* Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints
@ 2018-08-29 14:25 Clem Cole
2018-08-29 22:34 ` Dave Horsfall
2018-08-31 21:56 ` [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints Cág
0 siblings, 2 replies; 45+ messages in thread
From: Clem Cole @ 2018-08-29 14:25 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Greg 'groggy' Lehey; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3696 bytes --]
On Wed, Aug 29, 2018 at 1:07 AM Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@lemis.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday, 28 August 2018 at 23:23:10 -0400, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote:
> > On Wed, Aug 29, 2018 at 11:06:05AM +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> ....
>
>
> Creeping featurism!
>
No, I think its really is that many programmers that touch different
applications felt the need to pee on the code to feel that they left their
scent. 😘
Seriously, IMO the problem is you can never know what someone else really
values, so be careful at what you change. Pike's 'cat -v' dissertation
b*tched at UCB for the some of the same issues. Somewhere there is a
proper middle ground ( I think of as having good taste elegance). BSD nor
Linux was no more 'perfect' that 6th or 7th edition. Truth is a much as I
pine for the elegance, I don't want to run either of the later as my
day-2-day system in today's world and I >>loved<< running them when they
were what I had.
Rob has a real point and many of the changes really *are gratuitous* and
there *are better ways of doing* many things than adding a switch to old
command and reusing it because you can. I also think the complaint of just
adding 'crap' because you could started with BSD but the cause wasn't that
people were bad -- there was address space relief over the PDP-11 and often
added a new switch/new functionality was easy to do, instead of creating a
whole new solution just deidcated to that problen only. FWIW: sendmail is
my best example (useful tool that it was - there were/are much more elegant
solutions - sendmail should have been 'headerwriter' and smtpd should have
been a seperate program).
Dueling switches and functionality (dec vs -f bs -F) I fear is sometimes
ignorance of the past. I fear there is some sort of belief we need to shed
the past because someone feeld the it gets in the way of the future (I'll
pick on my on son here - who things 2-3 years is 'old' and its time to
throw things away). Truth is sometimes it might. But I would rather
inject a stronger strain into the mix and let the users decide and for good
or bad, BSD did that to the original (v6/v7) and now Linux is doing/has
done it to much of BSD.
The compaint is the 'throwing the baby out with the bath water' behavior
that seems to often follow (see systemd issues on other mailing lists);
*i.e*. did you really gain something for this huge disruption. To me when
something really new/a great innovation comes that should be celebrated.
BSD gave us VM and a number of 'useful' new utilities, and eventually an
networking API (al biet not everyone liked it, sockets was good enough,
solved the problems and became a standard that allowed us to move on).
Mach (while Larry may not like the VM implementation), moved the bar for
the kernel's handling of memory a huge amount and almost won the uK war
(which IMO was a too bad). BTW: other kernels would do nice VM's too, but
Mach was generally available (open source if you will and really was the
system the moived it forward).
That said, I give the Linux folks great credit for the addition of modules
was huge and it took BSD and the other UNIX systems a few years really pick
up that idea in the same way (yes Solaris, Tru64 and eventually HPUX etc..
had something too but again - my comment about being generally available
applies).
So here is the issue, how to do move the ball forward? BSD, then Linux,
became the 'stronger strain' and pushed out the old version. The problem
is the ROMs in my fingers (like Dave) never got reprogrammed so some of the
'new' becomes annoying. Will I learned to like systemd? We shall see...
Clem
[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 6416 bytes --]
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints 2018-08-29 14:25 [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints Clem Cole @ 2018-08-29 22:34 ` Dave Horsfall 2018-08-29 23:36 ` Larry McVoy 2018-08-31 21:56 ` [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints Cág 1 sibling, 1 reply; 45+ messages in thread From: Dave Horsfall @ 2018-08-29 22:34 UTC (permalink / raw) To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1059 bytes --] On Wed, 29 Aug 2018, Clem Cole wrote: [ Excellent screed elided ] > That said, I give the Linux folks great credit for the addition of > modules was huge and it took BSD and the other UNIX systems a few years > really pick up that idea in the same way (yes Solaris, Tru64 and > eventually HPUX etc.. had something too but again - my comment about > being generally available applies). Wasn't SunOS first with dynamic kernel modules, or is my memory worse than I thought? Linux may have been around at the time, but we never used in the shop until much later (Red Hat, nicknamed Dead Rat). > So here is the issue, how to do move the ball forward? BSD, then > Linux, became the 'stronger strain' and pushed out the old version. > The problem is the ROMs in my fingers (like Dave) never got > reprogrammed so some of the 'new' becomes annoying. Will I learned to > like systemd? We shall see... Never mind "systemd"; I'm having enough trouble coming to grips with "launchd" on the Mac... Gimme /etc/inetd.conf any time. -- Dave ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints 2018-08-29 22:34 ` Dave Horsfall @ 2018-08-29 23:36 ` Larry McVoy 2018-08-30 1:14 ` Clem cole 0 siblings, 1 reply; 45+ messages in thread From: Larry McVoy @ 2018-08-29 23:36 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Dave Horsfall; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society On Thu, Aug 30, 2018 at 08:34:05AM +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote: > On Wed, 29 Aug 2018, Clem Cole wrote: > >That said, I give the Linux folks great credit for the addition of modules > >was huge and it took BSD and the other UNIX systems a few years really > >pick up that idea in the same way (yes Solaris, Tru64 and eventually HPUX > >etc.. had something too but again - my comment about being generally > >available applies). > > Wasn't SunOS first with dynamic kernel modules, or is my memory worse than I > thought? Linux may have been around at the time, but we never used in the > shop until much later (Red Hat, nicknamed Dead Rat). Yep. And Linux has loadable modules because I posted the SunOS 4.x man pages for the SunOS loadable modules to the kernel list. Proving once again that the open source guys aren't always the greatest at coming up with the ideas but once you show them that it can be done, it gets done quickly. I think they had a prototype working in a week. > Never mind "systemd"; I'm having enough trouble coming to grips with > "launchd" on the Mac... Gimme /etc/inetd.conf any time. Amen, brother. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints 2018-08-29 23:36 ` Larry McVoy @ 2018-08-30 1:14 ` Clem cole 2018-08-30 1:15 ` Clem cole 2018-08-30 2:43 ` Kevin Bowling 0 siblings, 2 replies; 45+ messages in thread From: Clem cole @ 2018-08-30 1:14 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Larry McVoy; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society Truth is I think IBM beat Sun on getting loadable modules for the kernel out first. But I was counting the versions that people really looked at which is why I give Linux credit. It makes sense they modeled on SunOS btw but the fact is the Linux version is what folks like *BSD and macOS modeled after later. Btw you are 100% right - As for launchd I agree/no doubt - but I’d already given up on MacOS being able to be admin’ed like a Unix box. I can pretty much use it via iterm2 as a user like one and if mostly works as I expect (which I do appreciate). Linux is seductive enough to make think I should be able to admin it like I have for the last 40 years and it then bites me when I least expect it. Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not quite. > On Aug 29, 2018, at 7:36 PM, Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote: > >> On Thu, Aug 30, 2018 at 08:34:05AM +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote: >>> On Wed, 29 Aug 2018, Clem Cole wrote: >>> That said, I give the Linux folks great credit for the addition of modules >>> was huge and it took BSD and the other UNIX systems a few years really >>> pick up that idea in the same way (yes Solaris, Tru64 and eventually HPUX >>> etc.. had something too but again - my comment about being generally >>> available applies). >> >> Wasn't SunOS first with dynamic kernel modules, or is my memory worse than I >> thought? Linux may have been around at the time, but we never used in the >> shop until much later (Red Hat, nicknamed Dead Rat). > > Yep. And Linux has loadable modules because I posted the SunOS 4.x man > pages for the SunOS loadable modules to the kernel list. Proving once > again that the open source guys aren't always the greatest at coming up > with the ideas but once you show them that it can be done, it gets done > quickly. I think they had a prototype working in a week. > >> Never mind "systemd"; I'm having enough trouble coming to grips with >> "launchd" on the Mac... Gimme /etc/inetd.conf any time. > > Amen, brother. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints 2018-08-30 1:14 ` Clem cole @ 2018-08-30 1:15 ` Clem cole 2018-08-30 2:43 ` Kevin Bowling 1 sibling, 0 replies; 45+ messages in thread From: Clem cole @ 2018-08-30 1:15 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Larry McVoy; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society And I should added I do miss inetd.conf in both cases. Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not quite. > On Aug 29, 2018, at 9:14 PM, Clem cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote: > > Truth is I think IBM beat Sun on getting loadable modules for the kernel out first. But I was counting the versions that people really looked at which is why I give Linux credit. > > It makes sense they modeled on SunOS btw but the fact is the Linux version is what folks like *BSD and macOS modeled after later. > > Btw you are 100% right - As for launchd I agree/no doubt - but I’d already given up on MacOS being able to be admin’ed like a Unix box. I can pretty much use it via iterm2 as a user like one and if mostly works as I expect (which I do appreciate). > > Linux is seductive enough to make think I should be able to admin it like I have for the last 40 years and it then bites me when I least expect it. > > Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not quite. > >>> On Aug 29, 2018, at 7:36 PM, Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote: >>> >>>> On Thu, Aug 30, 2018 at 08:34:05AM +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote: >>>> On Wed, 29 Aug 2018, Clem Cole wrote: >>>> That said, I give the Linux folks great credit for the addition of modules >>>> was huge and it took BSD and the other UNIX systems a few years really >>>> pick up that idea in the same way (yes Solaris, Tru64 and eventually HPUX >>>> etc.. had something too but again - my comment about being generally >>>> available applies). >>> >>> Wasn't SunOS first with dynamic kernel modules, or is my memory worse than I >>> thought? Linux may have been around at the time, but we never used in the >>> shop until much later (Red Hat, nicknamed Dead Rat). >> >> Yep. And Linux has loadable modules because I posted the SunOS 4.x man >> pages for the SunOS loadable modules to the kernel list. Proving once >> again that the open source guys aren't always the greatest at coming up >> with the ideas but once you show them that it can be done, it gets done >> quickly. I think they had a prototype working in a week. >> >>> Never mind "systemd"; I'm having enough trouble coming to grips with >>> "launchd" on the Mac... Gimme /etc/inetd.conf any time. >> >> Amen, brother. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints 2018-08-30 1:14 ` Clem cole 2018-08-30 1:15 ` Clem cole @ 2018-08-30 2:43 ` Kevin Bowling 2018-08-30 2:59 ` George Michaelson 2018-08-31 0:27 ` Dave Horsfall 1 sibling, 2 replies; 45+ messages in thread From: Kevin Bowling @ 2018-08-30 2:43 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Clem cole; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society AIX takes a lot of shit but there were (and still are) some areas it was quite a bit ahead of its time. I haven't used the ROMP 2.0 version that would have been on the IBM RT.. on my search and todo list. This is interesting because it ran under a hypervisor. The 1.x version for x86 PS/2s is basically Locus. I don't like it. I think it was also used as a common port base for AIX/370 You can run 1.x in VirtualBox with some careful instructions. I'm the canonical source for all this at http://ps-2.kev009.com/aixps2/ But the 3.x version released with POWER/RS6000 in 1990 had a fully pagable kernel, loadable kernel modules[1], logical volume management and disk mirroring, an object oriented thing called the ODM which is probably extremely controversial but a pretty nice for providing KPI/KBI/API compatibility for drivers and subsystems and configuration thereof. It's a good mix of BSD and interesting to see how that was accomplished https://technologists.com/sauer/Convergence_of_AIX_and_4.3BSD.pdf [1] http://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/rs6000/aix_3.0/SC23-2207-0_Kernel_Extensions_and_Device_Support_Programming_Concepts_Mar90.pdf See for instance page 6-10 Regards, Kevin On Wed, Aug 29, 2018 at 6:14 PM, Clem cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote: > Truth is I think IBM beat Sun on getting loadable modules for the kernel out first. But I was counting the versions that people really looked at which is why I give Linux credit. > > It makes sense they modeled on SunOS btw but the fact is the Linux version is what folks like *BSD and macOS modeled after later. > > Btw you are 100% right - As for launchd I agree/no doubt - but I’d already given up on MacOS being able to be admin’ed like a Unix box. I can pretty much use it via iterm2 as a user like one and if mostly works as I expect (which I do appreciate). > > Linux is seductive enough to make think I should be able to admin it like I have for the last 40 years and it then bites me when I least expect it. > > Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not quite. > >> On Aug 29, 2018, at 7:36 PM, Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote: >> >>> On Thu, Aug 30, 2018 at 08:34:05AM +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote: >>>> On Wed, 29 Aug 2018, Clem Cole wrote: >>>> That said, I give the Linux folks great credit for the addition of modules >>>> was huge and it took BSD and the other UNIX systems a few years really >>>> pick up that idea in the same way (yes Solaris, Tru64 and eventually HPUX >>>> etc.. had something too but again - my comment about being generally >>>> available applies). >>> >>> Wasn't SunOS first with dynamic kernel modules, or is my memory worse than I >>> thought? Linux may have been around at the time, but we never used in the >>> shop until much later (Red Hat, nicknamed Dead Rat). >> >> Yep. And Linux has loadable modules because I posted the SunOS 4.x man >> pages for the SunOS loadable modules to the kernel list. Proving once >> again that the open source guys aren't always the greatest at coming up >> with the ideas but once you show them that it can be done, it gets done >> quickly. I think they had a prototype working in a week. >> >>> Never mind "systemd"; I'm having enough trouble coming to grips with >>> "launchd" on the Mac... Gimme /etc/inetd.conf any time. >> >> Amen, brother. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints 2018-08-30 2:43 ` Kevin Bowling @ 2018-08-30 2:59 ` George Michaelson 2018-08-31 0:27 ` Dave Horsfall 1 sibling, 0 replies; 45+ messages in thread From: George Michaelson @ 2018-08-30 2:59 UTC (permalink / raw) To: kevin.bowling; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society if you staid inside the reservation (so to speak) I think AIX made huge sense. I ran the BSD/RT stuff, it was very fine. The documentation was rigorous. If you stuck to the docs, you couldn't go wrong. But it was a frozen moment in time and as X10/X11 moved on, the RT port got older and older. the uni I worked at had a dying IBM mainframe. I think if we'd committed more to the IBM model and dived in, AIX would have worked well. But psych, compsci, engineering, arts/liberal-arts all went to Suns and the computer centre (where I was) had been DEC10/Vax as well as IBM) We were half-pregnant. Its a difficult state to be in. I don't really want to knock AIX, I think compared to the choices HPUX made, or Apollo Domain/OS made, the AIX choices were more self consistent. The unit I ran briefly in the research centre was rock solid and most of my complaints are 'principle of least surprise broken' coming from non-AIX world. I think if you were in it, it was fine. But really, thats the same thing about Solaris. I personally preferred SunOS but the company backed this other model, and if you were in it, the kickstart mechanism to do canned machine deployment, and disk config, and all that goodness, It was fine. I jumped ship well before Sun moved into the 'mainframe' world but I knew people who ran huge non-stop high transactional services on the E1000 series, and were very very happy. Tandem (to riff on that) had its niche. I love the story about sales engineers in the east coast pulling cards on the demo machine to show "look it works" live and the West coast maintenance people tearing their hair out at automatic supply-chain logistics shipping parts over to fix the borked node.. (this is an Aussie story) But I never had to handle the OS. SCO, I did have to work on. As long as you stayed inside the reservation.. No I can't go there. SCO was just awful. