Path: kzdoos!blackhl!utopia!hacktic!sun4nl!mcsun!uunet!math.ohio-state.edu!wupost!decwrl!decwrl!csus.edu!csulb.edu!dpalmer From: dpalmer@beach.csulb.edu (Dave Palmer) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: The Cookie Bear Message-ID: Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1993 17:57:33 GMT Sender: news@csulb.edu (News Administration/Rumor Bureau) Organization: Cal State Long Beach Lines: 68 Most people assume that the cookie hack is named for the Cookie Monster of Sesame Street, and the hack is frequently called "The Cookie Monster." But it is also called "The Cookie Bear," and I think this may have been the original term. So where did "Cookie Bear" come from? Glad you asked. In the early-to-mid 1970's, singer Andy Williams had a weekly variety show on TV...NBC, I think it was. Though it seems strange to say, the show was actually pretty hip for its time. One of the recurring features of the show was the Cookie Bear sketch. In these sketches, a guy in a bear suit (stuntman Janos Prohoska, if you MUST know) would try various devious methods for conning cookies out of Andy Williams. The sketches would always end with Williams shrieking, "No cookies. Not now, not ever....**NEVER**!" And the bear would fall over...great stuff. The show was actually fairly popular in some parts of the hacker community, especially around Ames Research Center. It was there that I first saw the cookie hack. In fact, I just happen to have a printout from that era (kept because it contained the classic "Sex Life of an Electron" story) that has instructions on how to launch the bear. It reads: FROM ARPANET HOST 198 AT 01:00 ON 09/27/73 HOW TO USE THE COOKIE BEAR ALREADY: %(1%) LOGIN AS "BEAR" OR "PANDA" OR "LION" OR WHATEVER. %(2%) TYPE AT DDT ":XFILE GLS;CHECK FOO" %(3%) WHEN A * (OR MAYBE TWO *'S) GET TYPED AT YOU, TYPE THE UNAME OF THE PERSON TO SIC THE BEAR ON. %(4%) IF THIS PERSON IS NOT ONLINE OR OTHERWISE FOULS THINGS UP, THE BEAR WILL TAKE 50 RETRIES AT INTERVALS OF 5 SECONDS OR SO; THUS IT MAY TAKE A WHILE TO DISAPPEAR. %(5%) WHEN DONE THE BEAR WILL LOG ITSELF OUT. <> THE BEAR FROM THE CONSOLE IT'S LOGGED IN AT. %(7%) IT IS POSSIBLE TO RUN THE BEAR AS A SUBJOB (THE PROGRAM IS "GLS;TS CHECK"), BUT THEN YOU CAN'T CONVERSE WITH IT (DDT WILL ONLY SEND MESSAGES TO OTHER HACTRNS; THUS THE BEAR SHOULD ALSO BE A HACTRN. THIS IS WHAT CHECK FOO DOES.) On the other hand, jtk@s1.gov (Jordin Kare) wrote: >My recollection is that one of the earliest, if not the earliest, >cookie monster, lived on the original Dartmouth Basic time sharing system >in the 1960's. One morning, the console terminal printed "I WANT >A COOKIE!" and the system came to a halt. Much scratching of heads, >typing of commands, etc. to no avail -- any input just produced "I WANT >A COOKIE!" Finally, someone typed "COOKIE" and lo and behold, the >system came back up. >etc... >"What's all this junk?" Sure enough, there was a lovingly hand-assembled >card cage containing.... The Cookie Monster! Jordin: Are you *SURE* this was the 1960's? If so, this would predate both the Muppets and the Cookie Bear. Was the hack actually CALLED "Cookie Monster" at the time, or did that label come later? Can anyone else recall any pre-70's cookie goings-on? I wonder if the Andy Williams Cookie Bear was based on an older gag? -- ************************************************************************ "To free a man of error is to give, not to take away. Knowledge that a thing is false is a truth." --Schopenhauer *************************************************************************