From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: cowan@ccil.org (John Cowan) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 14:29:24 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] UNIX turns forty In-Reply-To: References: <200906050348.n553mr9N017809@cuzuco.com> <20090605144015.GA27542@mercury.ccil.org> Message-ID: <20090605182924.GC31649@mercury.ccil.org> Ian King scripsit: > Not a very *good* article, either, IMHO. One gets the impression the > author of the piece was given two or three pieces of data and > instructed to write a historical drama around them. A bit more than that: the author credits Salus as his main source, so if you want more detail, you know where to get it. Remember the target audience. > I also suspect he's never seen a PDP-7, either. Few of us have, and even fewer have seen one running Unix, I dare say. For that matter, I never saw a PDP-11 running Unix, though I certainly heard plenty about it: my first Unix-in-anger was MS Xenix System III on a PC/AT with a 10 Mb hard drive. > It was unnecessary to slam the PDP-7 to make > the point that Unix was created on a computer of modest resources. "Wimpy" is a disrespectful word, undoubtedly. > In other words, this read like any other popularized account - which > would be expected, if it had been published in Ladies Home Journal. Is it actually necessary to slam _Ladies' Home Journal_ to make the point that _Computerworld_ is a popularizing magazine? Have you ever read even a single issue of LHJ? I have read many of them, though admittedly not since the 1970s. -- John Cowan cowan at ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan The present impossibility of giving a scientific explanation is no proof that there is no scientific explanation. The unexplained is not to be identified with the unexplainable, and the strange and extraordinary nature of a fact is not a justification for attributing it to powers above nature. --The Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. "telepathy" (1913)