Date: Sat, 9 Dec 1995 01:05:02 -0500
From: rmuha@tiac.net (ralph muha)

Subject: Re: -- WHO IS TOM SERVO??? --

>
>Good question. What is this thing? In the beginning i thought he was after
>me: I kept seeing his name on *every* reflector i logged into (sometimes
>even twice!)
>My guess:
>a) Tom Servo is a reflector bug
>b) Tom Servo is a joke the folks at cornell are playing on us
>c) Tom Servo is the CU equivalent of the "Killroy was here" graffiti
>d) all of the above
>
Tom Servo is the name of one of the robot puppets on a very popular
TV show called Mystery Science Theatre 3000, which appears on the
Comedy Central cable channel in the US.  A guy named Joel is stranded
on the 'Satellite of Love' where he is forced to watch bad movies
by his colleagues on earth.  His only companions are his robot buddies,
Crow, Tom Servo, Gypsy and CamBot.  They watch the movies and make
running commmentary, very funny, very satirical...

Apparently, there is some version of CU-SeeMe that has the default
nickname set to Tom Servo...

r



------------------------------
Date: Sat, 9 Dec 1995 12:42:16 -0500 (EST)
From: Stephen Edgar 
To: Stefaan Quix 
Cc: CU-SEEME-L@cornell.edu
Subject: Re: -- WHO IS TOM SERVO??? --
Message-ID: 

Tom Servo is a reference to the wise cracking "robot" on Mystery Science
Theater 3000, a comedy television show in the U.S. which made an art form
of making fun of really bad movies.  When I first wrote the Windows
version of CU-SeeMe (way back when), I was doing so, at night, in addition
to my "day job".  A friend had given me some "MST 3K" tapes, and they
seemed even funnier after coding late into the evening.  So, when
presented with an opportunity to provide a default string in the "Your Name"
field of the Windows CU-SeeMe Preferences dialog, the string used by the
Mac version ("Your Name") seemed a bit too boring, and "Tom Servo" made it
in, with a bit a figurative wink.  If folks do not type in a name in the
Preferences dialog, the default string "Tom Servo" gets used when they
connect.  Otherwise, whatever they type in gets used (and saved).

-- Steve.