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Unix Operating Systems Software

The Unix-Haters Handbook Online 317

Posted by CmdrTaco from the aged-liked-a-fine-win dept.
kinema writes "It looks like The UNIX-Hater's Handbook has been made availible online for free. You'll never guess who's server it is on." Worth noting that the book was written some time ago, and that much of what is in there is ancient history. But still worth a look.
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The Unix-Haters Handbook Online More

The Unix-Haters Handbook Online

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  • Dupe! (Score:3, Informative)

    by Corporate Troll ( 537873 ) on Sunday April 27, 2003 @10:45AM (#5819032) Homepage Journal
    Dupe!
    Look six headlines down (assuming you don't block topics) and it's still here on the main page.

    • Re:Dupe! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by kzinti ( 9651 ) on Sunday April 27, 2003 @10:56AM (#5819103) Homepage Journal
      If the Taco isn't at least going to read his own web site before posting, why doesn't he at least write a little slash module to search recent articles for possible duplicates? Wouldn't be hard to do, wouldn't have to be some fancy Bayesian filter... or maybe he likes wasting his effort - and our patience - posting dupes.

      • Re:Dupe! (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        why doesn't he at least write a little slash module to search recent articles for possible duplicates

        You're not the first to ask this question, nor will you be the last. Why they haven't done this yet is absolutely beyond me. Too busy playing video games and watching anime, I guess.

      • Re:Dupe! (Score:5, Funny)

        by Steve G Swine ( 49788 ) on Sunday April 27, 2003 @11:10AM (#5819156) Journal
        The dupes are a UNIX usability thing - it won't be cleared up until the slashcode port to another platform completes.

        Oo, don't you just HATE *nix?

      • Re:Dupe! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by rf0 ( 159958 ) <rghf@fsck.me.uk> on Sunday April 27, 2003 @11:15AM (#5819178) Homepage
        What about something that just scanned for duplicate URLs for the last 48 hours. Not 100% effective but wouldn't be to hard to implement

        Rus
      • You fools, you know they do this stuff on pupose ;)

      • Re:Dupe! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by btlzu2 ( 99039 ) * on Sunday April 27, 2003 @12:27PM (#5819550) Homepage Journal
        I guess I just don't plain old get it. How, in the scheme of the whole freaking universe, does it matter if there is a duplicate post?????? I don't fucking get it. I mean, if it's such a waste of time, what are you doing...reading the duplicate for 2 hours and suddenly it dawns on you that, "Derrrr, oh, this is a duplicate!"???? If it's a duplicate, use the fancy little button on your browser labelled "Back". It's not that difficult. I, for one, don't give a fly's ass whether an article is re-posted once and a while, there are bigger things to worry about in the world.
        • "How, in the scheme of the whole freaking universe, does it matter if there is a duplicate post??????"

          When I read Slashdot, I scroll down to the last article that I recognize and then start reading up from there. If there's a duplicate, I'm likely to wind up missing articles because I incorrectly assume that there are no articles I haven't previously read below it.

        • Re:Dupe! (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Guppy06 ( 410832 )
          "How, in the scheme of the whole freaking universe, does it matter if there is a duplicate post?"

          For every dupe you see, there is another unrelated interesting article that got rejected to make room for it.

        • the whole freaking universe (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          well, no, i guess a dupe doesn't impact the speed of light in a vacuum or the ultimate fate of the universe.

          but it DOES degrade the perceived credibility of both the slashdot website and the quality of its content. it is also indirecly a slant against the slashdot community which submits the stories.

          if you picked up a magazine for the first time and realized that spelling errors were rife and that an article was repeated, what would you think as a reader? as a writer?

          - a.c.
        • People have to have something to complain about. Otherwise, what are they going to do with their time? Take you for instance. You've just spent time complaining about other people complaining! This is silly! Hey, wait a second...
        • Quit your anti-bitching! You're messing up our chi.

