[TUHS] etymology of cron

[scj@yaccman.com (scj@yaccman.com)]

This has been a somewhat bizarre and troubling thread, all in all.

Would anybody want to discuss the origin of 'ls'?   Or 'at'?

Steve

PS: (that was NOT a serious suggestion!)



> On Thursday, 24 December 2015 at 10:17:53 -0500, John Cowan wrote:
>> Clem Cole scripsit:
>>
>>> Rik in his role as the editor of ;login is going to try work with Doug
>>> and
>>> to get something "published" into the next edition which should satisfy
>>> the
>>> Wikipedia folks.   There is a minor issue is that Rik is technically
>>> past
>>> the deadline but due to the holiday, there are a few days of grace that
>>> the
>>> workers putting the issue together have said they will thankfully try
>>> to
>>> handle.
>>>
>>> So maybe we can have get this fixed shortly.
>>
>> I don't think so.  Is ;login: a peer-reviewed journal?  It doesn't
>> look like it to me.
>
> One of the original references was from the proceedings of an AUUG
> conference.  From personal experience I can confirm that the level of
> review for the conferences fell far short of what USENIX did.
>
>> Still, the current state says:
>>
>>     The origin of the name cron is from the Greek word for
>>     time, ???????????? (chronos), according to its author Ken
>>     Thompson[2][better source needed]. Others have suggested that the
>>     name comes from the Greek God Chronos[3] or that it is an acronym
>>     for "Command Run On Notice"[4] or "Commands Run Over Night",[5]
>>     but the references lack substantiation.
>>
>> Even if someone is still grumbling on the talk page, that doesn't
>> substantially misrepresent anything that I can see.
>
> Yes, that last sentence was my update.  As I mentioned in an earlier
> message, I think that it's appropriate that it should stay, if only to
> stop people making the claim again in a more forceful manner.
>
> But it would be nice to be able to remove the [better source needed].
> It seems that there's only one person objecting to the changes.  I've
> asked him on the talk page what he really wants.
>
> Greg
> --
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