🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <43...@brazos.Rice.edu> pre...@titan.rice.edu (Preston Briggs) writes:
>
>I saw a take-off of Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaraunt" posted
>a couple of years ago.  It was called "Alice's PDP-10".
>Anybody out there have it?

There's actually two of them (that I know of): "MIT's AI Lab", and then
"Alice's PDP-10", which was a takeoff on the former.  They're both
included below.

I wrote one called "Alice's ECN" about the Purdue Engineering Computer
Network after seeing these two; I haven't included it, since unless
you worked there in 1984 it wouldn't make much sense to you.  If
there's enough interest though, I can dig it up... the second part is
all lots of fun System V bashing...

Dave Curry

==============================================================================

You can get anything you want at a Chinese Restaurant
 (exceptin a hamburger) ....

	  Chris Stacy, Alan Wecsler, and Noel Chiappa

	This song is called "MIT's AI Lab".  It's about MIT and
the AI Lab, but "MIT's AI Lab" is not the name of the lab, that's
just the name of the song.  That's why I call the song "MIT's AI
Lab."

	Now it all started two full dumps ago, on Thanksgiving,
when my friend and I went up to visit the hackers at AI lab on
the ninth floor.  But the hackers don't always live on the ninth
floor, they just go there to use these complex order code stack
machines they call Lisp Machines.

	And using a special purpose processor like that, they got
a lot of room upstairs where DDT used to be, and havin' all that
ROOM they decided that they didn't have to collect any garbage
for a long time.

	We JFCLed up here and found all the garbage in there and
we decided that it'd be a friendly gesture for us to take all the
garbage down to the system dump.

	So we took the half-a-meg of garbage, put it in the back
of a red ECL Multibus, took subrs and hacks and implementations
of defstruction, and headed on toward the system dump.

	Well, we got there and there was a big pop up window and
a write protect across the dump sayin', "This Garbage Collecter
Under Development on Thanksgiving," and we'd never heard of a
garbage collector NOP'd out on Thanksgiving before, and with
tears in our eyes, we CDR'd off into the sunset lookin' for
another place to put the garbage.

	We didn't find one 'til we came to a side area, and off
the side of the side area was three hundred megabyte disk, and in
the middle of the disk was another heap of garbage.  And we
decided that one big heap was better than two little heaps, and
rather than page that one in, we decided to write ours out.
That's what we did.

	Branched back to the Lisp Listener, had a Chinese
Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat, went to
SI:PROCESS-WAIT SLEEP, and didn't get up until the next quantum,
when we got a funcall from Mr. Greenblatt.  He said, "Kid, we
found your name on a cons at the bottom of a half-a-meg of
garbage and I just wanted to know if you had any information
about it".

	And I said, "Yes sir, Mr.  Greenblatt, I cannot tell a
lie.  I put that structure under that garbage."  After speakin'
to Greenblatt for about forty-five million clock ticks on the
telnet stream, we finally arrived at the truth of the matter and
he said that we had to go down and link up the garbage, and also
had to go down and speak to him at the Lisp Machine Factory.  So
we got in the red ECL Multibus with the subrs and hacks and
implementations of defstruction and headed on toward the Lisp
Machine Factory.

	Now, friends, there was only one of two things that
Greenblatt could've done at the Lisp Machine Factory, and the
first was that he could've given us another 64K board for bein'
so brave and honest on BUG-LISPM (which wasn't very likely, and
we didn't expect it), and the other thing was that he could've
flamed at us and told us never to be seen BLTing garbage around
in the vicinity again, which is what we expected.

	But when we got to the Lisp Machine Factory, there was a
third COND-clause that we hadn't even counted upon, and we was
both immediately Process-Arrested, Deexposed, and I said,
"Greenblatt, I can't GC up the garbage with these here
ARREST-REASONS on".  He said: "Output-Hold, kid, and get in the
back of the Control CAR."  ...And that's what we did...sat in the
back of the Control CAR, and drove to the sharpsign quote open
scene-of-the-crime close.