          -Lucas

        • It's frustrating for me because there's now two totally independent sets of comments that I may want to read. People posting in one article will continue to post there and only there (and may not even have any idea about the other article). Frequently the same sorts of posts will end up in both places redundantly, sometimes prompting replies in both places if you want to get your viewpoint known.

          Plus, it's just annoying and amateurish to keep seeing them over and over and over again. This is supposed to

    • What The Fuck does Taco do all day? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by glrotate ( 300695 ) on Sunday April 27, 2003 @11:20AM (#5819201) Homepage
      10 posts a day, 6 minutes to scan the original article (which the staff rarely does) and check for dupes.

      That's about 6 x 10 = 1 hour of work a day. And yet they won't even put out this minimal level of effort, but they want us to pay for it.

    • Re:Dupe! (Score:2, Interesting)

      by blah_ect ( 577817 )
      I'm sorry to say that dupes will continue on and on and on as long as Taco is an editor here.

      I didn't used to think this so.

      I used to think Taco would wake up, notice that dupes, misquotes, spelling errors, and totally blown articles are costing Slashdot *money* and lots of it. Who is going to subscribe to Slashdot... spend hard earned dollars when the Editors, chiefly Taco can't be bothered to read the front page ?!?!?!?!?

      Anyway, I hope Taco does "get it" sooner rather that later because I like sla

    • Re:Dupe! (Score:2, Interesting)

      by jmertic ( 544942 )

      <SLASHDOT RANT>

      I swear, this getting so damn ridiculous already. I know Slashdot is has a tendancy to dupe stories, but if one can't see that "The Unix-Haters Handbook Online" and "Unix-Haters Handbook Available Online" are the SAME story, one shouldn't be an editor.

      </SLASHDOT RANT>

      Anyways, let's try to be more careful guys. I've seen the dupe count increase since April Fools Day. It's sad since there are so many people who send in articles that get rejected since they don't fit "the way we w

  • Damn this double vision I got sux

    Damn this double vision I got sux.

    Good job there guys.

  • hmm, (Score:2, Funny)

    by nazh ( 604234 )


    think i've read this somewhere before

  • Removed from the web. (Score:5, Informative)

    by DeadSea ( 69598 ) * on Sunday April 27, 2003 @10:47AM (#5819046) Homepage Journal
    The link has been removed until the "brou-ha-ha on Slashdot to dies down". If you go to the google cache to get the link, you will get a "forbidden" error when you try to use it. Lucky, the pdf of the book is in the Google Cache [216.239.53.100].

  • Well... (Score:5, Funny)

    by BJH ( 11355 ) on Sunday April 27, 2003 @10:47AM (#5819050)
    ... I guess Taco hates Unix so much, he wanted us to see this story twice.

  • Slashdot needs a dupe section. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by vadim_t ( 324782 ) on Sunday April 27, 2003 @10:48AM (#5819054) Homepage
    The editors could move the articles there after they find it's duplicated, and this way we could choose to filter them out.

  • Conspiracy theory: deliberate dupe. (Score:5, Funny)

    by kriegsman ( 55737 ) on Sunday April 27, 2003 @10:49AM (#5819062) Homepage
    This time the duplicate is deliberate: they're trying to double-slashdot That Company's servers.

    -Mark

  • Little test... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Dark Lord Seth ( 584963 )

    I once asked an older coworker and Solaris guru what happened with the Unix-haters list. He told me that it stopped being quite so funny once Windows NT came along.

    I'm certainly not blind to the faults of Unix- there have been many, many failed technologies that were more advanced than the crap we have to work with now. I think the reason so many people profess their love for Unix now is that the remaining alternative is pretty godawful, and many of us have had limited opportunity to work with anything be

  • I thought I was in the Matrix when I saw this one again. I saw it yesterday about 7pm then this morning, holy crap. Thanks for you messing with my head.

