<p>We&#39;ve had a few emails recently from people who&#39;ve spotted the society&#39;s name mentioned in an online promotional game for the forthcoming film, &lsquo;Untraceable&rsquo;.</p><p>We were as surprised as players of the game to see this name check, as we have no affiliation with Sony Pictures. So, to quench your thirst for answers, allow us to explain a little.</p>

<p>The game is using a screen shot of a computer running an old version of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux">Linux</a> operating system kernel. One of our life members, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Cox">Alan Cox</a>, is a Linux developer and up until version 2.5.66 of Linux, our name appeared in the boot messages because he named his version of some networking code after us. So you would have seen something like:</p>

<pre>Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4<br />Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039</pre>

<p>Since version 2.5.67 the boot message has been absent from the Linux start up because they were reducing the amount of &lsquo;name checks&rsquo; in the boot messages but you can still find a reference to us in the code comments of <code><a href="http://sucs.org/uri/3M">net/socket.c</a></code></p>

<p>This won&#39;t help you win the game but we hope you found it interesting :-)</p>