	I wanna tell you 'bout the town of Cambridge,
Massachusetts, where this is happenin'.  They got seven hunnert
stop signs, no turn on red, and two campus police CARs, but when
we got to the sharpsign-quote-open scene-of-the-crime close,
there was five Lisp Machine hackers and three scope carts, bein'
the biggest hack of the last ten years and everybody wanted to
get in the HUMAN-NETS story about it.

	And they was usin' up all kinds of digital equipment that
they had hangin' around the Lisp Machine Factory.  They was
takin' backtraces, stack traces, plastic wire wraps, blueprints,
and microcode loads...  And they made seventeen 1K-by-32 pixel
multi-flavored windows with turds and arrows and a scroll bar on
the side of each one with documentation panes explainin' what
each one was, to be used as evidence against us.

.....Took pictures of the labels, blinkers, the cursors, the pop
up notification windows, the upper right corner, the lower left
corner.....and that's not to mention the XGP'd screen images!

	After the ordeal, we went back to the Factory. Greenblatt
said he was gonna locate us in a cell.  He said:  "Kid, I'm gonna
INTERN you in a cell.  I want your manual and your mouse."

	I said, "Greenblatt, I can understand your wantin' my
manual, so I don't have any documentation about the cell, but
what do you want my mouse for?"  and he said, "Kid, we don't want
any window system problems". I said, "Greenblatt, did you think I
was gonna deexpose myself for litterin'?"

	Greenblatt said he was makin' sure, and, friends,
Greenblatt was, 'cause he took out the left Meta-key so I
couldn't double bucky the rubout and cold-boot, and he took out
the Inspector so I couldn't click-left on Modify, set the
PROCESS-WARM-BOOT-ACTION on the window, *THROW around the
UNWIND-PROTECT and have an escape.  Greenblatt was makin' sure.

	It was about four or five hours later that Moon---
(remember Moon? This here's not a song about Moon)--- Moon came
by and, with a few nasty sends to Greenblatt on the side, bailed
us out of core, and we went up to the Loft, had another Chinese
dinner that couldn't be beat, and didn't get up until the next
evening, when we all had to go to court.

	We walked in, sat down, Greenblatt came in with the
seventeen 1K-by-32 pixel multi-flavored windows with turds and
arrows and documentation panes, sat down.

	McMahon came in, said, "All rise!"  We all stood up, and
Greenblatt stood up with the seventeen 1K-by-32 pixel
multi-flavored windows with turds and arrows and documentation
panes, and the judge walked in, with an LA36, and he sat down.
We sat down.

	Greenblatt looked at the LA36...  then at the seventeen
multi flavored windows with the turds and arrows and
documentation panes... and looked at the LA36...  and then at the
seventeen 1K-by-32 pixel multi-flavored windows with turds and
arrows and documentation panes, and began to cry.

	Because Greenblatt came to the realization that it was a
typical case of LCS state-of-the-art technology, and there wasn't
nothin' he could do about it, and the judge wasn't gonna look at
the seventeen 1K-by-32 pixel multi-flavored windows with turds
and arrows and documentation panes, explainin' what each one was,
to be used as evidence against us.

	And we was fined fifty zorkmids and had to rebuild the
world load...in the snow.


	But that's not what I'm here to tell you about.
	I'm here to talk about the Lab.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

	They got a buildin' down in Cambridge called Technology
Square, where you walk in, you get your windows Inspected,
detected, neglected and Selected!

	I went down and got my interview one day, and I walked
in, sat down (slept on the beanbag in 926 the night before, so I
looked and felt my best when I went in that morning, 'cause I
wanted to look like the All-American High School Tourist from
Sunnyvale.  I wanted to feel like.....  I wanted to BE the
All-American Kid from Sunnyvale), and I walked in, sat down, I
was gunned down, brung down, locked out and all kinds of mean,
nasty, ugly things.

	And I walked in, I sat down, KAREN gave me a piece of
paper that said:  "Kid, see the CLU hackers on XX."