  • Double Vision (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 27, 2003 @10:50AM (#5819071)
    Feeling down 'n' dirty, feeling kinda mean
    I've been from one to another extreme
    This time I had a good time, ain't got time to wait
    I wanna stick around till I can't see straight

    Fill my eyes with that double vision
    No disguise for that double vision
    Ooh, when you get through to me, it's always new to me
    My double vision gets the best of me

    Never do more than I, I really need
    My mind is racing, but my body's in the lead
    Tonight's the night, I'm gonna push it to the limit
    I live all my years in a single minute

    Fill my eyes with that double vision
    No disguise for that double vision
    Ooh, when you get through to me, it's always new to me
    My double vision always seems to get the best of me, yeah-ah

    Fill my eyes with that double vision
    No disguise for that double vision
    Ooh, when you get through to me, it's always new to me
    My double vision gets me

    Ooh, when it gets through to me, it's always new to me
    My double vision always seems to get the best of me
    Yeah, the best of me

  • AMATEURS (Score:5, Funny)

    by YOU ARE SO FIRED! ( 635925 ) on Sunday April 27, 2003 @10:50AM (#5819074) Journal
    Cut and paste mirror link from previous article. [kde.org]. I'm going to fire him so hard when I get in to work Monday...
  • So instead of talking shit about it, how about you all go read a story that I submitted to Slashdot about 4 times, but of course, got rejected.

    Opera is Spyware?! [theinquirer.net] - Check it out, made me think. But apparently /. really, really hates Unix, seeing as they posted a dupe to this story so soon. ;)

  • Well... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Squidgee ( 565373 )
    Since Taco is seemingly trying to kill this company's hardware, I suggest you all (Who've not already seen this book, since, well, it's a dupe) head on over to the Google Cache [216.239.53.100] and spare the poor company's servers.

  • Dupe letter... Dear Mr. Weise, et. al. (Score:3, Funny)

    by pr0ntab ( 632466 ) <pr0ntab.gmail@com> on Sunday April 27, 2003 @10:56AM (#5819101) Journal
    Thank you for sending us a copy of your book, "The Unix-Haters Handbook" to us. We've taken a look at it, and realized how misguided we have been.

    As we are quite pragmatic, we decided to fix these outstanding issues. It's much better now; you would be proud. In fact, we did a good enough job with your guidance that Macs everywhere are now using it too!

    Thanks again,
    Unix Users Everywhere.

    • Re:Dupe letter... Dear Mr. Weise, et. al. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SN74S181 ( 581549 ) on Sunday April 27, 2003 @11:46AM (#5819344)
      The fact that Macs everywhere are now running a UNIX is delicious irony to anybody who has read the UNIX Hater's Handbook in the past.

      Apple, mind you, spent hundreds of millions (billions?) of dollars in the early to mid nineties on initiatives to develop their much heralded Next Generation Mac Operating System all of which turned out to be pissing down a drain. That huge elite development team at Apple turned out to be a bunch of failures at coming up with a winning OS design.

      Apple finally had to fall back on the NextOS, which was a reasonable re-working, an evolutionary extension, of the UNIX environment.

      It's one HELL of a load of egg on the face of the Apple zealots and every technology journalist from the period of the mid 80's onward who wrote about Apple's development environment and corporate culture as a marvelous Engine Of Progress. Turns out all Apple has is some pretty GUI layering and fashion designers running the marketing and case design divisions of the company.

      • Re:Dupe letter... Dear Mr. Weise, et. al. (Score:5, Informative)

        by Apotsy ( 84148 ) on Sunday April 27, 2003 @02:53PM (#5820218)
        That's a pretty uninformed assessment. See David K. Every's excellent essay [igeek.com] on the subject for some relevant info.

        Although one factor he fails to emphasize enough is that, for various political and business reasons, Apple was forced to start over several times (first Pink, then Copland, etc.)

  • It's great to know that it's still online.

    Please keep us updated.

  • seriously (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Horse Cock ( 548609 ) <horsecock_2k2@yahoo.com> on Sunday April 27, 2003 @11:03AM (#5819135)
    the reason the unix-haters handbook is on microsoft's site is because the guy who co-edited the book also works for microsoft. this book was out well before he came to microsoft and he probably put up an online copy to stir up interest in selling more copies.

    seriously, ./ editors should get their shit straight before posting something like this. if they can't be professional about stating that this guy is an editor of the book, then they should just shut the fuck up so they don't look like totally incompetent asses to the rest of the world.
    • seriously, ./ editors should get their shit straight before posting something like this. if they can't be professional about stating that this guy is an editor of the book, then they should just shut the fuck up so they don't look like totally incompetent asses to the rest of the world.


