Baby-naming, in the geeky style of the xkcd webcomic

Posted by Cory Doctorow, October 10, 2007 1:28 AM | permalink

Proof that Randall from xkcd is wiretapping my brain in today's nose-sprayingly funny toon. I've always wanted to same a kid with a MySQL code-injection attack, or "+++ATH" or "^d^d^c^c^g^g^g^g". Anything to mess with database nation. Link

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Discussion

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#1 posted by loquacious

, October 10, 2007 2:37 AM

Accept direct chat on (various BBS software)? Y/N?

(macro)^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H(n+1^100)

BUFFER OVERFLOW

+++ATH0
NO CARRIER

(Sigh, I miss those days, when you could really and truly knock a n00b off the, err, "net", even if it only was a dozen-odd realtime nodes or less.)

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#2 posted by jonathanpberger

, October 10, 2007 6:14 AM

This has been in the back of my brain for a while, but i'm not geeky enough to know:

what *nix commands sound like good first names, either for scifi characters or Real Live (mercilessly mocked?) children?

I always thought "Grep" would make a nice first name...

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#3 posted by Simon Greenwood

, October 10, 2007 6:31 AM

Vi of course... Perl would be good too.

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#4 posted by dculberson , October 10, 2007 7:00 AM

Grep? Might as well name 'em ls -lR | more!

Ruby would getcha Web 2.0, Linux, and a pretty name...

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#5 posted by David Lantner

, October 10, 2007 7:54 AM

"Anything to mess with database nation."

Perhaps the opening line from an upcoming work of yours, Cory?

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#6 posted by z7q2

, October 10, 2007 8:52 AM

Have you ever read "The Man Whose Name Wouldn't Fit"?

Fascinating! My first exposure to the subject many years ago, I found it in the public library and read it several times. Basically, a company moves to a punch-card system to track it's employees, but the name field is only 20 characters long, and one of the employees with the name Albert Duane Cartwright-Chickering has one character too many in his last name. So the company decides it's cheaper to terminate him rather than revamp the system, and he fights back, and hilarity ensues!

Long out of print unfortunately.

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#7 posted by Pieps , October 10, 2007 2:39 PM

If you name your daughter cat, then she can change her middle name to whatever she finds appropriate - like /usr/share/dict/american-english, or /etc/shadow.

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#8 posted by Mike , October 10, 2007 5:53 PM

Pete Finnigan, Oracle security guru picked up on this, and points to prior art on this (pun intended, so sorry!)