On 2024-12-01, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

... I came across a T-shirt which read

C:DOS.
C:DOS:RUN.
RUN:DOS:RUN.
RUN:RUN:RUN.

What’s your earliest example of geek humour?

Fortune files from Unix and the Geek Code.

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What’s your earliest example of geek humour?

Das Blinkenlights which I saw in the 1960s but it's older than that.

--
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

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anthk <anthk@openbsd.home> writes:

On 2024-12-01, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

... I came across a T-shirt which read

C:DOS.
C:DOS:RUN.
RUN:DOS:RUN.
RUN:RUN:RUN.

What's your earliest example of geek humour?

Fortune files from Unix and the Geek Code.

The original FORTUNE program was created at SAIL, on their multi-processor PDP-10 system.

The fortunes were typed in by hand from cookies collected at as many Bay Area Chinese restaurants as could possibly be visited by a cadre of graduate students
in the course of a summer.

I have this on the authority of one of those grad students, for whom I worked when I first went to Stanford a decade later and with whom I still work as a contract programmer at a well known PDP-10 manufacturer.

--
Rich Alderson news@alderson.users.panix.com
Audendum est, et veritas investiganda; quam etiamsi non assequamur,
omnino tamen proprius, quam nunc sumus, ad eam perveniemus.
--Galen

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Reply-To: slp53@pacbell.net

anthk <anthk@openbsd.home> writes:

On 2024-12-01, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

... I came across a T-shirt which read

C:DOS.
C:DOS:RUN.
RUN:DOS:RUN.
RUN:RUN:RUN.

What’s your earliest example of geek humour?

Fortune files from Unix and the Geek Code.

Lists of fake instruction mnemonics in the mainframe
days. E.g. HCF - Halt and Catch Fire, PD - Punch Disk,
PO - Punch Operator, etc.

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On 7/6/25 18:14, Rich Alderson wrote:

anthk <anthk@openbsd.home> writes:

On 2024-12-01, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

... I came across a T-shirt which read

C:DOS.
C:DOS:RUN.
RUN:DOS:RUN.
RUN:RUN:RUN.

What's your earliest example of geek humour?

Fortune files from Unix and the Geek Code.

The original FORTUNE program was created at SAIL, on their multi-processor PDP-10 system.

The fortunes were typed in by hand from cookies collected at as many Bay Area Chinese restaurants as could possibly be visited by a cadre of graduate students
in the course of a summer.

I'm sure it was a big sacrifice, but they took one for the team.

I have this on the authority of one of those grad students, for whom I worked when I first went to Stanford a decade later and with whom I still work as a contract programmer at a well known PDP-10 manufacturer.

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On 2025-07-07, Peter Flass <Peter@Iron-Spring.com> wrote:

On 7/6/25 18:14, Rich Alderson wrote:

anthk <anthk@openbsd.home> writes:

On 2024-12-01, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

... I came across a T-shirt which read

C:DOS.
C:DOS:RUN.
RUN:DOS:RUN.
RUN:RUN:RUN.

What's your earliest example of geek humour?

$ make love
Don't know how to make love. Stop.

Apparently someone came up with a version of make
that would reply "Not war?"

Fortune files from Unix and the Geek Code.

The original FORTUNE program was created at SAIL, on their multi-processor >> PDP-10 system.

The fortunes were typed in by hand from cookies collected at as many
Bay Area Chinese restaurants as could possibly be visited by a cadre
of graduate students in the course of a summer.

I'm sure it was a big sacrifice, but they took one for the team.

At a PPOE I got my hands on a fortune file that gave me a random
Woody Allen quote every time I logged in.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Growth for the sake of
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | growth is the ideology
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | of the cancer cell.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Edward Abbey

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On Tue, 08 Jul 2025 09:43:00 +0000, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

Apparently someone came up with a version of make that would reply "Not
war?"

TOPS-10 had a MAKE command. It was used to invoke TECO to create a new
file.

It did that.

--
Using UNIX since v6 (1975)...

Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

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On Tue, 08 Jul 2025 09:43:00 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

Apparently someone came up with a version of make
that would reply "Not war?"

That was TECO. The MAKE command created a new file, whereas the TECO
command was for editing a new file.

I.e. nothing to do with the *nix “make” command, which was an alien concept to DEC systems anyway.

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On Tue, 08 Jul 2025 09:43:00 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

Apparently someone came up with a version of make that would reply "Not
war?"

Easy enough to do that in a Makefile:

love:
@echo not war\?

PHONY: love

(Having to declare “love” as a “PHONY” target might grate for some ....)

Guess what this one does:

me :
@if [ "$$(whoami)" != "root" ] ; then echo -n 'What?'; fi

a :
@if [ "$$(whoami)" != "root" ] ; then echo -n ' Make it'; fi

sandwich :
@if [ "$$(whoami)" != "root" ] ; then echo ' yourself!'; else echo Okay.; fi

.PHONY : me a sandwich

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