Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!hao!ames!umd5!uvaarpa!mcnc!ece-csc!ncrcae!ncr-sd!hp-sdd!hplabs!hpcea!hpcilzb!lock From: lock@hpcilzb.HP.COM (Ed Lock) Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions Subject: Re: Re: biff (INFO-UNIX Digest V4#082) Message-ID: <1500001@hpcilzb.HP.COM> Date: 13 Dec 87 05:24:52 GMT References: <10596@brl-adm.ARPA> Organization: HP Design Tech Center - Santa Clara, CA Lines: 16 > What does "biff" (the mail alarm) stand for? > "biff" is a funny one. Everyone asks "where does the name come from". > In fact, biff was the name of a dog who hung around the fifth floor of Evans > Hall at UC Berkeley in 1981. The programmer of biff (I forget the name) > couldn't come up with a name, so it was named after the dog. biff: bark if "from" found. This was also the name of the dog that belonged to Heidi S., a computer science graduate student at UC Berkeley in the late 70's and early 80's. Ed Lock Design Technology Center Hewlett-Packard ...!hpda!hpdtc!lock