	I went up there, I said, "Eliot, I wanna lose.  I wanna
lose! I wanna see hacks and kludges and unbound variables and
cruft in my code!  Eat dead power supplies with cables between my
teeth!  I mean lose!  lose!  lose!"

	And I started jumpin' up and down, yellin' "LOSE!  LOSE!
LOSE!" and Stallman walked in and started jumpin' up and down
with me, and we was both jumpin' up and down, yellin', "LOSE!
LOSE!  LOSE!  LOSE!!"  and some professor came over, gave me a
6-3 degree, sent me down the hall, said, "You're our
distinguished lecturer."  Didn't feel too good about it.

	Proceeded down the infinite corridor, gettin' more
inspections, rejections (this IS MIT), detections, neglections,
and all kinds of stuff that they was doin' to me there, and I was
there for two years...  three years...  four years...  I was
there for a long time goin' through all kinds of mean, nasty,
kludgy things, and I was havin' a tough time there, and they was
inspectin', injectin', every single part of me, and they was
leavin' no part unbound!

----------------------------------------------------------------------

	Proceeded through, and I finally came to see the very
last man. I walked in, sat down, after a whole big thing there.
I walked up, and he said, "Kid, we only got one question:  Have
you ever been arrested"?

	And I proceeded to tell him the story of the half-a-meg
of garbage with full orchestration and five-part harmony and
stuff like that, and other phenomenon.

	He stopped me right there and said, "Kid, have you ever
been to court"? And I proceeded to tell him the story of the
seventeen 1K-by-32 pixel multi-flavored windows with turds and
arrows and documentation panes...

	He stopped me right there and said, "Kid, I want you to
go over and sit down on that bench that says 'LISP Machine
Group'...  NOW, KID!"

	And I walked over to the bench there, and there's...  The
LISP Machine Group is where they put you if you may not be moral
enough to join Symbolics after creatin' your special form.

	There was all kinds of mean, nasty, ugly-lookin' people
on the bench there ...  there was Microcoders, DPL hackers, File
System hackers, and Window System Hackers!!  Window System
hackers sittin' right there on the bench next to me!  And the
meanest, ugliest, nastiest one...  the kludgiest Window System
hacker of them all...  was comin' over to me, and he was mean and
ugly and nasty and horrible and all kinds of things, and he sat
down next to me.  He said, "Kid, you get a new copy of the
sources?"  I said, "I didn't get nothin'.  I had to rebuild the
world load."

	He said, "What were you arrested for, kid?"  and I said,
"Littering..."  And they all moved away from me on the bench
there, with the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean, nasty
things, 'til I said, "And making gratuitous modifications to
LMIO; sources..."  And they all came back, shook my hand, and we
had a great time on the bench talkin' about microcoding, DPL
designing, file-system hacking, .....  and all kinds of groovy
things that we was talkin' about on the bench, and everything was
fine.

	We was drinking Coke smoking all kinds of things, until
the RA came over, had some paper in his hand, held it up and
said:

"KIDS-THIS-EXAM-S-GOT-FOURTY-SEVEN-WORDS-THIRTY-SEVEN-MULTIPLE-
CHOICE-QUESTIONS-FIFTY-EIGHT-WORDS-WE-WANT-TO-KNOW-THE-DETAILS-
OF-THE-HACK-THE-TIME-OF-THE-HACK-AND-ANY-OTHER-KIND-OF-THING-YOU-
GOT-TO-SAY-PERTAINING-TO-AND-ABOUT-THE-HACK-ANY-OTHER-KIND-OF-
THING-YOU-GOT-TO-SAY-WE-WANT-TO-KNOW-THE-ARRESTED-PROCESS'-NAME-
AND-ANY-OTHER-KIND-OF-THING..."

	And he talked for forty-five minutes and nobody
understood a word that he said.  But we had fun rolling the mice
around and clickin' on the buttons.

	I filled out the special form with the four-level macro
defining macros.  Typed it in there just like it was and
everything was fine.  And I put down my keyboard, and I switched
buffers, and there ...  in the other buffer...  centered in the
other buffer...  away from everything else in the buffer...  in
parentheses, capital letters, backquotated, in 43VXMS, read the
following words:  "Kid, have you featurized yourself"?

