I'm not sure what made me remember this - maybe reading the MSDN article 
on file name validity. But here's a story for you...

At the school I went to, the teachers didn't really "believe in" 
electricity. They saw it as the work of Satan. It was a necessary evil 
because it pervades the Real World [a place most of the teachers had 
only read about], but it's something that children should be protected 
from as much as possible.

As you can imagine, when the Government created the National Curriculum, 
which insists that children have to learn about computers, it caused a 
bit of a stir. Eventually one of the old unused rooms in the school was 
kitted out with 6 RM Nimbus 80186-SX machines and a couple of colour 
dot-matrix printers. It then fell to one of the Religious Education 
teachers to read the manuals and find out how computers actually work, 
and then teach it to us.

I presume it goes without saying that as an experienced programmer with 
5 years of BASIC and 3 years of Pascal behind me, being taught how to 
draw rectangles with LOGO was hardly challenging material. It /was/ nice 
to be able to /type/ my English essays in Word 2.0 rather than write 
them by hand, however.

This was also roughly around the time the shareware version of DOOM 
appeared. One of my classmates was a big DOOM enthusiast. He managed to 
smuggle the disks in to school, and while no-one was looking, he hid a 
copy of DOOM on the school computer, in a "hidden" folder.

Now, baring in mind this was a school for stupid people, and Adam had no 
particular computer training, what he did was, in retrospect, quite 
clever. He hid DOOM in a folder named "..".

The first thing to notice is that, under MS-DOS, every directory listing 
always begins with a dummy directory entry for ".", followed by another 
dummy entry for "..". So adding a /real/ folder actually named ".." just 
causes this line to be repeated. A typical user ignores all the headers 
and footers and just looks at the meat in the middle; thus, in all the 
years we were at the school, nobody ever found this hidden folder.

The second thing to notice is that ".." is a reserved name. Every time 
you utter it, the computer interprets it as an /instruction/ rather than 
a /name/. This makes it bafflingly difficult to /do/ anything to this 
folder. Even if you notice it exists, you can't access it. Every time 
you utter it's name, the computer assumes you mean the parent folder!

DIR ..      Just lists the parent folder.
CD ..       Takes you to the parent folder.
DEL ..      Tries to delete the parent folder. (And fails, because 
you're currently inside it.)
RENAME ..   Also fails.

In short, each time you try to interact with this folder, something 
baffling happens. Baffling, that is, if your knowledge of computing is 
so limited that you had to actually read the manual just to figure out 
which cable plugs into which socket. ;-) If, on the other hand, you 
happen to be quite skilful with computers, you can figure out the 
special incantation to make DOS interpret the name as a literal name, 
rather than a command. And /then/ you can play DOOM! :-D

In a way, I guess it's like shooting fish in a barrel. When they got the 
shiny new 80286-SX, that had Windows 2 on it, and it was "locked" so you 
need a username and password to get in, and us kids only had privileges 
to run a few Windows applications. In particular, you couldn't exit to 
DOS. Only the staff can do that.

We knew, of course, that the username was "manager". Once again, it was 
Adam who cracked the password. It was "teacher". :-D

With such a level of computer sophistication, it seems a little 
premature to claim a technological victory. Our adversary clearly had no 
clue what they were doing.

On the first hand again, most of the kids in my school probably couldn't 
*spell* teacher correctly. :-P

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> DEL ..      Tries to delete the parent folder. (And fails, because
> you're currently inside it.)

Actually, DEL .. will succesfully delete the contents of the parent 
directory, while leaving subdirectories intact.  Depending on the 
version of DOS, it may or may not ask you "Are you sure?" before doing so.

Before DOS 5 you needed to RD (or RMDIR) each sub directory 
individually, if you wanted to get rid of the entire branch.  DOS 5 
introduced the DELTREE command, and Newer versions of Windows after 
Win2000 got rid of it, probably in favor of the pointy-clicky method of 
deleting directories.


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/*    flabreque    */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
/*        @        */{P(0,a)P(a,b)P(b,c)P(2*a,2*b)P(2*b,b+c)P(b+c,<2,3>)
/*   gmail.com     */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> I'm not sure what made me remember this - maybe reading the MSDN article
> on file name validity. But here's a story for you...

This story also uses the anti-hero trope successfully. Good work. :)

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On 25/07/2012 03:20 PM, waggy wrote:
> Invisible<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
>> I'm not sure what made me remember this - maybe reading the MSDN article
>> on file name validity. But here's a story for you...
>
> This story also uses the anti-hero trope successfully. Good work. :)

How so?

