Honor, redefined

Flashback to 1981, when this pilot fish and everyone else in his university computer science program is learning Cobol, and they submit their decks of punched cards on the honor system.

"We were very careful with the computer time in those days," says fish. "Every time the compiler was executed, one point was subtracted from the score for that exercise."

"One day a friend commented that a guy named Fred always got his printouts back before anyone else, raising the suspicion that there was cheating going on.

"Near the end of the semester, with time crunch alive and well, I took a lengthy Cobol deck to the computer room and set it on the table behind the other two that were already there -- that was where the honor system came in.

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