
Crabs: The bitmap terror (1985) [pdf] - dsr_
http://lucacardelli.name/Papers/Crabs.pdf
======
kick
Crabs was probably the first graphical prank program—most assuredly the first
well-documented one: there are a _lot_ of scattered anecdotes about it around.
Here's an amazing talk by Rob Pike where it's casually mentioned, for example:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2NI6t2r_Hs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2NI6t2r_Hs)

It's not something you see very often anymore, partially because modern
windowing systems (and systems in general, really) were built with different
security models in mind (you can probably remember a few similar programs
released into the wild for real mode operating systems, they were especially
common then), but also because windowing systems have moved away from how
simple UNIX's windowing system was at the time.

It's actually kind of relevant to something that was on the front-page
recently: the displays they were using (JERQ/Blit bitmap displays) depended on
a routine that Larry Tesler co-invented (the bit blit, hence the name "Blit").

[http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/blit/](http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/blit/)

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

If you want to give it a try, I think 9front ships with a Blit emulator these
days; load up v8 and you should have a nice few hours poking around.

[http://9front.org/](http://9front.org/)

~~~
msla
The Blit (begat of Jerq, productized as the DMD 5620) was an interesting
system: The thing could be a normal text terminal, but the magic came when the
host sent it software to run locally. In short, if the IBM block-mode
terminals were the equivalent of filling out HTML forms, the Blit was closer
to WASM.

[https://loomcom.com/blog/0115_emulating_the_dmd5620.html](https://loomcom.com/blog/0115_emulating_the_dmd5620.html)

------
loph
I am reminded of the xcrab x11 program, where a crab would scuttle across the
screen and abscond with the mouse pointer. That was late 80s. Not to be
confused with xroach, where disgusting roaches would scatter when the window
covering them was moved. Good times.

~~~
all2
There is now an application for Windows that does this with the goose from
Untitled Goose Game. I think it is delightful at the very least.

------
floren
Don't miss the man page on the last page of the paper. It's a hilarious little
"trap" for anyone who happened to be browsing the manual!

------
anonsivalley652
Doom process manager: hold my rocket launcher

Free drink holder program: yo boys, watch this. _ejects CD-ROM tray_

Xeyes: Am I a joke program to you?

Excel 95: Goto B95, select row 95, Help > About > ctrl-alt-shift + [tech
support] (I'm an easter egg, which is a joke program in a program. They don't
make me anymore. :'( And you're welcome.)

Applesoft BASIC:

    
    
        10 INPUT "Press any key to continue...";A$
        20 GOTO 10
    

^ Tech support gets a flood of calls about "no 'any' key" s/any key/<ENTER>/

Or

    
    
        00 REM   Which OS are we using again? ;)
        10 PRINT
        20 PRINT "Not ready reading drive A"
        30 INPUT "Abort, Ignore, Retry, Fail?";A$
        40 PRINT
        50 FOR X = 1 TO 20000
        60 NEXT X
        70 GOTO 10
    

EDIT: how many people will admit to writing a phony "FORMAT.COM" command in C
|| Pascal || assembly that hit the drive with pointless reads to make the hard
drive light appear solid and realistic delays between % updates?

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codezero
This is awesome, and from the timing and some Wikipedia sleuthing, it sounds
like they inadvertently created the first ever screensaver?

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matt_morgan
My father-in-law, who passed away a few years ago, was at Bell Labs then. I
really wish I knew about this when I could have talked to him about it.