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> actually read the manual just to figure out which cable
> plugs into which socket. ;-)

Right after I got out of high school and I was working at the school's 
computer center for the summer, one of the new teachers took a TRS-80 home 
to learn about it.  An hour after closing, the phone rings.

"Is it supposed to smoke when I plug it in?"
"What? No, of course not."
"Should I unplug it then?"
"YES!"

The guy plugged the power supply into the video output socket.

Granted, the TRS-80 used the same DIN plug for power, monitor, and ... 
whatever the third thing was that plugged in. But yah, reading the 
instructions would have helped back before they figured out people don't 
read instructions and thus need a different connector shape for each cable.

 > probably in favor of the pointy-clicky method of deleting directories

It's all part of the DEL command now. In particular, DEL /S

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Oh no! We're out of code juice!"
   "Don't panic. There's beans and filters
    in the cabinet."

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Invisible wrote:
> On 25/07/2012 03:20 PM, waggy wrote:
> > Invisible wrote:
> >> I'm not sure what made me remember this - maybe reading the MSDN article
> >> on file name validity. But here's a story for you...
> >
> > This story also uses the anti-hero trope successfully. Good work. :)
>
> How so?

I identified Adam as the protagonist of this story, who the first-person
narrator describes entirely in unflattering terms. This anti-hero would likely
be interpreted in modern parlance as a "wannabe script kiddie", a very negative
stereotype. In fact, none of the characters in this drama are portrayed very
positively, and the narrator self-identifies as a co-conspirator; both of these
characterizations are common in the darker or more cynical stories involving
anti-heroes.

The antagonists in this tale (identified explicitly as "our adversary") come
across as severe and backward, perhaps even Luddites, but ultimately law-abiding
authority figures in a difficult situation. Yet a reader's sympathies lie with
the anti-hero, who is generous enough to share his smuggled contraband and
cracking skills with, at the very least, his partner in crime. Although the
presumed ages of the protagonists mitigates the seriousness of the
transgressions described, (because of the "innocence of children" and "youthful
indiscretions" tropes) I don't read much of a confessional tone in this story,
nor see evidence of a great deal of regret since the events transpired. (This,
"Would I do it all over again? You betcha," attitude also seems to be common in
the stories of anti-heroes.)

Personally, I was left wondering if Adam continued in IT, as vocation or
avocation, and how long he stayed on the "black hat" path. Was there some kind
of redemption in his future?

It's not easy to get a reader to care about a character in so few words,
especially in a technical tale for a technically-minded audience.

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"waggy" wrote:
[Snipped my amateur literary analysis, to which I refer.]

Please do not take my comments personally. I took your tale completely out of
context and tried to read it as a self-contained short story on its own terms. I
probably read into it too much of myself. ;)

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"waggy" <hon### [at] handbasketorg> wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
> > On 25/07/2012 03:20 PM, waggy wrote:
> > > Invisible wrote:
> > >> I'm not sure what made me remember this - maybe reading the MSDN article
> > >> on file name validity. But here's a story for you...
> > >
> > > This story also uses the anti-hero trope successfully. Good work. :)
> >
> > How so?
>
> I identified Adam as the protagonist of this story, who the first-person
> narrator describes entirely in unflattering terms. This anti-hero would likely
> be interpreted in modern parlance as a "wannabe script kiddie", a very negative
> stereotype. In fact, none of the characters in this drama are portrayed very
> positively, and the narrator self-identifies as a co-conspirator; both of these
> characterizations are common in the darker or more cynical stories involving
> anti-heroes.
>
> The antagonists in this tale (identified explicitly as "our adversary") come
> across as severe and backward, perhaps even Luddites, but ultimately law-abiding
> authority figures in a difficult situation. Yet a reader's sympathies lie with
> the anti-hero, who is generous enough to share his smuggled contraband and
> cracking skills with, at the very least, his partner in crime. Although the
> presumed ages of the protagonists mitigates the seriousness of the
> transgressions described, (because of the "innocence of children" and "youthful
> indiscretions" tropes) I don't read much of a confessional tone in this story,
> nor see evidence of a great deal of regret since the events transpired. (This,
> "Would I do it all over again? You betcha," attitude also seems to be common in
> the stories of anti-heroes.)
>
> Personally, I was left wondering if Adam continued in IT, as vocation or
> avocation, and how long he stayed on the "black hat" path. Was there some kind
> of redemption in his future?
>
> It's not easy to get a reader to care about a character in so few words,
> especially in a technical tale for a technically-minded audience.

wow, bravo!  Both to the story-teller, the critic in this amazing read and the
anti-hero in the story.

povray offtopic sure needs more wit like this... thumbs up!