      And this is coming from a person who goes by the handle of "Horse Cock (548609)"?

  • It's quite a laugh (Score:3, Funny)

    by sabri ( 584428 ) on Sunday April 27, 2003 @11:03AM (#5819136)
    I just read half of it (thanks to the earlier posting ;)

    The book is quite amusing imho. While the authors clearly have a lot of experience in the computing world, it's obvious to see that most of their stories are based on users not knowing that they are doing. Especially the part where the bash bash (huhu) and other shells was fun reading. The book could just as well have been written by Simon Travaglia [ntk.net] as a manual for his users.

    This pdf is 3.5MB. I really wonder how big it's Windows counterpart will be. I'd say approx 35MB then.
  • Well thats the only reason I can think of for the dupe :)

    rus

  • Dupe Haters Handbook (Score:4, Funny)

    by pangu ( 322010 ) on Sunday April 27, 2003 @11:10AM (#5819155) Homepage
    That's what we really need.
  • Come on... HOW HARD CAN IT BE!!! This is not only dupe story, but it's still on the HOMEPAGE! Is it April 1st still? WTF.
  • Microsft no longer allows access... As has been noted, the file is still accessible in the Google cache. And knowing my server will be /.ed by my doing this (be nice, I only have a T1!), I'm mirroring the link - since I downloaded the file after reading the last edition of this article. http://storyinmemo.com/uhh.pdf [storyinmemo.com]
  • [man.ac.uk]
    Mirror List.
    Please add others.
  • I don't know why this is getting any attention here. I read about it on Slashdot hours ago.

    --
    "It's a joke, I say, boy, a joke. I keep pitchin' 'em and you keep missin' 'em."

  • A HOWTO on fixing Unix's user interface (Score:5, Interesting)

    by YetAnotherName ( 168064 ) on Sunday April 27, 2003 @11:23AM (#5819214) Homepage
    I've got the print version of the book. Witty, clever, and sadly on-target in quite a lot of its observations. (I'm still dismayed to see a greater-than character in front of "From" when it's the first word on a line in an email message. There's just no excuse for that in 2003.) And I'm a die-hard Unix lover (logged on using a Silent 700 when I was in 3rd grade).

    But I was turned off that the Unix Haters mailing list was so exclusive: you had to write some similarly erudite and novel observation on how awful Unix was before you'd be let into the club. Clever invective to be kept a careful few? Sounds a bit fearful to me.

    Regardless, it's been years since the book's been out, and Unix still has many warts. The book (and presumably, the mailing list, although I wouldn't know), could serve as a requirements document on how you'd go about improving Unix in general.

    What did the authors offer as a better UI? No, not Windows. Not Mac. Some arcane LISP machine was usually the machine of choice. Sorry, I live in the real world and have to earn a paycheck.
    • What did the authors offer as a better UI? No, not Windows. Not Mac. Some arcane LISP machine was usually the machine of choice.

      What the authors fail to realize is that UNIX is the triumpth of realism over idealism. And like all ideologues, they're pissed senseless.

      Idealism: ITS, Multics, Lisp, AI. The hallmark of these is perfection and elitism. Perfection doesn't exist, but no matter, given enough decades we will eventually produce the workable Lisp Machine. And who cares about the industry? Only the u

      • "given enough decades we will eventually produce the workable Lisp Machine."

