Ian,

I remember writing a Unix command for a Sequent machine called “pagercall” that allowed any user to send a pager message directly (it linked a back-wired terminal server into an X25 connection I think).

It wasn’t long before it got attached to network monitoring software, and the strange game-effect of random network failure and the oddity that was the pager system meant the support guys (who were on call out of hours) being on a strange system-support loop.

I wish I had realised that the thing that I found deeply ethically worrying was in fact the future!