Mischief at the Computer Trade Show

Here’s another techie story; I will try to word it so normal people can understand.

Back in the ’80s my workplace used UNIX computer systems made by a particular vendor.

One day I discovered that the latest version of their system had a surprisingly egregious bug: an inoculous three-character command for their vi text editor would cause the entire system to crash.

We filed a report with the vendor and waited for a fix. In the meantime, all we had to do was avoid using that command, which wasn’t really a big deal.

Soon thereafter we found ourselves at a trade show where the vendor in question was showing off their latest wares.

Trade shows can be amusing. Often vendors try to throw subtle shade at their competitors, while simultaneously pretending to be above such things.

It wasn’t uncommon to hear them intone, sotto voce, “I would never criticize a competitor, but…”

Their booth had a centrally located multi-user system, with multiple terminals around the perimeter, at which various company representatives were proudly declaring the superiority of their UNIX implementation over that of other vendors.

They invited me to sit down at one such computer terminal and give their system a whirl.

I sat down and immediately fired up the vi text editor. I saw my department head arch an eyebrow.

Oh, yeah. He knew exactly what was going through my head.

“Shall we?” he asked, impishly.

I looked up at him with a mischievous smile.

“We shall,” I declared.

Three keystrokes later, their entire booth went down. Embarrassed, our host excused himself and rushed over to reboot the system.

Yeah, I suppose that wasn’t very nice of me, but oh, it was such fun. Sorry, not sorry.

And I chuckle to myself to this day every time I use that command on one of my own UNIX systems, which fortunately do not have that particular bug.