

Computer-related horror stories, folklore and anecdotes (1990) - ben0x539
http://www.speedygrl.com/funnies/texts/computer.folklore.from.net.rumors.html

======
0898
Is there still a good way to browse Usenet archives? When Google bought
Dejanews, it made a big thing of how you could go right back to the moments in
history - the first smiley, the first mention of Madonna etc. Now Google
Groups seems to make historical Usenet really hard to browse - hiding the
email addresses and trying to bounce you to modern groups. Or am I missing
something?

~~~
dmckeon
Point your NNTP client at: nntp.olduse.net or one of those new-fangled "Web"
browser things at: [http://olduse.net/](http://olduse.net/)

olduse.net is not an archive, as such, but more of a repeat performance - "
_updated in real time as it was thirty years ago_ " \- the bang!path email
addresses are not hidden, and work-arounds to the "line eater bug" abound.

The Google archive at:
[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!browse](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!browse)
seems useful to me, with, for instance, with 400+ results for "The Devouring
Fungus".

The Google interface has a "Show Original" function under the "More messages
actions" pulldown, and a "Show unmasked email addresses" function behind a
Captcha. Perhaps I'm missing something?

------
ethomson
Neat! Interestingly, many of these stories made it into dead tree form in
Karla Jennings' _The Devouring Fungus_, which provides a nice narrative around
this folklore and investigates some of these more thoroughly. She also goes
into computing history a bit (Babbage, Zeus, etc.)

I was surprised to see it's still in print, so if you're an old neckbeard or
interested in computing history, it's recommended.

~~~
voltagex_
[https://openlibrary.org/books/OL14414111M/The_devouring_fung...](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL14414111M/The_devouring_fungus),
but it appears to be "checked out". The concept of an electronic file being
checked out to one person on the whole internet is a goddamned abomination.

------
dpeck
"Let's see if 160Kb makes it around the Net." Love it.

------
chris_wot
If you think that's bad, I heard a story about a guy at the local TAFE
(Australia's Technical and Further Education) who annoyed all his classmates.
This being the 90s, they were still using floppy disks.

Well, one day he annoyed the class a little more than normal. When he went for
a bathroom break, they took his floppy disk, removed the magnetic media and
replaced it with a circular sander. Sanded the heads right off his FDD when he
got home.

------
blueskin_
The page contains this quote:

> ...the teflon insulation reacted with the hot (molten) metal to

> form HF gas. When the fire department turned on the sprinklers

> in desperation: hydrofloric acid.

I'm interested in where that comes from.

~~~
martiuk
Last bit is definitely correct, since hydrofluoric acid is HF in solution with
water.

HF is produced in Pyrolysis of Teflon[1], so I wouldn't say 100% myth busted.

[1][http://www.fluoridealert.org/wp-
content/pesticides/teflon.de...](http://www.fluoridealert.org/wp-
content/pesticides/teflon.decomposition.prod.htm)

~~~
blueskin_
I was wondering if that post was included in full in the link, as I failed to
find it.

------
blueskin_
I always like stories about weird hardware/software problems where one is
interfering with the other.

