Another Early Unix Story

[Jim]

Once in a while I'll read the ancient history in the Jargon file.  My 
favorite is the story of the system support staff at Motorola 
discovering a way to crack system security on the Xerox CP-V timesharing 
system.

Go here then scroll down until you see Xerox CP-V.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/meaning-of-hack.html

Richard Wilson wrote:
> One of my personal favorites concerns the guys at AT&T who decided to
> put some error messages in the original kernel code in Latin... if you
> ever saw one it was bad news because they were all of a "you should
> NEVER see this error" nature.  A friend who knew Latin got a call from
> someone who was trying to port Unix to a Burroughs Mainframe (don't ask
> me why!) and he had gotten the following error message before the system
> crashed hard:
> 
> Ecce! Hodie natus est pro geminus Radicus!
> 
> The translation: "Behold! Unto us is born a twin to Root!"
> 
> It has made me stop and think about what to put into those error
> messages "that will never be seen...".  They will be seen...
> 
> The Latin error messages are now (appropriately) ancient history.


-- 


"That income tax you know it's nothing more than legal robbery"
Sidney "Pa" Larkin

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