Dick Depew was a guy who let loose a program to do Retroactive Moderation of the Usenet News groups. Sadly he hadn't debugged it and, worse, let it loose then went home! Several hours later the net was brought to its knees as the program posted in newsgroups and then sent cancel messages in a recursive loop attempting to cancel itself!  Someone eventually found Depew's phone number and phoned him in the middle of the night to tell him to turn it off.  Red faces ensued.

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