Back in the late 1970's, before the microcomputers we are all so familiar with today, I worked for a company that sold accounting systems (software we wrote and Interdata minicomputers with a full 32KB or even 64KB of memory and a huge 5MB disk... but they could run 5 workstations at once). One time we had to repossess a computer from a client that didn't pay his bills, so a co-worker and I went and got the desk sized computer (and the desk that housed it - we sold those, too) and brought it back to my co-worker's apartment. In those days, very few people had an actual computer in their homes, so it was quite a novelty.
We invited a computer-illiterate friend over to play some computer games, and we programmed the login procedures to do our bidding: First, we had our friend, whom we shall call Doug, sit down at the terminal and login. We had him type his name "Doug" and his password "password", and the terminal displayed the message:
"Agghh! Doug! I hate you, you're a worthless piece of garbage and I'm not going to play any games with you!" And then it logged him off.
So we acted puzzled, and said "Try it again," so he logged in again. This time the terminal said:
"I thought I told you I wasn't going to play any games with you. You're scum and I don't want you touching my keyboard with your grubby little fingers. Go away and don't come back!"
So we said "Well, that's weird. Let me try it..." and I sat down at the terminal and logged in with my name. The terminal said:
"Hello, Mike. How are you today? Would you like to play a game? Hey... is that Doug standing behind you? I hate that guy! Make him go away!" and then it logged me off.
"Well, that's weird," we said. So we told Doug to go stand around the corner in the kitchen where the computer couldn't see him, and I logged in again. The terminal said:
"Hello, Mike. How are you today? Would you like to play a game? I'm sure glad that Doug guy is gone."
And then the program went into a loop for about 30 seconds. We told Doug it was all okay and he could come back in from the kitchen. He had just enough time to read the message on the screen when the 30 second loop was finished, and the terminal suddenly displayed:
"Aggghhhh! Doug is back! I hate that guy!" and it logged him off.
So then we acted puzzled and said, well, let's try the president of the company's login, and we logged in as "Phil". The terminal said:
"Hello Phil, good to see you. I see that Doug is standing behind you, but since you are the president of the company, I guess I have to allow it, but I really hate that guy!"
And then it let us play our games. I think Doug still doesn't trust computers to this day.
Read other answers by Michael Ross on Quora:
- When is it too late to fire software developers (97% complete for last six months)?
- What are some of the best baby photos you have taken so far?
- If you are atheist, have you actually read the entire Bible before dismissing it?
from Quora http://ift.tt/2j1EoEZ
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