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints 2018-08-30 2:43 ` Kevin Bowling 2018-08-30 2:59 ` George Michaelson @ 2018-08-31 0:27 ` Dave Horsfall 2018-08-31 0:41 ` Dan Cross ` (2 more replies) 1 sibling, 3 replies; 45+ messages in thread From: Dave Horsfall @ 2018-08-31 0:27 UTC (permalink / raw) To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society On Wed, 29 Aug 2018, Kevin Bowling wrote: > AIX takes a lot of shit but there were (and still are) some areas it was > quite a bit ahead of its time. The standing joke with AIX was that it was pronounced "aches" (as in pains), but I was glad that it ran "smit" for admin stuff, as there was no way that I could remember the appropriate Shell commands. -- Dave ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints 2018-08-31 0:27 ` Dave Horsfall @ 2018-08-31 0:41 ` Dan Cross 2018-08-31 1:58 ` Larry McVoy 2018-08-31 11:38 ` ron 2018-08-31 14:41 ` [TUHS] UNIX System names - since UNIX was a Trademark Clem Cole 2 siblings, 1 reply; 45+ messages in thread From: Dan Cross @ 2018-08-31 0:41 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Dave Horsfall; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 477 bytes --] On Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 8:27 PM Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote: > On Wed, 29 Aug 2018, Kevin Bowling wrote: > > > AIX takes a lot of shit but there were (and still are) some areas it was > > quite a bit ahead of its time. > > The standing joke with AIX was that it was pronounced "aches" (as in > pains), but I was glad that it ran "smit" for admin stuff, as there was no > way that I could remember the appropriate Shell commands. > "SMIT happens " - Dan C. [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 969 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints 2018-08-31 0:41 ` Dan Cross @ 2018-08-31 1:58 ` Larry McVoy 0 siblings, 0 replies; 45+ messages in thread From: Larry McVoy @ 2018-08-31 1:58 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Dan Cross; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society On Thu, Aug 30, 2018 at 08:41:26PM -0400, Dan Cross wrote: > On Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 8:27 PM Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote: > > > On Wed, 29 Aug 2018, Kevin Bowling wrote: > > > > > AIX takes a lot of shit but there were (and still are) some areas it was > > > quite a bit ahead of its time. > > > > The standing joke with AIX was that it was pronounced "aches" (as in > > pains), but I was glad that it ran "smit" for admin stuff, as there was no > > way that I could remember the appropriate Shell commands. > > > > "SMIT happens " So back in the BitKeeper days, we supported everything, including AIX. I've got a fairly beefy AIX box in my shop in case we need it, 1ghz, lots of ram, we're never gonna turn that on. I went into smit and I was just like can you just frigging let me edit /etc/inetd.conf or whatever, but no. SMIT happens. And I did not like it. I think that's one of the reasons that SunOS was cool, it was just a better, bugfixed BSD. So we all knew how to deal with it. SMIT not so much. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints 2018-08-31 0:27 ` Dave Horsfall 2018-08-31 0:41 ` Dan Cross @ 2018-08-31 11:38 ` ron 2018-08-31 14:41 ` [TUHS] UNIX System names - since UNIX was a Trademark Clem Cole 2 siblings, 0 replies; 45+ messages in thread From: ron @ 2018-08-31 11:38 UTC (permalink / raw) To: 'Dave Horsfall', 'The Eunuchs Hysterical Society' > The standing joke with AIX was that it was pronounced "aches" (as in pains), > but I was glad that it ran "smit" for admin stuff, as there was no way that I > could remember the appropriate Shell commands. We wanted to call the window manager "panes" on Aix (Aches and Pains). My only real memory of beating on the RS/6000 was that while it had a 24-bit graphics card, the X server didn't have a 24-bit visual. That and I was able to break into the demo box IBM sent me by turning the key to the "wrench" position and then shell escaping out of a more command it launched. I spent more time hacking the 370/PS2/i860 version of the kernel which was a unified source base. This had switching console contexts they called the "High Function Terminal." We named our i860 version of it the "Low Function Terminal." ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] UNIX System names - since UNIX was a Trademark 2018-08-31 0:27 ` Dave Horsfall 2018-08-31 0:41 ` Dan Cross 2018-08-31 11:38 ` ron @ 2018-08-31 14:41 ` Clem Cole 2018-08-31 15:13 ` Eric Wayte ` (2 more replies) 2 siblings, 3 replies; 45+ messages in thread From: Clem Cole @ 2018-08-31 14:41 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Dave Horsfall; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 753 bytes --] Dave Horsfall's comment about AIX made me think. The joker in me has always been impressed by how marketing people 'missed' the obvious pronunciations that would lead to serious jokes. Some of the more memorable ones from the UNIX world that I knew: AIX -> "aches", CRDS -> "cruds", HP-UX -> HP "yucks" and "hockey pucks" and my favorite: RHEL -> "our hell" I bet there are more and others I did know/consider ;-) That said, I did hear a pro-VMS person in ZKO (*i.e.* a DECie) once tried refered to "DEC Ultrix" as Dirty Tricks, but I never heard that one take off/be repeated outside of ZKO. For history we probably should try to collect them, although I fear the context of the joke in the future may be lost. Clem ᐧ [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2328 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] UNIX System names - since UNIX was a Trademark 2018-08-31 14:41 ` [TUHS] UNIX System names - since UNIX was a Trademark Clem Cole @ 2018-08-31 15:13 ` Eric Wayte 2018-08-31 15:17 ` William Pechter 2018-09-01 0:00 ` Dave Horsfall 2 siblings, 0 replies; 45+ messages in thread From: Eric Wayte @ 2018-08-31 15:13 UTC (permalink / raw) To: clemc; +Cc: tuhs [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 934 bytes --] I've heard Red Hat referred to as "root hat". On Fri, Aug 31, 2018 at 10:42 AM Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote: > > Dave Horsfall's comment about AIX made me think. The joker in me has > always been impressed by how marketing people 'missed' the obvious > pronunciations that would lead to serious > > jokes. > Some of the more memorable ones from the UNIX world that I knew: AIX -> > "aches", CRDS -> "cruds", HP-UX -> HP "yucks" and "hockey pucks" and my > favorite: RHEL -> "our hell" > > I bet there are more and others I did know/consider ;-) > > That said, I did hear a pro-VMS person in ZKO (*i.e.* a DECie) once tried > refered to "DEC Ultrix" as Dirty Tricks, but I never heard that one take > off/be repeated outside of ZKO. > > For history we probably should try to collect them, although I fear the > context of the joke in the future may be lost. > > > Clem > ᐧ > -- Eric Wayte [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2817 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] UNIX System names - since UNIX was a Trademark 2018-08-31 14:41 ` [TUHS] UNIX System names - since UNIX was a Trademark Clem Cole 2018-08-31 15:13 ` Eric Wayte @ 2018-08-31 15:17 ` William Pechter 2018-08-31 15:25 ` Clem Cole 2018-09-01 0:10 ` John P. Linderman 2018-09-01 0:00 ` Dave Horsfall 2 siblings, 2 replies; 45+ messages in thread From: William Pechter @ 2018-08-31 15:17 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Dave Horsfall, Clem Cole; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society UNIX is a trademark of AT&T AT&T is a modem test command. -----Original Message----- From: Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> To: Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society <tuhs@tuhs.org> Sent: Fri, 31 Aug 2018 10:42 Subject: Re: [TUHS] UNIX System names - since UNIX was a Trademark Dave Horsfall's comment about AIX made me think. The joker in me has always been impressed by how marketing people 'missed' the obvious pronunciations that would lead to serious jokes. Some of the more memorable ones from the UNIX world that I knew: AIX -> "aches", CRDS -> "cruds", HP-UX -> HP "yucks" and "hockey pucks" and my favorite: RHEL -> "our hell" I bet there are more and others I did know/consider ;-) That said, I did hear a pro-VMS person in ZKO (*i.e.* a DECie) once tried refered to "DEC Ultrix" as Dirty Tricks, but I never heard that one take off/be repeated outside of ZKO. For history we probably should try to collect them, although I fear the context of the joke in the future may be lost. Clem ᐧ ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] UNIX System names - since UNIX was a Trademark 2018-08-31 15:17 ` William Pechter @ 2018-08-31 15:25 ` Clem Cole 2018-09-01 0:10 ` John P. Linderman 1 sibling, 0 replies; 45+ messages in thread From: Clem Cole @ 2018-08-31 15:25 UTC (permalink / raw) To: William Pechter, The Eunuchs Hysterical Society [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1502 bytes --] Fair enough, but was a cute joke that made those "in the know" smile (like me), but less of a dig at a marketing naming IMO - like RHEL - not seeing the obvious way to pronounce the name - duh. I was more thinking terms of things like that that marketing folks just were clueless. Clem ᐧ On Fri, Aug 31, 2018 at 11:17 AM William Pechter <pechter@gmail.com> wrote: > UNIX is a trademark of AT&T > AT&T is a modem test command. > > -----Original Message----- > From: Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> > To: Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> > Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society <tuhs@tuhs.org> > Sent: Fri, 31 Aug 2018 10:42 > Subject: Re: [TUHS] UNIX System names - since UNIX was a Trademark > > Dave Horsfall's comment about AIX made me think. The joker in me has > always been impressed by how marketing people 'missed' the obvious > pronunciations that would lead to serious > > jokes. > Some of the more memorable ones from the UNIX world that I knew: AIX -> > "aches", CRDS -> "cruds", HP-UX -> HP "yucks" and "hockey pucks" and my > favorite: RHEL -> "our hell" > > I bet there are more and others I did know/consider ;-) > > That said, I did hear a pro-VMS person in ZKO (*i.e.* a DECie) once tried > refered to "DEC Ultrix" as Dirty Tricks, but I never heard that one take > off/be repeated outside of ZKO. > > For history we probably should try to collect them, although I fear the > context of the joke in the future may be lost. > > > Clem > ᐧ > [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2539 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] UNIX System names - since UNIX was a Trademark 2018-08-31 15:17 ` William Pechter 2018-08-31 15:25 ` Clem Cole @ 2018-09-01 0:10 ` John P. Linderman 2018-09-01 0:18 ` ron 2018-09-30 20:57 ` Lyndon Nerenberg 1 sibling, 2 replies; 45+ messages in thread From: John P. Linderman @ 2018-09-01 0:10 UTC (permalink / raw) To: William Pechter; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1249 bytes --] We always referred to HP-UX as "H-Pukes". On Fri, Aug 31, 2018 at 11:17 AM, William Pechter <pechter@gmail.com> wrote: > UNIX is a trademark of AT&T > AT&T is a modem test command. > > -----Original Message----- > From: Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> > To: Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> > Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society <tuhs@tuhs.org> > Sent: Fri, 31 Aug 2018 10:42 > Subject: Re: [TUHS] UNIX System names - since UNIX was a Trademark > > Dave Horsfall's comment about AIX made me think. The joker in me has > always been impressed by how marketing people 'missed' the obvious > pronunciations that would lead to serious > > jokes. > Some of the more memorable ones from the UNIX world that I knew: AIX -> > "aches", CRDS -> "cruds", HP-UX -> HP "yucks" and "hockey pucks" and my > favorite: RHEL -> "our hell" > > I bet there are more and others I did know/consider ;-) > > That said, I did hear a pro-VMS person in ZKO (*i.e.