Crispin@SUMEX-AIM.arpa (Mark Crispin) (08/06/86)
The following is from the August '86 issue of the DEC
Professional. It's amusing, if nothing else. I believe Dvorak
is a VMS/IBM PC junkie.
UNIX IS DEAD! WANNA FIGHT??
John C. Dvorak
Summer is over and a plague of UNIX programmers is upon us.
College kids, wet behind the ears; greenhorns, rubes. They pour
out of various campuses talking about ROFF and ED and pipes and
paths, and they look for work. They're impressed with
themselves. After all, they've learned the language of a secret
society. If they're from Berkeley, they've learned the secret
language of a secret society.
They all program in C, and wherever they go they change the
prompts on whatever computer they get their hands on so it
resembles a UNIX machine. They creative ones go into whatever
operating system they have to use and find a symbol or token
table; then they change the commands to look like UNIX. The
*more* creative ones customize the commands further so they are
even more cryptic and weird than UNIX. Whether these people ever
do any real work is a mystery.
"Yes, weeell, to list my files I merely type P; MJOI."
"P; MJOI?? What they heck does that mean?"
"It just so happens that if I put my coffee cup on the
keyboard and rock it a certain way, that's what it will type; so,
I do that to list my files!"
While it's good to see these kids doing something other than
wasting quarters on endless games of Pole Position, I'm not so
sure UNIX dabbling is much better for society.
I feel this way, not so much because UNIX is an
old-fashioned OS that has a special place reserved in hell, but
because its time has passed. UNIX is dead, but no one bothered
to claim the body. It lives like a zombie on college computers
and serves as a gateway to all sorts of weird networks.
UNIX haunts marketing men, too. I remember when Fortune
Systems was getting started. That's about the time that a bumper
crop of college-bred UNIX drones was dumped like mulch into the
marketplace. They all were singing the praises of UNIX to the
low end of the market.
So, I went to this strategy demonstration given by one of
the vice presidents of Fortune Systems. These guys surely were
ahead of their time, and it was a perfect example of having too
much bad information. The Fortune 16:32 (or was it 32:16? In
either case it looked like a biblical reference...) said unto us:
"Come to me for thine microprocessor and spend, spend, spend!"
it was the first camel of microcomputers. Like a horse designed
by committee (aka camel), the Fortune was preceded by too much
market research. A lot of this was skewed by the hordes of UNIX
maniacs running through the valley waving the UNIX flag.
First of all, I was shown a slide that clearly showed the
Motorola 68000 as the world's greatest microprocessor.
The 68000 beat everything. Personally, I can't remember
what it was pitted against -- probably the 8080, the 6502 and a
4004. Whatever, this was the chip to use.
Then the company did some market research and, because
writers, pundits, researchers, secretaries, publishers, and
programmers all said that UNIX was the next hot operating system,
they chose it for their own little machine.
The UNIX community yelled, "Yea!" But, they continued to
use free university-provided time, and none of the UNIX hackers
bought the little UNIX boxes. Well, that was okay, it was
intended to be a business machine, anyway.
Ooops! Gee, it seems that the businessmen couldn't cope
with UNIX and "$ ls /bin/pr -p -t" or any other such nonsense.
So they had to build a performance-sapping shell around the
system, code name: SLOW. So much for the UNIX world takeover. I
figured that would be the last I heard of it.
No so. Last week, a guy walked up to me as I was writing
this column on a portable computer in a San Francisco bistro. he
had been reading it through binoculars from across the room.
"So, you don't like UNIX, huh, Dvorak? What's better, MS-DOS??
Hahahaha!"
"IBM's VM is the happening operating system," was my quick
rejoinder.
"VM doesn't run on minis and micros. It's just a shell,
anyway," he shot back.
"Is not!"
"Is too!"
"Is not!"
He took a swing at me and I caught him a good one in the
stomach. We punched each other for a good 15 minutes. All of a
sudden he stopped and yelled,
"Hey, what's going on here? Where am I? Wow, I remember my
name! What happened?"
"We were fighting about UNIX," I said.
"UNIX? I was fighting about UNIX? My God...I was
hypnotized!"
True story.