	I went over to the RA.  Said, "Mister, you got a lot of
damned gall to ask me if I've featurized myself!  I mean, I
mean, I mean that you send, I'm sittin' here on the bench, I mean
I'm sittin' here on the Lisp Machine Group bench, 'cause you want
to know if I'm losing enough to join the Lab, burn PROMs, power
supplies, and documentation, after bein' on SF-LOVERS?"

----------------------------------------------------------------------

	He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind!
We're gonna send your user-id off to the DCA in Washington"!
And, friends, somewhere in Washington, enshrined on some little
floppy disk, is a study in ones and zeros of my brain-damaged
programming style...

----------------------------------------------------------------------

	And the only reason I'm singin' you the song now is
'cause you may know somebody in a similar situation.  Or you may
be in a similar situation, and if you're in a situation like
that, there's only one thing you can do:

[ CHORUS ]

	You  know, if one person, just one person, does it, they
may think he's really dangerous and they won't take him.

	And if two people do it, in harmony, they may think
they're both LISP hackers and they won't take either of them.

	And if three people do it!   Can you imagine three people
walkin' in, singin' a bar of "MIT's AI Lab"  and walkin' out?
They may think it's an re-implementation of the window system!

	And can you imagine fifty people a day?  I said FIFTY
people a day, walkin' in, singin' a bar of "MIT's AI Lab"  and
walkin' out?  Friends, they may think it's a MOVEMENT, and that's
what it is:  THE MIT AI LAB ANTI-LOSSAGE MOVEMENT!  And all you
gotta do to join is to sing it the next time it comes around on
the circular buffer.

	With feelin'.

You can hack anything you want
on MIT Lisp Machines
You can hack anything you want
on MIT Lisp Machines
Walk right in and begin to hack
Just push your stuff right onto the stack
You can hack anything you want
on MIT Lisp Machines

(but don't forget to fix the bug...  on MIT Lisp Machines!)

==============================================================================

;;; With thanks (and apologies) to Chris Stacy, Alan Wechsler, Noel
;;; Chiappa, Larry Allen, and of course Arlo Guthrie, and particularly
;;; to Ann Marie Finn who is a kind soul and not at all like the
;;; person portrayed herein.  --sra 3 May 85

This song is called "Alice's PDP-10".  But Alice doesn't own a PDP-10,
in fact Alice isn't even in the song.  It's just the name of the song.
That's why I called this song "Alice's PDP-10".

You see, it all started about two incompatible monitor versions ago,
about two months ago on a Tuesday, when my friend and I SUPDUP'd over
to MIT-OZ to pick up some hackers to go out for a Chinese dinner.  But
AI hackers don't live on MIT-OZ, they live on various assorted lispms
and such, and seeing as and how they never log in except via the file
server, they hadn't gotten around to doing filesystem garbage
collection for a long time.

We got over there, saw 600 pages free, 10000 pages in use on a 5 pack
PS:, and decided it would be a friendly gesture to run CHECKD for them
and try to reclaim some of that lost space.  So we reloaded the system
with the floppies and the switch registers and other implements of
destruction, and answered "Y" to RUN CHECKD?

But when we got the system up and tried to release all the lost pages
there was a loud beeping and a big message flashed up on our screen
saying:
                      PERMISSION DENIED BY ACJ

Well, we'd never heard of a version of ACJ that would let you go into
MDDT from ANONYMOUS but not run CHECKD, and so, with tears in our
eyes, we headed off over the Chaosnet looking for a filesystem with
enough free pages to write out the LOST-PAGES.BIN file.  Didn't find
one...

Until we got to XX-11, and at the other end of XX-11 was another MIT
Twenex, and in PS:<OPERATOR> on that MIT Twenex was another
LOST-PAGES.BIN file.  And we decided that one big LOST-PAGES.BIN file
was better than two little LOST-PAGES.BIN file, and rather than page
that one in we thought we'd write ours out.  So that's what we did.

