June 1994
Intermediate to advanced
384 pages
9h 28m
English
A little hardware knowledge is a dangerous thing. One programmer dismantled one of those novelty Christmas cards that plays a carol, and retrieved the piezoelectric melody chip. He secretly installed it into his boss’s keyboard, and connected it to one of the LEDs. It turns out that the voltage over a lighted LED is sufficient to drive one of these chips.
Then I, oops, I mean “he”, amended the system editor, so it turned on the LED when it started and turned it off when it exited. Result: the boss’s terminal played continuous Christmas carols whenever he used the editor! The people in neighboring offices formed a lynch mob after half-an-hour and made him stop all work until the cause was uncovered. ...
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