
I found an obscure political joke in the scan of a 1971 IBM logic block manual - sohkamyung
https://twitter.com/kenshirriff/status/1249090752983912448
======
smortaz
The Burroughs OS (“Master Control Program”) in the 70s had a routine from
which all other processes were started. Its name was MotherForker(). It was
eventually renamed when HR found out.

~~~
PostOnce
Burroughs MCP impresses me with its lifespan (which is ongoing)

Initial release 1961; 59 years ago

Latest release 19.0[1] / June 2019

I wonder who uses it today and for what?

~~~
smortaz
Definitely. The OS, HW and Extended Algol had some nice features that were
ahead of their time. I haven’t kept up, but their mainframes were very popular
with banks etc.

------
CalChris
I found an obscure dirty joke on p. 46 of the _Mac OS X Assembler Guide._ [1]

    
    
      .fill 69,4,0xfeadface | put out 69 0xfeadface’s
    

[1]
[http://personal.denison.edu/~bressoud/cs281-s07/Assembler.pd...](http://personal.denison.edu/~bressoud/cs281-s07/Assembler.pdf)

~~~
Zenst
AIX used to (probably still does) use DEADBEEF as a hex value to clear memory
out.

~~~
mjlee
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexspeak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexspeak)

There are some fun entries there for hex values used as magic numbers.

Apple have some great ones used in their crash report exception types -
0x2bad45ec (too bad for sec) and 0xc00010ff in the event of being killed for
overheating.

~~~
saagarjha
A list of such codes:
[https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/technotes/tn2151...](https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/technotes/tn2151/_index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/DTS40008184-CH1-EXCEPTION_INFO)

------
kens
The manual has a diagram of a FET (field-effect transistor) with the source,
gate, and drain. Someone wrote on the diagram: Nixon FET. Economic Drain.
Water Gate, Unimpeachable Source.

~~~
userbinator
For those for whom those references are a bit before their time:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal)

~~~
chmod775
I was born in 94 and don't live in the US.

References to Watergate are ubiquitous (especially thanks to the angle
journalists like to take on the current US president) and it was probably
mentioned in history classes in school too at some point. I know it's supposed
to be part of the curriculum in history classes in some German-speaking
countries.

Granted it _might_ not be familiar to someone from a non-western country
though.

------
mirimir
Many years ago, in a previous life, I heard about the ~friendly competition
between Caltech's Dabney and Flemming houses. Various spacecraft components
would have "DEI" (Dabney Eats It) or "FEIF" (Flemming Eats It Faster) hidden
on them. But there's apparently nothing online about that. Or at least
anything that's indexed.

Anyone?

~~~
BalinKing
Courtesy of Dabney Hovse’s official website:
[https://dabney.caltech.edu/wiki/doku.php?id=dei](https://dabney.caltech.edu/wiki/doku.php?id=dei)
(see the end paragraphs about the moon and Voyager)

------
sohkamyung
Found on Figure 1-20, page 1-11 of the manual [1]

[1] [http://bitsavers.trailing-
edge.com/pdf/ibm/logic/SY22-2798-2...](http://bitsavers.trailing-
edge.com/pdf/ibm/logic/SY22-2798-2_LogicBlocks_AutomatedLogicDiagrams_SLT,SLD,ASLT,MST_TO_Oct71.pdf)

~~~
raverbashing
This seems to be an older or non-standard FET depiction

The modern symbol has an arrow and doesn't have a closed rectangle

~~~
kens
Yes, this was IBM's symbol for a FET. They had their own nonstandard symbol
for bipolar transistors too, three stacked boxes labeled N, P, N, with a
triangle on the emitter. (See page 1-4 of the document above.) IBM also had
their own logic gate symbols: an OR gate looked like an AND gate, and an AND
gate looked like an op amp.

I came across the FET joke while looking up IBM transistor symbols in response
to TubeTime's thread on the history of transistor symbols (which is an
interesting thread you should read):
[https://twitter.com/TubeTimeUS/status/1249023089528078337](https://twitter.com/TubeTimeUS/status/1249023089528078337)

~~~
my_usernam3
Why is that?

My "IBM is evil" bias leads me to guess they wanted to make their own standard
that people started using. Then charge ridiculous license fees.

~~~
kens
I think several factors led to IBM's non-standard symbols. The standards
didn't exist at the beginning, so different companies used different things.
IBM also had historical baggage, wanting to stay consistent over time. In some
ways IBM's symbols were better, for instance making NPN vs PNP obvious.
Finally, IBM was big enough that they could do their own thing and train their
own people.

------
speplop
Tektronix, longstanding producer of high-end electronics testing and
measurement equipment, used to be heroes at both drawing beautiful schematics
as well as adding silly little easter eggs to them. Some samples:
[http://turingbirds.com/temp/tek-datasheets/](http://turingbirds.com/temp/tek-
datasheets/)

------
sideshowb
"The trouble with political jokes is that very often they get elected"

Will Rogers

------
pachico
Who knows the amount of jokes being written now given the current political
landscape...

------
cowmix
I wonder what year this really is from.

Watergate wasn't a thing in 1971.

~~~
lainga
Well, the way it's been annotated, I'd bet whoever did the joke scrawled it in
a few years after it was printed.

------
draugadrotten
OMG, 1971, it's almost like finding a joke in a cave drawing!

~~~
simonblack
Now come on, 1971 wasn't all that long ago. I got married for the first time
that year. My car at the time had a rotary engine and it cruised at 85mph on
the road every weekend. Did I mention that fuel was 31 cents a gallon? (And
that was classed as expensive.)

It really wasn't back in 'horse and buggy' days.

~~~
pavlov
Interestingly the things you mention do make it sound like a different era.
Many millennials don’t drive, don’t know what fuel costs today, and have no
idea what a rotary engine is. The American fascination with cars probably
peaked around 1971.

~~~
goatinaboat
_Many millennials don’t drive_

An aside but I’ve always found that turn of phrase bemusing. The right word is
“can’t”, nobody says “I don’t swim” or “I don’t wire a plug”. It’s like people
realise that it’s something they ought to be able to do and are deficient in
it.

~~~
pjc50
There are also urban dwellers who can drive, hold a license, but don't own a
car due to cost or space issues.

Undoubtedly more common in Europe - lots of Londoners don't own cars because
there's nowhere cheap to park at either end of a trip, the traffic is bad, and
the public transport is usable.

~~~
goatinaboat
_who can drive, hold a license, but don 't own a car due to cost or space
issues._

In my experience those people never use that phrase, they say “I don’t have a
car”.

------
jrochkind1
not too obscure

~~~
tome
Yeah I was surprised by that description too. Wasn't the topic the biggest
political event of the 20th century?

~~~
TeMPOraL
There are people in the workforce of our industry that were born in 21th
century. In a few years, they will be the majority of our industry.

~~~
saagarjha
The ones who’ve taken 11th grade history should know this, at least…

~~~
TeMPOraL
American history in the US, maybe. Rest of the world probably doesn't care -
and if a typical history class is like all my classes in primary, secondary
and high school, you barely reach World War II when the school year ends.

