alice is in unix land
"Can you help me? asked Alice.
"No," said Negative.
"I'm looking for a white consultant." Alice pointed in the direction she had been walking. "Did he go this way?" she asked.
"No," said Negative.
She pointed the other way.
"Yes," said Positive.
Soon Alice came upon a large brown table. The Consultant was there, as was an apparently Mad Hacker, and several creatures that Alice did not recognize. In one corner sat a Dormouse fast asleep. Over the table was a large sign that read "UNIX Conference."
Everyone except the Dormouse was holding a paper cup, from which they were sampling what appeared to be custard. "Wrong flavor," they all declared as they passed the cup the cup to the creature on their right and graciously took the one being offered on their left. Alice watched them repeat this ritual three or four times before she approached and sat down.
Immediately, a large toad leaped into her lap and looked at her as if it wanted to be loved. "Grep," it exclaimed.
"Don't mind him," explained the Mad Hacker. "He's just looking for some string."
"Nroff?" asked the Frog.
The Mad Hacker handed Alice a cup of custard-like substance and a spoon. "Here," he said, "what do you think of this?"
"It looks lovely," said Alice, "very sweet." She tried a spoonful. "Yuck!" she cried. "It's awful. What is it?"
"Oh just another graphic interface for UNIX," answered the Hacker.
Alice pointed to the sleeping Dormouse. "Who's he?" she asked.
"That's OS Too," explained the Hacker. "We've pretty much given up on waking him.
"Just than, a large, Blue Elephant sitting next to the Dormouse stood up. "Ladies and gentlemen," he trumpeted pompously, "as the largest creature here, I feel impelled to state that we must take an Open Look at..."
A young Job Sparrow on the other side of the table stood up angrily. The Elephant noticed and changed his speech accordingly."...what our NextStep will be.
"Half the creatures bowed in respect while the other half snickered quietly to themselves. Just then, OS Too fell over in his sleep, crashing into the Elephant and taking him down with him. No one seemed a bit surprised.
"What we need," declared a Sun Bear as he lapped up custard with his long tongue," is a flavor that goes down like the Macintosh.
"Suddenly, the White Consultant began jumping up and down as his face got red. "No, no, no! he screamed. "No one pays one fifty an hour to Macintosh consultants!"
"Awk," said the Frog.
"Users," explained the Sun Bear, "want an easy interface that they will not have to learn."
"Users?" cried the Consultant in disbelief. "Users?! You mean secretaries, accountants, architects. Manual laborers!"
"Well," responded the Sun Bear, "we've got to do something to make them want to switch to UNIX."
"Do you think," said a Woodpecker who had been busy making a hole in the table, "that there might be a problem with the name `UNIX?' I mean, it does sort of suggest being less than a man."
"Maybe we should try another name, " suggested the Job Sparrow, "like Brut, or Rambo."
"Penix," suggested a Penguin.
"Mount," said the Frog, "spawn."
Alice slapped him. "Nice?" he asked.
"But then again," suggested the Woodpecker, "what about the shrinkwrap issue?"
Suddenly, everyone leaped up and started dashing about, waving their hands in the air and screaming. Just as suddenly, they all sat down again.
"Now that that's settled," said the Woodpecker, "let's go back to tasting flavors."
Everyone at the table sampled a new cup of custard. "Wrong flavor," they all declared as they passed the cup to the creature on their right and took the one being offered on their left.
Totally confused, Alice got up and left. After she had been walking away, she heard a familiar voice behind her.
"Rem," is said, "edlin."
Alice turned and saw the Frog. She smiled. "Those are queer sounding words," she said, "but at least I know what they mean."
"Chkdsk," said the Frog. "Alice in UNIX land" was created by Lincoln Spector TEXAS COMPUTER CURRENTS SEPTEMBER 1989
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"No," said Negative.
"I'm looking for a white consultant." Alice pointed in the direction she had been walking. "Did he go this way?" she asked.
"No," said Negative.
She pointed the other way.
"Yes," said Positive.
Soon Alice came upon a large brown table. The Consultant was there, as was an apparently Mad Hacker, and several creatures that Alice did not recognize. In one corner sat a Dormouse fast asleep. Over the table was a large sign that read "UNIX Conference."
Everyone except the Dormouse was holding a paper cup, from which they were sampling what appeared to be custard. "Wrong flavor," they all declared as they passed the cup the cup to the creature on their right and graciously took the one being offered on their left. Alice watched them repeat this ritual three or four times before she approached and sat down.
Immediately, a large toad leaped into her lap and looked at her as if it wanted to be loved. "Grep," it exclaimed.
"Don't mind him," explained the Mad Hacker. "He's just looking for some string."
"Nroff?" asked the Frog.
The Mad Hacker handed Alice a cup of custard-like substance and a spoon. "Here," he said, "what do you think of this?"
