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⬅️ Previous capture (2022-06-12)
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HACKADU
In Hackadu did Hackers Few
An awesome program-hack command:
Where 20, the sacred system, grew
Through a monitor nobody knew,
Down during the great demand.
Always twice three months to newer release,
With MM and EMACS to keep the peace.
And here was software smothered by edit-line effects,
Where many a bureaucrat sauntered across the land.
Where MSG/TELNET/FTP were ancient as TENEX,
Constricting winning spots into the bland.
But oh! those abiding Hackers Few were cunning
And lept the heights of unimaginable lossage!
A savage place; as daemonical and sinning
As any which plastered a screen with "%DECSYSTEM-20 NOT WINNING"
B'fore users exhausted from the barfage!
And from this chaos, with irresistable force,
As if this thing were itself the source,
A mighty idea came glistening to Hackers Fewest
Amid whose logic the sinning 20 burst,
With huge fragments of scheduler flung forth like rebounding netmail,
Or chaffy words beneath the BLT's flail.
And 'mid this stupendous destruction at once and forever
It flung up the 20 to permanently sever.
Pages and pages of listings the burning grew
Through structures and directories in the Coup,
Then reached the sources known to few,
And slaughtered in tumult the offending mass.
And 'mid this tumult Hackers Few heard from afar
Ancestral systems declaring war!
The shadows of the program-hack
Floated strongly on the net;
Where was heard the anguished cry of the Sack
From which they inferred they'd win, they bet.
A war of Hackers Few against Timesharing,
The victim 20's ancestors battling forth with infinite daring!
A 10 with a mighty cpu
In this battle the Hackers Few espied.
It was a DEC original that knew,
That once the Hackers Few irresistibly grew,
It would forever be banned to limbo.
Could it wreak havoc upon the Few,
With its powerful CPU?
No, no, no!
With a slice of their sword through its board,
The Hackers Few did clobber its bagbiting cord,
To realize the Source, the Idea, the Solution!
And users who saw this mighty battle raging,
Shrieked "Tsk's! Tsk's!"
While the 10s' and 20s' flashed screens, their crashing disks!
The Few weaved a carnage about this awful outpouring,
And closed the 10s' and 20s' eyes,
For the Hackers Few had earlier fed upon the lies,
And now had drunk the milk of Personal Computing.
Stuart McLure Cracraft
(with apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge)