from
Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003)
RTM
/R.T.M/
1. [Usenet: abbreviation for `Read The Manual'] Politer variant of
{RTFM}.
2. Robert Tappan Morris, perpetrator of the great Internet worm of
1988 (see {Great Worm}); villain to many, naive hacker gone wrong to a
few. Morris claimed that the worm that brought the Internet to its
knees was a benign experiment that got out of control as the result of
a coding error. After the storm of negative publicity that followed
this blunder, Morris's username on ITS was hacked from RTM to {RTFM}.
from
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)
RTM
1. [{Usenet}] Read The Manual. Politer variant of {RTFM}.
2. Robert T. Morris Jr.
The perpetrator of the great Internet worm of 1988 (see {Great
Worm}); villain to many, naive hacker gone wrong to a few.
Morris claimed that the worm that brought the Internet to its
knees was a benign experiment that got out of control as the
result of a coding error. After the storm of negative
publicity that followed this blunder, Morris's user name on ITS
was hacked from RTM to {RTFM}.
[{Jargon File}]
(1995-03-31)