So, try snapping your fingers in the face of one of these
UNIX maniacs next time he flies off the handle.
See what happens.
-------KNIGHT@SRI-NIC.arpa (Bob Knight) (08/06/86)
I suppose it's appropriate to restate that old adage "a fool and his money are soon parted". Judging by Mr. Dvorak's output that I've read, any publisher who pays him money to be a seer with respect to the computing market is a fool. I don't doubt that the people who founded SUN read this article. And they're laughing. All the way to the bank. Bob -------
chuq@SUN.COM (Chuq Von Rospach- Lord of the OtherRealms) (08/06/86)
Just a nice little reminder. Posting copyrighted material is ILLEGAL. Posting Dvorak's column from the Dec Professional, content discussions aside, puts the poster and the network at potential legal liability. We are NOT above the law, no matter how much some people might like us to believe. This sort of garbage should not happen. chuq
MRC%PANDA@SUMEX-AIM.arpa (Mark Crispin) (08/06/86)
There is nothing that irritates me more than pseudo-legal experts who make sweeping statements about what the law says when lawyers are much more reticent on the issue. Individual lawyers may have opinions, and certain opinionated laymen may have their beliefs, but only the courts are authoritative. A reasonable argument can be made that passing on an editorial from a trade publication to various academic and trade distributions for the purposes of alerting the individuals in that distribution to the opinions expressed in that editorial is protected under the Fair Use Doctrine. I wonder if there is any relation beyond coincidence that both parties who flamed about "posting copyrighted material is illegal" are from SUN. Maybe this is a plot by SUN to close off people's brains so they will sign any terrible license agreement SUN comes up with. Sorry for passing this to all the mailing lists. -------
chuq@sun.arpa (Chuq Von Rospach- Lord of the OtherRealms) (08/06/86)
> There is nothing that irritates me more than pseudo-legal experts who > make sweeping statements about what the law says when lawyers are much > more reticent on the issue. There is nothing that irritates ME more than someone who breaks the law and tries to bluster their way out of it. I quote from the SAME issue of Dec Professional: COPYRIGHT 1986 by Professional Press, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without written permission of the publisher. > A reasonable argument can be made that passing on an editorial from a > trade publication to various academic and trade distributions for the > purposes of alerting the individuals in that distribution to the > opinions expressed in that editorial is protected under the Fair Use > Doctrine. Fair Use covers EXCERPTS. That wasn't, by any sense of the word. It was a clear copyright violation. > I wonder if there is any relation beyond coincidence that both parties > who flamed about "posting copyrighted material is illegal" are from > SUN. Maybe this is a plot by SUN to close off people's brains so they > will sign any terrible license agreement SUN comes up with. Mark, besides bordering on the purely slanderous, you're flaming nuts. It just happens that there are a couple of people who happen to believe in following the rules. I happen to be a writer, and so copyright is an interest of mine as well as way of life. The fact that two people from anywhere mention it should have made you wonder whether there was a basis in the accusation, not more defensive. I'm also sorry for passing this to all the mailing lists, but I couldn't let Marks name calling go uncommented on. You're wrong Mark, and I don't care how much you tell, that was a FLAGRANT copyright violation. It YOU wrote a piece of software, and I took a copy and gave it away on CompuServe, you'd scream and yell until the walls fell down. Why do you think you have the right to do the same thing to someone else? This is my last public word on the subject. Please, folks. don't ignore copyright. You can put yourself at legal and financial risk. You can also put your home site at risk, as well as the entire network. It just ain't worth it. We ARE NOT ABOVE THE LAW. chuq
sy.Ken@CU20B.COLUMBIA.EDU (Ken Rossman) (08/07/86)
Mark, besides bordering on the purely slanderous, you're flaming nuts. Umm, lets see here... WHO did you say was bordering on slander here??? -------
grr@cbmvax.cbm.UUCP (George Robbins) (08/08/86)
