Talk:Lace card

Untitled

Can the cleanup of the article be as simple as correcting the ugly grammar, subject inconsistencies, and lack of clarity? Also, looks like the content of the article was either taken from here, or maybe was copied to there. A more complete definition of lace card can be found here Dividingbyzero (talk) 22:13, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

---

i don't understand the article. Was this a sort of attack on a computer? would it be put in my malicious people in order to jam the machine and cause it to misfunction, or did it serve a specific purpose? i see that the modern equivalent would be a black fax, which I would consider to be malicious, however this article makes it seem like it would occur more by accident or by people who did not know it would cause a jam... -aliencam (talk) 01:11, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I assume it was usually an in-house prank, directed by one specific individual against another specific individual, and not any kind of attempt at serious economic vandalism or industrial sabotage. It would be hard to create a lace card by accident, and it would not serve any legitimate purpose according to the usual way of punching cards to represent information (see Punch_card#IBM 80 column punch card format). AnonMoos (talk) 22:17, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

This was the DoS attack of the punch card period – you could put such a card in a card stack and send it to your enimies, if you'd like to. --Sven (talk) 13:21, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

It was a good way to put the input system down for a while; students who needed a couple of additional hours would slip "Sunday cards" or "Holy cards" into a couple of other decks and go back to writing their own programs. Their assignments might be late, but they could blame "the system" as not having gotten to their code due to the other student's messing with the machines. We eventually changed to keeping track of when decks were turned in, rather than when they were scanned. Sorry, I have no idea where this might be documented. htom (talk) 04:42, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Sourcing

There really doesn't seem to be any mention of this in any academic database I have access to. I suppose there could be something in an older print source on punched cards, but I really am surprised that this doesn't seem to be mentioned in any ACM publication, even in passing. Some of the nicknames turn up literally zero hits in the databases. The implication at least (somewhat in response to the above comments) is that this really was never a big mode of sabotaging punched card systems. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 05:21, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Should have guessed this was based on a Jargon File entry. Anyway, that basic sourcing has been accomplished. Whether any more sources exist is probably a tough question. It doesn't look like the term was in the Jargon File before 2.1.1 (which appears to be 1990ish). —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 05:34, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

The jargon file frequently acquired entries when young folk were listening to the older folk talking about pranks from their (long ago) youth. My experience (above) was in the 1960s. Yes, we had computers then. Maybe if someone has access to the use/repair manuals for card readers and card punchers there might be a reference to them in there. That they are not discussed in journals is not surprising. What's to say about them that would be of academic interest? They were a nuisance to operators and maintenance people, few others paid any attention to them. There probably are not journal articles about misaligned slide rules, either. htom (talk) 02:40, 15 December 2013 (UTC)