- A nasty session with the AT&T rep. Hissing whenever he said that
some new system was "truly a sophisticated ....", which he did,
several times. Alex White asked why they didn't send anybody real,
he got a round of applause.
- "Sex, Drugs and UNIX(TM)" buttons were a hot item. You did not get
these from people at HCR, and they were not worn by non-hcr high-ups
whose initials are not M.T. or R.B.
- Also popular were the old Waterloo "There's only 1 TRUE brace style"
buttons and ones that said "If SOURCE is outlawed, then only outlaws
will have SOURCE". A person very similar to me had on a button that
said "Nuke Lady Arwen for Christ". No offense to L.A.
- A good reception at the Science Centre. With this great fancy place
to explore, several people could think of nothing better to do than
to look at the Science Centre's Vax. A rather interesting laser display,
where Usenauts, pretending they were from the great unwashed, suggested
you would make a laser lens out of wood, very small rocks or a duck.
- Two Andy Tannenbaums, which caused some confusion. If the one from
Vrije (sp) university had not worn a BTL badge, it might have helped
clear things up. I made this mistake myself.
- Not at all a complete set of unix box vendors at the show.
- B NEWS SUCKS buttons, even one for Mark Horton, although I'm not sure
he put it on.
- Good IMAX show at the Cinesphere. All the standard ones plus a few
I had not seen. Hail Columbia was quite good. David Yost of Fortune
gave alb@harpo a Hail Columbia button at the show. Many die-hards stayed
to 3 am. I hope they did not show up at the 8:30 am session!
Thanks to Fortune systems. Renting the Cinesphere must have cost them one.
IMAX may become a regular USENIX feature.
We learned that Americans and Canadians are both capable of making
strongly moralistic IMAX documentaries.
- The balance of the sexes in the UNIX community is getting better, but
only slightly. Only a couple of women were at Gred Wood's net.singles
party.
- Only one vicious session, that on "cat -v considered harmful" by
Rob Pike of BTL. The UCB vs. BTL split in the unix community seems to
be getting nastier!
--
Brad Templeton - Waterloo, Ont. (519) 886-7304
Guy Harris
{seismo,mcnc,we13,brl-bmd,allegra}!rlgvax!guy
Bill Joy
Bell Labs
research!wnj
Paul Scherf tektronix!tekecs!paulsc Tektronix
As for Rob's talk being viscious, I heartily disagree (even being
on the receiving end of things). Most of his points are truly right
and large systems do suffer from "excessive creativity" over large
time. Rob used his usual flair for hyperbole to make a strong point,
but I certainly agree much more than I disagree. I do disagree with
the abstract included in the schedule (for my money, autoconfig
alll by itself is a factor of 10 improvement, but arguing that
is another day), but the real content of his talk hit several
nails squarely on the head. From looking at other "computer science
mainstreams" (dare I say ADA?), I am glad we have people strong
enough in conviction and intellectual integrity to stand up and
point out "truths which may be unpleasant". Whether they are
truths may be the subject of vigorous debate, but I thank Rob
for the service he did.
-Mike O'Dell
PS - the quote from the Lion books was priceless.
PSS - my old boss had a saying well worth repeating in a world where
some people seem to find it easier to pogram than to think about what
they are trying to do:
"Creativity is no substitute for knowing what you are doing."
eric
Patrick ("I think that Bob Pike has heard a lot worse") Powell
I would like to see someone go through the manuals of system V
and 4.2BSD and heartlessly throw out as many options as possible.
Many of the options to, say, ls are just burying the poor user.
Notice I said options, not features. Many features can be turned
on, with no way to turn them off, and almost nobody would mind.
(Of course, some zealot will complain about every one no matter
what you do.) For example, the 4.2BSD "ls -g" option could be
always turned on, showing both owner and group. The -i option
could be part of -l. The -F option could be on unless -1 is on.
Similar arguments could be made for the tty driver - while it's
good to have all those strange bits to control at the ioctl level,
the user stty command needs only a few options. Things like ctlecho,
crterase (or echoe for system V), should probably always be on.
I do strongly agree with Rob that page mode in the tty driver (or
in the terminal, if at least one manufacturer could be made to
do it right) would obviate the need for every program in the world
to filter its output through more. Even the author of more felt the
code really belonged in the tty driver (although certainly not as fancy
as the more command is), but neither Berkeley nor USG will consider it.
Too bad - a half dozen UNIX systems have it (including the Fortune)
and it's a real win.
Mark Horton