In article <2810@brl-smoke.ARPA> Crispin@SUMEX-AIM.arpa (Mark Crispin) writes: > > The following is from the August '86 issue of the DEC >Professional. It's amusing, if nothing else. I believe Dvorak >is a VMS/IBM PC junkie. > Isn't this the same magazine that had the 'Special Unix Issue' last year that compared the wonderful VMS BACKUP utility to the wimpy Unix 'ar' backup utility? If more unix sites wasted time on the DEC professional the rag would probably be laughed out of existance. Unfortunatly, all they have to do is publish enough half decent VMS articles to sell their advertising... -- George Robbins - now working with, uucp: {ihnp4|seismo|caip}!cbmvax!grr but no way officially representing arpa: cbmvax!grr@seismo.css.GOV Commodore, Engineering Department fone: 215-431-9255 (only by moonlite)
jay@isis.UUCP (Jay Batson) (08/08/86)
In article <2829@brl-smoke.ARPA> chuq@sun.arpa (Chuq Von Rospach- Lord of the OtherRealms) writes: >> A reasonable argument can be made that passing on an editorial from a >> trade publication to various academic and trade distributions for the >> purposes of alerting the individuals in that distribution to the >> opinions expressed in that editorial is protected under the Fair Use >> Doctrine. > >Fair Use covers EXCERPTS. That wasn't, by any sense of the word. It was >a clear copyright violation. > Ok. Lets set the record straight on Fair Use. This is a doctrine that says, in effect, "there are certain uses of copyrighted material that appear to have legitimate use, and don't harm the copyright owner in any way, so we'll say that reproduction of the material does not violate the copyright laws." In determining whether a given use falls within this area, the courts "balance" four factors. They are: 1) The purpose and character of the use, including whether the use is commercial or for non-profit, educational purposes; 2) the nature of the copyrighted work; 3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used relative to the copyrighted work as a whole; and 4) the effect of the use on the potential market for the value of the copyrighted work. See Financial Information, Inc. v. Moody's Investors Service, Inc. 751 F.2d 501 (2d Cir. 1984) and 17 U.S.C. 107. Note that these four factors are "balanced" against each other. Chuq, ask yourself: 1) was the reproduction of the article on the net done to enhance the reputation/give commercial advantage/ otherwise promote the person who reproduced it? NO. 2) was the article one which has intrinsic value, like a textbook or software program was? No. It was opinion. 3) was the whole article reproduced? Yes. 4) did the reposting affect the copyright holders ability to re-sell the article again? No. IN FACT, if anything, it may have gone some folks to go out and _buy_ the magazine, just to see how bad the rag is. What is the net balance? Probably on the side of allowing the posting as fair use. We aren't judges, but we can use the same tests they do, and decide for ourselves how to act on the net. We don't need to be frightened off by incorrect, blanket statements like Chuq's that say "all re-postings are violations, and we should never do them." Just be sure to do the balancing test for yourselves. -------- "Stop it!! Stop it now. This is getting silly again, and this silliness has _got_ to stop. Go on to the next sketch. Go on. Turn this camera o " Jay Batson ihnp4!onecom!\ isis!jay seismo!{hao,nbires}!/
guy@sun.uucp (Guy Harris) (08/08/86)
> UNIX IS DEAD! WANNA FIGHT?? > John C. Dvorak ... > "IBM's VM is the happening operating system," was my quick > rejoinder. You're right, this article is certainly amusing - good joke, John! Of course, he isn't serious about this; VM certainly isn't happening on any IBM PC's out there, with the *possible* exception of the PC-XT/370, and I'm not sure even that is running *real* VM. VM isn't going to happen on any PCs until you start seeing recruitment ads reading "IBM needs a few hundred experts in 370 assembler and the Intel 8086 family to rewrite an operating system made of lots of 370 assembler code and (maybe) PL/S for a completely different machine with the opposite byte order and a different floating-point format." Of course, all the stories in the trade rags (about the same page size as the National Midnight Star and, at times, about as accurate) about how people are looking forward to running not only VM but *MVS* on their PCs are even more amusing. Another good joke Dvorak stuck in was the remark about cryptic UNIX commands - a lot of business people seem to be able to handle cryptic MS-DOS commands on their PCs. -- Guy Harris {ihnp4, decvax, seismo, decwrl, ...}!sun!guy guy@sun.com (or guy@sun.arpa)
csg@pyramid.UUCP (Carl S. Gutekunst) (08/11/86)