* a DECie) once tried > refered to "DEC Ultrix" as Dirty Tricks, but I never heard that one take > off/be repeated outside of ZKO. > > For history we probably should try to collect them, although I fear the > context of the joke in the future may be lost. > > > Clem > ᐧ > [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1939 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] UNIX System names - since UNIX was a Trademark 2018-09-01 0:10 ` John P. Linderman @ 2018-09-01 0:18 ` ron 2018-09-01 0:55 ` Nemo 2018-09-30 20:57 ` Lyndon Nerenberg 1 sibling, 1 reply; 45+ messages in thread From: ron @ 2018-09-01 0:18 UTC (permalink / raw) To: 'The Eunuchs Hysterical Society' [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1704 bytes --] Always H-PUCKS to us. Of course, the other HP operating system (MPE) we called Mighty Poor Excuse. From: TUHS <tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org> On Behalf Of John P. Linderman Sent: Friday, August 31, 2018 8:11 PM To: William Pechter <pechter@gmail.com> Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society <tuhs@tuhs.org> Subject: Re: [TUHS] UNIX System names - since UNIX was a Trademark We always referred to HP-UX as "H-Pukes". On Fri, Aug 31, 2018 at 11:17 AM, William Pechter <pechter@gmail.com <mailto:pechter@gmail.com> > wrote: UNIX is a trademark of AT&T AT&T is a modem test command. -----Original Message----- From: Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com <mailto:clemc@ccc.com> > To: Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org <mailto:dave@horsfall.org> > Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society <tuhs@tuhs.org <mailto:tuhs@tuhs.org> > Sent: Fri, 31 Aug 2018 10:42 Subject: Re: [TUHS] UNIX System names - since UNIX was a Trademark Dave Horsfall's comment about AIX made me think. The joker in me has always been impressed by how marketing people 'missed' the obvious pronunciations that would lead to serious jokes. Some of the more memorable ones from the UNIX world that I knew: AIX -> "aches", CRDS -> "cruds", HP-UX -> HP "yucks" and "hockey pucks" and my favorite: RHEL -> "our hell" I bet there are more and others I did know/consider ;-) That said, I did hear a pro-VMS person in ZKO (*i.e.* a DECie) once tried refered to "DEC Ultrix" as Dirty Tricks, but I never heard that one take off/be repeated outside of ZKO. For history we probably should try to collect them, although I fear the context of the joke in the future may be lost. Clem ᐧ [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 4780 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] UNIX System names - since UNIX was a Trademark 2018-09-01 0:18 ` ron @ 2018-09-01 0:55 ` Nemo 2018-09-01 7:37 ` Dave Horsfall 0 siblings, 1 reply; 45+ messages in thread From: Nemo @ 2018-09-01 0:55 UTC (permalink / raw) To: ron; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society On 31/08/2018, ron@ronnatalie.com <ron@ronnatalie.com> wrote: > Always H-PUCKS to us. Of course, the other HP operating system (MPE) we > called Mighty Poor Excuse. H-Pox in my neck of the woods. (I think everyone said Slowlaris. Even the guys from Sun who first demo'd dtrace and how it was used to speed up their system calls.) N. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] UNIX System names - since UNIX was a Trademark 2018-09-01 0:55 ` Nemo @ 2018-09-01 7:37 ` Dave Horsfall 2018-09-01 13:54 ` Nemo 2018-09-01 17:03 ` Paul Winalski 0 siblings, 2 replies; 45+ messages in thread From: Dave Horsfall @ 2018-09-01 7:37 UTC (permalink / raw) To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society On Fri, 31 Aug 2018, Nemo wrote: > (I think everyone said Slowlaris. Even the guys from Sun who first > demo'd dtrace and how it was used to speed up their system calls.) I've always called it Slowaris, mostly because my stutter stops me from pronouncing words starting with "r" or "l" (it comes out as "w"). And yes, I've seen "Life of Brian", and I can relate to it :-) "Welease Woger" etc... Oddly enough, I can pronounce "r" and "l" if preceded by a hard consonant, so I dunno... For the morbidly curious, I was born left-handed, and, err, "encouraged" to use my right hand back in kindergarten, which apparently completely fscked up my neural connections. As a result, I write right-handed, bat/bowl/throw left-handed, and am pretty much ambidextrous otherwise. Oh, and I also trained myself to use a mouse in my left hand (in right-hand mode, and in my SunOS days too!) which is apparently quite common amongst the righties; after all, why waste a perfectly good hand? It's hilarious watching someone letting go of the mouse to write something down, then back to the mouse again... -- Dave ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] UNIX System names - since UNIX was a Trademark 2018-09-01 7:37 ` Dave Horsfall @ 2018-09-01 13:54 ` Nemo 2018-09-01 17:03 ` Paul Winalski 1 sibling, 0 replies; 45+ messages in thread From: Nemo @ 2018-09-01 13:54 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Dave Horsfall; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society On 01/09/2018, Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote (in part): > Oh, and I also trained myself to use a mouse in my left hand (in > right-hand mode, and in my SunOS days too!) which is apparently quite > common amongst the righties; As did I -- I am right-handed -- but mainly because reaching over the keypad was such a bother. N. > It's hilarious watching someone letting go of the mouse to write something > down, then back to the mouse again... > > -- Dave > ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] UNIX System names - since UNIX was a Trademark 2018-09-01 7:37 ` Dave Horsfall 2018-09-01 13:54 ` Nemo @ 2018-09-01 17:03 ` Paul Winalski 2018-09-03 1:14 ` Robert Brockway 1 sibling, 1 reply; 45+ messages in thread From: Paul Winalski @ 2018-09-01 17:03 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Dave Horsfall; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society On 9/1/18, Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote: > > Oh, and I also trained myself to use a mouse in my left hand (in > right-hand mode, and in my SunOS days too!) which is apparently quite > common amongst the righties; after all, why waste a perfectly good hand? > It's hilarious watching someone letting go of the mouse to write something > down, then back to the mouse again... I'm left-handed but I trained myself to use a mouse in my right hand, for the reason you point out--I still have my dominant hand free to write things down. It also means that when I'm using someone else's machine, most of the time their mouse is configured the way I'm used to. -Paul W. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] UNIX System names - since UNIX was a Trademark 2018-09-01 17:03 ` Paul Winalski @ 2018-09-03 1:14 ` Robert Brockway 0 siblings, 0 replies; 45+ messages in thread From: Robert Brockway @ 2018-09-03 1:14 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Paul Winalski; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society On Sat, 1 Sep 2018, Paul Winalski wrote: > On 9/1/18, Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote: >> >> Oh, and I also trained myself to use a mouse in my left hand (in >> right-hand mode, and in my SunOS days too!) which is apparently quite >> common amongst the righties; after all, why waste a perfectly good hand? >> It's hilarious watching someone letting go of the mouse to write something >> down, then back to the mouse again... > > I'm left-handed but I trained myself to use a mouse in my right hand, > for the reason you point out--I still have my dominant hand free to > write things down. It also means that when I'm using someone else's > machine, most of the time their mouse is configured the way I'm used > to. At the risk of making a 'me too' post (especially these days) I am also left handed and trained myself to use a mouse right handed for both of the reasons you mention. Left handedness is very well studied so I wondered if there were any studies on this. While looking I found one that argues that numeric keypads and using the mouse on the right don't mix. Maybe time to run with a keyboard with no numeric keypad again.[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14985137 [1] As a leftie it's on the wrong side anyway. Rob ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] UNIX System names - since UNIX was a Trademark 2018-09-01 0:10 ` John P. Linderman 2018-09-01 0:18 ` ron @ 2018-09-30 20:57 ` Lyndon Nerenberg 2018-10-01 16:26 ` Paul Winalski 1 sibling, 1 reply; 45+ messages in thread From: Lyndon Nerenberg @ 2018-09-30 20:57 UTC (permalink / raw) To: John P. Linderman; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society John P. Linderman writes: > We always referred to HP-UX as "H-Pukes". For us canucks, it has always been called "hockey pucks" :-) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] UNIX System names - since UNIX was a Trademark 2018-09-30 20:57 ` Lyndon Nerenberg @ 2018-10-01 16:26 ` Paul Winalski 0 siblings, 0 replies; 45+ messages in thread From: Paul Winalski @ 2018-10-01 16:26 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Lyndon Nerenberg; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society On 9/30/18, Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon@orthanc.ca> wrote: > John P. Linderman writes: > >> We always referred to HP-UX as "H-Pukes". > > For us canucks, it has always been called "hockey pucks" :-) > Back at DEC Engineering we had the saying, "you can't teach a new dog ULTRIX." -Paul W. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] UNIX System names - since UNIX was a Trademark 2018-08-31 14:41 ` [TUHS] UNIX System names - since UNIX was a Trademark Clem Cole 2018-08-31 15:13 ` Eric Wayte 2018-08-31 15:17 ` William Pechter @ 2018-09-01 0:00 ` Dave Horsfall 2 siblings, 0 replies; 45+ messages in thread From: Dave Horsfall @ 2018-09-01 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society On Fri, 31 Aug 2018, Clem Cole wrote: > Some of the more memorable ones from the UNIX world that I knew: AIX -> > "aches", CRDS -> "cruds", HP-UX -> HP "yucks" and "hockey pucks" and my > favorite: RHEL -> "our hell" Just be glad that Hewlett-Packard was not called Packard-Hewlett... -- Dave ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints 2018-08-29 14:25 [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints Clem Cole 2018-08-29 22:34 ` Dave Horsfall @ 2018-08-31 21:56 ` Cág 2018-09-01 3:37 ` Andrew Warkentin 1 sibling, 1 reply; 45+ messages in thread From: Cág @ 2018-08-31 21:56 UTC (permalink / raw) To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society Not completely on-topic, in my opinion one of the reasons Plan9 failed was the fact that it presented itself overly idealistic, occasionally sacrificing usability -- maybe it's because of coming from a Unix system like Berkeley or IRIX, in which case, I think Brian Kernighan said, "if you'll think of it as Unix, you'll often be frustrated because something doesn't exist or works differently." On the one hand the `cat -v` and some other concerns (like columnated ls(1) output) are valid, and very well understood. On the other -- lack of find(1), shell history, and vi are not. Well, to me at least. Both acme and sam seem to have found its fanbase. Note, when I'm saying failed I mean commercially. As a research operating system, or, dare I say, esoteric, because in some way it was and still is esoteric, it succeeded as none of the others, with its impact going through this day. -- caóc ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints 2018-08-31 21:56 ` [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints Cág @ 2018-09-01 3:37 ` Andrew Warkentin 2018-09-03 18:04 ` Cág 0 siblings, 1 reply; 45+ messages in thread From: Andrew Warkentin @ 2018-09-01 3:37 UTC (permalink / raw) To: tuhs On 8/31/18, Cág <ca6c@bitmessage.ch> wrote: > Not completely on-topic, in my opinion one of the reasons Plan9 failed > was the fact that it presented itself overly idealistic, occasionally > sacrificing usability -- maybe it's because of coming from a Unix system > like Berkeley or IRIX, in which case, I think Brian Kernighan said, "if > you'll think of it as Unix, you'll often be frustrated because something > doesn't exist or works differently." I'd definitely agree with the lack of usability-oriented features being a part of why Plan 9 hasn't been commercially successful. In general, it seems like Plan 9 focuses on being minimal above everything else, whereas I'd say an ideal OS should focus on being sufficiently general and extensible in addition to being minimal (in other words, do things in the most minimal way that is sufficiently general and extensible). > On the one hand the `cat -v` and > some other concerns (like columnated ls(1) output) are valid, and very > well understood. On the other -- lack of find(1), shell history, and > vi are not. Well, to me at least. Both acme and sam seem to have found > its fanbase. > I'd say features like history, completion, and line editing really don't belong in a shell. They should be handled by a separate listener process with a simple API that shells and other client processes can use for controlling them. That's one good example of Plan 9 prioritizing minimalism above everything else. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints 2018-09-01 3:37 ` Andrew Warkentin @ 2018-09-03 18:04 ` Cág 2018-09-03 18:11 ` Kurt H Maier 0 siblings, 1 reply; 45+ messages in thread From: Cág @ 2018-09-03 18:04 UTC (permalink / raw) To: tuhs Andrew Warkentin wrote: > I'd say features like history, completion, and line editing really > don't belong in a shell. They should be handled by a separate listener > process with a simple API that shells and other client processes can > use for controlling them. That's one good example of Plan 9 > prioritizing minimalism above everything else. http://wiki.c2.com/?WhatIsNotInPlanNine > fn history {grep '^term%' /mnt/wsys/text|sed -e 's/^term%//'} term% This is sure better. On top of that I don't get how Acme adheres to the philosophy. It's basically a reverse engineered, unavailable on the console, GNU Emacs with a mouse-driven interface. -- caóc ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints 2018-09-03 18:04 ` Cág @ 2018-09-03 18:11 ` Kurt H Maier 2018-09-03 18:56 ` Cág 2018-09-03 20:08 ` Bakul Shah 0 siblings, 2 replies; 45+ messages in thread From: Kurt H Maier @ 2018-09-03 18:11 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Cág; +Cc: tuhs On Mon, Sep 03, 2018 at 01:04:01PM -0500, Cág wrote: > > On top of that I don't get how Acme adheres to the philosophy. It's > basically a reverse engineered, unavailable on the console, GNU Emacs > with a mouse-driven interface. > My pet theory is that Acme was going to replace Rio, at which time it would be 'the interface' again instead of a text editor with a slightly-incompatible filesystem interface. There are some hints toward this if you squint hard enough, but I can't prove it. "Unavailable on the console" is kind of a cheap shot when talking about an operating system that deliberately doesn't support consoles. Part of the point was outgrowing TTYs. The emacs comparison is a favorite of mine because it's so close to being an anagram, but obviously Acme never suffered from lisp fetishism. I still dislike Acme for basically all the same reasons I dislike emacs. khm ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints 2018-09-03 18:11 ` Kurt H Maier @ 2018-09-03 18:56 ` Cág 2018-09-04 6:10 ` Andy Kosela 2018-09-30 21:32 ` Lyndon Nerenberg 2018-09-03 20:08 ` Bakul Shah 1 sibling, 2 replies; 45+ messages in thread From: Cág @ 2018-09-03 18:56 UTC (permalink / raw) To: tuhs Kurt H Maier wrote: > My pet theory is that Acme was going to replace Rio, at which time it > would be 'the interface' again instead of a text editor with a > slightly-incompatible filesystem interface. There are some hints toward > this if you squint hard enough, but I can't prove it. Oberon 2.0 > "Unavailable on the console" is kind of a cheap shot when talking about > an operating system that deliberately doesn't support consoles. Part of > the point was outgrowing TTYs. Yeah, I guess I should've started with that :) I love Unix for the console. -- caóc ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints 2018-09-03 18:56 ` Cág @ 2018-09-04 6:10 ` Andy Kosela 2018-09-04 6:41 ` ron minnich 2018-09-30 21:32 ` Lyndon Nerenberg 1 sibling, 1 reply; 45+ messages in thread From: Andy Kosela @ 2018-09-04 6:10 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Cág; +Cc: tuhs [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1217 bytes --] On Monday, September 3, 2018, Cág <ca6c@bitmessage.ch> wrote: > Kurt H Maier wrote: > > > My pet theory is that Acme was going to replace Rio, at which time it > > would be 'the interface' again instead of a text editor with a > > slightly-incompatible filesystem interface. There are some hints toward > > this if you squint hard enough, but I can't prove it. > > Oberon 2.0 > > > "Unavailable on the console" is kind of a cheap shot when talking about > > an operating system that deliberately doesn't support consoles. Part of > > the point was outgrowing TTYs. > > Yeah, I guess I should've started with that :) I love Unix for the > console. > Pure text interface will always be the most elegant way to converse with a machine. And Unix is the most elegant command line based system. The world lost something when it moved to GUI. I still prefer to use the old phosphor based CRT monitors even with modern computers and because the text mode is still inherent in modern graphics cards (as a legacy mode), it is possible to not use GUI at all even today. That was one of the main reasons I disliked Plan9. It embraced the "windows interface" trend of the mid 80s. --Andy [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1580 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints 2018-09-04 6:10 ` Andy Kosela @ 2018-09-04 6:41 ` ron minnich 2018-09-04 9:34 ` Andy Kosela 0 siblings, 1 reply; 45+ messages in thread From: ron minnich @ 2018-09-04 6:41 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Andy Kosela; +Cc: tuhs [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 265 bytes --] On Mon, Sep 3, 2018 at 11:11 PM Andy Kosela <akosela@andykosela.com> wrote: > > That was one of the main reasons I disliked Plan9. It embraced the > "windows interface" trend of the mid 80s. > > > well, you can believe that, and I can't stop you, but it's wrong. [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 598 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints 2018-09-04 6:41 ` ron minnich @ 2018-09-04 9:34 ` Andy Kosela 2018-09-04 10:23 ` Dan Cross 2018-09-04 14:22 ` ron minnich 0 siblings, 2 replies; 45+ messages in thread From: Andy Kosela @ 2018-09-04 9:34 UTC (permalink / raw) To: ron minnich; +Cc: tuhs [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1883 bytes --] On Tuesday, September 4, 2018, ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote: > > > On Mon, Sep 3, 2018 at 11:11 PM Andy Kosela <akosela@andykosela.com> > wrote: > >> >> That was one of the main reasons I disliked Plan9. It embraced the >> "windows interface" trend of the mid 80s. >> >> >> > well, you can believe that, and I can't stop you, but it's wrong. > Can you elaborate more on your point of view? There has been a slow shift in the way we use computer interfaces and the start of the "windows computing" revolution certainly happened around mid 80s with companies like Apple, Microsoft or Commodore developing their own version of GUI (which goes back to Xerox PARC of course). Unix received X Window System from MIT in 1984. At the time people thought that GUI is the best and most useful interface for the new era and text terminal computing is about to die pretty soon. Well it took at least 10 more years to happen and the introduction of World Wide Web and Windows 95 certainly help solidify it. When Plan 9 was created in the mid-late 80s exactly those ideas circulated. Nothing comes from nothing, everything has its historical context. In the late 80s in order to "innovate" it was natural to think that abandoning text terminals is a "progress". Unix was born in the different era. Same with the original IBM PC. That is why they revolve around pure text interface. I'm just glad that text mode survived and it is still available even on modern PC's. But most kids these days don't even know what it is... They have GUIs everywhere, from their smartphones to their laptops. It is a very sad state of things when people more and more abandon text computing for the image based computing. I agree with Kurt that we are already in the Information Technology ice age. General purpose pure text based computing is slowly becoming just a retro hobby. --Andy [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2645 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints 2018-09-04 9:34 ` Andy Kosela @ 2018-09-04 10:23 ` Dan Cross 2018-09-04 14:22 ` ron minnich 1 sibling, 0 replies; 45+ messages in thread From: Dan Cross @ 2018-09-04 10:23 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Andy Kosela; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 5670 bytes --] On Tue, Sep 4, 2018 at 5:35 AM Andy Kosela <akosela@andykosela.com> wrote: > On Tuesday, September 4, 2018, ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> On Mon, Sep 3, 2018 at 11:11 PM Andy Kosela <akosela@andykosela.com> >> wrote: >> >>> That was one of the main reasons I disliked Plan9. It embraced the >>> "windows interface" trend of the mid 80s. >>> >> >> well, you can believe that, and I can't stop you, but it's wrong. >> > > Can you elaborate more on your point of view? > I don't mean to speak for Ron, but I think I know where he's coming from. There has been a slow shift in the way we use computer interfaces and the > start of the "windows computing" revolution certainly happened around mid > 80s with companies like Apple, Microsoft or Commodore developing their own > version of GUI (which goes back to Xerox PARC of course). Unix received X > Window System from MIT in 1984. > Don't mistake "windows" (as in "stacking window manager") for "bitmapped graphical displays." At the time people thought that GUI is the best and most useful interface > for the new era and text terminal computing is about to die pretty soon. > Well it took at least 10 more years to happen and the introduction of World > Wide Web and Windows 95 certainly help solidify it. > > When Plan 9 was created in the mid-late 80s exactly those ideas > circulated. Nothing comes from nothing, everything has its historical > context. In the late 80s in order to "innovate" it was natural to think > that abandoning text terminals is a "progress". > This is conflating two things: textual interfaces and the graphical presentation of those interfaces. Plan 9 is about both. Unix was born in an era where the TTY (that is, tele-typewriter, as in "prints to paper") was still very much a force in mediating the interaction between user and computer. That evolved rather quickly to the "green screen" terminals of the 70s and early 80s, but the paradigm was basically the same: the serial terminal was a window showing the tail of an infinite scroll of data. The "terminal", as in the TTY, was and is a central abstraction in Unix. By the late 80s, when plan9 got started, the paradigm had shifted: machines now had relatively high resolution bitmapped graphical interfaces, and by and large you weren't sitting in front of a serial terminal anymore. Being tied to a single "terminal" was a hindrance and led to a lot of complexity (job control, terminal interactions with process groups, POSIX sessions, signals and ioctls for window-size changes for programs that wanted to continue believing that they're using a serial terminal, even though they haven't been for years...). Plan9 wanted to take advantage of the new graphics functionality but didn't want to be chained to the complexity associated with obsolete hardware (e.g., the TTY abstraction, which _still persists_ and has its fingers in weird parts of the kernel). They still wanted a text-oriented interface though, and that's what plan9 provides. You sweep out a rio window and it's running a shell. Text in acme is usually editable and there aren't a lot of strange glyphs to click on; commands are strings. And you're no longer chained to a "terminal": I can have many shells running in many windows and they're all more or less the same. And it allowed them to move beyond the limitations of cursor-addressed user interfaces. They could, for example, write (or more precisely adapt) text editors like `sam`, which is fundamentally a textual program but uses the GUI to very nice effect. It may seem dated by today's standards, but it still works very nicely (indeed, I had to run a coworker through a sam session last Thursday; he was a continent away from me connecting to a plan9 system but we were able to do what needed to be done relatively quickly because it's all text and so simple...). I remember when I was in high school driving over to New Jersey and going to Bell Labs and meeting Dennis Ritchie for the first time (a college student I knew was doing an internship there and let me come visit). Dennis showed me plan9 on his gnot (this was back in the 8.5 days), and specifically talked about this: the focus was text, which was editable, could be manipulated, combined, split apart, was self-explanatory etc, instead of little icons like MS Windows and the Mac which were simultaneously static and cryptic. It *is* a textual interface, though it's *presented* and *multiplexed* via a bitmapped graphics display. I distinctly remember feeling blown away by the powerful marriage of text with bitmapped displays; it was a GUI for a Unix-like experience done right. They didn't sacrifice anything, but they gained so much more. Unix was born in the different era. Same with the original IBM PC. That > is why they revolve around pure text interface. > Unix and the PC date from radically different eras. The original IBM PC had a graphics adapter, and that was the expected mode of interaction, not the serial port. Granted that adapter was pretty weak, but it was there. Using a PC, you were using a graphical representation of your text interface. Unlike a serial terminal, where you simply emit the text to the terminal and the terminal deals with displaying it, writing an interface for CGA or MGA -- even in text mode -- involves scrolling the buffer, handling line feeds, tab and backspace expansion, and all the rest of it in software (granted, lots of serial drivers for Unix handle tab and BS expansion, too). But you, the programmer, have to manually keep track of your position in that little 4k buffer. You have to deal with moving the cursor around, etc. - Dan C. [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 7408 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints 2018-09-04 9:34 ` Andy Kosela 2018-09-04 10:23 ` Dan Cross @ 2018-09-04 14:22 ` ron minnich 2018-09-06 20:02 ` Andy Kosela 1 sibling, 1 reply; 45+ messages in thread From: ron minnich @ 2018-09-04 14:22 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Andy Kosela; +Cc: tuhs [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 585 bytes --] On Tue, Sep 4, 2018 at 2:34 AM Andy Kosela <akosela@andykosela.com> wrote: > When Plan 9 was created in the mid-late 80s exactly those ideas > circulated. Nothing comes from nothing, everything has its historical > context. In the late 80s in order to "innovate" it was natural to think > that abandoning text terminals is a "progress". > > I don't get the sense, from reading this, that you have ever used Plan 9 for serious work, or indeed done more than see or run a demo. I'm keeping this short because this is TUHS, not T9HS. But your characterization of Plan 9 is just wrong. [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 909 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints 2018-09-04 14:22 ` ron minnich @ 2018-09-06 20:02 ` Andy Kosela 2018-09-06 20:49 ` ron minnich 0 siblings, 1 reply; 45+ messages in thread From: Andy Kosela @ 2018-09-06 20:02 UTC (permalink / raw) To: rminnich; +Cc: tuhs ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, Sep 4, 2018 at 2:34 AM Andy Kosela <akosela@andykosela.com> wrote: > > > When Plan 9 was created in the mid-late 80s exactly those ideas > > circulated. Nothing comes from nothing, everything has its historical > > context. In the late 