Pleased to see the reincarnation of FINGER

[Les]

I am pleased to see the reincarnation of FINGER, having created the
original one in the early 1970s and then being saddened when it was
killed off some years later. That was mainly a result of security
problems exemplified by the 1988 Morris Worm, which exploited a
security loophole in the Berkeley Unix version of FINGER, which I
hasten to point out was written by others.

FINGER was the first social networking program of sorts in that it
facilitated looking to see which of your friends was currently online.
It also could be used to check on enemies to see when they apparently
went to bed so that you could then launch an email attack that they
wouldn't be able to refute for awhile.

FINGER also provided the first personal blogging service though the
term "blog" did not come into use until about 25 years later. It was
used by a number of people to express their opinions or to coordinate
projects. For example, Linus Torvalds reportedly used it to coordinate
the development of Linux.

For more see the CNET article at
http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/pcperipherals/0,39051168,61998604,00.htm

[Brett Slatkin]

Very cool, Les! Happy to see you on the mailing list.