        What exactly do you mean by "workable"? Is it the same definition as that of your "practicality"? As far as history goes, the first Lisp Machine took only a couple of years to be completed, and they were being built until Symbolics went bankrupt in 93 or 94 (LMI had gone under years before, and TI quite intentionally destroyed their Lisp business before selling off their computing division to HP). You can still get a fully working

        • By "Lisp Machine", I mean real hardware designed for Lisp, and not a virtual machine. Some were produced, sure, but they were not workable in that they were expensive. In the real world price is an integral component of usability.

          but hey, I guess DEC wasn't pragmatic, nor practical, nor affordable, and that's why you can't get a new Alpha anymore

          You're right, DEC wasn't any of those things. It also wasn't very perceptive, and allowed Sparc/x86/PPC to intrude into their chosen niche without doing a thing

  • C++ = Cobol? (Score:5, Funny)

    by termos ( 634980 ) on Sunday April 27, 2003 @11:29AM (#5819239) Homepage
    - 10 C++. The COBOL of the 90s
    Let me see. The document is at some microsoft developers homepage, they way I translate this is that "C++ is bad"?
    And what language is most of Microsoft Windows written in? Oh, let me see, C++? Isn't this a bit self-contradictory?
    • Weise isn't a developer, he's a researcher at MS Research, who aren't the people writing Windows. And even if he were one of the people writing Windows, he could feel C++ is crap even though his job involved writing software in it - most of us don't agree with every decision made by our employers, and getting a job writing software in sensible languages isn't trivial.
  • Would it be sarcasm or ironic if slashdot were to review it? it would be farce if they were to review it twice.

  • It's nice that we paid subscribers can see stories 10-15 minutes before they become part of the page, but when it's such an incredibly (incredibly) obvious dupe, it sure would be nice to be able to add a comment to the story. I understand that the process of a story moving from the mysterious future to the main page is probably automated, but it sure would be nice to have some way of helping out with this.

  • Mirror, and more information on the Lisp Machine (Score:3, Informative)

    by andreas ( 1964 ) on Sunday April 27, 2003 @11:54AM (#5819380) Homepage

    A mirror of the document is here [gwydiondylan.org].

    And here [gwydiondylan.org] is the master thesis of Tom Knight, describing the architecture of the Lisp Machine. If you want to see one in action, visit me on the Chaos Communication Camp [www.ccc.de].

    One online Symbolics Lisp Machine museum is here [uni-hamburg.de].

    And yes, UNIX royally sucks. It plays in the same suckage leage as Windows, of course, but still it sucks. It's a clone of technologies of the early 70ies, and a bad one.

  • I got a copy of it thanks to the earlier article [slashdot.org]; there's a bitzi ticket [bitzi.com] for it.

  • ONLINE PDF (Score:4, Informative)

    by MadAtGravity ( 661449 ) on Sunday April 27, 2003 @12:33PM (#5819582)
    Hi everybody

    Here's a copy of that infamous book : http://members.aol.com/Seb0013/uhh.pdf [aol.com]

    Sorry for the delay, it took time to remember i had some disk space on a site which has decent bandwidth and which i don't mind being slashdotted.

    Unix is the future.
  • If you think this is great, get a load of this: I hear the unix hater's handbook has been put online! A lot of you probably haven't heard of it since it's from 1994. I'll try to find the link and submit it as a slashdot story for tomorrow.

    Sometimes reading slashdot is like starring in Groundhog's Day. Freaks me out...

  • Deja vu (Score:4, Funny)

    by Brad1138 ( 590148 ) <brad1138@yahoo.com> on Sunday April 27, 2003 @12:59PM (#5819700)
    NEO: Whoa. Deja vu.

    TRINITY: What did you just say?

    NEO: Nothing. Just had a little deja vu.

    TRINITY: What happened? What did you see?

    NEO: A /. article said "Unix-Haters Handbook Available Online" and then I saw another that looked just like it.

    TRINITY: How much like it? Was it the same /. article?

    NEO: It might have been. I'm not sure.

    NEO: What is it?

    TRINITY: A deja vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix. It happens when CmdrTaco doesn't check previous posts!

