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Actually, you always had a user-ID, you just could not see it. It was necessary for the database and software to work.

The problem of people impersonating me on Slashdot was so serious that it inspired this song.

LOL ... I'm past my coding years by now.

But my counter point would be that many operating systems have been built in C, and people who rely too much on "modern compilers" often don't know what's really happening. I cut my teeth doing OS-level programming in C at the interrupt-handler level. Good times.

I'm not saying people should start all new projects in C, but a good solid grounding in C really does give one a good perspective on what's really happening in the innards of your code. It's about as close to "bare metal" programming as you can get without assembly.

I've met a few coders who had only ever worked at very high level stuff, and a lot of what they did more or less relied heavily on libraries they didn't really understand, or have any sense of the performance impacts when used inefficiently.

That being said, hand rolling your own memory management isn't something I really miss.

But every now and then I still like to sing a few bars of:

Pointers to pointers to printf()-like functions;
Unary minus and nested conjunctions;
Integers, booleans, characters, strings;
These are a few of my favourite things.

Because, "Pointers to pointers to printf()-like functions" was a pretty nifty language feature sometimes.

You could do some pretty neat things in C.

The English version of the ITS wikipedia entry claims that there are still a couple of machines running ITS....
Anybody knows where ? I miss my MIT-AI ITS account ;-)

It not, ... check out http://www.poppyfields.net/filks/00117.html

Cheers :-)

Information is context-sensitive. The VERY first thing you learn when using encryption systems is that it's much easier to crack something where you know what the plaintext should look like. The second thing you learn is that the information around the encrypted data is often far more valuable intelligence-wise than the encrypted stuff. That's why those of you who have ever been instructed on the use of STU-III phones were told NOT to chat before inserting the encryption card. (You WERE paying attention to those talks, right? Right???)

Next, there's this thing called the European Union. They're getting, oh, just a little sensitive about personal information these days. You know, what with German banks freely selling personal data (such as bank account details) to anyone who calls up, despite some of the toughest data protection laws in the world. Americans may view them as unimportant nobodies, but they are at least grasping the idea that ANY unnecessary exposure of personally-identifying information is a very high risk to the individual (identity theft) and a fairly substantial risk to the economy as a whole (such theft costs - and it costs a whole lot more than any "terrorist" threat ever did).

Name and address "high risk information"? If it can be used in a social engineering attack on a bank, credit card company or Government department (and usually such people do not make much effort to validate who a person is), then it is high risk. It doesn't matter if such information has always been viewed as public, as long as human operators (and computer programs) are satisfied that such information proves identity, it is not safe to expose.

Oh, and as for the fact that this information is actually used as a substitute for secure passwords, The Cheshire Catalyst was responsible for publishing a rather pointed song on the subject by breaking into the PRESTEL account of a BBC presenter whilst he was demonstrating the service live on BBC television. The lyrics should be required reading material for anyone who uses any kind of online service, and failure to heed its warnings should be considered no different from reckless driving or setting off fireworks inside a furniture store.

Sounds like The Woman Who Swallowed a Fly.

There aren't that many euphonic alternatives. Nintenducks? Nintegnu!

I mean, I wrote this song, but you don't see me standing up and pontificating, saying that it's now part of "the folklore of the Internet"...

Get your fill of nerdy software song parodies (filks), including several popular slashdot originals!

Security holes I've discovered,
The records of grades are now mine.
What once was a one point five average,
Is now a three point nine nine!

You can find many more of these here...

Filk: Will the real Bruce Perens please stand up?

is it fiber optic?

Sounds like a case of the telnet song (control up-arrow q) to me:

http://www.poppyfields.net/filks/00222.html

http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=userinfo&nick=Bruc e+Perens

and I quote
I used to post a lot on Slashdot. These days, it seems to be run by a bunch of whining kids, and I don't take it seriously any longer. (empasis mine) Is he talking about the slashdot crew or just in general?

Slashdot sucks, film at 11.

News for nerds, with sane submission queues

A great place to troll (heck, even their articles are trolls!)

An appropriate place for song parodies because everyone loves song parodies!

I realize slashdot has this all in one place, but the moderation system and the userbase is so pathetic these days that it's a wonder we old-timers bother to stick around. I've had this account for less than a week, and I'm already disgusted with slashdot! It used to take months for that to happen...

Go to the Computer Songs and Parodies site.

This is one of the most infamous entries in the book, which broke in live on a BBC Television demonstration of the Prestel service.: The Hacker Song

The reason there seems to be a more male bias in cracking is simple. Schools and parents encourage boys towards technical stuff, and girls towards nurturing stuff. The women crackers tend to be the rebellious ones who told their parents where they could stuff their gender roles.

If men and women were allowed to go after their own, personal interests, rather than have them dictated from On High, I suspect you'd find that the number of men and women in cracking was about equal. I suspect that the overall total would be less, too, as dictatorship & control breed far more resentment and hostility than guidance and understanding.