In message <Pine.GSO.3.96.980713173735.26116B-100000@geo.geocast.net>, Castor F
u writes:
>Apologies for the digression, but a couple of years ago, I read a
>William Safire "On Language" column where Safire noted that programmers
>would describe particularly nasty encounter with their computers as
>having "met Ed."  He then wondered who Ed might be.  Obviously, if
>Safire had dealt with a hosed Unix system he would have gotten the
>capitalization right ;-)

>Since there are no doubt some venerable unix hackers here, has anyone 
>actually used the phrase "met ed" to describe these sessions of file system
>surgery?  Is it perhaps an east coast thing?  I've never actually heard this.

Never heard it used.

When I was doing tech support for non-Unix users, for Xerox, I used to use
ed to walk people through fixing things.  It was very easy to control them,
whereas in an "advanced" editor, they'd try to do things themselves and botch.

-s