From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: imp@bsdimp.com (Warner Losh)
Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2011 22:03:13 -0600
Subject: [TUHS] Ideas for a Unix paper I'm writing
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On Jun 27, 2011, at 9:36 PM, Jim Capp wrote:
> 2) uniform device handling - Rendering all I/O as a stream of bytes, without regard to content or record sizes, provided a universal foundation for data exchange among heterogenous devices.

And before networking, universal name space.  Systems prior to this required you have both a device (aka C: or SYS$HOME:) and a directory.  Also, treating everything like a file meant you can open directories (which also wasn't possible except with special system calls on other systems).

Warner