From: Cris J. Holdorph Subject: origin of 'biff' To: todd (Todd VanHoosear), penney (Chris Penney), ziemniak (Terry Ziemniak), price@cps.msu.edu (Kevin Price), middleto (Derek Middleton), hibner (Rich Hibner), conner (Chris Conner), kurt@cps.msu.edu (Dave Kurt) Date: Fri, 30 Apr 1993 16:19:03 -36803936 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL21] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1044 X-Status: >From the Unix FAQ (posted to comp.answers) biff = "BIFF" This command, which turns on asynchronous mail notification, was actually named after a dog at Berkeley. I can confirm the origin of biff, if you're interested. Biff was Heidi Stettner's dog, back when Heidi (and I, and Bill Joy) were all grad students at U.C. Berkeley and the early versions of BSD were being developed. Biff was popular among the residents of Evans Hall, and was known for barking at the mailman, hence the name of the command. Confirmation courtesy of Eric Cooper, Carnegie Mellon University ---- Cris J H -- ================================================== = Christopher J. Holdorph Team OS/2 = = ACM Chairperson, Michigan State University = = e-mail: holdorph@cps.msu.edu = = NeXT mail: cris@cl-next4.cl.msu.edu = = "...Your dream is over, Or has it just begun?" = = ---"Silent Lucidity", Queensryche = ==================================================