Comment by searealist
2 years ago
He made the story up. When confronted with the fact that units didn't convert some of the units from his story his response was essentially "Oh yeah, well of course I always supplemented my units definitions on all my machines with obscure units.".
Do you have a source for that?
EDIT: #19 here https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html
These potential anachronisms are easy to insert when retelling a story. It doesn't really mean he "made it up", but reverse engineering how the diagnostic was determined might lead one to use tools/definitions that didn't exist at the time.
It's also entirely plausible that a local definitions file was used to provide the unit that didn't come in the default install. Hence the anachronism is merely "potential" instead of "definite"
Check his own FAQ.
I don't think that's enough evidence to claim he made the whole story up.