🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <5371@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu> lim@iris.ucdavis.edu (Lloyd Lim) writes:
 :: nuked the secret about showing dogcows ::
>What I'm curious about is how you got the stack to tell you the key phrase.
>Would you mind telling me how you stumbled across this unique phrase?

Of course I don't mind!  I was just curious how some minor feat was
accomplished in the stack.  I forget exactly what caught my interest, but it
had absolutely nothing to do with dogcows whatsoever, I assure you.

Of course, being a good programmer, I immediately began grokking the stack
script.  I thought that the repeated references to some strange code were a
touch unusual until I recognized them as rot13 crypt.

I would have thought nothing more about it until I realized that:
  - the main() XCMD was being used on the rot13, and I was really curious as to
     what main() did;
  - there were a few more convolutions in the code than I thought necessary
     (I later decided that these were probably to throw hackers of the track.
     Obviously, it didn't work); and
  - MacDTS wrote it.  Them, serious?  'Nuff said.

I worked my way backwards through the code until I figured out what was going
on.  I hit a dead-end when my machine refused to show the Dogcow note (it just
beeped, because it ran out of memory on my 1M SE); that's why I originally
complained about a 'bug' in the code.

More questions, though:  I think the pass for showing the Dogcow is either
"Grazing off a cliff" or "Lost in the weeds" (my memory fails me as to which
it really was...), but there is reference made in the stack scripts to both of
these phrases, as well as "loso in the weeds" (lower-case 'l', 't' swapped
for second 'o').  Are these in there for some obscure reason?

And while I think of it, how often does that stack get revised, and when will
the Tech Notes since this spring be added?

     << Brian >>
-- 
| Brian S. Kendig       |  I feel more like I   | bskendig                   |
| Computer Engineering  |  did when I got here  | @phoenix.Princeton.EDU     |
| Princeton University  |       than I do now.  | @PUCC.BITNET               |
| Systems Engineering, NASA Space Station Freedom / General Electric WP3     |