The story of UNIX

[George Petrides_1]

A mainframe guy wrote this in the late 80s...

[Fragon]

After all, I do like UNIX especially HP-UX!!!

-Gerald-

[Wodisch_1]

Hi George,

do you know wether this guy is still "mainframing"?

Curious,
Wodisch
PS: Is this your "day-after-sysdmin-appreciation-day" symptom???

[Michael Tully]

Sounds like the guy had a good understanding of drugs, no too much sex and no rock and roll. (obviously too stoned from his university days)
The code is not bad, but wait until Procura gets hold of it, it will be "transformed" into Perl.....

Cheers
Michael (who didn't have a good sysadmin day, Huge power outage.... UPS crapped itself....)
:^((

[George Petrides_1]

The guy is now retired, he tried to learn UNIX on SCO and then wrote this and went back to the mainframe... BTW, I am trying to assign points but it doesn't work.
George

[Nick Wickens]

Nothing wrong with being a "mainframe Guy in the late 80's".

I found it to be character building (After all the junk food ridden endless nights I now look like the character Homer Simpson !!).

Regds
Nick
(MVS/SP IBM 3083 circa 1987).

[Martin Johnson]

Gee, I thought it was something that Ken Olsen (former CEO of DEC) came up with when he was asked about Unix.

:-)
Marty

[Mark Greene_1]

The author of this gem is a guy by the name of Ian Horswill who wrote this while working on AI projects at MIT. That context alone, IMHO, is sufficient to justify all sort of what otherwise "normal" people would consider to be not-normal behavior.

Here's the dude's current homepage (not for the faint of heart!):

http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~ian/

HTH (really!),
mark

[Justo Exposito]

Hi George,

Do you have the history of Windows?:-)

Regards,

Justo.

[George Petrides_1]

Mark Greene's source as to where this story originated seems more reliable than my source, therefore that answer seems more correct. Now, regarding a story for MS Windows... I think I will write one, one of these days... click... click... reboot... click...reboot...
George

[Bill McNAMARA_1]

well, you know, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it only a duck if there happens to be trademarks involved..

Nice story, shame about the haircut!

[David Greenberg_1]

For a DOS/WinXX version of this tale, try "The Fable of the DOSFish" at http://www.tje.net/humor/9701/dosfish.htm

[Jean-Luc Oudart]

This is more MS type story, shortly available on all platform :

Dear Tech Support,

I am desperate for some help. I recently upgraded from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0 and found that the new program began unexpected child processing and also took up a lot of space and valuable resources. This wasn't mentioned in the product brochure. In addition Wife 1.0 installs itself into all other programs and launches during system initialisation where it monitors all other system
activity.

Applications such as Boys Night Out 2.5, and Golf 5.3 no longer run and crash the system whenever selected. Attempting to operate Saturday Rugby 6.3 always fails but Saturday Shopping 7.1 runs instead. I cannot seem to keep Wife 1.0 in the background whilst attempting to run any of my favourite applications. I am thinking about going back to Girlfriend 7.0 but de-install doesn't work on this program.

Can you please help.
Michael

Dear Michael,

This is a very common problem resulting from a basic misunderstanding. Many men upgrade from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0 thinking that Wife 1.0 is merely a UTILITIES & ENTERTAINMENT program. Whereas Wife 1.0 is an OPERATING SYSTEM designed by its creator to run everything. You are unlikely to be able to purge Wife 1.0 and still convert back to Girlfriend 7.0 as Wife 1.0 is not designed to do this and it is impossible to de-install, delete or purge the program files from the system once installed.
Some people have tried to install Girlfriend 8.0 or Wife 2.0 but have ended up with even more problems. (See in manual under Alimony/Child Support and Solicitors Fees)

Having Wife 1.0 installed myself I recommend you keep it installed and deal with the difficulties as best you can. When any faults or problems occur, whatever you think has caused them, you must run the C: I APOLOGISE program and avoid attempting to use the "Esc" key. It may be necessary to run C: I APOLOGISE a number of times but hopefully eventually the operating system will return to normal.

Wife 1.0 although a very high maintenance program can be very rewarding.

To get the most out of it consider buying additional software such as Flowers 2.0 and Chocolates 5.0.

Do not under any circumstances install Secretary With Short Skirt 3.3 as this is not a supported application for Wife 1.0 and the system will almost certainly crash.

Best of luck

Tech Support