The Unix Heritage Society mailing list
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
* Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?
@ 2018-06-30  1:31 Larry McVoy
  2018-06-30  1:45 ` Jon Forrest
  2018-06-30  2:27 ` [TUHS] Masscomp oops [was: Any Good dmr Anecdotes?] Mike Markowski
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 37+ messages in thread
From: Larry McVoy @ 2018-06-30  1:31 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

I've told this story so much that my kids hear me start it and go "is that
the Unix guy?  Yeah, we've heard this".  And I think many of you have heard
it as well so you can hit delete, but for the newbies to the list here goes.

Decades ago I was a grad student at UWisc and pretty active on comp.arch
and comp.unix-wizards (I was not a wizard but I've lived through, and
written up, the process of restoring a Masscomp after having done some
variant of rm -rf / so a stupid wizard wanna be?)

From time to time, some Unix kernel thing would come up and I'd email
...!research!dmr and ask him how that worked.  

He *always* replied.  To me, a nobody.  All he cared was that the question
wasn't retarded (and I bet to him some of mine were but the questions showed
that I was thinking and that was good enough for him).  I remember a long
discussion about something, I think PIPEBUF but not sure, and at some point
he sent me his phone number and said "call me".  Email was too slow.

So yeah, one of the inventors of Unix was cool enough to take some young
nobody and educate him.  That's Dennis.

I've tried to pass some of that energy forward to my kids, telling them
that if you want to learn, smart people like that and they will help you.

Dennis was a humble man, a smart man, and a dude willing to pass on what
he knew.

I miss him and cherish the interactions I had with him.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 37+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?
@ 2018-07-18  9:42 Hendrik Jan Thomassen
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 37+ messages in thread
From: Hendrik Jan Thomassen @ 2018-07-18  9:42 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

Several decades ago, Jim Joyce of San Francisco was one of the
more colorful chaps in the UNIX scene. Among other ventures he
had "The Independent UNIX Bookstore", and during Usenix conferences
he would rent a nearby hotel suite to sell his books to the
conference attendants. Jim once told me the following story (yes,
the topic is about dmr anecdotes).

One day a young man came to the hotel suite and asked, in a
somewhat exaggerated voice, "the best book to learn C programming".
Jim pointed at a gentleman in a nearby armchair, reading, and said:
"ask that gentleman because he knows everything there is to know
about C". So the young man approached said gentleman, and repeated
his question. The answer he got was: "Sorry, I can't help you, 
because I never had to learn C". Which left the young man flabbergasted.


-- 
Hendrik-Jan Thomassen     <hjt@ATComputing.nl>
AT Computing              Linux opleiders & consultants
Kerkenbos 1238            Tel +31 24 352 72 82
6546 BE  Nijmegen         www.atcomputing.nl

'If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.'


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 37+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?
@ 2018-07-03  7:27 arnold
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 37+ messages in thread
From: arnold @ 2018-07-03  7:27 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

Hi All.

Kudos to Warren for helping me track down the original USENET postings
that make up a fun DMR story.

In October of 1985, a guy from Teklabs posted a long rant against
both Unix and the people at USENIX conferences.  The original
rant is available here (thanks Warren!):

> https://www.tuhs.org/Usenet/comp.org.usenix/1985-October/000163.html
> and in this text file:
> https://www.tuhs.org/Usenet/comp.org.usenix/1985-October.txt.gz

Dennis replied - the relevant part of what he was replying to is
in his message available here:

