[ale] FW: (Fwd) A biography of Unix?....

[Gareth Williams]

----------
>Don't know if everyone has seen this yet, but, if so, It's worth a second
look :)
> 
> 
> >        Unix was a program gone bad. Born into poverty, its parents,
the
> >phone company, couldn't afford more than a roll of teletype paper a
year,
> >so Unix never had a decent documentation and its source files had to go
> >without comments whatsoever. Year after year, Papa Bell would humiliate
> >itself asking for rate increases so that it could feed its child.
Still,
> >Unix had to go to school with only two and three letter command names
> >because the phone company just couldn't afford any better. At school,
the
> >other operating systems with real command names, and even command
> >completion, would taunt poor little Unix for not having any job or
terminal
> >management facilities or for having to use its file system for
interprocess
> >comunication and locking.
> >
> >        Then, bitter and enmasculated by its poverty, the phone company
> >began to drink. During lost weekends of drunken excess, it would
brutally
> >beat poor little Unix about the face and neck. Eventually, Unix ran
away
> >from home. Soon it was living on the streets of Berkeley. There, Unix
got
> >involved with a bad crowd. Its life became a degrading journey of drugs
> >and debauchery. To keep itself alive, it sold cheap source licenses for
> >itself to universities which used it for medical experiments. Being
wantonly
> >hacked by and endless stream of nameless, faceless undergraduates, both
> >men and women, often by more than one at the same time, Unix fell into
a
> >hell-hole of depravity.
> >
> >        And so it was that poor little Unix began to go insane. It
> >retreated steadily into a dreamworld, the only place where it felt
safe.
> >It took heroin and dreamed of being a real operating system. It took
LSD
> >and dreamed of being a raspberry flavored three-toed yak. It liked thta
> >better. As Unix became increasingly attracted to LSD, it would spend
> >weekends reading Hunter Thompson and taking cocktails of acid and speed
> >while writing crazed poetry in which it found deep meaning but which no
> >one else could understand:
> >
> >   $sed <$mf >$mf.new -e '1,/^# AUTOMATICALLY/!d'
> >
> >   make shlist || ($echo "Searching for .SH files..."; \
> >      $echo *.SH | $tr ' ' '\012' | $egrep -v '\*' >.shlist)
> >   if $test -s .deptmp; then
> >      for file in `cat .shlist`; do
> >         $echo `$expr X$file : 'X\(.*\).SH'`: $file config.sh \; \
> >            /bin/sh $file >> .deptmp
> >      done
> >      $echo "Updating $mf..."
> >      $echo "# If this runs make out of memory, delete /usr/include
lines." \
> >         >> $mf.new
> >      $sed 's|^\(.*\.o:\) *\(.*/.*\.c\) *$|\1 \2; '"$defrule \2|"
.deptmp \
> >         >> $mf.new
> >   else
> >      make hlist || (($echo "Searching for .h files..."; \
> >         $echo *.h | $tr ' ' '\012' | $egrep -v '\*' >.hlist)
> >      $echo "You don't seem to have a proper C preprocessor. Using grep
\
> >         instead."
> >      $egrep '^#include ' `cat .clist` `cat ,hlist` >.deptmp
> >      $echo "Updating $mf..."
> >      <.clist $sed -n                                                  
\
> >         -e '/\//{'                                                    
\
> >         -e   's|^\(.*\)/\(.*\)\.c|\2.0: \1/\2.c; '"$defrule \1/\2.c|p"
\
> >         -e d                                                          
\
> >         -e '}'                                                        
\
> >         -e 's|^\(.*\)\.c|\1.o: \1.c|p' >> $mf.new
> >      <.hlist $sed -n 's|\(.*/\)\(.*\)|s= \2= \1\2=|p' >.hsed
> >      <.deptmp $sed -n 's|c:#include "\(.*\).*$|o: \1|p' | \
> >         $sed 's|^[^;]*/||' | \
> >         $sed -f .hsed >> $mf.new
> >      <.deptmp $sed -n 's|c:#include <\(.*\)>.*$|o: /usr/include/\1|p' 
\
> >         >> $mf.new
> >      <.deptmp $sed -n 's|h:#include "\(.*\)".*$|h: \1|p' | \
> >         $sed -f .hsed >> $mf.new
> >      <.deptmp $sed -n 's|h:#include <\(.*\)>.*$|h: /usr/include/\1|p' 
\
> >         >> $mf.new
> >      for file in `$cat .shlist`; do
> >         $echo '$expr X$file " 'X\(.*\).SH'`: $file config.sh \;  \
> >            /bin/sh $file >> $mf.new
> >      done
> >   fi
> >
> >
> >        Eventually, Unix began walking down Telegraph Avenue talking to
> >itself, saying: "Panic: freeing free inode," over and over again.
Sometimes
> >it would accosting perfect strangers and yell "Bus error (core
dumped)!" or
> >"UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY: RUN FSCK MANUALLY!" at them in high pitched
squeal
> >like a chihuahua with amphetamine psychosis. Upstanding citizens
pretended it
> >was invisible. Mothers with children crossed to the other side of the
street.
> >
> >        Then one evening Unix watched television, an event which would
change
> >its life. There it discovered professional wrestling and knew that it
had
> >found its true calling. It began to take huge doses of corticosteroids
to
> >build itself up even bigger than the biggest of the programs which had
beaten
> >it up as a child. It ate three dozen pancackes and four dozen new
features for
> >breakfast each day. As the complications of the steroids grew worse,
its
> >internal organs grew to the point where Unix could no longer contain
them.
> >First the kernel grew, then the C library, then the number of daemons.
Soon
> >one of its window system was requiring two megabytes of swap space for
each
> >open window. Unix began to bulge in strange, unflattering places. But
Unix
> >continued to take drugs and its internal organs continued to grow. They
grew
> >out its ears and nostrills. They placed incredible stresses on Unix's
brain
> >until it finally liquefied under pressure. Soon Unix had the mass of
Andre
> >the Giant, the body of the Elephant Man, and the mind of a forgotten
Jack
> >Nicholson character.
> >
> >        The worst strain was on Unix's mind. Unable to assimilate all
the
> >conflicting patchworks of features it had ingested, its personality
began
> >to fragment into millions of distinct, incompatible operating systems.
People
> >would cautiously say "good morning Unix. And who are we today?" and it
would
> >reply "Beastie" (BSD), or "Domain", or "I'm System III, but I'll be
System V
> >tomorrow." Psychatrists labored for years to weld together the major
poles of
> >Unix's personality, "Beasty Boy", an inner-city youth from Berkeley,
and
> >"Belle", a southern transvestite whi wanted to be a woman. With each
attempt,
> >the two poles would mutate, like psychotic retroviruses, leaving their
union
> >a worthless blob of protoplasm requiring constant life support remain
> >compatible with its parent personalities.
> >
> >        Finally, unbalanced by its own cancerous growth, Unix fell into
a vat
> >of toxic radioactive wombat urine, from it emerged, skin white and hair
green.
> >It smelled like somebody's dead grandmother. With a horrible grin on
its face,
> >it set out to conquer the world.
> >
> 
> 
> Though you might like this... -Rick
> Rick Glisson, N4XMX
> Southeastern DX Club
> Atlanta, GA
> 
>