The Digital Elephant

On Fri, 1 Apr 2005 10:44:33 +0900, "David J. Littleboy"
wrote:

As a two-year veteran of AT&T's Unix group (Tokyo office), I will never,
ever, use anything based on Unix.

Two years isn't long enough to write a complex pipe!

ATT Unix, the original, was good for what it did - no networking to speak
of. In fact, there's a 3B2 here that's been running for about twenty years,
fault free (largley because I won't let anyone touch it!)

"jjs" wrote:
"David J. Littleboy" wrote:

As a two-year veteran of AT&T's Unix group (Tokyo office), I will never,
ever, use anything based on Unix.

Two years isn't long enough to write a complex pipe!

But plenty long enough to realize that to do so would be a really bad idea.
Unix is such an incredible collection of cutesy bad ideas, like pipe and
fork.

ATT Unix, the original, was good for what it did - no networking to speak
of.

Yes. AT&T was a hotbed of not invented here. "TCP/IP??? What's that???"
"emacs??? What's that??? Real mens use lineed (or whatever it was called)."

In fact, there's a 3B2 here that's been running for about twenty years,
fault free (largley because I won't let anyone touch it!)

In my experience, "fault free", "running", and "3B2" don't go together in
the same sentence without a lot of negatives. (They had the secretarial
staff using vi. That was seriously cruel.)

What was funny was that I had worked at several east coast software
startups/DOD contract research sorts of places places plus one _large_
Japanese company, and found AT&T much more like a Japanese company than what
I had thought US companies were about.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

David J. Littleboy" wrote in message
...

But plenty long enough to realize that to do so would be a really bad
idea.

Unix was a great idea that, for a while, went the way of a rougue OS, but
recent BSD systems are quite good.

Unix is such an incredible collection of cutesy bad ideas, like pipe and
fork.

Those were great ideas. In fact, they will be shortly revived to connect
tiny object programs described by new methods. It's a project I've been
involved in for years and is coming back very strong under surprising
auspices. The essential breakthrough was realizing that we have to drop the
previous notions of strident specificity and create objects that allow fuzzy
descriptions, but specific guidance. You won't find a lot happening in the
USA in that regard. We are just now catching onto what Europe, in particular
Germany, has been doing.

In my experience, "fault free", "running", and "3B2" don't go together in
the same sentence without a lot of negatives. (They had the secretarial
staff using vi. That was seriously cruel.)

The 3B2 was never intended to be a general user machine. It's a friggin
controller. It works beautifully.

David J. Littleboy" wrote in message
...

But plenty long enough to realize that to do so would be a really bad
idea.

Unix was a great idea that, for a while, went the way of a rougue OS, but
recent BSD systems are quite good.

Unix is such an incredible collection of cutesy bad ideas, like pipe and
fork.

Those were great ideas. In fact, they will be shortly revived to connect
tiny object programs described by new methods. It's a project I've been
involved in for years and is coming back very strong under surprising
auspices. The essential breakthrough was realizing that we have to drop the
previous notions of strident specificity and create objects that allow fuzzy
descriptions, but specific guidance. You won't find a lot happening in the
USA in that regard. We are just now catching onto what Europe, in particular
Germany, has been doing.

In my experience, "fault free", "running", and "3B2" don't go together in
the same sentence without a lot of negatives. (They had the secretarial
staff using vi. That was seriously cruel.)

The 3B2 was never intended to be a general user machine. It's a friggin
controller. It works beautifully.

David J. Littleboy" wrote in message
...

But plenty long enough to realize that to do so would be a really bad
idea.

Unix was a great idea that, for a while, went the way of a rougue OS, but
recent BSD systems are quite good.

Unix is such an incredible collection of cutesy bad ideas, like pipe and
fork.

Those were great ideas. In fact, they will be shortly revived to connect
tiny object programs described by new methods. It's a project I've been
involved in for years and is coming back very strong under surprising
auspices. The essential breakthrough was realizing that we have to drop the
previous notions of strident specificity and create objects that allow fuzzy
descriptions, but specific guidance. You won't find a lot happening in the
USA in that regard. We are just now catching onto what Europe, in particular
Germany, has been doing.

In my experience, "fault free", "running", and "3B2" don't go together in
the same sentence without a lot of negatives. (They had the secretarial
staff using vi. That was seriously cruel.)

The 3B2 was never intended to be a general user machine. It's a friggin
controller. It works beautifully.

"jjs" wrote in message
...

Those were great ideas. In fact, they will be shortly revived to connect
tiny object programs described by new methods. It's a project I've been
involved in for years and is coming back very strong under surprising
auspices. The essential breakthrough was realizing that we have to drop
the
previous notions of strident specificity and create objects that allow
fuzzy
descriptions, but specific guidance. You won't find a lot happening in the
USA in that regard. We are just now catching onto what Europe, in
particular
Germany, has been doing.

DirectShow graphs come to mind.

"jjs" wrote in message
...

Those were great ideas. In fact, they will be shortly revived to connect
tiny object programs described by new methods. It's a project I've been
involved in for years and is coming back very strong under surprising
auspices. The essential breakthrough was realizing that we have to drop
the
previous notions of strident specificity and create objects that allow
fuzzy
descriptions, but specific guidance. You won't find a lot happening in the
USA in that regard. We are just now catching onto what Europe, in
particular
Germany, has been doing.

DirectShow graphs come to mind.