Treczoks

Do you have to break your fingers, too, to switch them off?

In case you young whippersnappers have no clue what is so special about September:

Back then, the internet (and usenet, bitnet, talk) community had been nearly 100% academic. No idiots, no stupid loudmouths, no antivax moms, no politicians. Each September was an inflow of new students accessing the net for the first time, and it was up to the existing population to educate the newbies on things like netiquette and overall good behavior. People learned to use free and open services without abusing them. Back then, those newbies were usually quick to learn, so any problem arising from people who might cause issues usually was over within a few weeks.

Then, The Flood came. The Eternal September began. The time where AOL disks were so common that people used them as coasters. The Internet and all the services on it never were the same again. The existing netizens were no longer capable to educate new users on proper, civilized behavior, and usenet posts solely consisting of text like “me too” became common. It went downhill from there. Formerly open services closed up because of unmitigated abuse. One day, even lawyers invaded the net, people despicable things like Sanford Wallace, for example. You newbies today cannot imagine a time like it was before criminals like him invaded this space.

Whoever invents sich a thing simply underestimates the target groups’ ability to analyzes this and in a not-so-far future will filter such things out.

Back in Ye Olden Days, we probably had the first web interface to order pizza. “We” had been a long-established computer nerd meeting, and this pizza service that normally was closed on Sundays actually opened just for us on that weekend just for the occasion. We had an internal web page to order and organize orders of pizza. But of course, the order did not go out electronically - when our web app saw the need to place the order, is simply sent a fax ;-)

I remember a scene of such a crime movie that was at least funny for people used to computers and progrmmers.

The (old and seasoned) detectives were brought in contact with the new “cyber unit” of the police. Stored away in an otherwise empty office floor somewhere, they were the absolute movie style hackers: cluttered desks, sloppy outfit, beards. The old detectives were quite reluctant to work with those young “computer people” and had a lot of prejudices. Then, one of the detectives found a big red button on the desk and said “I wonder what happens when I press this button” - and presses it. And the “cyber guys”: “DON’T!”. The detective mocks them, and presses the button several times before he asks what the button actually does. Cyber guy: “That is our ‘order pizza’ button! I hope you’ve got enough money to pay for this…”. Cut. Next scene: They are all eating pizza together from a desk-high stack of pizza boxes.

Running “top” is also some common thing.

So, when I got a bunch of free serial WYSE terminals ages ago, I propped them up on the shelf, daisy-chained them, wrote a wrapper to be able to address all four screens through one UART, and had them display (and regularly update) system stats. Just because.

Put all the data in the cloud, they said. It will all be save and handled by professionals!