In article <2827@brl-smoke.ARPA> MRC%PANDA@SUMEX-AIM.arpa (Mark Crispin) writes: >I wonder if there is any relation beyond coincidence that both parties >who flamed about "posting copyrighted material is illegal" are from >SUN. Maybe this is a plot by SUN to close off people's brains so they >will sign any terrible license agreement SUN comes up with. I haven't had any problems with Sun's license agreements: a lot of their best stuff they give away free! (RPC, XDR, user level NFS....) Lets get real. If you are a writer, you are going to be very concerned about unauthorized reproduction of copyrighted work, especially when the medium has never been examined by the courts. And aside from the legal issues, there remains the question of whether it's *RIGHT* to reproduce someone else's work. I feel I have the best chance of being both *legal* and *right* by limiting myself to excerpts, or by just making a reference. If people really care about it that much, they can go buy a copy (or sneak a peak on the newstand :-)). Was it *right* to reproduce Dvorak's article? Probably not. (1) I don't see much point in posting a satirical article by a relatively unknown author from a low-credibility publication to be held up on the net for public ridicule. (2) We already have enough Unix versus the world discusssions going; we don't need any more. <csg>
bzs@bu-cs.bu.EDU (Barry Shein) (08/11/86)
>Isn't this the same magazine that had the 'Special Unix Issue' last >year that compared the wonderful VMS BACKUP utility to the wimpy Unix >'ar' backup utility? >If more unix sites wasted time on the DEC professional the rag would probably >be laughed out of existance. Hey, wait a minute...I published an article in this magazine on UNIX and it was absolutely correct in every detail :-) To shed a little light from my experience with them, I had no particular reason to believe anyone had ever critically read my submission before publishing it (other than the people involved in the article's format and perhaps writing style.) It isn't exactly a refereed journal. They are biased towards VMS inasmuch as DEC is and (hence) DEC's customers [at least from the magazine's point of view.] I'm mixed, on the one hand, yes, the quality can be quite low. On the other hand, you might see most any view published eventually as they have fairly loose editorial policies. I think the best way to view the Dec Professional and other, similar, trade magazines is that they're kinda like USENET or these mailing lists (only cheaper :-). To be read with a grain of salt probably for ideas, comments etc that you can judge for yourself, not as gospel. And of course, the ads, which are useful. As for Dvorak, he speaks with the same tone of desperation of other VMSoids, blaming UNIX for the inevitable collapse of their favorite piece of malengineering. Maybe, I suppose a monopoly would help their cause. Look, there's two ways to make yourself feel taller in this world, grow or try to make everyone else stand in a hole. Dvorak has clearly chosen the latter path and it's pretty pathetic. As with politics, be very suspicious of anyone who can only talk about what s/he doesn't like and leaves one only to wonder what it is s/he does like and why. -Barry Shein, Boston University
rcd@nbires.UUCP (Dick Dunn) (08/11/86)
(Before you hit 'n'--this is NOT about copyright, nor is it a pro/anti
UNIX/VMS flame.)
Regarding Mark Crispin's reposting of an anti-UNIX flame from the 8/86
"DEC Professional" (sic) -
DEC is showing various signs of being unable to decide whether they want to
be a closed, "us and them" sort of company or want to participate in an
open world where hardware and software both come from various sources. You
can pick examples like the attitude toward the BI bus, or the printer shown
at DECUS which will apparently only talk DECNET, or in their attitude
toward UNIX.
The problem is roughly this: If you can lock people into your systems,
you've got a more stable captive market. If you open up your systems, you
can lose piecemeal to other vendors. But you can also sell to a larger
market, and you can sell, e.g., peripherals, to people who aren't your
standard locked-in customers. DEC is pulled both ways more than most
manufacturers--they're large enough to be tempted to try the dominant,
insular approach but they're not large enough to be sure to be able to do
it (meaning simply: they're not IBM).
With UNIX, the problems come up in spades: Who asked anybody to go write an
operating system for DEC computers? It's particularly confounding because
it undercuts their software and sells their hardware! Watching DEC from
the outside, I would have to guess that there are massive internal wars
over VMS vs UNIX. I guess when the radical VMS faction gets the upper
hand, you get the sort of tripe that Dvorak wrote (Dvorak being the author
of the article that Crispin posted).
It's pretty clear that Dvorak's words won't really do VMS any good, nor
UNIX any harm - in fact, probably just the opposite. But they're the sort
of war chant which will whip up a frenzy in one small part of the VMS
camp. The mere publication of that sort of article says a lot about DEC's
problems. Unfortunately, one of the attitudes that it suggests is a sort
of desperation--if you can't attack substance, go for an ad hominem attack.
I doubt that VMS is really that seriously threatened--it's not a terrible
system and it's got some things that UNIX lacks--but the article seems like
a vicious rejoinder to SOMEthing. (It's reminiscent of blasts against UNIX
that I saw in a couple of random DTACK Grounded issues once.)
I think DEC needs to decide whether they're going to become serious players
in an open, competitive marketplace (of which UNIX is a vital part) or try
to take their customers off to one side where they can see that they get
only DEC hardware and software. I rather hope DEC will decide to join the
party, because I think they could do a lot of good--they're big enough to
be able to force things to happen but also technologically capable enough
to force them in the right direction.
--
Dick Dunn {hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd (303)444-5710 x3086
...If you get confused just listen to the music play...brett@wjvax.UUCP (Brett Galloway) (08/11/86)
In article <2814@brl-smoke.ARPA> KNIGHT@SRI-NIC.arpa (Bob Knight) writes: >I don't doubt that the people who founded SUN read this article. And they're >laughing. All the way to the bank. Actually, SUN had a guaranteed market, selling 68k unix boxes to a university to sit on its campus network, namely the Stanford University Network (hence the name SUN). SUN's commercial market came later. -- ------------- Brett Galloway {pesnta,twg,ios,qubix,turtlevax,tymix,vecpyr,certes,isi}!wjvax!brett
shannon@sun.uucp (Bill Shannon) (08/13/86)
> In article <2814@brl-smoke.ARPA> KNIGHT@SRI-NIC.arpa (Bob Knight) writes: > >I don't doubt that the people who founded SUN read this article. And they're > >laughing. All the way to the bank. > Actually, SUN had a guaranteed market, selling 68k unix boxes to a university > to sit on its campus network, namely the Stanford University Network (hence > the name SUN). SUN's commercial market came later. The name of the company is "Sun", it is not an acronym. SUN is indeed the Stanford University Network, and that's where we got our start, but we broke away from that very early on. Bill Shannon
ddavis@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU (ddavis) (08/14/86)
Come on Chuq. I think that copywrite laws exist to make sure that
only the original author of a work gains financial or other benefit from
it. Posting to the net, with credit given to the original author and
publication, is hardly detrimental to the author's interests. I don't
think that Mr. Dvorak would even want to bring suit against the net for
such a violation. Is it even a violation? Lighten up. Your example of
posting a piece of software to a net without the author's permission is
not valid since such an incident would serve to deprive the author of
expected monetary return. What is Mr. Dvorak or DEC Professional losing
via the posting of such an article to the net?