> https://www.tuhs.org/Usenet/comp.unix/1985-October/005952.html

Here is the full text of Dennis's note:

| Groupies
|
| dmr at dutoit.UUCP dmr at dutoit.UUCP 
| Wed Oct 9 15:30:04 AEST 1985
|
|------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| tekadg!davidl writes, at considerable length and with widespread distribution:
| 
| > ... Socially, Usenix is like a
| > spherical glob, with a handful of original software authors at the center (the
| > ones who wrote the original code, like the developers of Unix, C, etc. - the
| > ones whose names are always being bandied about). Around these, there's a
| > surrounding shell of what has been aptly called "Unix groupies" trying to
| > associate themselves, both logically and physically, with the "illuminati"
| > at the center.  Typically, these loathsome little insects are system
| > administrators and hackers who spend their time either on the net or
| > endlessly rewriting UUCP or NROFF or, or, or... And, I'm told, there are
| > even some real, honest-to-goodness groupies (of the rock-star variety) who
| > spend their time trying get near the "inner circle" for - never mind...
| > it's believable, though -  it's certainly consistent with the demeanor of
| > the rest of the proceedings.
| 
| Usenix conventions, which are undeniably and appropriately narrow-minded
| and introverted, sport more than a few bores, but are notable for absence
| of loathsome insects.  Even the irascible Rob Pike remarked after Portland,
| "Goodness, there were very few loathesome insects there."
| 
| They are also marked by a lack of honest-to-goodness rock-star-variety
| groupies.  Believe me on this.  The free cocaine was nowhere in evidence,
| I consumed no cigar-sized hash bombers, the insistent, complaisant
| lovelies were elsewhere by the time I got back from dinner.  Indeed, the
| plaster of Paris I had obtained in case anyone wanted a cast of my genitals
| went entirely unused.
| 
| Still, I understand the party that AT&T threw in Washington
| was pretty wild.  Too bad I missed it.
| 
| 	DMR

All this was in October 1985.

At the Atlanta USENIX in the summer of 1986, there was some kind of
contest (I don't remember what) and they announced (undoubtedly as a joke)
that one of the prizes was "a plaster cast of Dennis Ritchie's genitals."
It got a good laugh.

Arnold

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 37+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?
@ 2018-07-02 19:55 Paul Ruizendaal
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 37+ messages in thread
From: Paul Ruizendaal @ 2018-07-02 19:55 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs


Not quite a dmr anecdote, but maybe this list can clear up a statement that dmr reputedly made: “streams means something different when shouted”.
I think the claim goes back to around the turn of the millennium and as far as I know it is not disputed that dmr either said this or could have said this.

Now, from reading this list over the years my understanding of the above statement is that dmr designed streams as a mechanism to clean up the kernel handling of line disciplines in a context of access via a terminal and/or modem, and that STREAMS developed this into a way to integrate network stacks with the kernel — hence streams meant something different when shouted.

The original dmr paper (1984) on streams (http://cm.bell-labs.co/who/dmr/st.html) seemed to support this understanding, focussing on terminal handling in its discussion. Also, near the end it says: "Streams are linear connections; by themselves, they support no notion of multiplexing, fan-in or fan-out. [...] It seems likely that a general multiplexing mechanism could help in both cases, but again, I do not yet know how to design it.” This seemed to exclude usage for networking, which is typically multiplexed.

However, now that the V8 sources are available it is clear that the streams mechanism was used (by dmr?) to implement TCP/IP networking. He explains how that tallies with the above quote on multiplexing in a 1985 usenet post: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topicsearchin/net.unix-wizards/subject$3Astreams/net.unix-wizards/b7W_j_0qASU
(if the post by dmr does not immediately appear, click on the 8-10-85 post by 'd...@dutoit.uucp’ to make it fold out: this is the message I refer to).

The way I read this usenet post, dmr was actually reasonably content with implementing a network stack on top of (lowercase) streams. This then implies that he was alluding to something else when saying “streams means something different when shouted” (or maybe he never said it).

Any opinions on what he might have meant?








^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 37+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?
@ 2018-07-01 16:35 Norman Wilson
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 37+ messages in thread
From: Norman Wilson @ 2018-07-01 16:35 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

Greg Lehey:

  No, that was Peter Weinberger, as dmr confirmed.  There's quite a
  story behind what happened to the stencil.  I'll let Warren tell it,
  but if you want to cheat, check
  http://www.lemis.com/grog/diary-oct2002.php#17

====

There are many stories behind the use and abuse of Peter's
face.  The canonical source is

http://spinroot.com/pico/pjw.html

spinroot.com belongs to Gerard Holzman, who was involved
with many creative uses of digitized photography during
my time at the Labs.  (Also much work on software reliability,
which he now pursues at JPL.)