80s in order to "innovate" it was natural to think > > that abandoning text terminals is a "progress". > > > > > I don't get the sense, from reading this, that you have ever used Plan 9 > for serious work, or indeed done more than see or run a demo. I'm keeping > this short because this is TUHS, not T9HS. But your characterization of > Plan 9 is just wrong. I understand that we are drifting a bit off-topic here, but for the sake of all reading it, it probably would be relevant to at least offer some more explanation of your point. Saying 'you are wrong' is not very informative. I still think that you just misinterpret my words though. One still cannot ignore the fact that Unix and Plan 9 offer two completely different approaches to displaying text. I think it also would not be very productive nor it was intended to use Plan 9 without mouse and rio(1). --Andy ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints 2018-09-06 20:02 ` Andy Kosela @ 2018-09-06 20:49 ` ron minnich 2018-09-06 21:55 ` Andy Kosela 0 siblings, 1 reply; 45+ messages in thread From: ron minnich @ 2018-09-06 20:49 UTC (permalink / raw) To: akosela; +Cc: tuhs [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 722 bytes --] On Thu, Sep 6, 2018 at 1:02 PM Andy Kosela <akosela@andykosela.com> wrote: > One still cannot ignore the fact that Unix and Plan 9 offer two > completely different approaches to displaying text. I think it also > would not be very productive nor it was intended to use Plan 9 without > mouse and rio(1). > I spent four years using Plan 9 on the Blue Gene supercomputer (I led the team that did the port). I also spent years using it on embedded systems with no windowing system at all. What you're saying does not accord with anything I experienced with Plan 9 over a dozen year span. I also don't believe your claims are driven by experience using Plan 9; am I missing something? What is the basis of your statement? [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1050 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints 2018-09-06 20:49 ` ron minnich @ 2018-09-06 21:55 ` Andy Kosela 2018-09-07 1:59 ` Dan Cross 0 siblings, 1 reply; 45+ messages in thread From: Andy Kosela @ 2018-09-06 21:55 UTC (permalink / raw) To: rminnich; +Cc: tuhs ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Sep 6, 2018 at 1:02 PM Andy Kosela <akosela@andykosela.com> wrote: > > > One still cannot ignore the fact that Unix and Plan 9 offer two > > completely different approaches to displaying text. I think it also > > would not be very productive nor it was intended to use Plan 9 without > > mouse and rio(1). > > > > I spent four years using Plan 9 on the Blue Gene supercomputer (I led the > team that did the port). I also spent years using it on embedded systems > with no windowing system at all. > > What you're saying does not accord with anything I experienced with Plan 9 > over a dozen year span. I also don't believe your claims are driven by > experience using Plan 9; am I missing something? What is the basis of your > statement? Just from personal experience running Plan 9. Well, you can't tell me this system was designed with the idea of running it using text terminal and no mouse. There is also no cursor addressing, no curses. Like I written before it was born in the different era -- they tried to not build it on the idea of character based TTY, but rather incorporate graphical element into it. If it is possible to be fully productive in Plan 9 using just VGA text mode (720x400) and not any of the bitmap modes, with Unix like cursor addressing and with no rio(1) and no mouse then it's something I never really explored. --Andy ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints 2018-09-06 21:55 ` Andy Kosela @ 2018-09-07 1:59 ` Dan Cross 2018-09-07 4:40 ` Andy Kosela 0 siblings, 1 reply; 45+ messages in thread From: Dan Cross @ 2018-09-07 1:59 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Andy Kosela; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2860 bytes --] On Thu, Sep 6, 2018 at 5:56 PM Andy Kosela <akosela@andykosela.com> wrote: > [snip] Well, you can't tell me > this system was designed with the idea of running it using text terminal > and no mouse. I won't, because it wouldn't be true. You are correct that it was always intended to be used with a graphical console. But you keep talking about "text terminals" and therein lies the confusion: our text terminals haven't been purely "text" since the teletype days. Even green-screen serial terminals have graphics adapters to draw characters on the screen. There is also no cursor addressing, no curses. Actually, there *is* a graphical program to emulate a vt-series terminal, but pretty much no one uses it. So while strictly speaking this is incorrect, it is essentially correct for all intents and purposes. But it begs the question: why would you *want* to use that sort of interface? That was appropriate for an HP or DEC terminal connected via a low-bandwidth link (e.g., serial) or a shared host computer. Once we moved onto personal workstation-class machines with graphics adapters, why continue with that paradigm? Your framebuffer doesn't care that, '\033[H\033[J' means "move the cursor to the upper-left corner and clear the current line to the end of the screen", so why should your terminal emulator? For that matter, if logged into the text-only console on a Linux or FreeBSD machine, why does running `stty` say your graphics adapter has a BAUD rate? The plan9 authors decided to leave such historical debris behind. > Like I > written before it was born in the different era -- they tried to not > build it on the idea of character based TTY, but rather incorporate > graphical element into it. > Correct. I wasn't there, but the observation surely must have been in part that the user was *already* using a graphical environment, just not to very good effect. If it is possible to be fully productive in Plan 9 using just VGA text > mode (720x400) and not any of the bitmap modes, with Unix like cursor > addressing and with no rio(1) and no mouse then it's something I never > really explored. > You could skip `rio` and just run `vt` on the console. I doubt the emulation is very good and it wouldn't be an acceptable substitute for serious use. `vt` was really intended as a stop-gap for accessing older systems; the plan9 model was different, and instead of accessing remote resources, the idea was that those resources would be shared with the (plan9) network and imported locally for manipulation. That is, I wouldn't `ssh` into some machine to make use of something on it; instead I'd use `import` to bring those resources into my namespace locally and I'd manipulate them there. I did a writeup of this a while back: http://pub.gajendra.net/2016/05/plan9part1 I should probably do parts 2 and 3.... - Dan C. [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 3955 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints 2018-09-07 1:59 ` Dan Cross @ 2018-09-07 4:40 ` Andy Kosela 0 siblings, 0 replies; 45+ messages in thread From: Andy Kosela @ 2018-09-07 4:40 UTC (permalink / raw) To: crossd; +Cc: tuhs Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Sep 6, 2018 at 5:56 PM Andy Kosela <akosela@andykosela.com> wrote: > > > [snip] Well, you can't tell me > > this system was designed with the idea of running it using text terminal > > and no mouse. > > > I won't, because it wouldn't be true. You are correct that it was always > intended to be used with a graphical console. But you keep talking about > "text terminals" and therein lies the confusion: our text terminals haven't > been purely "text" since the teletype days. Even green-screen serial > terminals have graphics adapters to draw characters on the screen. I think I was clear enough and meant 'text terminal' as a physical glass TTY e.g. vt220 from DEC, but understand now why someone might have interpreted it differently. There is also a big difference between a text mode (character mode) where what we see on the screen is addressed in terms of characters rather than individual pixels and a bitmap mode (graphics mode) also known as APA (all points addressable) mode where every pixel is addressable[1]. Inherent in the text mode is also the concept of monospace fonts which some people prefer to this day. > > There is also no cursor addressing, no curses. > > > Actually, there *is* a graphical program to emulate a vt-series terminal, > but pretty much no one uses it. So while strictly speaking this is > incorrect, it is essentially correct for all intents and purposes. > > But it begs the question: why would you *want* to use that sort of > interface? That was appropriate for an HP or DEC terminal connected via a > low-bandwidth link (e.g., serial) or a shared host computer. Once we moved > onto personal workstation-class machines with graphics adapters, why > continue with that paradigm? Why there are still people running C64, Atari XL/XE or Amiga? Even more, some of them think those computers are still better than the machines of today... In the Unix community there are some that still prefer to use old CRT terminals or MS-DOS era PC monitors using only text mode. Why I can't speak for all of them, I can speak for myself and explain my motivation behind it. I instantly fell in love with a text mode when I first started computing on Commodore and Atari machines in the 80s and then naturally advanced to a text mode on MS-DOS era PC's. I never really ran Linux or *BSDs with X Window System -- always preferred pure text mode. It is aesthetically pleasing and most elegant to converse with a machine using only text, and a text mode as displayed on cathode ray tube (CRT) is the most beautiful representation of such an idea. Although these days I'm using sometimes MacBook (who doesn't?) which is using of course the bitmap mode, I still prefer to experience the full text mode on a real CRT and actually collect them as they are becoming more and more rare. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_mode --Andy ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints 2018-09-03 18:56 ` Cág 2018-09-04 6:10 ` Andy Kosela @ 2018-09-30 21:32 ` Lyndon Nerenberg 1 sibling, 0 replies; 45+ messages in thread From: Lyndon Nerenberg @ 2018-09-30 21:32 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Cág; +Cc: tuhs > > "Unavailable on the console" is kind of a cheap shot when talking about > > an operating system that deliberately doesn't support consoles. Part of > > the point was outgrowing TTYs. > > Yeah, I guess I should've started with that :) I love Unix for the > console. But in Plan9, the console is assumed to be a bitmap device. Perhaps with the exception of, say, the file server. But there is no reason why that has to be the case - certainly not on modern "file server" hardware. It's just an artifact of how cpurc is set up. It's trivially changable, should you desire to. --lyndon ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints 2018-09-03 18:11 ` Kurt H Maier 2018-09-03 18:56 ` Cág @ 2018-09-03 20:08 ` Bakul Shah 2018-09-03 20:41 ` Kurt H Maier 1 sibling, 1 reply; 45+ messages in thread From: Bakul Shah @ 2018-09-03 20:08 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Kurt H Maier; +Cc: tuhs On Sep 3, 2018, at 11:11 AM, Kurt H Maier <khm@sciops.net> wrote: > > I still dislike Acme for basically all the same reasons I dislike emacs. What text editor do you like? One measure of success of a program is additional tools people build to work with it. By that measure emacs has succeeded very well. Acme is used by far fewer people but it too has had additional tools built. And even standard tools such as grep work well with it. You can also view it as an experiment and not an end product. That is, nothing to prevent anyone from extending it or changing it. The same is true of plan9 too. An experiment in seeing how far “representing resources as filesystems” model can be pushed. But for some reason this never happened. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints 2018-09-03 20:08 ` Bakul Shah @ 2018-09-03 20:41 ` Kurt H Maier 2018-09-03 21:46 ` Bakul Shah 0 siblings, 1 reply; 45+ messages in thread From: Kurt H Maier @ 2018-09-03 20:41 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Bakul Shah; +Cc: tuhs On Mon, Sep 03, 2018 at 01:08:41PM -0700, Bakul Shah wrote: > > One measure of success of a program is additional tools people build > to work with it. This is true, but unix and plan 9 are special because they have facilities that let many tools work together. Unix has pipes, plan 9 has the plumber on top of that, and so forth. I prefer tools that work with these systems to create an environment that lets me use the whole world to do my job. Emacs pointlessly restricts itself to its own reinventions of the world it inhabits. It makes sense if you are using a LispM but it constitutes a rejection of the 'system' component of 'operating system' when you transplant it to an ecosystem built on a different paradigm. The current modality of this antisocial behavior is the web; we've come full circle, and now we have bespoke web browsers shoved into the text-editing role, reinventing everything from character addressing to memory management on the way, treating the underlying system as an unfortunate accident of history instead of integrating with (or even learning from) it. Acme is a bad citizen in similar ways, but as I said, I suspect that's because it was intended to supplant Rio rather than infect it. When people talk about "the unix way," they usually hyperfocus on "do one thing well" and leave composability by the wayside, and that's a shame, because that's where the real power comes from. "Do one thing well" is a method to achieve quality when you're building a piece of a well-integrated system. If you're not building a well-integrated system, you *can't* "do one thing well," because you've signed on to do everything, come hell or high water. khm ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints 2018-09-03 20:41 ` Kurt H Maier @ 2018-09-03 21:46 ` Bakul Shah 2018-09-04 0:52 ` Kurt H Maier 0 siblings, 1 reply; 45+ messages in thread From: Bakul Shah @ 2018-09-03 21:46 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Kurt H Maier; +Cc: tuhs On Sep 3, 2018, at 1:41 PM, Kurt H Maier <khm@sciops.net> wrote: > > Acme is a bad citizen in similar ways, but as I said, I suspect that's > because it was intended to supplant Rio rather than infect it. I’m still not clear on why you think acme is a bad citizen. If anything it makes its windows more accessible to other tools. Unlike emacs or vim or any IDE. What could acme have differently or what other editor is not a “bad citizen”. > When people talk about "the unix way," they usually hyperfocus on "do > one thing well" and leave composability by the wayside, and that's a > shame, because that's where the real power comes from. "Do one thing > well" is a method to achieve quality when you're building a piece of a > well-integrated system. If you're not building a well-integrated > system, you *can't* "do one thing well," because you've signed on to do > everything, come hell or high water. Composability is implicitly the key point in “the Unix way” but typically editors are not very composable. Or composable in a different domain. Similarly GUI. Once you add a human in your composition, further composability falls apart! A human being the ultimate “do everything” kitchen sink:-) The question is what can be done to improve composability beyond the “Unix way” or plan9 way. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints 2018-09-03 21:46 ` Bakul Shah @ 2018-09-04 0:52 ` Kurt H Maier 0 siblings, 0 replies; 45+ messages in thread From: Kurt H Maier @ 2018-09-04 0:52 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Bakul Shah; +Cc: tuhs On Mon, Sep 03, 2018 at 02:46:14PM -0700, Bakul Shah wrote: > > I’m still not clear on why you think acme is a bad citizen. If anything it > makes its windows more accessible to other tools. Unlike emacs or vim > or any IDE. What could acme have differently or what other editor is > not a “bad citizen”. > Ok. I apologize for expressing myself poorly. I give up. > Composability is implicitly the key point in “the Unix way” but typically > editors are not very composable. Or composable in a different domain. > Similarly GUI. Once you add a human in your composition, further > composability falls apart! A human being the ultimate “do everything” > kitchen sink:-) I don't consider myself on an equal footing as the tools I use. I don't "add a human in my composition." I compose. This is a pretty fundamental difference between me and software. > The question is what can be done to improve composability beyond the > “Unix way” or plan9 way. I have about a million questions to answer first, and I suspect the industry as a whole will collapse and re-form a few times before anyone gets around to answering that one. We haven't even fully developed composability in "the unix way" since market forces seem to have frozen things in a sort of late-1980s amber. I envy the future generation that rediscovers the core concept and runs with it, but I doubt I'll be around then. Information technology is entering an ice age in which general-purpose computing is not guaranteed to select for survival; the barrier to entry for understanding systems has never been higher, there is a distinct and global trend against it, and the cost of thirty years' abuse of Moore's law is coming due. Hunter Thompson's high-water mark comes to mind. I am grateful, for these reasons, for the efforts of people like TUHS and Bitsavers, so that I can still find and use the tools that were made back before people confused the simplistic for the simple, even if it gets harder to make a living with them each passing year. khm ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 45+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2018-10-01 16:27 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 45+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 2018-08-29 14:25 [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints Clem Cole 2018-08-29 22:34 ` Dave Horsfall 2018-08-29 23:36 ` Larry McVoy 2018-08-30 1:14 ` Clem cole 2018-08-30 1:15 ` Clem cole 2018-08-30 2:43 ` Kevin Bowling 2018-08-30 2:59 ` George Michaelson 2018-08-31 0:27 ` Dave Horsfall 2018-08-31 0:41 ` Dan Cross 2018-08-31 1:58 ` Larry McVoy 2018-08-31 11:38 ` ron 2018-08-31 14:41 ` [TUHS] UNIX System names - since UNIX was a Trademark Clem Cole 2018-08-31 15:13 ` Eric Wayte 2018-08-31 15:17 ` William Pechter 2018-08-31 15:25 ` Clem Cole 2018-09-01 0:10 ` John P. Linderman 2018-09-01 0:18 ` ron 2018-09-01 0:55 ` Nemo 2018-09-01 7:37 ` Dave Horsfall 2018-09-01 13:54 ` Nemo 2018-09-01 17:03 ` Paul Winalski 2018-09-03 1:14 ` Robert Brockway 2018-09-30 20:57 ` Lyndon Nerenberg 2018-10-01 16:26 ` Paul Winalski 2018-09-01 0:00 ` Dave Horsfall 2018-08-31 21:56 ` [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints Cág 2018-09-01 3:37 ` Andrew Warkentin 2018-09-03 18:04 ` Cág 2018-09-03 18:11 ` Kurt H Maier 2018-09-03 18:56 ` Cág 2018-09-04 6:10 ` Andy Kosela 2018-09-04 6:41 ` ron minnich 2018-09-04 9:34 ` Andy Kosela 2018-09-04 10:23 ` Dan Cross 2018-09-04 14:22 ` ron minnich 2018-09-06 20:02 ` Andy Kosela 2018-09-06 20:49 ` ron minnich 2018-09-06 21:55 ` Andy Kosela 2018-09-07 1:59 ` Dan Cross 2018-09-07 4:40 ` Andy Kosela 2018-09-30 21:32 ` Lyndon Nerenberg 2018-09-03 20:08 ` Bakul Shah 2018-09-03 20:41 ` Kurt H Maier 2018-09-03 21:46 ` Bakul Shah 2018-09-04 0:52 ` Kurt H Maier
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).