[TUHS] 2018: eighteen months to the Unix 50th anniversary

[TUHS] 2018: eighteen months to the Unix 50th anniversary

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: George Michaelson

    > Try this on the birth of the ICL 2900.

Along the same lines, there's this:

  https://www.netjeff.com/humor/item.cgi?file=GenesisForProjects

with its great closing line..

  Noel

[TUHS] 2018: eighteen months to the Unix 50th anniversary

[Clem Cole]

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Definitely a classic.
ᐧ

On Wed, Jan 10, 2018 at 8:22 PM, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
wrote:

>     > From: George Michaelson
>
>     > Try this on the birth of the ICL 2900.
>
> Along the same lines, there's this:
>
>   https://www.netjeff.com/humor/item.cgi?file=GenesisForProjects
>
> with its great closing line..
>
>   Noel
>
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[TUHS] 2018: eighteen months to the Unix 50th anniversary

[Robert Brockway]

On Thu, 11 Jan 2018, Dave Horsfall wrote:

> No way the big JC could've been born in the middle of winter in that part of 
> the world; try about 4BC (Halley's comet) around Spring in March or so.

Quite right.  I was there in winter and got snowed in for 3 days at a 
kibbutz near Jerusalem.

I'd also like to endorse the Holocene Calendar at this point since it 
results in all events since the development of agriculture having a 
positive date.  Much easier for comparison.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_calendar

OnUNIX: Development of UNIX started in 11969HE.  See, perfectly sensible.

Rob

[TUHS] 2018: eighteen months to the Unix 50th anniversary

[George Michaelson]

If you're going to bring religion into it... Try this on the birth of
the ICL 2900..

(by D.W. barron, 1976)

http://algebras.org/ggm/oldtestament.html

On Thu, Jan 11, 2018 at 9:48 AM, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Jan 2018, Andy Kosela wrote:
>
>> Christians also do not know the _exact_ year when Jesus was born, but they
>> arbitrary chose the date as the start of their Epoch.
>
>
> Not really arbitrary; the dates were chosen to hijack pagan festivals, so we
> have Christmas at Yuletide, Easter at the Spring fertility rites, etc.
>
> No way the big JC could've been born in the middle of winter in that part of
> the world; try about 4BC (Halley's comet) around Spring in March or so.
>
>
> --
> Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will
> suffer."

[TUHS] 2018: eighteen months to the Unix 50th anniversary

[Dave Horsfall]

On Wed, 10 Jan 2018, Andy Kosela wrote:

> Christians also do not know the _exact_ year when Jesus was born, but 
> they arbitrary chose the date as the start of their Epoch.

Not really arbitrary; the dates were chosen to hijack pagan festivals, so 
we have Christmas at Yuletide, Easter at the Spring fertility rites, etc.

No way the big JC could've been born in the middle of winter in that part 
of the world; try about 4BC (Halley's comet) around Spring in March or so.

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

[TUHS] 2018: eighteen months to the Unix 50th anniversary

[Grant Taylor]

On 01/10/2018 03:57 AM, Warren Toomey wrote:
>> If not maintaining itself, right on the verge of maintaining itself, 
>> to totally sever the GECOS connection.
> 
> So, while we don't have an exact date, it's reasonable to assume that, 
> sometime around July 1969, Unix was at a point where it was self-hosting.

Somehow I was not aware that Unix was ever dependent on another OS.

I get the impression that GECOS was more integral with early Unix than I 
had ever imagined.  It sounds like more than just the GECOS field in 
/etc/passwd for associating Unix accounts with GECOS accounts on other 
machines.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die

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[TUHS] 2018: eighteen months to the Unix 50th anniversary

[Andy Kosela]

On Wednesday, January 10, 2018, Kevin Bowling <kevin.bowling at kev009.com>
wrote:

> Things like this don't really occur in one day [1]  "Unix was born in
> 1969 not 1974" - dmr
>
> Is it fair to say 1/1/1970 is the spiritual christening and the day to
> celebrate?


>

Christians also do not know the _exact_ year when Jesus was born, but they
arbitrary chose the date as the start of their Epoch.

The Roman calendar before was counted ab urbe condita (from the foundation
of the city, i.e., Rome) in 753 BC, so that year was the start of their
Epoch.

I think it is fair to say that our calendar started on 1/1/1970, and not
because UNIX was born on that day, but because that day was chosen
arbitrary by the Fathers of UNIX.

We, as UNIX disciples, should start counting our calendar starting with the
UNIX Epoch, so we have 48 and not 2018 now...

--Andy
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[TUHS] 2018: eighteen months to the Unix 50th anniversary

[Warren Toomey]

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On Wed, Jan 10, 2018 at 05:53:51PM +1100, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
>> Is it fair to say 1/1/1970 is the spiritual christening and the day to
>> celebrate?
>
>Clearly wkt has something else in mind if he wrote "18 months".  I
>don't think 1 January 1970 had any meaning until it became the
>(currently last) epoch.

HI all, and apologies for the delay in responding. Here's a quote
from an interview that Mike Mahoney did with Ken Thompson:

(http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/OralHistory/transcripts/thompson.htm)

    MSM: At what point did you feel you had something here?
    