Frank Godek
UCBdave@pta.OZ (Dave Horsfall <VK2KFU>) (08/14/86)
In article <589@cbmvax.cbmvax.cbm.UUCP>, grr@cbmvax.cbm.UUCP (George Robbins) writes: > Isn't this the same magazine that had the 'Special Unix Issue' last year that > compared the wonderful VMS BACKUP utility to the wimpy Unix 'ar' backup utility? The author obviously was in search of Unix backup utilities, and stopped reading at page 1 !!! -- Dave Horsfall VK2KFU ISD: +61 2 438-1266 VTL: 248181000 SUN Computer Australia STD: (02) 438-1266 20 Waltham St ACS: dave@pta, dave@runx Artarmon NSW 2064 UUCP: seismo!munnari!pta.oz!dave AUSTRALIA ARPA: munnari!pta.oz!dave@SEISMO "ADA - from the people who brought you COBOL"
phils@tekigm.UUCP (Phil Staub) (08/16/86)
In article <121@pta.OZ> dave@pta.OZ (Dave Horsfall <VK2KFU>) writes: >In article <589@cbmvax.cbmvax.cbm.UUCP>, grr@cbmvax.cbm.UUCP (George Robbins) writes: >> Isn't this the same magazine that had the 'Special Unix Issue' last year that >> compared the wonderful VMS BACKUP utility to the wimpy Unix 'ar' backup utility? > >The author obviously was in search of Unix backup utilities, and stopped >reading at page 1 !!! >-- I think the point was that the author did not even read page 1, since 'ar' is a library generator/archiver, not a backup utility. Phil Staub Tektronix, Inc. ISI Engineering P.O. Box 3500 Vancouver, Washington 98668 C1-904, (206) 253-5634 ..tektronix!tekigm!phils
Per_Lindberg_QZ%QZCOM.MAILNET@MIT-MULTICS.arpa (08/19/86)
Well, he's good at humourous writing, no doubt. That was really funny! Although some of the laughs was on the writer... UNIX dead!? Well, in that case someone forgot to tell it so, because it hasn't stopped moving yet. And what about slow menu-oriented operating systems? I recall some unmentionable horror called P/OS which runs on the DEC Professional. It took only half a day for it to drive me crazy. And don't tell me you can put THAT in front of a naive user and expect him to be off on his own. (I have TEACHED univeristy-level engineering students (most of them with a Ph.D.) on how to use P/OS, and they had a hell of a time getting the knack of it. I have also been teaching C programming under UNIX, and that didn't cause any troubles at all). Enuff of this for now; I'm not going to waste any more time rebutting fools. If they prefer VMS (or was that MVS?), fine. Good luck.
matt@oddjob.UUCP (Matt Crawford) (08/19/86)
In article <15232@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> ddavis@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU (ddavis) writes: > > What is Mr. Dvorak or DEC Professional losing > via the posting of such an article to the net? Face.
zben@umd5 (Ben Cranston) (08/23/86)
In article <3149@brl-smoke.ARPA> Per_Lindberg_QZ%QZCOM.MAILNET@MIT-MULTICS.arpa writes: ^^^^^^^^^^^^ > ... Although some of the laughs was on the writer... ^^^^ ^^^ > ... (I have TEACHED univeristy-level engineering ... ^^^^^^^ Egad, I hope you never "teached" [sic] English... Actually, I'm sure your English is much better than my French after all these years. You show a fine knack for idiom. And I guess these few piddling complaints aren't much - but when deriding others you do make such a large, tempting target... -- umd5.UUCP <= {seismo!umcp-cs,ihnp4!rlgvax}!cvl!umd5!zben Ben Cranston zben @ umd2.UMD.EDU Kingdom of Merryland Sperrows 1100/92 umd2.BITNET "via HASP with RSCS"
zeta@runx.OZ (Nick Andrew) (08/24/86)
Its hard for me to consider Dvorak's editorial seriously. The man's probably jealous because he doesn't understand Unix ... or can't keep up with the "wet behind the ears" students he criticizes.
zeta@runx.OZ (Nick Andrew) (08/24/86)
In message <15232@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> ddavis@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU (ddavis) writes: > What is Mr. Dvorak or DEC Professional losing > via the posting of such an article to the net? > Frank Godek > UCB Yes indeed? What? Only professional reputation. However the purpose of a magazine is to distribute text [etc]. See somebody's previous network message on tests used to determine legal standing. In this case the editorial has merely been reproduced on a relatively unfriendly medium [ie the network]. Dvorak and "DEC Professional" are living in a dream world if they expect their words to reach only friendly ears [the captive readership] or conversely: if they expect that their readership be only subjected to pro-VMS opinion. Regards, Nick Andrew.
emv@umix.UUCP (Edward Vielmetti) (08/26/86)
I don't place a whole lot of trust in Dvorak's "news"--really overblown rumors, mostly. Case in point: He just recently raved about a communications program for PCs called Procomm. That's hardly new news to me--I had an early version a year ago, and the current release (2.3) for *six months* now. I conclude that his information is running about 6 months behind, not too good for the supposed "cutting edge" of information. Edward Vielmetti, U-M Computing Center, ihnp4!umich!umix!emv