"It looks lovely," said Alice, "very sweet." She tried a spoonful. "Yuck!" she cried. "It's awful. What is it?"
"Oh just another graphic interface for UNIX," answered the Hacker.
Alice pointed to the sleeping Dormouse. "Who's he?" she asked.
"That's OS Too," explained the Hacker. "We've pretty much given up on waking him.
"Just than, a large, Blue Elephant sitting next to the Dormouse stood up. "Ladies and gentlemen," he trumpeted pompously, "as the largest creature here, I feel impelled to state that we must take an Open Look at..."
A young Job Sparrow on the other side of the table stood up angrily. The Elephant noticed and changed his speech accordingly."...what our NextStep will be.
"Half the creatures bowed in respect while the other half snickered quietly to themselves. Just then, OS Too fell over in his sleep, crashing into the Elephant and taking him down with him. No one seemed a bit surprised.
"What we need," declared a Sun Bear as he lapped up custard with his long tongue," is a flavor that goes down like the Macintosh.
"Suddenly, the White Consultant began jumping up and down as his face got red. "No, no, no! he screamed. "No one pays one fifty an hour to Macintosh consultants!"
"Awk," said the Frog.
"Users," explained the Sun Bear, "want an easy interface that they will not have to learn."
"Users?" cried the Consultant in disbelief. "Users?! You mean secretaries, accountants, architects. Manual laborers!"
"Well," responded the Sun Bear, "we've got to do something to make them want to switch to UNIX."
"Do you think," said a Woodpecker who had been busy making a hole in the table, "that there might be a problem with the name `UNIX?' I mean, it does sort of suggest being less than a man."
"Maybe we should try another name, " suggested the Job Sparrow, "like Brut, or Rambo."
"Penix," suggested a Penguin.
"Mount," said the Frog, "spawn."
Alice slapped him. "Nice?" he asked.
"But then again," suggested the Woodpecker, "what about the shrinkwrap issue?"
Suddenly, everyone leaped up and started dashing about, waving their hands in the air and screaming. Just as suddenly, they all sat down again.
"Now that that's settled," said the Woodpecker, "let's go back to tasting flavors."
Everyone at the table sampled a new cup of custard. "Wrong flavor," they all declared as they passed the cup to the creature on their right and took the one being offered on their left.
Totally confused, Alice got up and left. After she had been walking away, she heard a familiar voice behind her.
"Rem," is said, "edlin."
Alice turned and saw the Frog. She smiled. "Those are queer sounding words," she said, "but at least I know what they mean."
"Chkdsk," said the Frog. "Alice in UNIX land" was created by Lincoln Spector TEXAS COMPUTER CURRENTS SEPTEMBER 1989
the user's reboot poem
Don't you wish when life is bad
and things just don't compute,
That all we really had to do
was stop and hit reboot?
Things would all turn out ok,
life could be so sweet
If we had those special keys
Ctrl, Alt, and Delete
Your boss is mad, your bills not paid,
your wife, well she's just mute
Just stop and hit those wonderful keys
that make it all reboot
You'd like to have another job
but you fear living in the street?
You solve it all and start a new,
Ctrl, Alt, and Delete
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and things just don't compute,
That all we really had to do
was stop and hit reboot?
Things would all turn out ok,
life could be so sweet
If we had those special keys
Ctrl, Alt, and Delete
Your boss is mad, your bills not paid,
your wife, well she's just mute
Just stop and hit those wonderful keys
that make it all reboot
You'd like to have another job
but you fear living in the street?
You solve it all and start a new,
Ctrl, Alt, and Delete
ten c commandments
1. Thou shalt run lint frequently and study its pronouncements with care, for verily its perception and judgement oft exceed thine.
2. Thou shalt not follow the NULL pointer, for chaos and madness await thee at its end.
3. Thou shalt cast all function arguments to the expected type if they are not of that type already, even when thou art convinced that this is unnecessary, lest they take cruel vengeance upon thee when thou least expect it.
4. If thy header files fail to declare the return types of thy library functions, thou shalt declare them thyself with the most meticulous care, lest grievous harm befall thy program.
5. Thou shalt check the array bounds of all strings (indeed, all arrays), for surely where thou typest ``foo' someone someday shall type ``supercalifragilisticexpialidocious'.
6. If a function be advertised to return an error code in the event of difficulties, thou shalt check for that code, yea, even though the checks triple the size of thy code and produce aches in thy typing fingers, for if thou thinkest ``it cannot happen to me', the gods shall surely punish thee for thy arrogance.
7. Thou shalt study thy libraries and strive not to re-invent them without cause, that thy code may be short and readable and thy days pleasant and productive.
8. Thou shalt make thy program's purpose and structure clear to thy fellow man by using the One True Brace Style, even if thou likest it not, for thy creativity is better used in solving problems than in creating beautiful new impediments to understanding.
