+ X-NEWS: spcvxb alt.folklore.computers: 6523 I Relay-Version: VMS News - V6.0 13.10.90 VAX/VMS V5.4; site spcvxb.spc.edu g Path: spcvxb.spc.edu!njin!princeton!udel!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!rice!uw-beaver!milton!Tomobiki-Cho!mrc " Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: the jargon file+ Message-ID: <13419@milton.u.washington.edu> 8 From: mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU (Mark Crispin) Date: 24 Dec 90 00:32:02 GMT$ Sender: news@milton.u.washington.edu9 References: <CSTACY.90Dec17151739@wheat-chex.ai.mit.edu>  :  <1YqWpR#1YnZJF2ktJM020ODXT8YVbVG=eric@snark.thyrsus.com> Q  <13268@milton.u.washington.edu> <LENNOX.90Dec19130434@minilove.diag.stratus.com> ; Organization: Mendou Zaibatsu, Tomobiki-Cho, Butsumetsu-Shi 	 Lines: 64   V In article <LENNOX.90Dec19130434@minilove.diag.stratus.com> lennox@stratus.com writes:C >For the benefit of those of us who weren't at MIT 15 years ago and C >never used ITS, could someone concisely explain this ITS/UNIX war?   ? The "war" was more general than that.  It was between those who D favored the PDP-10 computer and its various operating systems vs theF Unix fanatics.  It was not confined to MIT; it was nation-wide, if not5 worldwide.  It took place in the 70's and early 80's.   @ Any one of the PDP-10 operating systems were orders of magnitudeE friendlier, better-designed, and with more powerful system calls than C Unix.  However, they were all written in assembly language and thus C died when the manufacturer of PDP-10 computers decided not to build  any more in 1983.   F >What is/was it about UNIX that caused such distress and resentment in0 >the MIT hacking community, and what settled it?  E It was "settled" only by the fact that Unix was the only option to go B to that didn't involve going to bed with another manufacturer that0 would stab you in the back like DEC did in 1983.  F Everybody had their own favorite reasons for hating Unix.  I would notE presume to speak for the MIT/ITS community since my contact with them ? is too stale and their reasons were different from those of the  community (TOPS-20) I was in.   D A very brief listing of the problems I have with Unix: terrible userF interface (cryptic commands, single-character case-dependent switches,@ poor handling of wildcards), weak system calls, massive securityA holes, vulnerable filesystem, lack of file/memory mapping in most F implementations, lack of file versions, lack of file undelete, lack ofA file author (as opposed to owner), lack of other file attributes, B inconsistent I/O (different system calls for the network), lack ofF process/process memory mapping (shared memory), excessively simplisticC scheduler, no breakdown of privilege levels (either you are root or D you are not, nothing inbetween).  All this is just off the top of my; head, I could come up with many more if I thought about it.   E "Gaijin" is Japanese for "foreigner", but it is a perjorative much as D "Negro" is in North America.  This was a conversation between me andG an obnoxious little boy who was pointing at me and calling me "gaijin": 4 >> "Gaijin! Gaijin!"		=> kid:	Foreigner!  Foreigner!3 >> "Gaijin ha doko?"		=> me:	Where's the foreigner? 6 >> "Niichan ha gaijin."		=> kid:	You're the foreigner.A >> "Chigau. Omae ha gaijin."	=> me:	Wrong.  You're the foreigner. 5 >> "Iie, boku ha nihonjin."	=> kid:	No, I'm Japanese. = >> "Souka. Yappari gaijin!"	=> me:	Is that so?  As I thought,  					you're a foreigner!  F >> Hee, dakedo UNIX nanka wo tsukatte, umaku ikanaku temo shiranai yo.  F Boy, anyone who tries to use UNIX deserves to lose!  [Lit. "Eh, if you> use something like UNIX, if it doesn't go well I can't be heldB responsible!"  For you Nihongo students, "shiranai" ("don't know")B means an unwillingness to say whether or not things will go well.]  G  _____   | ____ ___|___   /__ Mark ("Gaijin") Crispin "Gaijin! Gaijin!" G  _|_|_  -|- ||   __|__   /  / R90/6 pilot, DoD #0105  "Gaijin ha doko?" J |_|_|_|  |\-++-  |===|  /  /  Atheist & Proud         "Niichan ha gaijin."O  --|--  /| ||||  |___|    /\  (206) 842-2385/543-5762 "Chigau. Omae ha gaijin." N   /|\    | |/\| _______  /  \ FAX: (206) 543-3909     "Iie, boku ha nihonjin."N  / | \   | |__|  /   \  /    \MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU  "Souka. Yappari gaijin!"C Hee, dakedo UNIX nanka wo tsukatte, umaku ikanaku temo shiranai yo. 