Sid Dabster

The newest addition to the User Friendly comic strip. Sid is an old and very experienced geek who has spent a lot of his time at Columbia Internet competing with Pitr to prove that he is a better geek. The first program he ever wrote was an AI that answered "yes"/"no" questions by answering "yes" to questions ending in a vowel (much like Pitr's "da"/"nyet" AI). He considers Linux to be a "watered-down version of a real Unix", and prefers other Unix systems.

Sid is an old time hacker, and probably also a real programmer. He is rooted in the iron age of computer science, when "computer" meant a huge, hulking mainframe consuming kilowatts of power and being programmed with punched cards. However, despite his grey hair he has kept abreast of recent developments and so far has managed to prove that nobody can beat him where computers are concerned. He is just plain über-cool.

Sid is almost always holding a cup of (presumably) programming fluid, something that I suspect will play some role in a user friendly story to come...