9. Thy external identifiers shall be unique in the first six characters, though this harsh discipline be irksome and the years of its necessity stretch before thee seemingly without end, lest thou tear thy hair out and go mad on that fateful day when thou desirest to make thy program run on an old system.
10. Thou shalt foreswear, renounce, and abjure the vile heresy which claimeth that ``All the world's a VAX', and have no commerce with the benighted heathens who cling to this barbarous belief, that the days of thy program may be long even though the days of thy current machine be short.
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2. Thou shalt not follow the NULL pointer, for chaos and madness await thee at its end.
3. Thou shalt cast all function arguments to the expected type if they are not of that type already, even when thou art convinced that this is unnecessary, lest they take cruel vengeance upon thee when thou least expect it.
4. If thy header files fail to declare the return types of thy library functions, thou shalt declare them thyself with the most meticulous care, lest grievous harm befall thy program.
5. Thou shalt check the array bounds of all strings (indeed, all arrays), for surely where thou typest ``foo' someone someday shall type ``supercalifragilisticexpialidocious'.
6. If a function be advertised to return an error code in the event of difficulties, thou shalt check for that code, yea, even though the checks triple the size of thy code and produce aches in thy typing fingers, for if thou thinkest ``it cannot happen to me', the gods shall surely punish thee for thy arrogance.
7. Thou shalt study thy libraries and strive not to re-invent them without cause, that thy code may be short and readable and thy days pleasant and productive.
8. Thou shalt make thy program's purpose and structure clear to thy fellow man by using the One True Brace Style, even if thou likest it not, for thy creativity is better used in solving problems than in creating beautiful new impediments to understanding.
9. Thy external identifiers shall be unique in the first six characters, though this harsh discipline be irksome and the years of its necessity stretch before thee seemingly without end, lest thou tear thy hair out and go mad on that fateful day when thou desirest to make thy program run on an old system.
10. Thou shalt foreswear, renounce, and abjure the vile heresy which claimeth that ``All the world's a VAX', and have no commerce with the benighted heathens who cling to this barbarous belief, that the days of thy program may be long even though the days of thy current machine be short.
actual help center calls
Computer novices may feel like they're alone these days, but some of the following calls to IBM's help center show there are plenty of people out there who still are inching onto the information superhighway.
After a caller gave a technician her PC's serial number, he scanned a database of registered users and responded, "I see you have an Aptiva" desktop unit. Before he could say another word, the caller shrieked and said she'd be right back. When the customer returned, the technician asked if she was all right. The caller responded: "Had I realized you could see me, I never would have telephoned in my bathrobe."
A customer who had just received a laptop computer asked about the power-saving feature known as "hibernate." Would this hibernate device work in the spring and summer, the caller asked.
Another caller explained she had received a gift of software on 5.25-inch diskettes, but she had only a 3.5-inch disk drive on her computer. The technician said she had two options: Get a second disk drive, or use 3.5-inch diskettes. The customer called back later, now complaining that her disk drive was making a terrible noise. And this despite the fact that she was using a 3.5-inch diskette, she said. After a bunch of questions, the technician determined the caller had used a pair of scissors to trim the 5.25-inch diskettes to fit the 3.5-inch drive.
A caller, perplexed that his new desktop computer--the one that was supposed to do everything short of bringing on world peace - was doing nothing, cried out for help. No problem, the IBM technician said. First, open a "window" to launch a specific program. The conversation continued, and the caller asked a few moments later if it might be all right to close the window. Why, the IBM technician asked. Because, the caller responded, it was getting very chilly.
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After a caller gave a technician her PC's serial number, he scanned a database of registered users and responded, "I see you have an Aptiva" desktop unit. Before he could say another word, the caller shrieked and said she'd be right back. When the customer returned, the technician asked if she was all right. The caller responded: "Had I realized you could see me, I never would have telephoned in my bathrobe."
A customer who had just received a laptop computer asked about the power-saving feature known as "hibernate." Would this hibernate device work in the spring and summer, the caller asked.
Another caller explained she had received a gift of software on 5.25-inch diskettes, but she had only a 3.5-inch disk drive on her computer. The technician said she had two options: Get a second disk drive, or use 3.5-inch diskettes. The customer called back later, now complaining that her disk drive was making a terrible noise. And this despite the fact that she was using a 3.5-inch diskette, she said. After a bunch of questions, the technician determined the caller had used a pair of scissors to trim the 5.25-inch diskettes to fit the 3.5-inch drive.
A caller, perplexed that his new desktop computer--the one that was supposed to do everything short of bringing on world peace - was doing nothing, cried out for help. No problem, the IBM technician said. First, open a "window" to launch a specific program. The conversation continued, and the caller asked a few moments later if it might be all right to close the window. Why, the IBM technician asked. Because, the caller responded, it was getting very chilly.
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