  • Favorite quote... (Score:3, Funny)

    by rayvd ( 155635 ) on Sunday April 27, 2003 @01:02PM (#5819710) Homepage Journal
    Ken Thompson has an automobile which he helped design. Unlike
    most automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gauge, nor
    any of the other numerous idiot lights which plague the modern
    driver. Rather, if the driver makes a mistake, a giant "?" lights up in
    the center of the dashboard. "The experienced driver," says Thompson,
    "will usually know what's wrong."
  • Well, if it can work for the British government [guardian.co.uk], it can work for Microsoft.

  • It seems to me like... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 0xB00F ( 655017 ) on Sunday April 27, 2003 @02:31PM (#5820123) Homepage Journal

    ... that the contributing authors of the book are suffering from "Damn, I wish I had thought of that." syndrome.

    Think about it. They have whined and grumbled about the (mis)features of Unix, yet they themselves have done nothing and contributed nothing that has significantly advanced the state of operating systems. Worse yet, they are describing the old Unix. Unix has evolved far beyond that which is described in the book. True, the system remains cryptic and unforgiving but so does our own existence in this material plane. If you do something wrong, its probably your fault anyway so you have no one to blame but yourself.

    Yes, Unix is old, Unix is antiquated, Unix is a relic from the past. But until the guys who wrote this book come up with something else that will surpass Unix in its flexibility, robustness, and elegance I remain unconvinced of their blabberisms.

    And to add further, one of the guys who wrote for the book worked (still works?) for Apple *wink* *wink*. Talk about swallowing your own crap.

  • C and Unix were April Fools day joke? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Khopesh ( 112447 ) on Sunday April 27, 2003 @02:43PM (#5820173) Homepage Journal
    can anybody debunk appendix B?
    i have placed it here in its entirety:

    Creators Admit C, Unix Were Hoax
    In an announcement that has stunned the computer industry, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Brian Kernighan admitted that the Unix operating system and C programming language created by them is an elaborate April Fools prank kept alive for more than 20 years. Speaking at the recent UnixWorld Software Development Forum, Thompson revealed the following:

    • In 1969, AT&T had just terminated their work with the GE/AT&T Multics project. Brian and I had just started working with an early release of Pascal from Professor Nichlaus Wirth's ETH labs in Swit-zerland, and we were impressed with its elegant simplicity and power. Dennis had just finished reading Bored of the Rings, a hilari-ous National Lampoon parody of the great Tolkien Lord of the Rings trilogy. As a lark, we decided to do parodies of the Multics environ-ment and Pascal. Dennis and I were responsible for the operating environment. We looked at Multics and designed the new system to be as complex and cryptic as possible to maximize casual users' frus-tration levels, calling it Unix as a parody of Multics, as well as other more risque allusions.

      Then Dennis and Brian worked on a truly warped version of Pascal, called "A." When we found others were actually trying to create real programs with A, we quickly added additional cryptic features and evolved into B, BCPL, and finally C. We stopped when we got a clean compile on the following syntax:

      for(;P("\n"),R=;P("|"))for(e=C;e=P("_"+(*u++/
      8)% 2))P("|"+(*u/4)%2);

      To think that modern programmers would try to use a language that allowed such a statement was beyond our comprehension! We actu-ally thought of selling this to the Soviets to set their computer science progress back 20 or more years. Imagine our surprise when AT&T and other U.S. corporations actually began trying to use Unix and C! It has taken them 20 years to develop enough expertise to generate even marginally useful applications using this 1960s technological parody, but we are impressed with the tenacity (if not common sense) of the general Unix and C programmer.

      In any event, Brian, Dennis, and I have been working exclusively in Lisp on the Apple Macintosh for the past few years and feel really guilty about the chaos, confusion, and truly bad programming that has resulted from our silly prank so long ago.

    Major Unix and C vendors and customers, including AT&T, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, GTE, NCR, and DEC have refused comment at this time. Borland International, a leading vendor of Pascal and C tools, including the popular Turbo Pascal, Turbo C, and Turbo C++, stated they had suspected this for a number of years and would continue to enhance their Pascal prod-ucts and halt further efforts to develop C. An IBM spokesman broke into uncontrolled laughter and had to postpone a hastily convened news confer-ence concerning the fate of the RS/6000, merely stating "Workplace OS will be available Real Soon Now." In a cryptic statement, Professor Wirth of the ETH Institute and father of the Pascal, Modula 2, and Oberon struc-tured languages, merely stated that P. T. Barnum was correct.

