Unix witticisms

[crossd@gmail.com (Dan Cross)]

On Thu, Oct 5, 2017 at 10:26 AM, Ron Natalie <ron at ronnatalie.com> wrote:
> At the 83 USENIX Sun handed out buttons that said the "The Joy of UNIX."
> Peter Langston thought that was a bit conceited on Bill's part, so  he made
> up buttons for the next show that read "The PSL of UNIX", "The DMR of UNIX,"
> etc... and handed them out.    I still have the Joy of UNIX button, but I
> lost my "Ron of UNIX" button shortly after the show.
>
> The "is a  trademark of bell labs" generated lots of jokes over the year.
> I have somewhere a button that says "Eunuchs are a hallmark of the Ottoman
> Empire."    At one of the early UUGs someone tried to make "UNIX is a
> Trademark of Bell Labs" pencils except the custom pencil place only allowed
> 18 letters or something so the pencils just ended up saying "UNIX is a
> Trademark."     I'm not sure I've ever come across another Trademark that
> the footnote status was as widely propagated as UNIX's.    AT&T's lawyers
> even got up at one of the conferences (in a talk about licensing changes or
> such) and thanked the community for defending the trademark.

A running gag throughout the Mel Brooks movie, "Spaceballs" is
recurring product spots for the film's promotional materials
("Spaceballs: the toiler paper" was my favorite:
https://i.pinimg.com/474x/c3/53/c3/c353c3a52c70a66b2d7cf456756a361c--movie-drinking-games-s-movies.jpg).
This sounds similar in both character and execution.

        - Dan C.