Went back to OZ, found some hackers and went out for a Chinese dinner
that couldn't be beat, and didn't get up until the next morning when
we got a SEND from Ann Marie Finn.  She said, "Kid, we found you
initials in SIXBIT in the right half of a POPJ at the end of a two
megaword core dump full of garbage, just wanted to know if you had any
information about it".  And I said, "Yes ma'am Ann Marie, I cannot tell
a lie, I put that XUNAME into that halfword".

After talking back and forth with Ann for about 45 messages we arrived
at the truth of the matter and Ann said that we had to go rebuild the
bittable and we also had to come down and talk to her in room
NE43-501.  Now friends, there was only one of two things that Ann
could of done with us down at room 501, and the first one was that she
could have hired us on the spot for actually knowing enough about
Twenex to screw it up that badly, which wasn't very likely and we
didn't expect it, and the other was that she could have bawled us out
and told us never to be seen hacking filesystems again, which was what
we expected.  But when we got to room 501 we discovered that there was
a third possibility that we hadn't even counted upon, and we was both
immediately de-wheeled.  CD%DIR'ed.  And I said "Ann, I don't think I
can rebuild the bittable with this here FILES-ONLY bit set."  And she
said "XOFF, kid, get into this UDP packet" and that's what we did and
rode up to the square bracket asciz slash scene of the crime slash
close square bracket.

Now friends, I want to tell you about the ninth floor of building NE43
where this happened.  They got three KL10s, 24 LISPMs, and about 32
VAXen running 4.2 unix.  But when we got to the square bracket asciz
slash scene of the crime slash close square bracket there was five
twenex hackers past and present, this being the biggest lossage yet by
an RMS clone and everybody wanted to get in their suggestion for a new
system daemon that would have kept it from ever having happened in the
first place.  And they was using up all kinds of debugging equipment
that they had lying around on V3A SWSKIT tapes.  They were doing DSs,
MONRDs, and RSTRSHs, and they made 27000 pages of core dumps and photo
files on an RP06 with comments and -READ-.-THIS- files to be used as
evidence against us.

After the ordeal, Ann took us back downstairs and left us with the CLU
hackers.  She said "Kid, I'm gonna leave you with the CLU hackers.  I
want your jsys manual and your ROLM DTI".  I said "Ann, I can
understand your wanting my jsys manual so I won't remind the CLU
hackers of grody things like operating systems, but what do you want
my DTI for?" and she said "Kid, we don't want any VTS errors".  I said
"Ann, did you think I was going to try to crash the system for
littering?"  Ann said that she was making sure, and friends, Ann was,
'cause she cleared all my left-hand privs bits so I couldn't logout.
And she disabled the TREPLACE command so I couldn't crock in an
XCT [0] instruction, cause an illegal instruction interrupt to MEXEC,
and sneak into MDDT.  Yeah, Ann was making sure, and it was about four
or five hours later that Chiappa (remember Chiappa?  This song's never
even mentioned Chiappa) Chiappa came by and with a few gratuitous
insults to the CLU hackers bailed us out of there, and we went out and
had another Chinese dinner that couldn't be beat, and didn't get up
until the next morning when we all had to go to LCS Computational
Resources staff meeting.

We walked in, sat down.  Ann came in with the RP06 disk pack with the
27000 pages with the comments and the -READ-.-THIS- files and a two
liter coffee mug, sat down.  Esther Felix comes in says "All rise", we
stood up, Ann stood up with the 27000 page RP06 pack, and Dave Clark
comes in with an IBM PC.  He sits down, we sit down, Ann looks at the
IBM PC.  Then at the 27000 page RP06 pack, then at the IBM PC, then at
the 27000 page RP06 pack, and began to cry, because Ann had come to
the realization that it was a typical case of 36%8==4 and that there
was no way to display those last four bits, and that Dave wasn't gonna
look at the 27000 pages of core dumps and photo files on the RP06 pack
with the comments and -READ-.-THIS- files explaining what each one was
to be used as evidence against us.