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> > actually read the manual just to figure out which cable
> > plugs into which socket. ;-)

> Right after I got out of high school and I was working at the school's 
> computer center for the summer, one of the new teachers took a TRS-80 home 
> to learn about it.  An hour after closing, the phone rings.

> "Is it supposed to smoke when I plug it in?"
> "What? No, of course not."
> "Should I unplug it then?"
> "YES!"

> The guy plugged the power supply into the video output socket.

> Granted, the TRS-80 used the same DIN plug for power, monitor, and ... 

I consider that a double fail, then. (The second fail is, of course, a
completely stupid hardware design.)

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>>> This story also uses the anti-hero trope successfully. Good work. :)
>>
>> How so?
>
> I identified Adam as the protagonist of this story, who the first-person
> narrator describes entirely in unflattering terms.

Oh, I don't know. At the time, he was one of my favourite people. But, 
like most of the people in my school, he wasn't exactly the sharpest 
tool in the box. Using a reserved file name to hide stuff is... actually 
surprisingly astute. It's the sort of thing *I* might try.

(I do wonder if he actually knew what a "reserved name" was, though. He 
probably just thought it looked pretty innocuous and would be likely to 
get ignored. He /did/ correctly figure out how to persuade DOS to create 
this folder though. That's not too easy...)

> This anti-hero would likely
> be interpreted in modern parlance as a "wannabe script kiddie", a very negative
> stereotype.

I'm not so sure. Usually a "script kiddie" is somebody who /claims/ to 
be brilliant, but isn't. Adam never claimed to be brilliant. He never 
pretended to be a super-elite hacker. He /did/ claim to have hidden some 
stuff where the teachers would never find it - and he succeeded!

Nobody likes people who pretend to be more special than they are. But 
everybody likes a guy who manages to out-smart the people who are 
supposed to be the "experts".

> In fact, none of the characters in this drama are portrayed very
> positively, and the narrator self-identifies as a co-conspirator; both of these
> characterizations are common in the darker or more cynical stories involving
> anti-heroes.

It was a school. ALL children unconditionally hate school! Almost every 
tale of school life is therefore one of the kids verses the evil school 
system (sometimes with the aid of someone on the inside - i.e., a rogue 
member of staff who sympathised with the kids).

> The antagonists in this tale (identified explicitly as "our adversary") come
> across as severe and backward, perhaps even Luddites, but ultimately law-abiding
> authority figures in a difficult situation.

Nobody likes going to school. But very few schools deliberately try to 
shut out the Real World and pretend it doesn't exist to quite the extend 
of this one. All items of modern technology were confiscated. TV and 
radio was banned. All letters in or out had to be examined by a member 
of staff... The comparison to a prison may seem extreme, but it 
certainly felt like that at times.

> Yet a reader's sympathies lie with
> the anti-hero, who is generous enough to share his smuggled contraband and
> cracking skills with, at the very least, his partner in crime.

In the mind of any school kid, the only "crime" is forcing defenceless 
young kids to go to school. ;-) Anything that makes that time less awful 
is an obvious victory.

> Although the
> presumed ages of the protagonists mitigates the seriousness of the
> transgressions described, (because of the "innocence of children" and "youthful
> indiscretions" tropes) I don't read much of a confessional tone in this story,
> nor see evidence of a great deal of regret since the events transpired. (This,
> "Would I do it all over again? You betcha," attitude also seems to be common in
> the stories of anti-heroes.)

The school had a rule: No computer games. That rule was stupid and 
arbitrary.

It is a rule which should never have existed in the first place. In 
fact, the only reason it existed in the first place was that computer 
technology, and computer games in particular, were deemed to be "against 
God's wishes". There /are/ valid reasons for not allowing computer 
games. Kids fighting over them, lack of exercise, the potentially 
antisocial nature of it. But "because it's not in the Holy Bible" is a 
stupid and hateful /excuse/ for a reason.

Having just said all that... Letting teenage boys play DOOM? Yeah, 
that's /probably/ not a very defensible position. ;-)

> Personally, I was left wondering if Adam continued in IT, as vocation or
> avocation, and how long he stayed on the "black hat" path. Was there some kind
> of redemption in his future?

Yeah, I wonder. After we left school, he vanished off the face of the 
Earth. It's /plausible/ we went into IT, but I suspect not. He was more 
of a games expert than a technology expert. (There IS a difference...)

> It's not easy to get a reader to care about a character in so few words,
> especially in a technical tale for a technically-minded audience.

Heh. And to think I wasn't even expecting anybody to bother reading it, 
much less "care about" the main character... ;-)

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