The org chart with every face replaced by Peter's was on
the wall of the UNIX Room when I first visited 1127 in
February 1984.  I suspect it appeared not long after Peter
became a department head, but I don't know just when that
was.

Peter didn't really take the alleged glory of being a
department head all that seriously, just the responsibilities.
One of the official glories was that Department Heads were
supposed to get carpet in their offices, atop the standard
linoleum tiles.  Peter didn't want it, and (as he told me
the story later) had to argue with Facilities a lot not to get it.
Somehow this resulted in a trophy: a small square of carpet
stuck to the wall outside his office.

Norman Wilson
Toronto ON

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 37+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?
@ 2018-06-29  7:53 Warren Toomey
  2018-06-29 10:53 ` ches@Cheswick.com
  2018-06-29 23:55 ` Dave Horsfall
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 37+ messages in thread
From: Warren Toomey @ 2018-06-29  7:53 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

We do have ken on the list, so I won't be presumptious to ask for ken-related
anecdotes, but would anybody like to share some dmr anecdotes?

I never met Dennis in person, but he was generous with his time about my
interest in Unix history; and also with sharing the material he still had.

Dennis was very clever, though. He would bring out a new artifact and say:
well, here's what I still have of X. Pity it will never execute again, sigh.

I'm sure he knew that I would take that as a challenge. Mind you, it worked,
which is why we now have the first Unix kernel in C, the 'nsys' kernel, and
the first two C compilers, in executable format.

Any other good anecdotes?

Cheers, Warren

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 37+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2018-07-18 10:01 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 37+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2018-06-30  1:31 [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes? Larry McVoy
2018-06-30  1:45 ` Jon Forrest
2018-06-30 18:43   ` Steve Johnson
2018-06-30  2:27 ` [TUHS] Masscomp oops [was: Any Good dmr Anecdotes?] Mike Markowski
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2018-07-18  9:42 [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes? Hendrik Jan Thomassen
2018-07-03  7:27 arnold
2018-07-02 19:55 Paul Ruizendaal
2018-07-01 16:35 Norman Wilson
2018-06-29  7:53 Warren Toomey
2018-06-29 10:53 ` ches@Cheswick.com
2018-06-29 12:51   ` John P. Linderman
2018-06-30  0:50   ` Steve Johnson
2018-06-30 11:44     ` Arrigo Triulzi
2018-06-30 22:42       ` Arthur Krewat
2018-06-30 23:29         ` Arrigo Triulzi
2018-07-01  4:17           ` Larry McVoy
2018-07-01 11:42           ` ron
2018-07-01  5:29       ` Dave Horsfall
2018-07-01  8:28         ` Arrigo Triulzi
2018-07-01 11:34         ` ron
2018-07-09 16:30           ` Random832
2018-07-09 17:13             ` Clem Cole
2018-07-10  5:54               ` arnold
2018-07-10  6:09                 ` George Michaelson
2018-07-10  7:19                   ` arnold
2018-07-11  0:20                     ` Noel Hunt
2018-07-11  1:31                       ` Larry McVoy
2018-07-11  1:37                         ` George Michaelson
2018-07-11  1:37                         ` ron minnich
2018-07-11  3:12                           ` Larry McVoy
2018-07-13  9:08                       ` ches@Cheswick.com
2018-07-13 14:10                         ` ron
2018-07-10 14:10                 ` Clem Cole
2018-07-03 17:34       ` Perry E. Metzger
2018-06-29 23:55 ` Dave Horsfall
2018-06-30  0:06   ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2018-06-30 14:20   ` John P. Linderman

This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).