  • hmmm (Score:2, Interesting)

    by nyseal ( 523659 )
    I accept the fact that this is a pro-Unix / anti MS site, but when are you people going to realize that the general pubilc does not WANT to know about root directories or /xcxx/kkk/lll/iuy? I recently spoke with a friend of mine who didn't even know how to access his floppy drive; which made me think....just because you're a guru with any given application does NOT mean that it's the best; even M$. I for one, would love to join the *nix revolution but after reading a lot of posts here makes it scary. "If

  • Amusing reactions here (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Spinality ( 214521 ) on Sunday April 27, 2003 @03:15PM (#5820328) Homepage
    I find it interesting that so many people here apparently think this book slams UNIX to praise MSWindows. More careful readers noticed that this collection of rants arose from people who came to UNIX from other, less familiar, more robust platforms, and who were frustrated by what struck them in comparison as obvious omissions and limitations. Most were not DOS/Windows users, but experienced Multics, LISP, Mesa/Cedar, etc. hackers. They knew enough to realize a) that UNIX wasn't perfect, b) that they lost some capabilities and clarity when they changed platforms, and c) that many of the problems they encountered were technicaly solvable...so why the hell did they still exist?

    Naturally, this book is dated, and the mailing list that fed it more dated still. But the most important thing is this: the book is a collection of self-declared rants. They're supposed to be narrow-minded flames. The result is supposed to be funny. And from my perspective, it is funny.

    There are plenty of reasons that UNIX has its warts, most of which stem from its long, strange legacy of benign neglect under AT&T's care. If its original purpose and vision could have been sustained with an adequate development budget through the years, who knows what we'd have today? But it didn't happen that way. Oh well, we have what we have. We get plenty of value by putting up with UNIX headaches -- absolutely. But it's not surprising that somebody would feel pain after leaving a conceptually clean platform like Smalltalk, Cedar, or a LISP Machine.

    And again, they're not saying that DOS/Windows was the answer, fer chrissakes. They're not actually saying that anything is the answer; they're just using their right to gripe and be funny about it. It strikes me about the same as most of our normal anti-MS rants (including my own). In other words, it's possible to say "I hate UNIX" and still hate Bill Gates.

    • Re:Amusing reactions here (Score:3, Insightful)

      by miu ( 626917 )
      More careful readers noticed that this collection of rants arose from people who came to UNIX from other, less familiar, more robust platforms, and who were frustrated by what struck them in comparison as obvious omissions and limitations.

      I don't think it requires a careful reading to realize that a book in which the forward refers to the authors as a "rock throwing rabble" is not meant to be taken at face value.

  • I have this book (Score:3, Informative)

    by Do not eat ( 594588 ) on Sunday April 27, 2003 @03:41PM (#5820432)
    I actually have it in paperback form, and it comes with a Unix barfbag. A lot of the points made in the book are still quite valid, but a lot of them are things that have been fixed in the last 10 years. When placed at the appropriate time, you have to realize that it does a decent job of describing the worst parts of Unix from the views of VMS users, among others. Like /., it makes no pretense of being a balanced view.

    My main gripe is that they confuse the Internet with Unix. So an entire chapter is devoted to Usenet. That was written before spam, I'm sure the author would be able to write even more vitriol in that category.

    I'd love to see it updated, particularly given that so many of the gripes have been addressed and fixed in the world of FS/OSS.
    • At the time the book was written UNIX and the Internet were, for all intents and purposes, one and the same. Since Mosiac was ported to Windows that has been changing, many would say for the worse.
  • From http://research.microsoft.com/~daniel/:

    I am in the Office Code Quality and Reliability Group. We are responsible for helping developers create better code. ... I am currently working on the World's Best Buffer Overrun Detector.

    And windows is the World's Best Buffer Overrun Creator!

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