Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Re: Honesty works!
Author: David Brown Posted: 8/1/2000; 3:28:44 PM Topic: Honesty works! Msg #: 19362 (In response to 19359) Prev/Next: 19361 / 19363
This reminds of something I read about the "Incompatible Timesharing System" that they used at MIT for a while (I think this was from the original Hacker's Dictionary).They included a "Kill System" command that would do just that.
Occasionally some newbie would discover the command, try it out, and it would do exactly what it said. And so the system would go down. After a while, because it wasn't a challenge, and because the system was a lot more fun when it was up, nobody bother trying to crash the system any more.
Of course, that assumes a certain level of maturity on the part of the participants, but it's still a good stroy, and it probably qualifies as a parable.
dave
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