Is my paranoia unfounded or not

On 2007-06-08, Moe Trin wrote:
>
> While a lot of tradition exists that UNIX usernames are often formed
> from the 'first initial, last name' - there is also the tradition of
> using 'first name, last initial' when the other scheme may conflict
> with an existing user. Thus, 'roberto' and 'richardo' would be
> worth looking at. What - you say you have another individual named
> Roberto Clements? OK - who is going to be "robert1" or similar ;-)

Well, of course. Presumably Robert Oliver Oot could be rooot, and
Richard Oliver Ot could be rot, instead of either being root. So they
have options even if they want their full last name in their login id.

> Hmmm, that piqued my interest... the Phoenix (Arizona, USA - metro
> population about 2.5e6) telephone book lists
>
> [compton ~]$ grep ^OOT phone.PHX | cut -d' ' -f1 | column
> OOTE OOTEN OOTON OOTS
> [compton ~]$ egrep '^OT.? ' phone.PHX | cut -d' ' -f1 | column
> OTA OTO OTT OTU
> [compton ~]$ wc -l phone.PHX
> 837489 phone.PHX
> [compton ~]$
>
> Well, those names don't seem to be very common - of course, Mister Oot
> or Mister Ot might have unlisted phones. ;-)

Probably they've just switched to using a shadow phonebook. ;-)

--keith

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