373
submitted 1 year ago by free_owl716@lemm.ee to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] rockstarpirate@lemmy.world 107 points 1 year ago

When I was in middle school in the mid ‘90s, the school library decided to go digital. They installed a bunch of computers with what they called “a boolean search system”. For the first time, you could search for a book by topic in the library and, after a bit of a wait bc computers were pretty slow back then, you’d get a list of results.

Well, us being kids, on the very first day, somebody decided to search for “book”, which of course matched every single book in the library and therefore created enough system load to lock up those poor mid-‘90s computers to the point that they required a hardware restart. IIRC this system was on some kind of a network too and I believe it would also lock up the network such that the other computers couldn’t use the system either. I didn’t know much about such things at the time.

Anyway, word got around immediately and so every single time a class came to the library, somebody would search “book” on a computer to see what would happen and lock up the whole system for hours. This went on for weeks with the punishment for searching “book” on the “boolean search system” becoming more and more severe, and then I moved to a new state so I unfortunately do not know how this story ended.

[-] deadhead@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

This is the most innocent prank with the most destruction I’ve ever heard

[-] Rachelhazideas@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Imagine not being able to search for book in a library. Literally 1984.

[-] rockstarpirate@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago
[-] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 3 points 1 year ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/mZHoHaAYHq8?t=17s

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.

[-] Borgzilla@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That was one shitty database application lol. I guess the programmer hadn't thought of using pagination.

this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
373 points (97.7% liked)

Asklemmy

43027 readers
1845 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS