cross-posted Woohoohoo Woo Hoo Hoo HooHoo And she's byteing a Gateway to Heaven And it's processed by root Unix Labs will reboot NCR will then listen to reason And a prompt will respawn For those yet to logon And the networks will echo much faster Woohoohoo Woo Hoo Hoo HooHoo And she's byteing a Gateway to Heaven If there's a lookup in your netstat don't be .alarmed now it's just a pinging from the link queen Yes there are two routes you can type in but in the long run there's still time to change the net you're on (I hope so!) And as we find stuff to download We ftp and we chmod There was a sysadm we know Who changed the server to her own She had root privs and she used chown She hacked out on the DDN And if you tail her stdin Then you will find what you had lost And get it back with cpio To be a hack and not to scroll... And she's byteing a Gateway to Heaven @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Gateway To Net Ten Original : Stairway To Heaven Group : Led Zeppelin Author : Mark Lottor Intro : Song : GATEWAY TO NET TEN -- Mark Lottor [Original words and music by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant] There's a hacker who's sure all that's coax is fast and he's buying a gateway to net ten. When he gets it he'll know if the ports are all closed with a SYN he can get what he sent for. Ooh ooh ooh ooh, ooh ooh ooh ooh and he's buying a gateway to net ten. There's an RFC on the wall but he wants to be sure cause you know sometimes words have two meanings. In a note on the page there's a warning that says sometimes all of our code is broken. Don't ya know, it makes me wonder. There's an error I get when I send to the net and my packets are lost and retransmitting. In my logs I have seen loops of mail thru the machine, and the screams of those who are hacking. Oooh, it makes me wonder. And it's whispered that soon if we all fix and tune then the packets will reach their destinations. And a new day will dawn for hosts that stay long and the telnets will echo quite faster. Ohhhhh, it makes me wonder. If there's a bustle in your cisco, don't be alarmed now it's just a quick ping for the NIC machine. Yes there are two paths you can route by, but in the long haul there's still time to change the protocol. Yowwww, it makes me wonder. Your host is loaded and it will slow in case you don't know, the unix's are asking you to join them. Dear hacker, do you see the overflow, and did you know your gateway is still under development. And as we wind out more coax, and gateways slower than our hosts, There goes a message we all know, it updates routes and wants to show how everything still turns quite slow. And if you listen very hard, the bits will come to you at last. When all are ones and ones are all, to be a rubout and not a null. And he's buying a gateway to net ten... @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Girls just wanna defun Original : Girls just wanna have fun Group : Cindy Lauper Author : ? Intro : Song : GIRLS JUST WANNA DEFUN* I can't wake up, in the morning Cause of what I've been doing for most of the night. Teacher don't you know my program is done? And girls just wanna defun. The phone rings, in the middle of the night Advisor screams, "Watcha gonna do with your life?" Patrick**, how I relish double-oh-one***! And girls just wanna defun. They just wanna, just wanna, yeah Girls just wanna defun. Some people say A beautiful girl can't tool all night like The rest of the world. I wanna be the one to welcome the sun. And girls just wanna defun. *Defun, the Lisp command to define a procedure **Winston, ai professor, MIT ***6.001, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : HACKADU Original : Xanadu Group : Samuel Taylor Coleridge Author : Stuart McLure Cracraft Intro : Song : HACKADU In Hackadu did Hackers Few An awesome program-hack command: Where 20, the sacred system, grew Through monitors nobody knew Down during the great demand. Always twice two months to newer release With TTY's and EMACS to bring the peace: And here was software smothered by edit-line effects, Where many a bureaucrat sauntered across the land, And where MSG/TELNET/FTP were ancient as TENEX, Constricting winning spots into the bland. But oh! those abiding Hackers Few were cunning And lept the heights of unimaginable lossage! A savage place; as daemonical and sinning as e'er which plastered a screen with "%DECSYSTEM-20 Not Winning" B'fore users exchausted from the barfage! And from this chaos, with irresistable force, As if this thing were itself the Source, A mighty idea came glistening to Hackers Fewest Amid whose logic the sinning 20 burst Huge fragments of scheduler flung forth like rebounding netmail, Or chaffy words beneath the BLT's flail: And 'mid this stupendous destruction at once and forever It flung up the 20 to permanently sever. Pages and pages of listings the burning grew Through structures and directories in the Coup, Then reached the sources known to few, And slaughtered in tumult the offending mass: And 'mid this tumult Hackers Few heard from afar Ancestral systems declaring war! The shadows of the program-hack Floated strongly on the net; Where was heard the anguished cry of the Sack From which they inferred they'd win, they bet. A true war of Hackers Few against Timesharing, With the ancestors of the 20 battling forth with infinite daring! A 10 with a mighty cpu In this battle the Hackers Few espied: It was a DEC original that knew, That once the Hackers Few irresistibly grew, It would forever be banned to limbo. Could it wreak havoc upon the Few? With its powerful CPU? To such a deep satisfaction the answer is no, That with a slice of their sword through its board, The Hackers Few did clobber its bagbiting cord, To realize the Source, the Idea, the Solution! And all the users who saw this mighty battle raging, And shrieked, Tsk! Tsk! While the 10s' and 20s' flashed screens, their crashing disks! The Few weaved a carnage about this awful outpouring, And closed the 10s' and 20s' eyes, For the Hackers Few had earlier fed upon the lies And now had drunk the milk of Personal Computing. Stuart McLure Cracraft (with apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge) @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : The Hackers are Best Author : Tony Duell Original : A Song of Patriotic Prejudice (The English are Best) Group : Flanders and Swann Intro : You can replace F-ing with the obvious thing if you want an 'X-rated' version The mention of the headcrash and servo microcode refers roughly to a problem with the DEC RA90 disk drive, where updating the microcode program on the servo processor could cause HDA problems (although not an actual headcrash) Song : The Hackers, the Hackers, the Hackers are Best! I wouldn't give tuppence for all of the rest The day-to-day use of this system of ours We've left in the hands of three unfriendly powers Examine the Serviceman, User, or Op You'll find he's a luser with nothing up top. The oper is mean, as we're all well aware And if you crash the system, he's sure to go spare He deletes our print jobs, he works all the day And he hasn't the source code to show him the way The Hackers, the Hackers, the Hackers are best I wouldn't give tuppence for all of the rest The serviceman now our contempt is beneath He swaps random parts and he strips all the teeth He causes headcrashes, or so I have heard And blames it on the servo microcode word The Hackers are vocal, the Hackers are nice And worth any other at double the price The User writes programs, which crash when they can Not assembler code, but unstructured Fortran He works all the day with a Mouse in his hand And has problems with bitwise binary AND And out on the network, you cannot say much For the IBM or DEC, the Sequent or such The support is useless, they make us see red And they work the hours when we should be in bed The Hackers are moral, the Hackers are good And clever, and modest, and misunderstood And all the world over, each system's the same They've simply no notion of being insane They chose obvious password, they leave when they're done And they read the F-ing manual, which ruins the fun The Hackers, the hackers, the hackers are best So up with the Hackers and down with the rest It's not that they're wicked or naturally bad It's knowing they're lusers that makes us so mad For the Hackers are all that a people should be And the flower of the Hackers are and me @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : The Hacker Song Original : Put Another Nickel In Group : ? Author : Chesire Catalyst Intro : Song : Put another password in, Bomb it out and try again. Try to get past logging in, We're hacking, hacking, hacking. Try his first wife's maiden name. This is more than just a game. It's real fun, but just the same, It's hacking, hacking, hacking. Sys-call, let's try sys-call. Remember, that great bug from version 3, Of R S X, It's here! Whoopie! Put another sys-call in, Run those passwords out and then, Dial back up, we're logging in. It's hacking, hacking, hacking! @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : The Hacker's Son Original : The Lumberjack's Song Group : Monty Python Author : Dave Touretzky and Don Libes Intro : Song : The Hacker's Song by Dave Touretzky and Don Libes (with no apologies whatsoever to Monty Python) I'm a hacker and I'm okay. I work all night and I sleep all day. I wrote some hacks in APL, each on a single line. They're mutually recursive, and run in n-squared time! (chorus:) Oh, he's a hacker and he's okay. He works all night and he sleeps all day. I'm a hacker and I'm okay. I work all night and I sleep all day. I wrote two hacks in MACRO, with UUOs galore. One plays Nim on the console lights, while the other zeros core! (chorus) I wrote a hack in Snobol, with FORTRAN subroutines, It spits out trashy stories, for ladies' magazines! (chorus) I wrote some hacks in InterLisp, they barely fit in core. The swapper thrashed its guts out, So now it runs no more. (chorus) I wrote a hack in microcode, with a goto on each line, it runs as fast as Superman, but not quite every time! (chorus) I wrote some hacks in Ada, and still can't run them yet, Do you suppose we'll see that day? On it, I wouldn't bet! (chorus) I wrote a hack for UNIX While it was still in vogue. It knows the tricks to pacman, and plays mean games of rogue! (chorus) I wrote some hacks, distributed, across our neat gateway. Each one of its 10 functions kills RIG in a different way! (chorus) I wrote some hacks in Mlisp, to edit files of root. It writes them back no-execute, And now it won't reboot! (chorus) I wrote some hacks to manage jobs with PLITS and IPC. Its very first activity, was firing the faculty! (chorus) I wrote some hacks with P and V to synchronize my life. Now I can't use the bathroom, I'm deadlocked with my wife! (chorus) I wrote a hack (in theory), it may not ever halt. But if it does, just watch out... [Fatal Error: Infinite Page Fault] (chorus) I wrote a hack with hough transforms for our folks at DoD. It'll guide their fancy missiles, to Washington, D.C. I'm a hacker and I'm okay, I work all night and I sleep all day. I'll have a system of my own someday, that'll run my code in a hacked-up way. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Hacking Iron Author : Tony Duell Original : Sounding Brass Group : Flanders and Swann Intro : I don't actually approve of crashing systems on the net.... Tektronix and Fluke are manufacturers of electronic test equipment, including protocol/network analysers You can replace 'Cambridge' with 'Token' if you prefer Song : Society frowns on blowing one's own trumpet But we've found a game that merits no rebuke If that's the password file we're going to dump it It's more fun with a Tektronix or a Fluke The object is to login as your neighbour "I've got system privs" is the acid test So flip the sense switch one up And watch those DECpacks run up And hack our mainframe systems with the best Looking round the worldwide network Searching through the system cache Bigger, faster, newer, smarter See the networked systems crash My dial-in port's ex-directory should you wish to make a call Mine is even more exclusive (More exclusive?) I won't have dial-in at all (spoken) You can always e-mail me - net.god@uk (lines now alternated) I've a packet radio network, though it can't receive a thing I've my own direct connection, straight into the Cambridge Ring I've a disk pack, arrives daily, with the next software update All my software comes via IR (via what??) To my H - P - forty - eight I believe my home computer runs full Unix system five I lost 20 gigs of software when I crashed my hard disk drive I've been asked to build a handheld, complete with network IO I've been asked to rebuild Unix - for security you know My local network login site runs R S X version 3 All my net backdoors fly open when I enter 'Sesame' Your task privs are 'user, user', My task privs are 'root, root, root' I've just bought an net monitor (Bought a what?) (An net monitor) Oh yes, I run one when I boot Looking round the worldwide network Searching through the system cache Bigger, faster, newer, smarter See the networked systems crash DEC has just been taken over, we got in without a pause We've acquired an Alpha system, bigger, faster, far than your's @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : The HACTRN Original : The Raven Group : Edgar Allan Poe Author : Guy L. Steele Jr. Intro : [a bit longish - sth] Notes for those not familar with the terms in this poem: TTY ("titty") = any terminal, not necessarily a teletype (in this case, a CRT); in particular, a terminal associated with and in control of a job tree (see "DDT" below). The terminal may be passed up and down the job tree; at any point in time only one job in the tree may use the tree's TTY. When ^Z is typed on the TTY, the system intervenes, stopping the job which has the TTY, and interrupts that job's superior in the tree, which may then grab the TTY from the inferior job. DDT ("dee dee tee") = HACTRN ("hack-tran") = top level debugging and job controlling procedure, capable of controlling up to eight simultaneous jobs (which may themselves be DDTs!) and performing other miscellaneous functions. HACTRN specifically denotes a DDT at the top of a job tree, while DDT is the more general term. The two terms refer to the same job in the poem, and are thus treated as synonymous. Note that DDT requires its subjobs to have unique names for obvious reasons; hence the concern over seven jobs all named FOO. PEEK = a program similar to the SYSTAT of certain PDP-10 monitor systems of dubious quality. PEEK is actually much more versatile, giving information in any of some dozen modes, such a job status, DECtape status, Arpanet sockets, terminal