    Thompson: Um, well, the first one was not at all multiprogrammed,
    and was almost like subroutines on the file system. The read call, the
    system read call, was in fact the call "read" of the file system and it
    was very synchronous, just subroutine call to the file systems for these
    applications. And um there was a very quick rewrite that admitted it was
    an operating system, and it had a kernel user interface that you trapped
    across. I really can’t remember what the realization was, I mean,
    the whole time span, from initially starting with...walking downstairs,
    down there with the idea that we were going to build a file system.
    
    MSM: When was this, do you remember the time?
    
    Thompson: Yeah, it was the summer of ‘69.
    
    MSM: Summer of ‘69 ok
    
    Thompson: In fact um my wife went on vacation to my family’s place
    in California to visit my parents -- we’d just had a new son in August
    ‘68 -- and uh they hadn’t seen the kid so (unclear) took the kid to
    visit my family and she was gone a month to California and I allocated a
    week each to the shell, to the operating system, the shell, the editor,
    and the assembler, to reproduce itself. During the month she was gone,
    which was in the summer of ‘69, it was totally rewritten in a form that
    looked like an operating system, with tools that were sort of known, you
    know, an assembler, an editor and a shell. If not maintaining itself,
    right on the verge of maintaining itself, to totally sever the GECOS
    connection.
    
So, while we don't have an exact date, it's reasonable to assume that,
sometime around July 1969, Unix was at a point where it was self-hosting.

Ken is a subscriber to this list, so maybe he might be able to help 
narrow down the date.

Cheers all,
	Warren

[TUHS] 2018: eighteen months to the Unix 50th anniversary

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Tuesday,  9 January 2018 at 23:25:32 -0700, Kevin Bowling wrote:
> Things like this don't really occur in one day [1]  "Unix was born in
> 1969 not 1974" - dmr
>
> Is it fair to say 1/1/1970 is the spiritual christening and the day to
> celebrate?

Clearly wkt has something else in mind if he wrote "18 months".  I
don't think 1 January 1970 had any meaning until it became the
(currently last) epoch.

Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed.  If your Microsoft mail program
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[TUHS] 2018: eighteen months to the Unix 50th anniversary

[Kevin Bowling]

Things like this don't really occur in one day [1]  "Unix was born in
1969 not 1974" - dmr

Is it fair to say 1/1/1970 is the spiritual christening and the day to
celebrate?

[1] http://webarchive.loc.gov/all/20100506231949/http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/hist.html

On Tue, Jan 9, 2018 at 10:23 PM, George Michaelson <ggm at algebras.org> wrote:
> I'm probably a bit of a simpleton about this stuff. I feel like my
> engagement with UNIX has been a succession of mind-blown moments.
>
> 1978: shown a piped command. mind blown. What.The.Holy.Hell. I cannot
> understand this. I entered the room with punched cards. How does this
> even work.
>
> 1979: shown how to write macros. mind blown.
> This.Is.Not.A.Program.This.is.a.meta.program. What reads this? a pre
> processor. whats that. mind officially blown. I cannot understand.
> WHERE IS MY CODE
>
> 1981: made to read about the design of the IBM 360 monotonically
> rising clock. mind blown. How.Can.Every.Computer.Not.Have.Had.This.
> What does time even mean? what is negative time? Whats the granularity
> of time? I DONT UNDERSTAND WHY I DONT UNDERSTAND
>
> 1982: I start work on systems where I have su privilege and can change
> the time. Mind blown I.Can.Tell.Lies.About.Time How come? How come
> there isn't some magic once-only pass through hardware abacus
> rat-in-a-cage machine I can't lie about ITS ALL LIES mind blown.
>
> 1984: I start doing NTP and see emails from Dave Mills. Mind blown.
> He.Is.Not.Typing.English.As.I.Understand.It.This.Is.The.Goon.Show mind
> blown. But.. in a good way. People can make fun of themselves and
> write real code? Time is fuzzy? Time has properties? People are
> thinking about 2039? Mind blown. I don't even believe I will be alive
> in 2039 given "star wars" and "protect and survive"
>
> I really like 1/1/1970. its been like a constant in my life. If it
> turned out to be 1969 I'd be ok but I have to say.. a bit .. somewhere
> inside.. a small squirrel inside Searles  'chinese box' is saying...
>
>    mind... blown...

[TUHS] 2018: eighteen months to the Unix 50th anniversary

[George Michaelson]

I'm probably a bit of a simpleton about this stuff. I feel like my
engagement with UNIX has been a succession of mind-blown moments.

1978: shown a piped command. mind blown. What.The.Holy.Hell. I cannot
understand this. I entered the room with punched cards. How does this
even work.

