Medieval/Unix Story
John Dumas
request but it fits the bill as well as any. About 2 years ago, when
I was but a net.newbie I saw a most hilarious bit of wit somewhere.
It was a medieval story about wizards and demons but it was written
about unix. It spoke of a wizard invoking a powerful demon (sendmail I
think) and of the incantations he spoke to the demon ... and then of still
more powerful demons ... in short, for a unix experienced person it
was nothing short of hilarious. Clever me, I did not save it and cannot
seem to locate it anywhere. If *anyone* has seen this or knows where I might
find it I would be very grateful if they could pass the info on to me.
I read this group semi-regularly but would prefer email if it's not too much
of a bother. Thank you in advance ...
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* John F. Dumas | finger $USER | grep `echo putz | tr utpz earl` \
* jdu...@zgs.com | | sed -n '1,1p' | sed 's/.*: \(.*\)/\1/' && \
* Programmer / Analyst | echo '0H &#* #(!725 4^ 48*4!' | tr \
* Zeh Graphics Systems | '0-9~`!@#$%^&*()_+}{' a-z | dd conv=swab \
* Houston, Tx | 2> /dev/null
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mike
>Hello all, I'm not entirely sure this is the proper newsgroup for this
>request but it fits the bill as well as any. About 2 years ago, when
>I was but a net.newbie I saw a most hilarious bit of wit somewhere.
>It was a medieval story about wizards and demons but it was written
>about unix. It spoke of a wizard invoking a powerful demon (sendmail I
>think) and of the incantations he spoke to the demon ... and then of still
>more powerful demons ... in short, for a unix experienced person it
>was nothing short of hilarious. Clever me, I did not save it and cannot
>seem to locate it anywhere. If *anyone* has seen this or knows where I might
>find it I would be very grateful if they could pass the info on to me.
>I read this group semi-regularly but would prefer email if it's not too much
>of a bother. Thank you in advance ...
Resisted the temptation to type "Me too" ( the original post wasn't long
enough :) . But if you mail him please post too. I've been thinking of
writing The Ballad of crond the Time Deamon a sort of swords and sourcery
meets unix for a bit now. All that invoking deamons killing zombies and
child processes seemed ripe for a bit of humour.
Cheers.
--
Mike Cavanagh.
Joseph Casadonte
: Resisted the temptation to type "Me too" ( the original post wasn't long
: enough :) . But if you mail him please post too. I've been thinking of
: writing The Ballad of crond the Time Deamon a sort of swords and sourcery
: meets unix for a bit now. All that invoking deamons killing zombies and
: child processes seemed ripe for a bit of humour.
I have a wonderful poster circa 1986 entitled 'Unix Magic', put out by
a (now defunct) company called UNITECH Software, Inc (Reston, VA),
signed by 'overacre'. It has a wizard mixing things in a shell-shaped
cauldron. It has all sorts of little unix-isms (a spool of thread, a
black cat, a boot, a fork, pipes, buckets, etc.). It also has a
number of containers, labelled with things like tar, null, awk, uucp,
etc. There is even a 'C' container, and a partially obscured and
broken 'B' container. Guess which shell they used? The one container
I can't figure out is 'oregano'. Anybody have a clue?
I would love to find another copy of this poster. If anyone has any
leads, please let me know, either here or thru email. Thanks!
Mike Morris
>mike (mi...@emgee.demon.co.uk) wrote:
Well, if the co is out of business, then there is probably no problem in
modifying it (adding a "grep" container, making the wizard into Gates,
perhaps adding a double size C++ container, etc), and then doing a press
run? I'm sure that there would be a _bunch_ of buyers...
--
Mike Morris WA6ILQ | All opinions must be my own since nobody pays
PO Box 1130 | me enough to be their mouthpiece...
Arcadia, CA. 91077 |
ICBM: 34.12N, 118.02W | Reply to: mor...@grian.cps.altadena.ca.us
Stewart Stremler
[snip]
> Well, if the co is out of business, then there is probably no problem in
> modifying it (adding a "grep" container, making the wizard into Gates,
> perhaps adding a double size C++ container, etc), and then doing a press
> run? I'm sure that there would be a _bunch_ of buyers...
With _Gates_ as the wizard? There's no way I would buy it then. You want
somebody like Knuth as the Wizard. :)
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Nobody likes my great ideas in action." | stre...@ucssun1.sdsu.edu
-Calvin (_Calvin & Hobbes_) | Stewart Stremler
Lars Duening
>j...@netaxs.com (Joseph Casadonte) writes:
>>I have a wonderful poster circa 1986 entitled 'Unix Magic', put out by
>>a (now defunct) company called UNITECH Software, Inc (Reston, VA),
>>signed by 'overacre'. It has a wizard mixing things in a shell-shaped
>>cauldron. It has all sorts of little unix-isms (a spool of thread, a
>>black cat, a boot, a fork, pipes, buckets, etc.). It also has a
>>number of containers, labelled with things like tar, null, awk, uucp,
>>etc. There is even a 'C' container, and a partially obscured and
>>broken 'B' container. Guess which shell they used? The one container
>>I can't figure out is 'oregano'. Anybody have a clue?
My first association to the oregano was 'Pizza, ANSI standard'.
--
Lars Duening; due...@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de
Jeremy J. Epstein
: j...@netaxs.com (Joseph Casadonte) writes:
:
: >I have a wonderful poster circa 1986 entitled 'Unix Magic', put out by
: >a (now defunct) company called UNITECH Software, Inc (Reston, VA),
:
: Well, if the co is out of business, then there is probably no problem in
: modifying it (adding a "grep" container, making the wizard into Gates,
: perhaps adding a double size C++ container, etc), and then doing a press
: run? I'm sure that there would be a _bunch_ of buyers...
They're not exactly "defunct", they have been sold several times.
My recollection is that they were bought by VM Software, which merged
with someone else and got a new name (don't remember what it was).
That division (which was the only part of the whole company not involved
in mainframe stuff), was sold, I believe to Raxco.
So I don't think the copyright or the company are dead.
But they are truly wonderful posters. I had a chat one day with the
VP of engineering, and suggested that they forget selling their software
product (which was never very succesful) and go into selling posters.
He was amused, but never did it.
--
--Jeremy Epstein
Cordant, Inc.
11400 Commerce Park Drive
Reston VA 22091
Geoff Kimbrough
> [ SNIP ] Guess which shell they used? The one container
> >I can't figure out is 'oregano'. Anybody have a clue?
It's an inside joke. The story I heard was that it had something to do
with one of the Unix Founders(tm) (can't remember which one) getting
detained at the US-Canadian border for having a baggie of oregano in
his luggage. Obviously the cops thought it was pot, but it was really
oregano. Why? I don't recall, perhaps something about it being
freshly grown or something. (dmr? Can you help us out?)
It's a nice poster, innit? There was a "canonical list of references" on the
net shortly after the poster was published and handed out at Usenix, it might
still be around somewhere.