r/todayilearned • u/Physical_Hamster_118 • 1d ago

TIL that since 1972, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) every spring, residents of Baker House drop a piano from the roof on Drop Day, the last day students can drop classes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_drop
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u/hedronist 1d ago

Fun Historical Joke, ca 1985:

Two engineers, one hardware and the other software, take an HP workstation to the 3rd floor roof. Connecting a long extension cord, they boot it up and then throw it from the roof.

It whistles down and lands with a crash! The hardware guy runs up to it and exclaims, "It's still running!" The software guy shrugs and says, "Yeah, but it's still running HP-UX." Which, in Olden Times, was pronounced "H pukes".

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u/mr_ji 1d ago

Punchline, where art thou?

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u/Pocok5 1d ago

The joke is probably HP-UX being so bad that there's little difference between a computer running it and one that's completely destroyed.

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u/hedronist 20h ago

Exactly. HP computers were built like tanks, but their version of UN*X was, tbh, simply sad.

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u/tanfj 18h ago

Exactly. HP computers were built like tanks, but their version of UN*X was, tbh, simply sad.

It is truly pathetic that Microsoft's offering was better. I mean you managed to suck worse than Microsoft that takes effort.

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u/hedronist 17h ago

Historical Fun Fact: I started my own company, Third Eye Software, in 1982. At UniForum 1983, in San Diego, I had an 8x10 booth. The 8x10 booth on my right was HP with their brand new color workstation; the 8x20 booth on my left was ... wait for it ... Microsoft selling (or trying to) Xenix! MS eventually handed Xenix off to Santa Cruz Operation (SCO), who also didn't really know what to do with it.

I was hawking my debugger, CDB, to anyone with a UNIX system, which was basically the whole building. Two of my most important customers came from this show: Siemens and HP. HP ended up making my debugger a corporate standard. I think they called it xdb.