[ih] Why is there (still) spam...?

[Nigel Roberts]

That may indeed be what I was thinking of.

Then again, was it perhaps possible to use that to kill some important 
process?.

It's a very long time ago!


I may also be confusing this with a proposal we had for MUD which would 
allow any adventurer to bring down the system.

THERE IS A BUTTON HERE, UPON WHICH IS A LABEL "DON'T PRESS ME"

 >PRESS BUTTON


A HOLLOW VOICE SAYS "DON'T PRESS ME AGAIN"


 >PRESS BUTTON

THE ENTIRE WORLD HAS BEEN COLLAPSES INTO A POINT SINGULARITY

(crash).


Again, maybe that never got implemented and was merely talk over 
coffee/pinball after the teletype room closed for the evening.




On 29/07/2025 10:35, Steve Crocker wrote:
> Nigel,
>
> If I recall correctly, ITS had a command, Gun, that killed a specific 
> process, not the entire system.  Any user could kill another user's 
> process.  This explicit lack of security was included to make it 
> uninteresting to find ways to find hacks -- a word that meant 
> "interesting and clever tricks," not the later and current negative 
> meaning -- of breaking into the system.  It was, in my opinion, an 
> amusing and quirky way to counter the tendency of smart youngsters to 
> find ways to misbehave, but it seemed obvious to me this strategy 
> would only work within relatively small communities.
>
> Perhaps someone on this list can comment further.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Steve
>
>
> I was in the MIT-AI lab in 1967-68, before the machine was connected 
> to the Arpanet.  I don't know if security was added later.
>
> On Tue, Jul 29, 2025 at 3:32 AM Nigel Roberts via Internet-history 
> <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>     >> Computers were attended by armies of administrators and operators,
>     >> who protected their expensive resources with the technology of the
>     >> day, such as passwords and quotas.
>     >
>     > That does not sound like what I remember hearing about, for the
>     > operations and use of some of the MIT research computers...
>     >
>     Not exactly my recollection, either.
>
>     If we are talking about MIT computers I remember the following
>     interchange, the first time I connected to ITS in early 1978.
>     (It's been
>     a long time so please forgive the many inaccuracies in remembered
>     syntax)
>
>     @O70
>
>     :LOGIN NIGEL
>
>     YOU DO NOT APPEAR TO HAVE ACCOUNT. WOULD YOU LIKE ONE?
>
>     :Y
>
>     WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE CALLED?
>
>     NIGEL
>
>     WELCOME, TOURIST.
>
>
>
>     Such casual use by this stranger from overseas who just happened
>     to have
>     worked out how to connect to the only ARPAnet node in the UK and
>     thence
>     to the systems, particularly MIT-AI (134) and MIT-DM (70) was
>     actively
>     encouraged.
>
>     Following which we found DUNGEON aka ZORK.
>
>     And it was this passwordless openness that inspired the creation
>     of MUD,
>     the ancestor of most all multiplayer games.
>
>     (I know the folks at DM were really doing some statistical stuff, and
>     the DM stood for Dynamic Modelling or something close to that, but I
>     always remember it as "dungeon masters".)
>
>     The ITS command :OS allowed you to watch what was going on any other
>     terminal, and I even have a vague recollection that there was a
>     command
>     that allowed anyone to crash the system.
>
>     So, not exactly that guarded.
>
>
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