status, and scheduler variables and statistics. It also has provisions for maintaining a continuously updated display on a CRT, and for line printer usage. TECO ("teeko") = text editor and corrector (that is, the good version of several versions of TECO which are floating around). :KILL ("colon kill") = message typed out by DDT whenever it kills a subjob. Note that subjobs, if running, may request DDT to kill themselves. If the job does not have the TTY when it makes such a request, DDT merely rings the TTY's bell (which on the CRT in the poem above is a particularly obnoxious flavor of "beep"), and prints nothing until you ascend to DDT, and perhaps type J (see below). LOCK = utility program, which interprets the particular command "nKILL" to mean "please bring the time-sharing system down in n minutes" (where it is required that n5). The system will then go down at the prescribed time unless the request is countermanded with a "REVIVE" request. ITS = Incompatible Timesharing System, the good timesharing system for the PDP-10. DSKDMP ("disk dump") = program used to, among other things, bootstrap ITS into a running state. = "altmode"; read it as such to preserve the meter. V = command to DDT, requesting it to print out the names of all its subjobs. J = command to DDT, asking that it select the job which has requested attention so that it may be dealt with. DDT responds "jobnameJ" so that you will know which job it was. Z ("control zee") = command to ITS to stop the job which currently has the TTY, and interrupt the next higher job in the job tree. Ordinarily this has the effect of returning to DDT. 0/ ("zero slash") = command to DDT, asking it to print out the contents of location zero of the selected subjob. This operation is theoretically transparent to the subjob itself. RMS = Richard M. Stallman, who does an admirable job of keeping DDT, as well as many other programs, relatively bug-free. (C) Copyright 1973, 1974 Guy L. Steele Jr. All rights reserved. Song : The HACTRN Once before a console dreary, while I programmed, weak and weary, Over many a curious program which did TECO's buffer fill, -- While I pondered, nearly sleeping, suddenly there came a feeping, As of something gently beeping, beeping with my console's bell. "'Tis my DDT," I muttered, "feeping on my console's bell: Once it feeped, and now is still." Ah, distinctly I remember that dark night in bleak December, And each separate glowing symbol danced before me, bright and chill. Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow From my HACTRN aid for sorrow -- sorrow for the bugs which fill -- For the strange unknown and nameless bugs which ever all my programs fill -- Bugs which now I searched for still. And the coughing, whirring, gritty fan I heard inside my TTY Made me with fantastic terrors never known before to thrill; So that now, to still the beating of my heart I stood repeating, "'Tis some interrupt entreating DDT to signal me -- Some strange interrupt entreating DDT to signal me -- Its importance surely nil." Presently my soul grew stronger: hesitating then no longer I decided that I would respond to this strange program's call; TECO, which I then attended, to my soul more strength extended; With ^Z I ascended, going to my DDT -- V I typed, and answered soon my DDT -- TECO there, and that was all! Dumbly at my console peering, as I sat there, wondering, fearing, Doubting now that any interrupt was ever there to call; But the silence was unbroken, and my HACTRN gave no token, And the only sound there spoken from my TTY's whirring fan -- The low and rough and distant sound came from my TTY's whirring fan -- TECO there, and that was all. Back into my TECO going, with my pounding heart now slowing, Soon again I heard a feeping, somewhat louder than before. "Surely," said I, "surely this is some strange bug of RMS's Which an interrupt professes, though I have no other job; Let me then ask DDT if it thinks there's another job -- 'Tis a bug, and nothing more!" Again I went up to my HACTRN while cold shivers up my back ran V I typed, my jobs now once more to display. Only TECO was there listed; though my trembling heart resisted Yet I willed my hand, insisted, J to quickly type -- To answer this bold query DDT did hesitantly type A ghostly "FOOBARJ". From V protected, now, this phantom job, selected Gave no clue to why it had invoked that former beeping shrill. "Though," I said, "you're no inferior, I shall act as your superior And examine your interior, this strange matter to explore." Then I typed a 0/ this matter further to explore -- Quoth the HACTRN, ":KILL". Much I worried -- this outrageous bug might prove to be contagious, Though thus far it had not seemed to do my TECO any ill: For we cannot help concurring such a bug would cause a stirring, Feeping on a console whirring, disappearing then from sight -- An evanescent mystery subjob disappearing then from sight With no clue but ":KILL"! But my HACTRN, swapping, running, gave no further sign of cunning By this unknown phantom, which was in a thirty second sleep; None of this I comprehended; to my TECO I descended, And in terror I pretended that the bug had gone away -- I pretended that for good the mystery bug had gone away -- When my console gave a feep. Now I quickly, hoping, praying, started up a PEEK displaying All the the jobs and subjobs there which did the system fill: What I found was quite unpleasant, for there was no FOOBAR present: Only TECO was there present, underneath my DDT; I quit the PEEK, and "FOOBARJ" typed out my DDT -- Then quoth the HACTRN, ":KILL". But -- this FOOBAR now beguiling all my sad soul into smiling -- I tightly grinned, determined that this glitch should cause nobody ill; Now, into my armchair sinking, I betook myself to linking Fancy unto fancy, thinking why this unknown phantom job -- Why this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and unknown phantom job Feeped and did a ":KILL". This I sat engaged in guessing, but conceived no thought expressing How a phantom job could sound those strange and ghostly beeps; This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining, With the symbols coldly shining at me from the CRT, With the bright, sharp symbols coldly shining on the CRT -- Which suddenly gave seven feeps! Then methought the air grew denser, filled with clouds which grew immenser, As when under darkened daylight thick and stormy weather brews; With some bit of hesitation stemming from my trepidation Again I typed that incantation finding out how much I'd lose -- V I typed again to find how much I'd lose -- TECO there, and seven FOOs! "Job!" said I, "with ghostly manner! -- subjob still, if LISP or PLANNER! Whether accident, or feeping as another hacker wills! Tell me now why I am losing, why my HACTRN you're abusing, Which no doubt is of your choosing: echo truly on my screen!" Then DDT as if in answer echoed quickly on my screen, Typing seven ":KILLs". "Job!" said I, "with ghostly manner! -- subjob still, if LISP or PLANNER! By the ITS above us which the DSKDMP doth fulfill, I shall be the system's saviour: I shall mend your crude behaviour, I shall halt your strange behaviour, and thee from the system lock!" Madly, wildly laughing I made DDT invoke a LOCK, And quickly typed thereat -- "5KILL"! "Be this now our sign of parting, phantom job!" I shrieked, upstarting, As my HACTRN now informed me ITS was going down in 5:00. "You have run your last instruction and performed your final function!" But, refuting this deduction HACTRN then my TTY grabbed -- To type out yet another message HACTRN now my TTY grabbed -- Quoth the HACTRN, "ITS REVIVED!" And the FOOBAR, never sleeping, still is beeping, still is beeping On the glaring console out from which I cannot even log! And other happenings yet stranger indicate inherent danger When bugs too easily derange or mung the programs of machines; When programs too "intelligent" start taking over the machines: Is this the end of AutoProg? -- The Great Quux (with apologies to Edgar Allan Poe) @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : I Could Have Tooled All Night Original : I Could Have Danced All Night Group : from My Fair Lady Author : Guy L. Steele Jr. Intro : Song : I Could Have Tooled All Night [to be sung to the tune of I Could Have Danced All Night from My Fair Lady] Tool! Tool! I feel like such a fool! All term I goofed off; I can't catch up now! Sleep! Sleep! I've got to get some sleep! Tooling wouldn't help me anyhow! I could have tooled all night, I could have tooled all night, and still have tooled some more; I could have been absurd, Learned all my Latin verbs, It wouldn't raise my score. I can't remember all those theorems, And all those facts from my mind flee -- I only know exams, Are why one usually crams, But tooling never could help me! I could have tooled all night, I could have tooled all night, And memorized each book; I only now regret, My sections never met, And lectures I forsook. I cross my fingers now in terror, I only hope some luck's with me -- But had I tooled or not, I'd still be on the spot, My goofing off deserves the E! -- The Great Quux (with apologies to Lerner and Loewe) @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : I'm Typing Backwards for Christmas Original : I'm walking Backwards for Christmas Group : Spike Milligan and another Author : Russell Street Intro : Song : I'm Typing Backwards for Christmas ---------------------------------- (Adapted from "I'm walking Backwards for Christmas", by Spike Milligan and another.) Adaption by Russell Street (russells@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz) I'm typing backwards for Christmas, Across the TCP/IP, I'm typing backwards for Christmas, It's the only thing for me. I've tried posting sideways, And mailing to the front, But people just look at it, And say it's a publicity stunt. I'm typing backwards for Christmas, To prove that I love you. An imigrantal telnet, loved an Irish inetd From Dublin University's VAX. He longed for her XONs, But spurned his charms, And connected with a former socket. She left the telnet by himself, on his own All alone, EWOULDBLOCKing And sadly he dreamed, or at least that's the way it seemed, buddy, That an angel quieted him.... An angel quieted the same. I'm typing backwards for Christmas, Across the TCP/IP. I'm typing backwards for Christmas, It's the finest thing for me. And so I've tried posting sideways, And mailing to the front. But people just flamed, and said, "It's a publicity stunt". So I'm typing backwards for Christmas To prove that I love you. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : I Want a New Bug Original : I Want a New Drug Group : Huey Lewis and the News Author : Nelson Bishop Intro : Song : I Want a New Bug (To the tune of: I Want a New Drug, Huey Lewis and the News) I want a new bug. One I don't have to fix. One that wont make me crash my disks. Or make me use menu picks I want a new bug One I don't have to dread. One that wont turn the cursor black Or make my graph too red. Chorus: One that wont make me nervous Wonderin' what to do. One that makes me feel Like I feel when I'm all through. When I'm all done and through. I want a new bug. One that wont kill. One that wont thrash too much Or end in a Nil. I want a new bug. One that wont go away. One that wont keep me up all night. One that wont make me work all day. (Chorus) I want a new bug. One that wont show. One that wont make it run too fast. One that wont make it run too slow. I want a new bug. One with no doubt. One that wont spin the disk too much Or make me use break out. (Chorus) @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : I am the very model of a Genius Computational Original : I am the very model of a modern major-general Group : Gilbert & Sullivan Author : (First seen at Cambridge, England?) Intro : Song : I am the very model of a genius computational: At writing of assembler code I really am sensational. I'm not afraid of SVC's, to macros I am much attached; Load modules I make elegant, well optimised, DEBUGged and PATCHed. I know the different languages: in Fortran and BCPL, In Algol, Snobol, PL/I, in Lisp and Cobol I excel. Numerical analysis? My algorithms make y' gape! I read my favourite novels in editions punched on paper tape. I'm very good at file control - my DCB's are always right. My use of ZED's so subtle, people stay to watch me half the night. I know what's wrong with the machine if it's not operational - And thus I am the model of a genius computational! @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Into the Tube Original : Into The Groove Group : Madonna Author : Mike Portuesi Intro : Song : Into the Tube ============= by Mike Portuesi Sung to the tune of "Into The Groove" by Madonna And you can hack, For computation. Come on, It's waiting... Chorus: Stare into the tube, Boy, you've got to prove Your subroutine. RS-232, And full duplex too, With no parity. Hacking can be such a revelation, When you can find your missing declaration. It might be running if the code is right; I hope to fix a major bug tonight. Only when I'm hacking can I feel this free. At night I buy some Coke, And hack till after three. I'm tired of all those GOTO's by themselves. Tonight, I want to write with IF-THEN-ELSE! (chorus) You've got to type NEW in a special way, Or else it won't clear Out your first array. Don't try to run it with your memory size. I've got an error on the hard disk drive. Only when I'm hacking, Can I feel this free. At night I buy some Coke, And hack till after three. I'm tired of all those GOTO's by themselves. Tonight, I want to write with IF-THEN-ELSE! (chorus) Live out your fantasy, Written in C. Just let those macros Set you free. Touch my BREAK key, In real time. Now I'm not on line. (chorus) Only when I'm hacking, Can I feel this free. At night I buy some Coke, And hack till after three. I'm tired of all those GOTO's by themselves. Tonight, I want to write with IF-THEN-ELSE! Live out your fantasy, Written in C. Just let those macros Set you free. Touch my BREAK key, In real time. Now I'm not on line, Now I'm not on line, Now I'm not on line, Now I'm not on line (nasal, like Madonna) Now I'm not on line. (repeat chorus - fade out) @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : JES The mighty system Original : Puff the Magic Dragon Group : Peter, Paul and Mary / The Seekers ? Author : ? Intro : Song : JES The mighty system Ran my C-P-U It did my work with-out a quirk And never was I blue An M-V-S sub-system JES-2 could not fail It printed jobs and punched my cards And e-ven did NET-mail My users were unhappy M-V-S was hard to learn They wanted something eas-i-er A place where they could turn So when my boss assigned me To find a better way I started searching for soft-ware