And we were permanently assigned to the batch dregs queue and had to
rebuild the bittable (in the batch dregs queue).  But that's not what
I came here to talk about.  I came here to talk about DEC.

======================================================================

They got a building up there in Marlboro where you walk in and get
averted, diverted, inverted, reverted, and perverted.  I went up there
one day to pick up a new copy of the tools tape.  Drove down to Philly
for a Greatful Dead concert the night before, so I looked and felt my
best when I went in that morning.  'Cause I wanted to look like a real
live twenex hacker from MIT.  I wanted to feel like, I wanted to be a
real live twenex hacker from MIT.  I walked in and I was hung down,
brung down, hung up, and spaced out.  The receptionist hands be a
piece of paper saying "Kid, the EDIT-20 maintainers are polling user
opinions today and would like you to stop by room 604 while you're
here."

I walked in there and I said "Droids, I want to lose.  I mean, I want
to lose.  I want to see line editors on CRTs and nulls in my files.
Write 36 bit ascii that can't be read except with the monitor
filtering it.  I mean LOSE, LOSE, LOSE!"  And I started jumping up and
down yelling "LOSE, LOSE", and Kevin Paetzold came in wearing his
moose ear hat and started jumping up and down with me yelling "LOSE,
LOSE", and a DEC sales rep came over, put an arm around my shoulder,
and said "How'd you like me to show you a *real* editor that has
macros and things like that?  We have one, it's called TV...."

Didn't feel too good about it.

Proceeded on down the hall getting more diversions and perversions.
Man, I was in there for two hours, three hours, four hours, I was in
there for a long time, and they was doing all kinds of mean nasty ugly
things, and I was just having a tough time there.  They was diverting
and inverting every single part of me and they was leaving no bit
untouched.

Finally I got to the very last office (I'd been in all the rest), the
very last desk, after that whole big thing there, and I walk over and
say "what do you want?" and the man says "Kid, we only got one
question: have you ever been dewheeled?"

So I proceeded to tell him the story of the 10600 page five pack PS:
with full orchestration and five part harmony and other phenomena and
he stopped me right there and said "Kid, did you ever get hauled on
the carpet for it?"

So I proceeded to tell him about the 27000 page RP06 pack with the
comments and the -READ-.-THIS- files and he stopped me right there and
said "Kid, I want you to go sit over there on that bench marked Large
Systems SIG.  NOW, KID!"

I, I walked over to the bench there... See, the LCG group is where
they put you if they think you may not be compatible with the rest of
DEC's product line.

There was all kinds of mean nasty ugly people there on the bench...
Chaosnet designers... Lisp hackers... TECO hackers.  TECO hackers
right there on the bench with me!  And the meanest one of them, the
hairiest TECO hacker of them all was coming over to me.  And he was
mean and nasty and horrible and undocumented and all kinds of stuff.
And he sat down next to me and said:

[1:i*^Yu14<q1&377.f"nir'q1/400.u1>[8
.-z(1702117120m81869946983m8w660873337m8w1466458484m8
)+z,.f^@fx*[0:ft^]0w^\

And I said "I didn't get nothing, I had to rebuild the bittable in
queue six" and he said:

[1:i*^Yu16<q1&77.+32iq1f"l#-1/100.#-1&7777777777.'"#/100.'u1r>6c[6
.(675041640067.m6w416300715765.m6w004445675045.m6
455445440046.m6w576200535144.m6w370000000000.m6),.fx*[0:ft^]0w^\

And I said "Littering".  And they all moved away from me on the bench
there, with the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty ugly stuff
until I said "and making undocumented gratuitous changes to the
default EMACS key bindings".  And they all came back, shook my hand,
and we had a great time on the bench talking about Chaosnet hacking
and Lisp interpreters written in TECO, and everything was fine.  And
we were eating Peking ravs and smoking all kinds of things until the
guy from DDC came over, had some paper in his hand, said:

KIDS-THIS-SPR-FORM-HAS-FIFTY-EIGHT-LINES-THIRTY-SEVEN-BOXES-AN'-
SIXTY-EIGHT-QUESTIONS-WE-WANT-TO-KNOW-THE-DETAILS-OF-THE-BUG-THE-
LOAD-FACTOR-WHEN-IT-HAPPENED-AND-ANY-OTHER-KIND-OF-THING-YOU-GOT-
TO-SAY-WE-WANT-TO-KNOW-THE-F-S-GUY'S-NAME-AND-HOW-MANY-TRACKS-ON-
YOUR-TAPE-DRIVE-AND-ANY-OTHER-KIND-OF-THING-YOU-GOT-TO-SAY-

and he talked for forty-five minutes and nobody understood a word
that he said or why we were doing this but we had fun filling out the
forms in triplicate and speculating on why we were filling out SPRs on
unsupported products.

I filled out the special form with the four-level macro defining
macros.  Typed it in there just like it was and everything was fine.
And I put down my keyboard, and I switched buffers, and there ...  in
the other buffer...  centered in the other buffer...  away from
everything else in the buffer...  in parentheses, capital letters, in
reverse video, read the following words:

"Kid, have you taken the ``VMS for TOPS-20 managers'' course yet?"

I walked over to the man and I said "Mister, you got a lot of damned
gall asking me if I've taken the ``VMS for TOPS-20 managers'' course
yet.  I mean... I mean... I mean, I'm sitting here on the bench, I'm
sitting here on the LCG SIG bench, 'cause you want to know if I'm
braindamaged enough trade my PDP-10 for partial credit on a system
that doesn't even handle filename completion after being a litterbug."

He looked at me and said "Kid, the front office don't like your kind,
so we're going to put you on our VAX/VMS mailing list."  And friends,
somewhere down in the NE43 receiving room is a large trash barrel with
a big sign on it that says "VAX/VMS documents".

And the only reason I'm singing you the song now is that someday
you may know somebody in a similar situation... or you may be in a
similar situation.  And if you're in a situation like that there's
only one thing you can do, and that's call up the Digital Educational
Services office nearest you and sing "You can hack anything you want
with TECO and DDT" and hang up.

You know, if one person, just one person, does it, they may think he's
really dangerous and they won't take his machine.

And if two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both ITS
hackers and they won't touch either of them.

And if three people do it!  Can you imagine three people calling up,
singin' a bar of "Alice's PDP-10" and hanging up?  They may think it's
an re-implementation of the Chaosnet protocol.

And can you imagine fifty people a day?  I said FIFTY people a day,
calling up, singin' a bar of "Alice's PDP-10" and hanging up?
Friends, they may think it's a MOVEMENT, and that's what it is: THE
36-BIT ANTI-LOSSAGE MOVEMENT!  And all you gotta do to join is to sing
it the next time it comes up to the head of the GOLST.

With feelin'.


You can hack anything you want, with TECO and DDT.
You can hack anything you want, with just TECO and DDT.
$U in and begin to hack.
Twiddle bits in a core dump and write it back.
You can hack anything you want, with TECO and DDT.
(But be careful typing <RET>)
Just with TECO and DDT!

In article <43...@brazos.Rice.edu>, pre...@titan.rice.edu (Preston Briggs)
writes:
> I saw a take-off of Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaraunt" posted
> a couple of years ago.  It was called "Alice's PDP-10".
> Anybody out there have it?

  I have three humorous parodies of "Alice's Restaurant" in
~ftp/pub/humor on pit-manager.mit.edu (18.72.1.58).  They are
alices.pdp10, which is the one to which you refer, alices.AI-lab, which
is something written over at the MIT AI Lab, and alices.atlas, which is
something I wrote a while back after one of our HDA's crashed brutally. 
The one about Atlas is very Project Athena specific, so you might not
find it as amusing as we did around here, but you'll probably enjoy it
nevertheless.

  Feel free to snarf.

Jonathan Kamens			              USnail:
MIT Project Athena				11 Ashford Terrace
j...@Athena.MIT.EDU				Allston, MA  02134
Office: 617-253-8495			      Home: 617-782-0710