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
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