Comments by "Paul Frederick" (@1pcfred) on "A Chronicle of the Unix Wars" video.

  1. Yeah and the guy that walked backwards and the other one that made paper airplanes all day. Good times.
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  2. It is hard to look back today and understand what it was like then. The pioneers are the ones that are supposed to strike gold. They took the risks to discover it. So yeah they deserve to be rewarded.
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  3. This video doesn't cover why UNIX was made though. Legend has it that Ken and Dennis made UNIX because they wanted to play a video game called Space War. So they developed the C programming language to code it and UNIX as the OS. Later on some bean counters saw what they did and figured they could monetize it. At the Labs you could do whatever you wanted to as long as you filed 3 patents a year. That was the workload. Place was a nuthouse.
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  4. As I understand it RMS was a bit of a fixture at MIT. Kind of like a doorknob or a bookend. Handy to have around so no one got rid of him. Until it became awkward. I think he crashed somewhere in the school? Like he had no place where he lived. It was weird.
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  5. While you could go that route I never did. Early on I opted for CD installs. Then I only needed 2 or 6 floppies depending on the distro. I would buy sets of CDs at computer shows. I was only on a dial up and just felt I didn't have the bandwidth to download everything. Later I proved myself wrong by downloading Slackware 7 over dial up. It only took me three days. It was 128 MB. I did a hard disk install of it. How times have changed.
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  6. We were demolishing a place and came across a pizza box. All we had was a crowbar to open it up. So we did but let me tell you they really built those things. We were impressed by the amount of abuse we had to apply. They just don't make them like they used to.
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  7.  @remka2000  I was not aware that this is a second part at all. So thanks for telling me. It's not obvious at all this is part 2.
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  8. The government determined that it was in the public's best interests that Bell was a monopoly. When that was no longer the case and things changed Bell didn't owe anyone anything. You already got a telecommunications network out of it. You think Keebler elves strung up all of those wires in their spare time? It was magic? It was never going to happen without the monopoly. Which is why it happened in the first place.
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  9. Someday maybe they'll even get Hurd to work.
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  10. The A-10 sports a GAU-8 Avenger. That's the name of the gun. The weapon exists beyond the plane.
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  11.  @PaulFisher  that sounds about right to me. He's not the only one I've ever heard of doing such a thing. When I was young I worked at a gas station and we had a homeless person that kind of lived and worked there. Looked a bit like RMS too. Perhaps a bit better manicured. So I've not only heard of it but witnessed it.
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  12. Those licensing prices were eye watering. Today Linux has a hard enough time getting users free. I bet if we could afford to pay people what they used to charge we could get some market penetration then. Adjusted for inflation, of course.
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  13. Linux being free for anyone to download and having full source code available were certainly driving forces for Linux adoption. Some people just want to get on with what they're doing. Not having to deal with licenses is one less thing. Well, there is the GPL. But the terms of the early version were manageable. With an internal project you're not subject to anything really. Linux is still v2.
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  14. Linux uber Alles!
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  15. I wouldn't worry about it. Due to practical issues modern supercomputing has to use Linux. It was the OS positioned to get the development required for the task. AI has to deal with all of those harsh realities too. So it's a lock there as well. Someday the mind of God will have a Linux kernel. Guaranteed.
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  16. When your workstation is sparking do not douse it with water!
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  17. The main reason Linux isn't certified is some of the requirements are deemed too stupid to comply with. So devs simply refuse to implement them. You can't make volunteers do what they don't want to. Although I think a lot of Linux devs are paid today. So now I suppose not complying is more tradition than anything else. The whole GNU is not UNIX thing.
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  18. I used to see Dennis Ritchie at the grocery store. He was a local boy. I grew up next door to Bell Labs.
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