:Eric Conspiracy: n. A shadowy group of mustachioed hackers named
Eric first pinpointed as a sinister conspiracy by an infamous
talk.bizarre posting ca. 1986; this was doubtless influenced by the
numerous `Eric' jokes in the Monty Python oeuvre. There do indeed
seem to be considerably more mustachioed Erics in hackerdom than
the frequency of these three traits can account for unless they are
correlated in some arcane way. Well-known examples include Eric
Allman (he of the `Allman style' described under {indent style})
and Erik Fair (co-author of NNTP); your editor has heard from about
fifteen others by email, and the organization line `Eric
Conspiracy Secret Laboratories' now emanates regularly from more
than one site.
-- The AI Hackers Dictionary
