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From: bmckeon@tcd.ie (Brendan McKeon)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc,alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: On the Naming of UNIX Things
Date: 15 Nov 1996 20:20:02 GMT
Organization: University of Dublin, Trinity College
Lines: 51
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cbh@bankersnet.co.uk (Chris Hedley) writes:
> I'm sorry, you're totally wrong. GREP was ported to UNIX from its
> original inception on NT. [...]
> The GROPE program, along with the rest of VMS, was written for Sega's
> PDP-10 "mainframe" (a rackmounted PC) back in 1988 by Bill Gates and
> Alan Turing when they worked together sweeping floors at a Burger King
> in Istanbul.
Indeed. And it was while cleaning under the tables at that restaurant
that Bill got the idea for Bubble Gum memory, which he later sold to
IBM, - in exchange, they would use his fries. While the bubble gum
memory was a failure (it was only useful for storing sticky bits), IBM
later contracted him to provide large quantaties of sauce. (I can't
remember what sort of sauce it was - it started off with plenty of
character, then later had a sour apple taste, but anyhow took years to
ketchup.) He later went into the glazing business, and hired a vaccuum
cleaner engineer to create a self-cleaning window (it sucked) called
'Aunty'. (Was sort of a success, although the special glass used was
very heavy.) Many people referred to it the name of country in which
that Burger King was situated.
As an aside, Alan was later promoted to Human Resources at that
particular burger joint (involved hiring and training cash-register
attendants to grin in that special way, etc). He gained fame for
creating a simple test for determining if a certain person *lacked* the
qualities necessary for the job. Hence only applicants who failed the
so-called Turing test got the job. (Oddly enough, the first person to
get a job after the test was put in place was called Elisabeth, who was
at the time majoring in psychoanalysis. She had an interesting way of
daling with the customers:
Customer: Quarter pounder and large cola, please.
Elizabeth: HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT DEATH?
Customer: Err, ok, make it a veggie burger instead...
Elizabeth: YOU WANT FRIES WITH THAT?
... and so on. She was fired after a guy called Parry joined up - they
spent the whole time arguing. Last I heard, she was working in the
Chineese next door, owned by some guy called Searle...)
HTH, HAND.
Brendan.
--
char c[39],i,j;main(){srandom(time(0)/*/ Brendan McKeon /*/);for(
;i++<11;){for(j=39;j--;)printf((c[j]/*/ bmckeon@tcd.ie /*/=random
()%2)?"/ ":" \\");putchar('\n');for/*/ http://alf2.tcd.ie/~bmckeon /*/(j=39;j;
)printf(c[--j]?" /":"\\ ");putchar/*/ /*/('\n');}}