That might make their day I thought we would try U-NIX But that was even worse While I-B-M has P-L-S 'C' is far too terse My time was running out And I was not inspired I knew it would be two more weeks Before I would be fired JES the mighty system Ran my C-P-U It did my work without a quirk And never was I blue An M-V-S subsystem JES-2 could not fail It printed jobs and punch my cards And e-ven did NET-mail I was getting worried And so I came to SHARE I asked around and what I found Was a big teddy BEAR Software that was simple Eas-y to understand With V-M in the world today All others would be canned My users were now happy Content and worry free V-M and friendly C-M-S Sure saved the day for me The only thing I'll miss That M-V-S pro-vides Is all that great JES-2 source code That I-B-M can't hide JES the mighty system Ran my C-P-U It did my work with-out a quirk And never was I blue An M-V-S sub-system JES-2 could not fail It printed jobs and punched my cards And e-ven did NET-mail Some systems live forever But not so M-V-S 'Cause T-S-O and S-M-P Are too much of a mess V-M is like heaven It's software you can trust But as I'm sure you're all aware That source code is a must My eyes looked t'ward tomorrow As I scratched my C-D-S I'd never have to worry now Which SYS-MODS I'd regress Without a super-visor JES-2 could not be run And so that code of Houston fame Just rode into the sun Jes the mighty system Ran my C-P-U It did my work with-out a quirk And never was I blue An M-V-S sub-system JES-2 could not fail It printed jobs and punched my cards And e-ven did NET-mail @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Just remember that you're flying o'er a disk pack.... Original : Just remember that you're standing... Group : Monty Python, (Meaning of Life) Author : Tony Duell Intro : Song : Just remember that you're flying over a disk pack that's revolving and revolving at 90,000 revs an hour and seeking at 100 tracks a second so its reckoned for a system that is the source of all our power. The disk and you and me, and all the files that we can see are transfering at 180,000 bytes a sec, in an outer system rack at 25,000 blocks an hour for controller that was made by DEC The controller itself is called an RK11-C Its 10 and a half inches side to side It's made from flip-chip, that is plain to see and the data path is 16 bits wide We're 15 devices from the bus arbitor, we get served every 200 millisec, and our system is just one of hundreds and thousands on the amazing and expanding UNIBUS The UNIBUS itself keeps on transfering and transfering all of the data it can whiz. as fast as it can go, it's asynchronous you know, 3 million bytes a second and thats the fastest that there is So remember when you're waiting for the Non-processor grant, how amazingly unlikely is a crash, And pray that someone's changed the filters last week, or we will soon be ready for the trash !!!!!! @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Lambda Bound Original : Homeward Bound Group : Simon & Garfunkel Author : Guy L. Steele Jr. Intro : Song : Lambda Bound [to be sung to the tune of Homeward Bound] I'm just a little value cell, And I play my special role so well -- Hmmm -- Serving as a global switch To predicate some system glitch; But some strange value -- who knows which? -- Could cause me functions to bewitch! Lambda bound! I wish I was Lambda bound! Bound, so no SETQ's get me; Bound, so quits will reset me; Bound, where I can forget my Top-level value. It's hard to catch those system screws: 'Most any value causes me to lose -- Hmmm -- Each atom looks the same to me, Whose interned name I cannot see, And every NIL and every T Reminds me that I long to be Lambda bound! I wish I was Lambda bound! Bound, so no SETQ's get me; Bound, so quits will reset me; Bound, where I can forget my Top-level value. Next time I'll have a MAR break set And try to catch each clobber threat -- Hmmm, mmmm -- The next covert attempt to mung Will cause the MAR break to be sprung, But then the poor LISP will be hung Because I'm not as I have sung: Lambda bound! I wish I was Lambda bound! Bound, so no SETQ's get me; Bound, so quits will reset me; Bound, where I can forget my Top-level value. -- The Great Quux (with apologies to Paul Simon) @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Leavin' Fed'ral Express Original : Leavin' on a Jet Plane Group : Peter, Paul and Mary Author : Nelson Bishop Intro : Song : Leavin' Fed'ral Express (To the tune of Leavin' on a Jet Plane, Peter, Paul and Mary) All my disks are packed, no room for more, You think you'll ship me out the door, I hate to tell you I've got one more bug. But the dawn is breakin' it's early morn. The truck is waitin', he's blowin' his horn. But you've got time for just one more compile. Chorus: So link me and debug me, Try to write new code for me. You've sold me now, you've got to let me go. I'm leavin' Fed'ral Express. Don't know how you could ship this mess. Oh wait, it can't be time to go. There's so many times I've let you down. So any ancient bugs you've found. I tell you now, you ain't seen a thing. Every place I go there's bugs anew. Every one they find reflects on you. But think about the money that I'll bring. (Chorus) Now the time has come to ship me, One more time, try to link me. Then close your eyes, I'll be on my way. Dream about the days to come, When you don't rush to get things done, About the time, I wont have to say, (Chorus) @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Little PC Original : Little Deuce Coupe Group : The Beach Boys Author : Nelson Bishop Intro : There's that singing memory again. Obviously this was written fairly early in the IBM PC days when hard disks were a big deal. The network card mentioned was a pretty early offering and never worked very well. Song : Little PC (To the tune of: Little Deuce Coupe, The Beach Boys) Well I'm not braggin' boys so don't put me down. But I've got the fastest ROM boot in town. When somethin' comes up you know I don't even try. I just hit the return key an let her fly. She's my little PC, you don't know what I've got. Just a little PC with a monochrome. But we tell the other guys take your Apples home. She's got a printer port and a network board And an 8087 on the motherboard. She's my little PC, you don't know what I've got. She's got an Alpha Byte card with a 232 And her memory sings like she's cryin' the blues. And if that ain't enough to make you flip your lid, There's one more thing; I've got a hard disk daddy. When I bring her on line all I see is green, Till I turn the brightness up and clear the screen. I get bent out of shape and I start to fret, When I have to boot again 'cause there's no reset. She's my little PC, you don't know what I've got. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Lonely Users Original : Elanor Rigby Group : The Beatles Author : ? Intro : Song : Eleanor Rigby Sits at the keyboard And waits for a line on the screen Lives in a dream Waits for a signal Finding some code That will make the machine do some more. What is it for? All the lonely users, where do they all come from? All the lonely users, why does it take so long? Guru MacKenzie Typing the lines of a program that no one will run; Isn't it fun? Look at him working, Munching some chips as he waits for the code to compile; Where is the style? All the lonely users, where do they all come from? All the lonely users, why does it take so long? Eleanor Rigby Crashes the system and loses 6 hours of work; What is it worth? Guru MacKenzie Wiping the blood off his hands as he walks from the grave; Nothing was saved. All the lonely users, where do they all come from? All the lonely users, why does it take so long? @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : The Maven Original : The Raven Group : E.A. Poe Author : The Dragon Intro : Song : The Maven Once upon a weekend weary, while I pondered, beat and bleary, Over many a faintly printed hexadecimal dump of core -- While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some Source user chatting, chatting of some Mavenlore. "Just a power glitch," I muttered, "printing out an underscore -- Just a glitch and nothing more." Ah, distinctly I remember that old Teletype ASR, And the paper tape dispenser left its chad upon the floor. Eagerly I thought, "Tomorrow, maybe I will go and borrow >From my friend an Apple micro -- micro with a monitor -- So that I can chat at leisure, and then throw away my paper -- Lying all across the floor. And the repetitious tapping which had nearly caught me napping Woke me -- and convinced me that it could not be an underscore; Appearances can be deceiving, so I sat there, still believing; "My terminal must be receiving more express mail from the Source -- That's it -- my terminal's receiving new express mail from the Source; Posted mail and nothing more." But my curiosity grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, I stood up and crossed the room to see what waited there in store. Sticking up from the terminal were three inches or so of paper; Carefully my trembling hand tore off the scrap, and then I swore -- "What is this?", I cried in anger -- here I threw it to the floor; Blankness there and nothing more. Deep into its workings peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, What could cause the thing to stutter, dropping twenty lines or more? But the ribbon was unbroken, and the "HERE IS" gave no token, I thought the Teletype was broken, so I typed the number "4"! This I typed, and then the modem echoed back the number "4" -- Merely this and nothing more. Back then to my work returning, with my temper slowly burning, Soon again I heard a tapping something louder than before. "Surely," said I, "surely that is just another RESET message; With my luck, there's probably expensive data to restore!" -- As it chattered, still I sat there, trying to complete my chore. "'Tis the Source and nothing more." This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing To the dour and cryptic Maven now whose words I puzzled o'er; This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining On the seat back's plastic lining that the lamp-light fluoresced o'er, But whose flattened plastic lining with the lamp fluorescing o'er Shall compress, ah, little more! All at once my thoughts grew clearer -- as if looking in a mirror, Now at last I understood where I had sent the number 4! "Look," I typed, "I was just testing -- did you think that I was jesting? Why was it so interesting that I typed the number 4? Did you think that you were chatting to some foolish sophomore?" Quoth the Maven, "... #4?" "Maven!" said I, "Great defender! Venerable comprehender! Whether you began this chat, or were a victim of error, Mystified, and yet undaunted, by this quandary confronted," -- (Could my terminal be haunted?) -- "tell me truly, I implore -- Can you understand my message? -- tell me, tell me, I implore!" Quoth the Maven, "#4!" "Maven!" said I, "Great pretender! Ancient Jewish moneylender! By the Source that now connects us -- by the holy Oath you swore -- Tell me in your obscure wisdom if, within your distant modem, You receive my words unbroken by backspace or underscore -- Tell me why my Teletype prints nothing but the number 4!" Quoth the Maven, "#4?" "Be that word our sign of parting, bard or friend!" I typed, upstarting -- "Get back to your aimless chatter and obnoxious Mavenlore! Leave no token of your intent -- send no messsage that you repent! Leave my terminal quiescent! -- Quit the chat hereinbefore! Type control-P (or escape), and quit this chat forevermore!" Quoth the Maven, "#4..." And the Maven, notwithstanding, still is chatting, still is chatting Over my misunderstanding of his cryptic "#4?"; And I calmly pull the cover and remove a certain lever >From the 33ASR, which I never shall restore; And a certain ASCII number that lies broken on the floor Shall be printed -- nevermore! (with no apologies whatsoever to anyone) ...the Dragon @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : My Favorite Hacks Original : My Favorite Things Group : Rodgers and Hammerstein (?) Author : Guy L. Steele Jr. Intro : Song : My Favorite Hacks [to be sung to the tune of My Favorite Things from The Sound of Music] Circular MAPCAR and ANDCA'd negation, Indirect JMP auto-incrementation, Tangled spaghetti embroidered in stacks: These are a few of my favorite hacks. Mismatched DEFINE-TERMIN pairs with .QUOTEing, Misbalanced brackets for macroed remoting, PDP-6's with chess tourney plaques: These are a few of my favorite hacks. LAMBDAs as GO TOs and spooling on TPLs, Flip-flops and bit drops and TRCE's in triples, Crufty heuristics that prune minimax: These are a few of my favorite hacks. When the bugs strike, When the disks crash, When I read this verse, I simply remember my favorite hacks And then I feel even worse! -- The Great Quux (with apologies to Rodgers and Hammerstein) @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Mr. Bossman Original : Mr. Sandman Group : ? Author : Nelson Bishop Intro : this was written around release 2.5 of a product. There weren't any particularly exciting enhancements, just a bunch of tweaking, snore. Any two syllable name will substitute for Bossman, as of course it did in the original (Hi Gary :-). We never did get a plum either! Song : Mr. Bossman (To the tune of: Mr. Sandman) Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum Mr. Bossman, bring us a plum. An expert system would be lots of fun. How 'bout a new exciting project? How 'bout some brand new source and object? Mr. Bossman, how 'bout AI? We'd like to do it, we'll give it a try. Give us the word our work is no joke, Sir, And tell that the big compiles are over. Mr. Bossman, windows are nice. We'd like to do them and play with some mice. Pop-up menus would really be friendly, And local networks are just oh so trendy. Mr. Bossman (Yeees), take us off hold. This boring maintenance has gotten so old. So please bring back out happy hum. Mr. Bossman give us, please, please, please, Mr. Bossman give us a plum! Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum! @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : My Data are Over the Ocean Original : My bonnie is over the ocean Group : Traditional (?) Author : Young European Radio Astronomers Intro : Here the beginning of "My Data are Over the Ocean", created during lunch by participants of the Young European Radio Astronomers Conference in September 1989 at Kharkov, (then) USSR. This was inspired by a colleague, who couldn't read back in Europe the tape with observational data she had written at an Hawaiian observatory. The other parts of the song weren't related to computers. Song : (to the tune of "My bonnie is over the ocean") My data are over the ocean, and I cannot read them right here. My data are over the ocean, oh bring back my data to me. (Chorus) Bring back, bring back, oh bring back my data to me, to me! Bring back, bring back, oh bring back my data to me! @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : My Favourite Things Original : My Favourite Things Group : ? Traditional Author : Fred Curtis Intro : Song : To be sung to the tune of "My Favourite Things" written by Fred Curtis Pointers to pointers to printf()-like functions; Unary minus and nested conjunctions; Integers, booleans, characters, strings; These are a few of my favourite things. Bach on a CD and good indentation; Not getting mugged while en route to the station; Fountains with wishes and Gnomes without slings; These are a few of my favourite things. When the bug bites! When core dumps! When the machine's had the I simply remember my favourite things And then I don't fell so sick. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Network Pie Original : American Pie Group : Don Mclean Author : Ken Kaufman Intro : Song : Copyright (c) MCMLXXXIV by Ken Kaufman (if it matters) Sung to the tune of "American Pie" (the 7 minute version) A long long time ago I can still remember how the newsgroups used to make me smile. And I knew if I'd had my way I'd have something clever to say, Or at least flame articles that weren't my style. But I found net.religion boring; Net.waterbeds left me snoring. Liberals and right wingers were net.politics mudslingers. I can't remember if I could laugh when 10 people flamed my speling gaffe. But net.women.only was undistaff the day net.wombat died. So ... Bye bye, net.records has run dry. Won't you paean net.wobegon, they ask with a sigh. net.singles readers think that I am being too shy saying If rejected I'm sure to die ... If rejected I'm sure to die. Did you say you love net.books? Are worms your name for computer crooks if "a hacker" fits you so? Now do you believe in net.jokes.d? Can you pay without an ID if your purchase is 90 bucks or so? Well I know that you can sympathize; net.tv leaves me hypnotized. But you can always choose to discuss six Doctor Whos. I wrote anonymously to net.flame; in net.jokes I used another name. But I knew it would all be the same the day net.wombat died. I started singing ... Bye bye, net.records has run dry. Won't you paean net.wobegon, they ask with a sigh. net.singles readers think that I am being too shy saying If rejected I'm sure to die ... If rejected I'm sure to die. Now for ten years we've all been on line the unix-wizards are doing fine, But that's not how it used to be When wombats were still quite unknown, before we left net.test alone And New Yorkers had to sin illegally. Oh but while our machine had gone down we could not get our mail from Brown Or the whole Pacific Coast. So could you all please repost? And while driving home I was tailgated for leaving my jokes unrotated. No sanity was demonstrated the day net.wombat died. We were singing ... Bye bye, net.records has run dry. Won't you paean net.wobegon, they ask with a sigh. net.singles readers think that I am being too shy saying If rejected I'm sure to die ... If rejected I'm sure to die. Astro.expert and/or bio.expert and soon net.battle.of.the.sexpert Because no one could find a better name. Net.caveat or net.consumer; perhaps net.ripoff or net.product.humor Or net.what.company.should.we.blame? Well, I think you should be arrested (Your parentheses were (triply) nested!) I would have followed up ... Oh, but my note was swallowed up! Vegetarians ranted and the hunters raved; the Whoppers were McMicrowaved. Do you recall what files we saved the day net.wombat died? We started singing ... Bye bye, net.records has run dry. Won't you paean net.wobegon, they ask with a sigh. net.singles readers think that I am being too shy saying If rejected I'm sure to die ... If rejected I'm sure to die. And there we were all in one place - maybe net.astro or perhaps net.space With no time left to start again. So come on - Bio fans, please be patient while physicists discuss creation and net.tv.da comes to a fiery end. And as I watched it on the screen, my hands got tense, my face grew mean. No M.O.any-S. could clean up this net.mess And the news arrived at this network site with the results of the long fight - Wombat haters chuckled with delight ... the day net.wombat died. We were singing ... Bye bye, net.records has run dry. Won't you paean net.wobegon, they ask with a sigh. net.singles readers think that I am being too shy saying If rejected I'm sure to die ... If rejected I'm sure to die. I met a woman (that's not a girl!) and asked for news from the wombat world But she just smiled and turned away. I saw a clever bumper sticker that years ago would make me snicker But it couldn't even raise a smile today. And on the net chess players gamed, joke readers laughed, and insultees flamed, But it had all been tried ... I committed net.suicide. And the newsgroups I enjoyed the most were shut down; no one cared to post. Users logged off from coast to coast the day net.wombat died. And they were singing ... Bye bye, net.records has run dry. Won't you paean net.wobegon, they ask with a sigh. net.singles readers think that I am being too shy saying If rejected I'm sure to die ... If rejected I'm sure to die. They were singing ... Bye bye, net.records has run dry. Won't you paean net.wobegon, they ask with a sigh. net.singles readers think that I am being too shy saying If rejected I'm sure to die. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Not a boolean Original : Blowin' in the wind Group : Bob Dylan Author : Joerg Anslik (janslik@leibniz.GUN.de) Intro : Song : ***************** * NOT A BOOLEAN * ***************** 1. How many code must a man type in Before you can call him a man? How many C must a compiler process Before it can sleep in the RAM? How many times must MS-DOS crash Before it is forever banned? R. The answer, my friend Is not a boolean The answer is not a boolean. 2. How many times must a man read his source Before he can see what is wrong? How many memory must his system have Before he can use 'unsigned long'? How many errors will it take till he knows That there's still some work to be done? R. 3. How many years can a program exist Before it's erased from drive C:\ ? How many years must known bugs exist Before you get an update for free? How many times can a drive move its head And pretend there's no data to read? R. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Ode to Amy (or: The Frontend Shuffle) Original : The Longest Time Group : Billy Joel Author : Nelson Bishop Intro : This is the best in a long line of songs I wrote for departing coworkers. Song : Ode to Amy or The Frontend Shuffle (To the tune of: The Longest Time, Billy Joel) If you said the deadline was tonight, There would still be functions left to write. What else could I do? I get the frontend from you. And I'll be coding for the longest time. Once I thought enhancements we all done. Now I know the battle can't be won. The boss will find me, Give me work and then remind me. That I'll be coding for the longest time. I'm that voice you're hearing in the hall. And we need a miracle that's all. Because we need you. And I know we'll want to see you. 'Cause we'll be coding for the longest time. Maybe this wont last very long, The new fix is right, but I could be wrong. Maybe I've been coding too hard, But I've come this far, and a bonus I hoped for. Who knows how much further we'll go on. Frontend will be broken when you're gone. I'll take my chances, I forgot this disk drive dances And I'll be coding for the longest time. I had second thoughts at the start. I said to myself I hope that she's smart. Now I know the woman that you are. Your coding is bizarre, But it's more that I hoped for. I don't care what consequence it brings. Kludge it and get on to other things. This code is so bad. I think you ought to know that I intend to debug for the longest time. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : On our First Day on Usenet Original : The 12 days of Xmas Group : Traditional Author : Laura Glenn Intro : More than enough days of usenet Song : on our first day on usenet the mailer sent to me a reject from uucp... (an unsent message. trouble was, it kept retrying once an hour, so regular as clockwork, i got a copy of the transmit session and a random piece of my message - never enough to resend it, of course!) on the second day on usenet, upon my crt (were) two 'rot 13's and a reject from uucp... on the third day on usenet, tom truscott sent to me three new scripts, (1 patch to inews and two patches to the patch!) two 'rot 13's and a reject from uucp... on the fourth day on usenet, readnews had for me: four net.flames (what... only four?!) three new scripts, two rot 13's and a reject from uucp... on the fifth day on usenet, plain for all to see (were) five hundred lines! (all in one message, mind you...brief and to the point!) four net.flames, three new scripts, two rot 13's and a reject from uucp... on the sixth day of usenet, our postnews gave to me six orphaned responses, (darn thing never *did* get it right!) five hundred lines! four net.flames, three new scripts, two rot 13's and a reject from uucp.... on the seventh day on usenet, our adm gave to me seven added newsgroups (all dealing with the same topic, of course.) six orphaned responses, five hundred lines!! four net.flames, three new scripts, two rot 13's and a reject from uucp... on the eighth day on usenet 'sf-lovers' gave to me eight Doctor Who fans, (even after we give them their own group!) seven added newsgroups, six orphaned responses, five hundred lines!! four net.flames, three new scripts, two rot 13's and a reject from uucp... on the ninth day on usenet my mbox had for me nine chain letters, (yep... the same one that was finally posted.) eight Doctor Who fans, seven added newsgroups, six orphaned responses, five hundred lines! four net.flames, three new scripts, two rot 13's and a reject from uucp... on the tenth day on usenet, the df showed to me ten blocks of disk space (left, that is...) nine chain letters, eight Doctor Who fans, seven added newsgroups, six orphaned responses, five hundred lines! four net.flames, three new scripts, two rot 13's and a reject from uucp... on the eleventh day on usenet, the phone bill came to me: eleven calls to europe, (gee, i didn't know we had a *direct* uucp link ten blocks of disk space, ...to mcvax!) nine chain letters, eght Doctor Who fans, seven added newsgroups, six orphaned responses, five hundred lines! four net.flames, three new scripts, two rot 13's and a reject from uucp... on the twelfth day on usenet, i read despairingly: ------------------------------------------------- | | | Your USENET administrator has taken your | | site off the net. For further information | | contact Pacific Bell re: your system's | | $1300 phone bill. | | Sincerely, | | The Management. | | | ------------------------------------------------- @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : P-I-F-FO Original : BINGO Group : ? Author : Aubrey Philipsz Intro : Song : There is a network you can hack And AUTOVON's it's name-o P-I-F-FO P-I-F-FO P-I-F-FO And AUTOVON's it's name-o @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Please Release Me Original : Please Release Me Group : Englebert Humperdinck Author : Nelson Bishop Intro : Song : Please Release Me Please release me let me go, My bugs aren't major anymore. To waste your time would be a sin. Release me, to Beta once again. I have found a new bug here, Too late to fix it now I fear, You can't boot warm, but must boot cold. Release me, the users never know. Please release me can't you see, You'd be a fool to cling to me. That's not a bug, but feature, dear. Release me, don't wait another year. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : PLIate's Dream Original : Pilate's Dream Group : from Jesus Christ Superstar Author : Guy L. Steele Jr. Intro : Song : PLIate's Dream [to be sung to the tune of Pilate's Dream from Jesus Christ Superstar] I dreamed I was a brand new language, The ultimate in speed; I handled strings as fast as RPG, And twice as easily. I crunched numbers like COBOL, Trees like APL, And FORTRAN loaned its FORMATs and GO TOs, The cause of many screws. And then a man said, "Now we'll write a monitor, With Multics what it's for. Our project is begun; We'll code in PL/I." Then I saw thousands of coders Searching for their bugs, And then I heard them mentioning my name And leaving me the blame. -- The Great Quux (with apologies to Rice and Webber) @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : POOR PURE PERCY P Original : ? Group : ? Author : ? Intro : Song : Percy P was a mathematician whose "pureness" was never denied. But he found one day, to his sorrow, that his theorems had been applied! He had used all the standard precautions; his papers were pointedly dry! But his own esoteric notation had been solved by a physicist spy! The colloquium buzzed with the gossip; he could offer no valid excuse. Percy P was a traitor of traitors, for his work was of PRACTICAL USE! Nobody dared to defend him. Could it be that he'd plead the crime That his work was just then needed to effect quantization of time? Ignored when he joined conversations; one would think that he poisoned the air. And he felt on his way to the office - a new man might be in his chair. A committee was in operation, working twenty four hours a day, Deleting his name from the journals, and throwing his reprints away. He knew where his future was leading, no sense in prolonging the pain; He left with a handful of papers, and never was heard from again. So take heed all you mathematicians who pretend your endeavor is pure; Tho' your luck may hold for a decade, in the end you can never be sure. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : The Programmer's Blues Original : Smuggler's Blues Group : Glenn Frye Author : , Mark E. Sunderlin Intro : Song : "The Programmer's Blues" by Robert J. Woodhead (Cleaned up by Dr. Megabyte) with apologies to Glen Frye There's trouble in the data now, I can feel it in my bones, I had a premonition that I should'nt code alone, I had the new dos loaded but I didn't think it'd fry, Then everything exploded and 2 weeks work blew sky-high! So baby here's a printout and a keyboard for your hand, And here's a little floppy, now do it just the way we planned, You debug for 20 days and I'll pay you 20 grand! I'm sorry it went down like this, but some chip had to fuse, It's the typing of the language, It's the Programmer's Blues... Programmer's Blues... Coder's and the Analyst's, Hackers and Sysops, Bad comments and strange bomboffs, and the bugs nobody copped, No matter if it's Pascal, Basic or Cobol, You've got to carry manuals, there's no online help at all! It's lots of rotten coffee, and lot's of lousy food, Every variable name is dangerous, it might have been pre-used, It's the lure of relaxed typing, it's so easy to be crude! Perhaps you'll understand it better, when you see my tools, It's the ultimate enhancement, it's the Programmer's Blues! Programmer's Blues... You see it in their memos, you read them every day, They say you have to fix those bugs, but they just don't go away, No matter how hard you work, it just won't run OK, You bury them in subroutines, but you know they're here to stay! You hope that none'll notice them, but they always seem to do, You beg for Beta testing, maybe one will give a clue, Down from the office of your manager, you learn the heat's on you.. Heat's on you.. It's a losing proposition, but one you can't refuse, It's policies of debugging, it's the Programmer's Blues... Programmer's Blues! @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : The Programmer's Viewpoint Original : My favorite things Group : ? (traditional) Author : greywolf Intro : Song : The programmer's viewpoint ( to the tune of "My favorite things" ) ( Lyrics by greywolf ) This routine sets up some pointers to functions, And this one completely reverses conjunctions, This function here turns your trees into rings, And does other rather unusual things... Pointers to longwords with external labels, Pointers to structures in segmented tables, Pointers to pointers to pointers to strings (This code does some *rather* unorthodox things...!) Unions and structures and macros included, Some of which seem to be quite convoluted, Library calls make the network go "ping!" (And other sometimes inexplicable things) When the crash comes, when the core dumps When the data fries, I simply recall these unusual things ..then I know *why* it dies. Assemblers, preprocessors, dynamic loaders, Linkers, compilers, and optimized coders, Debuggers and dumpers and archivers bring Online a programmer's favourite things... Scanners and parsers and string tokenizers, And lexicographical line analyzers, Tools that make endless arrays of the strings, These are some more of a programmer's things... Debuggers and coredumps and function backtraces, Registers, breakpoints and strange interfaces, Contexts and byte-ordering problems do cling, but these are a programmer's *favourite* things (uck!) When the core dumps, and the disk hangs, and the program dies, "Well, hey, it did just what I told it to do -- Tell the Boss that my program *flies*!" @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Puff the Fractal Dragon Original : Puff the Magic Dragon Group : Peter, Paul and Mary / The Seekers? Author : ? Intro : Song : Puff the Fractal Dragon (to the tune of Puff the Magic Dragon) -------------------------------------------------------------- No plain fanfold paper could hold that fractal Puff -- He grew so fast no plotting pack could shrink him far enough. Compiles and simulations grew so quickly tame And swapped out all their data space when Puff pushed his stack frame. CHORUS: Puff the fractal dragon was written in C, And frolicked while processes switched in mainframe memory. Puff the fractal dragon was written in C, And frolicked while processes switched in mainframe memory. Puff, he grew so quickly, while others moved like snails And mini-Puffs would perch themselves on his gigantic tail. All the student hackers loved that fractal Puff But DCS did not like Puff, and finally said, "Enough!" (chorus) Puff used more resources than DCS could spare. The operator killed Puff's job -- he didn't seem to care. A gloom fell on the hackers; it seemed to be the end, But Puff trapped the exception, and grew from naught again! (chorus) @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Rawhide Original : Rawhide Group : Blues Brothers Author : Michael Weber Intro : Song : (based on RAWHIDE from BluesBrothers) ------------------------------------- Rolling, rolling, rolling, When the screens are scrolling, Keep the Mouses rolling - Rawhide Cores and Shells and dither Dust bin forever Wishin` my disk was in my drive All the things I`m missin` Good Ops, Kills and Listings Are waiting at the end of my file Move `em on Hit `em up Move `em on Rawhide Cut `em out Ride `em in Cut `em out Ride `em in Rawhide Keep hackin`, hackin`, hackin` While Sysop isn`t checkin` Keep other users crackin` - Rawhide I don`t understand her My program has an error Soon I will turn that system off My C-Shell isn`t workin` The Admin catched me lurkin` Lurkin` at the end of my file Move `em on Hit `em up Move `em on Rawhide Cut `em out Ride `em in Cut `em out Ride `em in Rawhide @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : The RSX Backup Song ("Are we back up yet?") Original : To the tune of: "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean" Group : Author : (probably by Bruce Mitchell) Info : Kindly provided in source by Jim McGlinchey - from the RSX songbook Note that ROLLIN was the first backup program on RSX, but normally only ran off the Diagnostic tape system. All the other mentions are later attempts at writing the perfect backup program. Song : Dave Cutler wrote RSX V1, The kit fit on one magtape then, The baseline came in in 5 minutes! My Ghod, how the files ROLLIN! Refrain: ROLLIN, ROLLIN, my Ghod, how the files ROLLIN, ROLLIN! ROLLIN, ROLLIN, my Ghod, how the files ROLLIN, ROLLIN! PRESRV you can boot from a magtape, The files go out and come in, Just don't try to do single files! My Ghod, how the files ROLLIN! (Refrain) Disk Save and Corrupt, it works real good, Whoever wrote it must have grinned, The index file moves to the low blocks! My Ghod, how the files ROLLIN! (Refrain) LUsers back files up with BRU now, The magtapes it writes are a sin, They don't read on VMS BACKUP! My Ghod, how the files ROLLIN! (Refrain) Myself, I write DOS FLX tapes, A copy in ANSI for grins, But mainly, all my disks are shadowed! My Ghod, how the files ROLLIN! (Refrain) @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : The RSX Support Song ("Thank you for your SPR") Original : "Send Lawyers, Guns and Money" Group : Author : Info : Kindly provided in source by Jim McGlinchey - from the RSX songbook Song : I tried to do some realtime The way I always do How was I to know We were running DECnet, too? I was cutting up a driver I took a little risk Send Dave and Clarke and Howard DEC, get me out of this! I'm the innocent programmer But somehow I got stuck Between Big Blue and the VAX SIG And the system is down Yes the system is down Well the system is down Now I'm writing code in Basic I'm a desperate man Send Ralph and Jim and Brian The shit has hit the fan @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : The RSX VMS Lovers Song ("Wow, there's lots of stuff on that VAX") Original : "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands" Group : Author : (probably by Bruce Mitchell) Info : Kindly provided in source by Jim McGlinchey - from the RSX songbook For some time there was a tradition at DECUS symposia that the RSX SIG would do something to disrupt the VAX SIG. (Once they kidnapped the VAX SIG chair, along with the sofa she was relcining on. They managed to ransom the sofa for a six-pack of beer, but had to pay to have the VAX SIG take their Chair back.) Anyway, the following song was sung to the VAX SIG by the assembled RSX SIG at a recent symposia. Song : He's got lotsa crud, on his VAX, He's got lotsa crud, on his VAX, He's got lotsa crud, on his VAX, He's got lotsa crud on his VAX. He's got DEC star couplers, on his VAX, He's got Britton Lee, on his VAX, He's got full DECservice, on his VAX, He's got expensive crud on his VAX. He's got real-time, on his VAX, He's got Datatrieve, on his VAX, He's got VMS, on his VAX, He's got slow crud on his VAX. He's got office automation, on his VAX, He's got All-in-One, on his VAX, He's got security up the ying-yang, on his VAX, He's got management on his VAX. He's got VAX/ELAN, on his VAX, He's got ANSI DIBOL, on his VAX, He's got RPG, on his VAX, He's got useless crud on his VAX. He's got gigundo disks, on his VAX, He's got max warp speed, on his VAX, He's got unlimited POOL, on his VAX, He's got some decent stuff on his VAX. He's got BLISS-16, on his VAX, He's got TOPS-20 emulation, on his VAX, He's got Fidonet, on his VAX, He's got bizarre crud on his VAX. He's got 1000 users, on his VAX, He's got 40 LAT servers, on his VAX, He's got the King James Bible, on his VAX, He's got the whole world on his VAX. He's got lotsa crud, on his VAX, He's got lotsa crud, on his VAX, He's got lotsa crud, on his VAX, He's got lotsa crud on his VAX! @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Script for a Hacker's Tear Original : Script for a Jester's Tear Group : Marillion Author : Thomas Koenig , Hubert Schaefer Intro : Amazing how adaptive the original is, there wasn't much to change :-) Song : Script for a Hacker's Tear So here I am once more in the playground of the broken hacks one more experience, one more entry in the logfile, self - typed yet another programming suicide overdosed on caffeine and bytes Too late to say I'll fix it too late to remount the drive abandoning the listings of projects no longer alive I'm losing on this VAX, I'm losing with these system calls I'm losing on this VAX, I'm losing with these system calls Too much, too soon, too far, to go, too late to type, this hack is over This hack is over So here I am once more in the playground of the broken hacks I'm losing on this VAX, losing with these system calls, this hack is over, over Yet another programming suicide overdosed on caffeine and bytes I'm losing on this VAX, I'm losing with these system calls, this hack is over Too late to say I'll fix it too late to remount the drive The hack is over @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : SIGHUP Blues Original : Bluebottle Blues Group : Milligan and Carbone Author : Russell Street Intro : Adapted from the "Bluebottle Blues" featuring Maurice Plonk and his Orchestra Fromage, with Nick Rauchen conducting "The Ball's Pond Road, near the One in Harmony". In reality written by Milligan and Carbone, recorded 24/05/56. Song : SIGHUP Blues ------------ By Russell Street (russells@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz) P: PING 255.255.255.255! K: Just the process I've been looking for. P: Oh! K: Clamber into my disk heads, Fred Whence all but you have exec'd, Fred There is no contesting, I've no way of manefesting How much I'd prefer you dead, Fred P: Oh I'm glad you like me, my Kernel Because I trust you to. K: Gratifiy your wim, Jim. P: Jim? What happened to Fred? K: He mv'd his name. P: What to? K: Chunky. Tell me, can you catch Jim? P: No, Jim can not catch. K: Then open this named pipe, son On the file system, son Which I have carefully arranged so it will open up and throw you into thirty K of NULLs when you upset the pipe by reading from it, Jim. P: I say, it's not for deading me, is it Kernel? K: Oh course not, dear boy! Just read from it a bit further! P: Righty-ho then. Ahh. Here I am on the edge of the nice little named-type pipe. It is a lovely day for a naughty pipe. YAHHH! You've swamped me. I do not like this game. I've got those "When I say I trust you I do not want to be KILLed because I do not like those kind of signals" Blues. I don't like naughty files that give my gets(3) binary data. (They say harm can come to a growing process like that) And I do not like SIGQUITs that longjmp me back to main() Out of my reniced batch queue I don't like being woken by nasty SIGALRM showers And I do not like being nutted by Eifel and Fortran programs So I do not want to be KILLed, HUPed, TERMed, QUITed, XCPUed INTed! I don't like that kind of type blues -- I don't like that I've got them SIGHUP Blues. K: Still alive? Take this /dev/tty, pet. P: Oh tar(1). K: No, don't iocntl it yet, pet. All right, now you can iocntl it. P: Are you sure I won't be KILLed or nothing, Kernel? K: No, no -- don't be frightened! P: All right then, I'll just send a DUP to it, and .... < BOOOM> < over explosion > You rotten swine you! You HUPed me again. I shan't play this rotten game no more. Closes open files, pages out memory And exists through little hole in Mail deamon security... @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Software for Nothing Original : Money for Nothing Group : Dire Straits Author : Brent CJ Britton Intro : Song : Software for Nothing ==================== by: Brent CJ Britton With appoligies to Mark Knopfler. I waaaant my.. I waaaant my... I waaaant my C-R-T...... Now look at them hackers, That's the way ya' do it. Ya' play with mem'ry that you cannot see. Now that ain't workin, that's the way ya do it. Get your software for nothing and your chips for free. Now that ain't workin, gotta CPU-it. Let me tell ya, them guys ain't dumb. Maybe crash the system with your little finger, Maybe crash the system with your thumb. We got to install micro-data-bases, Gotta make things run like a breeeeze. We gotta help these foreign students, We gotta help these mindless E.E.'s... The little Hacker with the Pepsi and the Munchos: Yeah, buddy, don't like to SHARE... The little Hacker got his own compiler, The little guy don't change his underwear. We got to install the latest debugger, Under budget, and optimiiiiiiized. We got to have more muddy-black coffee, We got a green glow in our eyyyyyyes... I shoulda' learned to play with Pascal. I shoulda' learned to program some. Look at that drive, I'm gonna stick it on the channel, Man, it's better than the old one... And who's up there, what's that? Beeping noises? He's bangin on the keyboard like a chimpanze. Oh that aint workin, that's the way ya do it, Get your software for nothin', get your chips for free. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Socket Man Original : Rocket Man Group : Elton John Author : Wes Morgan Intro : While attempting to thrash a socket-ridden BSD package to some semblance of System V-ism, the following ditty camne unbidden.... Song : Socket Man I got my source last night from FTP Compiling up at 2 AM And my system is screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaming "Undefined" at me..... I thumb through books, I use my 'man' It does no good, you see 'Cause I'm on System Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive And not BSD Chorus: And I think it's gonna take a lot of time 'Till named pipes bring me where I get to find That BSD's not worth a pile of slime (oh no no noooooooo) I'm a Socket Man..... Socket Man....burning up the CPU for days Socket Man....hacking through the SVID maze.... Verse 2: I've tried so many things, they all have failed, It's lonely in the lab And noone elllllllllsssssssssee Has a clue.... And all the techniques I don't understand It's just a kludge to make it work... A Socket Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan Socket Man..... Chorus: And I think it's gonna take a lot of time 'Till named pipes bring me where I get to find That BSD's not worth a pile of slime (oh no no noooooooo) I'm a Socket Man...... Socket Man.....Hacking through the piles and piles of C Socket Man.....Building up a hate for BSD.... @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Song of the Certified Data Processor Original : When I Was a Lad Group : Gilbert and Sullivan Author : Guy L. Steele Jr. Intro : Song : Song of the Certified Data Processor [to be sung to the tune of When I Was a Lad from H.M.S. Pinafore] When I was a lad I served a term As office boy to a computing firm. I polished the handle of the big front door And swept up all the card chips from the keypunch floor. He swept up all the card chips from the keypunch floor. I swept that chad so carefullee That now I am officially a CDP. He swept that chad so carefullee That now he is officially a CDP. My office job was a heavy load, So I went to night school and learned to code. I was soon coding payroll in RPG And compiled all my programs on a System/3. He compiled all his programs on a System/3. I compiled my code so gay and free That now I am officially a CDP. He compiled his code so gay and free That now he is officially a CDP. I wrote efficient code each day, But I missed the benefits of higher pay. I asked for a raise, but my boss said, "See, Youse ain't good enuf because youse ain't a CDP." "He ain't good enuf because he ain't a CDP." So I vowed that someday I would see Myself become officially a CDP. So he vowed that someday he would see Himself become officially a CDP. For nineteen weeks I worked to cram All the textbooks for the CDP exam. Then I took the exam and was shocked to see That the questions didn't seem to mean a thing to me. All the questions didn't seem to mean a thing to him. So I wrote down some answers randomly, But I gave up all my hopes to be a CDP. So he wrote down some answers randomly, But he gave up all his hopes to be a CDP. Well, those random answers worked out fine; They scored my results at the top of the line. Now I am a consultant here, And I make at least a hundred thousand bucks each year. And he makes at least a hundred thousand bucks each year. But I only command such a salary Because I am officially a CDP. But he only commands such a salary Because he is officially a CDP. Now, office boys, whoever you may be, If you want to rise to the top of the tree, Just go and take the CDP exam, And no matter what you answer they won't give a D--n! And no matter what you answer they won't give a D--n! Just answer it all as random as you please And you will all officially be CDPs. Just answer it all as random as you please And you will all officially be CDPs. -- The Great Quux (with apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan) @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : The Sound of FORTRAN Original : The Sound of Music Group : Rodgers and Hammerstein Author : Guy L. Steele Jr. Intro : Song : The Sound of FORTRAN [to be sung to the tune of The Sound of Music] My programming day has come to an end, I know, But one minor bug still restrains me, though, So back to me desk I stumble, More coffee I pour in my mug, So back to me desk I stumble, More coffee I pour in my mug, And I drink, and I think, and I program Just one more hack, just one more hairy kludge To remove that bug. Machines are alive with the sound of FORTRAN, With numbers they've crunched for a thousand hours; They add and subtract to the sound of FORTRAN, And raise fractions to unheard of powers. My code's full of REAL statements, INTEGER and COMPLEX too, duplicated thrice oe'r, And so intermixed with the WRITEs and READs to cause errors galore; Arrays are declared of dimension six, but indexed minus two; Computed GO TOs are last in the range of a DO! I now recompile my corrected programs; I know I will get what compiled before -- My code will be blessed with the sound of FORTRAN, And I'll lose once more. And I'll lose once more. -- The Great Quux (with apologies to Rodgers and Hammerstein) @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : The Sounds of Silence Original : The Sound of Silence Group : Simon & Garfunkel Author : ? Intro : Song : THE SOUNDS OF SCIENCE Hello lab work my old foe I've come to feel my anger grow I have to find your composition Using your spectograph emission But I can't, and I'm on my seventh try I start to cry These are the sounds of science My test tube shatters with a pop The gunk eats through the tabletop Through all the science labs in Thimann You can hear the students screamin' And my own voice rises up above the rest I'm so depressed These are the sounds of science The tabletop begins to smoke The students all begin to choke The TA hurries to my station And then dies of asphyxiation And I whine "I'm having trouble with this class I hope I pass." These are the sounds of science The deadly smoke goes through the halls And peels the paint right off the walls And then I note with aggravation This means a bad evaluation And I breathe a long and melancholy sigh And then I die These are the sounds of science @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Structured Programmer's Soliloquy Original : Hamlet's Soliloquy Group : Shakespeare Author : Henry Kleine and Philip H. Roberts Intro : Song : Structured Programmer's Soliloquy SP or not SP -- that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The rules and exceptions of outrageous FORTRAN Or to take arms against a sea of transfers And by structuring end them. To code -- to test No more; and by a test to say we end The heartache, and the thousand natural mistakes That FORTRAN is heir to. 'Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To code -- to test. To test -- perchance to bomb: aye, there's the rub! For in that test of code what bugs may come When we have shuffled of this FORTRAN code, Must give us pause. There's the respect that makes calamity of so long lists. [??] For who would bear the whips and scorns of time-sharing Th' operating systems wrong, the computer's crash, The pangs of despis'd code, the turnaround's delay, The insolence of compilers, and the spurns That patient coding of FORTRAN takes When he himself might his quietus make with PL/I? Who would this FORTRAN Bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary language, But that the dread of something after FORTRAN The undiscover'd country, from whose bourne No programmer returns -- puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn away And lose the name of action. - Henry Kleine and Philip H. Roberts April DATAMATION @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : The Swapper Original : The Seeker Group : The Who Author : Jamie Mason Intro : Since I posted 'Unix Wizard', I thought up another Unix-specific song inspired by The Who... Song : The Swapper (Concocted by Jamie Mason to 'The Seeker' by The Who) ----------- I've looked in kernel memory, I've looked in the tables. I try to find some core For fifty million pages. They call me the swapper. I've been searching low and high. Unix won't run out of memory Till the day I die. I asked Dennis Ritchie, I asked Ken Thompson. I asked comp.unix.wizards, But they couldn't help me either. They call me the swapper. I've been searching low and high. Unix won't run out of memory Till the day I die. People tend to hate me, Cause I swap too slow. As I page out their jobs They want to shake my hand. Focusing on swap space, Investigating pagefaults, I'm a pagedaemon, I'm a very desperate hack. Unix won't run out of memory Till the day I die. I learned how to raise resident set size. Yeah, but look at this process it's mem'ry bound! I'm happy when you segfault, and when you run thrash.c I crash. I get values but I Don't know how or why! I'm looking for core, You're looking for CPU, We're running on the same box, And we don't know what to do! They call me the swapper. I've been searching low and high. Unix won't run out of memory Till the day I die. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : SYSTEM CRASH Original : The Monster Mash Group : ? Author : ? Intro : Song : SYSTEM CRASH (to the tune of "The Monster Mash") ------------ I was working in the lab, late one night When my eyes beheld an eerie sight, Some smoke from our VAX began to rise And suddenly, to my surprise... [chorus] (There was a crash) There was a system crash (A mighty crash) I heard the disk heads smash (A system crash) It came down in a flash (There was a crash) A fatal system crash The lab manager then appeared from his room, Said: "I don't want to be a prophet of doom, But we had one like this just the other day Which blew up 4 megs and the SBA" [chorus] The system had just been booted, diagnostics had all run through, When a power fluck made it all run amuck, then SCOTTY and IRVING blew too So we'd lost all our VAXes in less than one night When a VP came in and said: "hey, that's all right, I'll loan you a Venus - here's what to do When you call up Support, tell them Gordon sent you... [chorus] @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Take me Down to the SunLab Original : Take me Out of the Ball Game Group : Al Green & Mabon Hodges Author : ? Intro : Song : TAKE ME DOWN TO THE SUN LAB Take me down to the Sun lab Take me down to 210 We'll edit our programs and scratch our heads Never mind that I'd rather be dead And we'll root, root, root through the listing Looking for dollar star 'name' And it's one, two, three downloads in the old Sun lab game! Take me down to the Sun lab Take me down to 210 We'll run the assembler and have a snack I don't care if it never comes back And we'll wait, wait, wait for the download If it don't work it's a shame And it's one, two, three downloads in the old Sun lab game! Take me down to the Sun lab Take me down to 210 We'll program our I/O and interrupts Sometimes it just makes me want to throw up And we'll press, press, press on the reset Each time it goes up in flames And it's one, two, three downloads in the old Sun lab game! @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Tap My Wire Original : Light my Fire Group : The Doors Author : Maarten Loss <90406025@hse.nl> Intro : In addition to the neverending flow of hack-n-roll songs, I decided to post this one. It's based on the all time Doors-hit "Light my fire". Song : Tap my wire (the more's) ~~~~~~~~~~ You know that I would be untrue You know that I would be a 'foo' If I was to say to you We couldn't hack ourselves to root Come on hackers tap a wire Come on hackers tap a wire Try to set the mode-bits higher The time to sit and watch is gone No time to linger in the shell Try to make crack-programs run Yes we will make the tty's bell Come on hackers tap a wire Come on hackers tap a wire Try to set the mode-bits higher @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Ten little Modulans Original : Ten little (?) Group : Traditional Author : Pat Terry Intro : C.A.R. Hoar was amazingly correct, and the shadow of the Emperor's Clothes falls heavily on Modula-2. But I thought you might be amused by a piece in a lighter vein, written for the Tuebingen WG13 meeting over a year ago by Modula-2's great friend Professor Terry. [Notes: Nottingham = place of Modula-2 conference, VDM = declaration language] Song : And then there were .... ======================== We start our tale with some Poetry: "Ten little Modulans, keen to toe the line, One went to Nottingham, and then there were nine. Nine little Modulans thought casting sounded great, One pressed for cast, old style, and then there were eight. Eight little Modulans said "COMPLEX will be heaven". One stayed with FORTRAN code, and then there were seven. Seven little Modulans the FOR loop tried to fix, Sixteen pages VDM - and then there were six. Six little Modulans, exceptions felt should thrive. One weakly RAISED a "no", and then there were five. Five little Modulans, keen to add yet more, Built five I/O libraries and then there were four. Four little Modulans, on a formal spree, Couldn't freeze the VDM, and then there were three. Three little Modulans, Strings libraries did view, One cried "still not enough!" and then there were two. Two little Modulans said "Coroutines are fun" HALT wouldn't terminate, and then there was one. One little Modulan, dreadfully alone, Soon he discovered C, and then there were none." (Naughty Nineties Nursery Rhyme) @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : That old time PDP Original : That old time Rock'n'Roll Group : Bob Seger Author : ? Info : Unofficial theme song of the RSX/IAS SIG Song : Just take that PRO down off the shelf and let me program it by myself. A half a meg's just fine by me, I love that old-time PDP. Refrain: I love that old-time PDP The kinda CPU that sets you free. Instruction set looks good to me. I love that old-time PDP. Don't try to take me to ZK. Won't make it, I won't last a day. I love that old-time PDP. Refrain Say I'm old fashioned, say I'm over the hill, say I'm outmoded, oh say what you will. Those new CPU's haven't got the same thrill, I love that old-time PDP. Refrain You gotta balance their complexity 'gainst functionality and quality The words are twice as long as I need, I love that old-time PDP. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : That was the HASP my friend Original : Those were the days my friend Group : Mary Hopkin Author : ? (Another Cambrigde product) Intro : Song : Once upon a time there was a system Which read and spooled and ran the printers too. Remember how we coded up the changes, And dreamed of all the great things we could do. That was the HASP my friend, There's no use to pretend, We sang and danced and coded the night away. We'd make the mods we choose, We'd fight and never lose, For we had HASP and it would lead the way. Tra-la la-LA la-la, Tra-la la-LA la-la, We had the HASP and it would lead the way. Then the busy years went rushing by us, HASP went version two to version three. The features and enhancements kept on coming, From execution batch to R-J-E. That was the HASP my friend ... Soon the days on VS were upon us, The future role of HASP was now in doubt. But version four of HASP was soon to follow, And show what virtual spooling's all about. Yet today there looms another system, It's more complex and difficult to grasp. We look at M-V-S and ask the question, Is that JES2 system really HASP? It's really HASP my friend: There's no use to pretend. We'll sing and dance and code the night away. We'll make the mods we choose, We'll fight and never lose, For we have HASP and it will lead the way. Tra-la la-LA la-la, Tra-la la-LA la-la, We still have HASP and it will lead the way. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : The 12 computerised days of Xmas Original : The 12 days of Xmas Group : Traditional Author : (Byte 1981?) Intro : [for the second version] Here's another version of the Twelve Days of Christmas ... more recent than _Byte_'s, obviously, since it's got mouses. This sounds a lot like the original Christmas carol if you don't pay attention. [George Sicherman ] Song : [two, actually ;-] On the Twelfth day of Christmas , my computer gave to me Twelve blown-out circuits Eleven damaged diskettes Ten disk-drive lockouts Nine burnt-out fuses Eight worthless printouts Seven system resets Six I/O spasms Five Blank Cassettes Four garbled SAVEs Three loose plugs Two keyboard bounces And a glitch on the video screen ... and another version: The Computer's Twelve Days of Christmas My true love gave to me Twelve plotters plotting, Eleven printers grinding, Ten punches jamming, Nine nixies blinking, Eight drums a-spinning, Seven screens a-scrolling, Six mice a-clicking, Five write rings, Four coding sheets, Three punch cards, Two paper tapes, And a cartridge in a P.C. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : These are are a Few of Our Favorite Machines Original : These are a Few of My Favorite Things Group : Traditional Author : Nelson Bishop Intro : This song was written about the time the Mac was first introduced. Most of the machines mentioned were some sort of IBM PC semi- compatible. We generally managed to port to them in time for them to be withdrawn from the market. The memory singing refers to an Alpha Byte memory expansion board which had an audible high pitched whine. Song : These are are a Few of Our Favorite Machines (To the tune of "These are a Few of My Favorite Things") Compaqs and Lisas and hard disks with tape drives, Sperrys and Victors and Wangs with no disk drives. Gray IBMs with the mem'ry that sings, These are a few of our favorite machines. TIs and Rainbows and Dots with no futures Trendspotter's dead, but it draws pretty pictures. HP-150s you touch on the screens, These are a few of out favorite machines. Chorus: When the bits byte, when the bugs sting, When out code is bad, We simply remember our favorite machines, And then we know we've -- been had Mainframes and micros and minis with Unix, Networks and async and mice with some new tricks. We get the Journal and read everything, So we'll know which is our favorite machine. Bright Macintoshes to purchase on credit, We can't afford it this year so forget it. Boss, we all need a big raise as you've seen, So we can purchase our favorite machines. Chorus @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Treekiller Original : Painkiller Group : Judas Priest Author : Bri Bri Intro : well, i was cleaning up my directory, and i found this thing, which i sorta wrote this summer. anyway, here it is, dedicated to one of my "favorite" users of the printer. Song : He is the Treekiller This is the Treekiller Faster than ethernet Bigger than /usr/dict/words Found in /etc/printers Much worse than a thousand nerds Wielding high the chainsaw Defend us, true and brave Why you would never know Those trees might come back from the grave With the Amazon in ruins Never again to rise You know deep inside we'll all end up fried He is the Treekiller This is the Treekiller Files of megs Treekiller No toner left, Treekiller @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : The Underfull Badness Blues Original : Do Run Run Group : Beach Boys (?) Author : Frankeye Jones Intro : Song : The Underfull Badness Blues by Frankeye Jones (Sing to the tune of "Do Run Run") I thought I put the backslashes in I thought I did it right; But when I tried to run the thing The screen displayed this sight: "Error, error, error," it said So I've got no time to lose My line's too long and my bracket's missing I've got the underfull badness blues (a-do-run-run-run, a do-run-run) I can do most anything With Latex as a tool Make boxes, tables, Greek letters too And I can alter the size of my pool But wait! I got too excited again It's the same old, not-good-news My control sequences are in error again I've got the underfull badness blues (a-do-run-run) My life is like a Latex run With trials and errors each day The fates one minute are on my side Then they slip and slide away I lose my keys, I'm out of Scope I'm totally missing my cues The cats have fleas and the water heater burst I've got the overfull/underfull badness blues (a-do-run-run-run, a do-run-run) @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : UNIBUS Original : Omnibus Group : Flanders and Swann Author : Tony Duell Intro : Song : Some choose an Atari, Some prefer a smart HP, Or for a Tandy TRS-80, They'd lay them doon and dee. Such means of computation, seem rather dull to us The processor and the arbitor Of the PDP UNIBUS @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : UNIX Original : Money Group : Pink Floyd Author : Jim Flanagan Intro : In the spirit of the UNIX rock adaptations, I drag this out. Song : UNIX* [To the tune of _Money_ by Pink Floyd] ---- UNIX, it's a gas; grab that VAX with both hands and make it crash. UNIX, it's a hit; Don't give me that PC DOS Bullshit. I'm into well benchmarked POSIX Open Systems I think I need a RISC chip. UNIX, jmp back; I'm all niced now pop your frame off of my stack. --- *UNIX is a trademark of AT&T @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Unix Man Original : Nowhere Man Group : Beatles Author : Brad Morrison Intro : Song : UNIX Man (to The Beatles' "Nowhere Man") -------- He's a real UNIX Man Sitting in his UNIX LAN Making all his UNIX .plans For nobody Knows the blocksize from 'du' Cares not where /dev/null goes to Isn't he a bit like you And me? UNIX Man, don't worry It's the tube that's blurry UNIX Man The new kernel boots, just like you had planned He's as wise as he can be Programs in lex, yacc and C UNIX Man, can you help me At all? UNIX Man, please listen My printout is missin' UNIX Man The wo-o-o-orld is your 'at' command @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Unix Quandry Original : Dirty Laundry Group : Don Henley Author : Rich Kulawiec Intro : sometime in 1986 or so; address at the time was pucc-j!rsk; current address is rsk@gynko.circ.upenn.edu with apologies to Don Henley for appropriating "Dirty Laundry" Song : Unix Quandry I make my living off the Unix news, Just give me something that I can use. Users love it when they lose, They love Unix quandries. Well I could have been a hacker, But I wound up here. I just have to look good, I don't have to be clear. Come and whisper in my ear, We need Unix quandries. Use 'em when they're up, Boot 'em when they're down. Use 'em when they're up, Boot 'em when they're down. Use 'em when they're up, Boot 'em when they're down. Use 'em when they're up, Kick 'em all around. We got the bubble-headed bimbies, Log on at five, They can tell about the last crash, With a gleam in their eye(s). It's int'resting when sessions die, Give us Unix quandries. Can we film the operators? Are the heads dead yet? Y'know the boys in the staffroom, Got a running bet. Read the manual on tset, We need Unix quandries. You don't really need to find out What's going on, You don't want to know just How far it's gone, Just leave well enough alone, Keep your Unix quandries. Use 'em when they're up, Boot 'em when they're down. Use 'em when they're up, Boot 'em when they're down. Use 'em when they're up, Boot 'em when they're down. Kick 'em where they sit, Kick 'em all around. Dirty little disk packs, Dirty little drives, We got our fingers in ev'rybody's pies, We love to shut you down (first prize), We love Unix quandries. We can do the innuendo, We can dance and sing. When it's all over we haven't Told you a thing. We all know 'bout rebooting, Give us Unix quandries. Use 'em when they're up, Boot 'em when they're down. Use 'em when they're up, Boot 'em when they're down. Use 'em when they're up, Boot 'em when they're down. Use 'em when they're up, Kick 'em all around. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Unix Wizard Original : Pinball Wizard Group : The Who Author : Jamie Mason Additions by Wayne Throop <...!mcnc!aurgate!throop> Intro : I also found this thing which I sorta wrote this summer. This is dedicated to all those weary Unix hacks who spend their entire waking lives stuffing /dev/tty??'s clist so that processes have something to read. :-) [JM] It seems to me this can be improved quite a bit, to make it scan better with the score, and such. "I have a modest example here." [WT] Song : Unix Wizard Ever since I heard of Unix I've always had a ball, From SunOS to Minix I must have run 'em all But I ain't seen nothing like him On systems large or small That tired, squinting, blind kid Sure makes a mean sys call! He sits like a statue, Becomes part of the machine, Feeling all the limits, Knows what the signals mean Hacks by intuition His process never stalls, That tired, squinting blind kid Sure makes a mean sys call! He a Unix Wizard, I just can't get the gist A Unix wizard's Got such a mental twist How do you think he does it? I don't know! What makes him so good? Ain't got no distractions Don't hear no beeps or bells Don't see no lights a flashin' Ignores his sense of smell Patches running kernels Dumps no core at all, That tired, squinting and blind kid Sure makes a mean sys call! I thought I was The process table king, But I just handed My root password to him. Even on my favorite boxen, His hacks can beat my best. The network leads him in, And he just does the rest. He's got crazy Finger servers Never will seg-fault... That tired, squinting blind kid Sure makes a mean sys call! @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : VAX Raphosdy Original : Bohemian Rhapsody Group : Queen Author : Russell Street Intro : Song : VAX Raphosdy ------------ Is this the real login:? Is it a trap? Caught on a terminal No escape from the committee Open your mail Look up to the skies And see... I'm just a poor hacker, I need no sympathy Because I'm easy come, easy go Little high, little low Hit me where the wind blows, Doesn't really matter to me, to me Momma, just killed a VAX Type a command into the shell, Hit RETURN, now it's dead Momma, my account had just begun And now I've gone and thrown it all away Momma, didn't mean to make you crash If I'm not back on this time tomorrow Hack on, hack on as if nothing really matters Too late -- my time has come Sent shivers down my spine Bodies aching all the time Goodbye everybody, I've got to go Got to leave you all behind and face the truth Momma, (every way the wind blows) I don't wanna kicked off, I sometimes wish I'd never logged on at all ... @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Waiting for The Sun Original : Waiting for The Sun Group : The Doors Author : Jamie Mason Intro : This one is dedicated to all you folks who have inadequate, slow computing facilties. (We don't! We just got an upgrade! :-) Song : Waiting for the Sun (by Jamie Mason, to the Doors tune of the same name) ------------------- At first flash of daylight, We're still hacking in C. Sitting there Bashing one last Bug Waiting for the Sun, Waiting for the Sun, Waiting for the Sun. Can't you feel it, Now that work is due, That it's time to Fight for some CPU Waiting for the Sun, Waiting for the Sun, Waiting for the Sun. Waiting for the Sun. Waiting... Waiting... Waiting... Waiting... Waiting... Waiting... Waiting... Waiting... Waiting for Make is Such a bore. Waiting for a.out to Stop dumping core... Waiting for some cycles All day long. Waiting for adb to tell me what went wrong. This is the strangest Bug I've ever known. Can't you feel it, Now that work is due, That it's time to fight For some CPU Waiting for the Sun, Waiting for the Sun, Waiting for the Sun. Waiting for the Sun. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : The Wall 2 Original : The Wall Group : Pink Floyd Author : Nathan Torkington Intro : Song : "Another User in the Wall Part 1" Root has flown across the ocean Leaving just a memory Coredumps from /bin ls Root, what else did you leave for me? Root, what'd'ja leave behind for me?! All in all, you were just a pain in the ass, All in all, we are all just pains in the ass. "Another Brick in the Wall part 2" {\lead} We don't need no pull-down-menus We don't need no rescaled fonts No dark icons in the corner Hackers, leave those Macs alone. Hey! Hackers! Leave them Macs alone! All in all it's just another WIMP up for sale All in all you're just another WIMP up for the sale. {\kids} We don't need no fancy windows We don't need no title bars No MultiFinder in the startup Hackers leave them Macs alone Hey! Hackers! Leave them Macs alone! All in all it's just another WIMP up for sale All in all you're just another WIMP up for sale. {\guitar} "Another Brick In the Wall Part 3" I don't need no mice around me And I don't need no fonts to calm me. I have seen the writing on the wall. Don't think I need any WIMP at all. No! Don't think I need any WIMP at all. No! Don't think I'll need any WIMP at all. All in all it was all just bricks in the wall. All in all you were all just bricks in the wall. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : What is a Hacker? Original : What is a DJ? Group : Spike Jones Author : Russell Street Intro : [longish - sth] Sometime ago I recorded from a radio programme a Spike Jones recording "What is a DJ?". I think it was recorded in the 50's -- it includes a reference to televison advertising stealing from radio. It has only recently occured to me that it is perfect for adapting to describe the "hacker". Above is my first attempt to do this, along with the original (below) Unfortunately I can not find out who actually wrote it or when. The only information that the announcer gave was that it was a Spike Jones recording, and it was only released once. I have only changed the words to suit computer ideas, keeping with the original flow, patterns and concepts. Any suggestions this could improve this are welcomed. The original recording has some organ music that flows with and emphasis the way it is read. It is difficult to reproduce this in text. Most of this is to do with the speed at which it is spoken. The original: What is a DJ? ------------- Between the commercialism of the sponsor, and the innocence of the radio audience we find a delightful creature called the Disc Jockey. Disc Jockeys come in assorted sizes, weights and colours. But all disc Jockeys have the same creed: to fill every minute of every hour of every day with records and commercials. And to protest with noise, their only weapon, when the last programme has finished and the radio sponsor switches his interest to television. Disc Jockeys are found everywhere -- radio stations, golf courses, advertising agencies, underneath, inside of, climbing on, swinging from, running away to, on top of **OLD SMOKY**. Mothers ignore them, little girls don't understand them, older sisters tolerate them, adults HA! Heaven and the advertising agencies protect them. A disc jockey is truth with a script in his hand, beauty with a bloodshot voice, wisdom with a cut of the profits, and the hope of the sponsor with a frog in his throat. When you are busy a disc jockey is a inconsiderate, bothersome, intruding jangle of noise. When you want him to play a beautiful melodic record his brain turns to jelly. Or else he becomes a savage sadistic jungle creature bent on destroying his Hooper rating and himself with a brass band playing into an echo chamber. A disc jockey is a composite. He has the brain of an adding machine, the ulcers of a banker, the persistency of an auctioneer, the diction of a train announcer, the subtlety of a meat cleaver, and when he has to put a record on the turn-table by himself he has five thumbs on each hand! He likes free albums, swimming pools, Dixieland records, cadallics, money, sponsors (in their natural habitat), free passes and the girl-across-the-street. He is not much for music, song sloggers, other disc Jockeys, the sales department, engineers, and the girl-across-the-street's husband. Nobody else is so early to rise or to late to supper. Nobody else gets so much fun out of old joke books, loud records, fan mail and females. Nobody else can cram into one half hour so many commercials about soap, falling hair, toothpaste, deodorant, non-skid tyres and a large chunk of unknown substance. A disc jockey is a magical creature. You can turn him off your radio but you can't turn him off your neighbour's radio. You can get him out of your mind, but you can't get him out of the air. He's a bleary-eyed, syrup-voiced, fast-talking, bundle of noise. But, when you wake up in the morning with only the shattered pieces of your sleep and dreams he can make you wish you'd never been born with the two magic words: GOOD MORNING! Song : What is a Hacker? (version 1.01) ----------------- Adapted by Russell Street (russells@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz) Between the commericalism of the MSIS department, and the innocence of the Real User we find a delightful creature called the Computer Hacker. Hackers come in assorted sizes, weights and colours. But all hackers have the same creed: to fill every byte of every disk of every machine with source code and old news. And to protest with flames, their only weapon, when the last process is KILLed and the computer centre switches to a "better" computer. Hackers are found everywhere -- univerities, colleges, corporations, underneath, inside of, climbing on, swinging from, running away to, on top of **VAXen**. Management ignores them, secretaries don't understand them, Customer Support tolerate them, administrators HA! Heaven and the greatful user protect them. A hacker is intelligence with a head ache, elegance with a core dump, daring with a secure backup, and the hope of the admin with the root password. When you are busy a hacker is a inconsiderate, bothersome, intruding, resource hogging process. When you want him to solve your problem his brain turns to jelly. Or else he becomes a savage sadistic jungle creature bent on destroying his reputation and your data with a misplaced 'rm -r'. A hacker is a composite. He has the brain of a adding machine, the stealth of a thief, the percistancy of a tiger, the resourcefulness of cracker, the subtetly of a meat cleaver. And when he has to put a tape in a drive by himself he has five thumbs on each hand! He likes USENET access, e-mail, source code, nethack, money, admins (in their natural habitat), free accounts and the new-girl-in-the-operator's-room. He is not much for paper work, code grinders, other hackers on his machine, the MSIS department, dummy money, and the new-girl-in-the-operator's-room's husband. Nobody else is so late to rise or to late to supper. Nobody else gets so much fun out of old news files, loud records, junk food and females. Nobody else can cram into one half hour so many requests for restores, bulk chowning, increased disk space, more processer time, faster CPUs and a large chunk of unknown substance. A hacker is a magical creature. You can kick him off your terminal but you can't kick him off your neighbour's terminal. You can get him out of your mind, but you can't get him out of the batch queue. He's a bleary-eyed, syrup-voiced, fast-talking, bundle of keystrokes. But, when you are editing, with only the shattered pieces of working code backed up, he can make you wish you'd saved sooner with the two magic words: SYSTEM CRASH! @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : When I was a lad Original : When I was a Lad Group : Gilbert and Sullivan Author : Tony Duell Intro : Song : When I was a lad I served a term As office boy in a computer firm. I cleared the bugs out, and I got to grips With polishing the silicon on all their chips. [With polishing the silicon on all their chips.] I polished up that silicon so carefully That now I am responsible for Phoenix 3. [He polished up that silicon so carefully That now he is responsible for Phoenix 3.] At cleaning chips I made such a name That a drinks pro-grammer I soon became: I mixed soup, cola and some fizzy tea, And when the program ran it cost 8p. [And when...] The users so enjoyed this Most Vile Tea That now I am responsible for Phoenix 3. [The users...] At making drinks I acquired such a knack That at operatorship I had a crack: I did the crossword, read about foot-ball And never tried unloading Printer 3 at all. [And never...] I tore off output sheets so carelessly That now I am responsible for Phoenix 3. [He tore...] The users often saw me every day, So I took on the job of a P.A. I told the beginners of GCAL and ZED, Or phoned up experts for their views instead. [Or phoned...] I passed the buck along so frequently That now I am responsible for Phoenix 3. [He passed...] I worked so hard that I required a rest, And so they got me dealing with SUGGEST: I took three months off, turned the users sour By claiming that I was a shortage of manpower. [By claiming...] I took a year off, did the C.S.T. To learn enough to work on Phoenix 3. [He took...] At user-friendliness I'd made such a mess, They got me working hard on MVS: I made commands obscure and twice as long, And changed the syntax so most jobs went wrong. [And changed...] I made such trouble they upgraded me By making me responsible for Phoenix 3. [He made...] Now hackers all, whoever you may be, If you want to do things faster than Queue D, If your eyes are forever glued to VDUs, Then leave the rat race and its four job queues: [Then leave...] Keep clear of machines, IBM or BBC, And you may get the blame for parts of Phoenix 3! [Keep clear...] @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : When you try to get work from the data network Original : The Nightmare Song (When you're lying awake) Group : Gilbert & Sullivan Author : ? (First seen at Cambridge, England) Intro : Song : When you try to get work from the Data Net-work, and you're tapping the keys with impatience, It will say it's congested, your code stays untested, all users are waiting for sessions. For with C.I.P. errors and similar terrors the C.U.D.N. tries to thwart you And you hit RETURN thrice and ask friends for advice - for again the new system has caught you, As your password is typed out before it is wiped out (by hitting the button marked CLEAR SCREEN), And you hit CONTROL/P C and try to get busy at trying to conquer the machine! Then the system expires and you pull out the wires and you find that the VDU's broken, Get another one near, then walk out with a jeer for by now it won't let any folk on! Well at last it permits you to log on and hits you, you join all the users in weeping, For your session's such pain, and there's so little gain that you'd very much better be sleeping! For you find your UPDATEing a file, and you're waiting five minutes for ZED to acknowledge, While the user next door throws a fit on the floor and runs screaming back home to his college; And you're typing ahead as you're waiting for ZED, then refile to a file that is GUARDed, But forgot to say YES and you're now in a mess, as you think the result's been discarded; Then you try to use RUN and it's really no fun, for the scheduler's not very clever, And you're job's in queue D and you really can't see if it's likely to run now, or ever. Well you try once again and it runs right as rain, so you have a quick look with COLLECTREAD: The results of your look - "Standard Fixup" was took - IBM's guess not what you expect/need! Fortran IV you reject, as you're program's all wrecked, so you dump all your files TLS-wise, But the filename's too long, ARCHIVE always goes wrong, and you're finding it's too much now, stress-wise! So at INFO.NEW you look, feeling quite blue, and you find that the CS has faltered: All the keywords changed round, and you don't like the sound for the language is terribly altered: For it's IBM-ese, wasn't written to please, though amuses the people who wrote it, Each command a long word, of the like never heard, some anomalies that you've just noted. From your work you now rest, see INFO.SUGGEST, which no-body has looked at for ages, So you try SUGGEST-FILE, and ironically smile, which is better than yielding to rages! Now with PRINTOUT you fail, it is lost in the mail, and your hair you are frantically tearing, POST and ROUTE get ignored, once again you've been floored! You log off with a shudder despairing... You are worn out and tired, feel the chief should be fired, For he won't sympathise, to use PHX never tries, And you're angry and cross, with the time that is loss, With a pain in you brain, swear "no more!" (all in vain!) For your session's a waste, never more should be faced, And you're nerves are all frayed, and your output's mislayed, You can't fix it today, the adviser's away, And you haven't been lying in clover: But the session is past, and it's teatime at last, And the torment's been long, ditto ditto my song, And thank goodness they're both of them over! @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : The Worm before Christmas Original : The Night Before Christmas Group : ? Author : Received in a mailfile on Cornell's computer network. (Copied from m-net, Ann Arbor, MI) Intro : Song : THE WORM BEFORE CHRISTMAS Twas the night before finals and all through the lab Not a student was sleeping, not even McNabb. Their projects were finished, completed with care In hopes that the grades would be easy (and fair). The students were wired with caffeine in their veins While visions of quals nearly drove them insane. With piles of books and a brand-new highlighter, I had just settled down for another all-nighter -- When out from our gateways arose such a clatter, I sprang from my desk to see what was the matter Away to the console I flew like a flash And logged on as root to fend off a crash The windows displayed on my brand new Sun-3 Gave oodles of info -- some in 3-D. When, what to my burning red eyes should appear But dozens of "nobody" jobs. Oh dear! With a blitzkrieg invasion, so virulent and firm, I knew in a moment. It was Morris's Worm! More rapid than eagles his processes came And they forked and exec'd and they copied by name! "Now Dasher! Now Dancer! Now, Prancer and Vixen! On Comet! On Cupid! On Donner and Blitzen! To the sites in .rhosts and host.eqi Now, dash away! dash away! dash away all!" [ Note: the machines dasher.cs.uiuc.edu, dancer.cs.uiuc.edu, prancer.cs.uiuc.edu, etc., have been renamed deer1, deer2, deer3, etc., so as not to confuse the already burdened students who use those machines. We regret that this poem reflects the older naming scheme and hope it does not confuse the network administrator at your site. -Ed. ] And then in a twinkling, I heard on the phone, The complaints of the users (thought I was alone!) "The load is too high!" "I can't read my files!" "I can't send my mail over miles and miles!" I unplugged the net, and was turning around, When the worm-ridden system went down with a bound. I frettedI fritteredI sweatedI wept. Then finally I core dumped the worm in /tmp. It was smart and pervasive, a right jolly old stealth, And I laughed when I saw it, in spite of myself. A look at the dump of that invasive thread Soon gave me to know we had nothing to dread. The next day was slow with no network connections For we wanted no more of those pesky infections. But in spite of the news and the noise and the clatter Soon all became normal, as if naught were the matter. Then later that month, while all were away, A virus came calling, and then went away. The system then told us, when we logged in one night: "Happy Christmas to all! (You guys aren't so bright.)" @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Write in C Original : Let it Be Group : Beatles Author : Intro : Song : Write in C When I find my code in tons of trouble, Friends and colleagues come to me, Speaking words of wisdom: "Write in C." As the deadline fast approaches, And bugs are all that I can see, Somewhere, someone whispers: "Write in C." Write in C, Write in C, Write in C, oh, Write in C. LOGO's dead and buried, Write in C. I used to write a lot of FORTRAN, For science it worked flawlessly. Try using it for graphics! Write in C. If you've just spent nearly 30 hours Debugging some assembly, Soon you will be glad to Write in C. Write in C, Write in C, Write in C, yeah, Write in C. Only wimps use BASIC. Write in C. Write in C, Write in C Write in C, oh, Write in C. Pascal won't quite cut it. Write in C. Write in C, Write in C, Write in C, yeah, Write in C. Don't even mention COBOL. Write in C. (and what about C++ ?) @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Title : Yellow Subroutine Original : Yellow Submarine Group : The Beatles Author : adrian@milton.u.washington.edu Intro : Song : Yellow Subroutine "In the town where I was born, Lived a man, who played with 'C'. And he coded his whole life On a stack of Function Keys. So we traced to his data schemes, Til we found a 'C' routine.. And we lived beneath the SAVES, In our yellow Sub-Routine... Chorus: WE ALL live in A YELLOW SUB-ROUTINE, YELLOW SUB-ROUTINE, YELLOW SUB-ROUTINE .... (ETC) When our friends are on the boards, Many MODEMS RETURN NEXT:FOR Then the BAUD RATE goes astray... (B-B-BEEP, BEEP BEEP B-B-BEEP..) Chorus (IF YOU CAN STAND IT!) As we live in Memories Every one of us Returns Linefeeds... CPU and 'C' Routine, In our yellow SUB-Routine...