1979: shown how to write macros. mind blown.
This.Is.Not.A.Program.This.is.a.meta.program. What reads this? a pre
processor. whats that. mind officially blown. I cannot understand.
WHERE IS MY CODE

1981: made to read about the design of the IBM 360 monotonically
rising clock. mind blown. How.Can.Every.Computer.Not.Have.Had.This.
What does time even mean? what is negative time? Whats the granularity
of time? I DONT UNDERSTAND WHY I DONT UNDERSTAND

1982: I start work on systems where I have su privilege and can change
the time. Mind blown I.Can.Tell.Lies.About.Time How come? How come
there isn't some magic once-only pass through hardware abacus
rat-in-a-cage machine I can't lie about ITS ALL LIES mind blown.

1984: I start doing NTP and see emails from Dave Mills. Mind blown.
He.Is.Not.Typing.English.As.I.Understand.It.This.Is.The.Goon.Show mind
blown. But.. in a good way. People can make fun of themselves and
write real code? Time is fuzzy? Time has properties? People are
thinking about 2039? Mind blown. I don't even believe I will be alive
in 2039 given "star wars" and "protect and survive"

I really like 1/1/1970. its been like a constant in my life. If it
turned out to be 1969 I'd be ok but I have to say.. a bit .. somewhere
inside.. a small squirrel inside Searles  'chinese box' is saying...

   mind... blown...

[TUHS] 2018: eighteen months to the Unix 50th anniversary

[Warner Losh]

On Tue, Jan 9, 2018 at 8:34 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:

> On Tuesday,  9 January 2018 at 10:30:18 +1000, Warren Toomey wrote:
> > Hi all, Happy New Year. As it's now only eighteen months to the Unix 50th
> > Anniversary, ...
>
> So we have an exact date?  What happened on that day?
>

PDP-7 Unix has a date of Jan 1, 1970 date in the TUHS tree. Wikipedia cites
http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch02s01.html as saying it was developed in
1969, but is not more specific. I've seen references to the summer of 1969
Ken starting to write the paper filesystem.

Warner
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[TUHS] 2018: eighteen months to the Unix 50th anniversary

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Tuesday,  9 January 2018 at 10:30:18 +1000, Warren Toomey wrote:
> Hi all, Happy New Year. As it's now only eighteen months to the Unix 50th
> Anniversary, ...

So we have an exact date?  What happened on that day?

Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
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[TUHS] 2018: eighteen months to the Unix 50th anniversary

[Warner Losh]

I'm working on a long-term project to reverse engineer the sources to Venix
on my Rainbow based off the now-publicly available v7 sources and recently
re-surfaced disks... I suspect that the compiler is not going to happen...
But lots of the rest of it might...  Will make an interesting
presentation...

On Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 5:30 PM, Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org> wrote:

> Hi all, Happy New Year. As it's now only eighteen months to the Unix 50th
> Anniversary, I thought I'd poll you all to get an update of what is being
> done to celebrate the anniversary, and/or what could we organise that has
> not yet been organised.
>
> Cheers, Warren
>
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[TUHS] 2018: eighteen months to the Unix 50th anniversary

[Kevin Bowling]

I would like to see an in person event somewhere

On Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 5:30 PM, Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org> wrote:
> Hi all, Happy New Year. As it's now only eighteen months to the Unix 50th
> Anniversary, I thought I'd poll you all to get an update of what is being
> done to celebrate the anniversary, and/or what could we organise that has
> not yet been organised.
>
> Cheers, Warren

[TUHS] 2018: eighteen months to the Unix 50th anniversary

[Dave Horsfall]

On Tue, 9 Jan 2018, Noel Hunt wrote:

> Didn't Piers write ACSnet too?

He was part of it, yes; the reference was to Piers getting an MHSnet node 
ready for The Event.

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

[TUHS] 2018: eighteen months to the Unix 50th anniversary

[Noel Hunt]

Didn't Piers write ACSnet too?


On Tue, Jan 9, 2018 at 11:39 AM, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:

> On Tue, 9 Jan 2018, Warren Toomey wrote:
>
> Hi all, Happy New Year. As it's now only eighteen months to the Unix 50th
>> Anniversary, I thought I'd poll you all to get an update of what is being
>> done to celebrate the anniversary, and/or what could we organise that has
>> not yet been organised.
>>
>
> Gawd; I'd better get started on ACSnet then...  As I recall, Piers did the
> MHSnet stuff, but I don't recall whether it interoperates with ACSnet (too
> long ago!).
>
> --
> Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will
> suffer."
>
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[TUHS] 2018: eighteen months to the Unix 50th anniversary

[Dave Horsfall]

On Tue, 9 Jan 2018, Warren Toomey wrote:

> Hi all, Happy New Year. As it's now only eighteen months to the Unix 
> 50th Anniversary, I thought I'd poll you all to get an update of what is 
> being done to celebrate the anniversary, and/or what could we organise 
> that has not yet been organised.

Gawd; I'd better get started on ACSnet then...  As I recall, Piers did the 
MHSnet stuff, but I don't recall whether it interoperates with ACSnet (too 
long ago!).

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

[TUHS] 2018: eighteen months to the Unix 50th anniversary

[Warren Toomey]

Hi all, Happy New Year. As it's now only eighteen months to the Unix 50th 
Anniversary, I thought I'd poll you all to get an update of what is being
done to celebrate the anniversary, and/or what could we organise that has
not yet been organised.

Cheers, Warren