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> I must say the Linux community is a lot nicer than the Unix community. A negative comment on Unix would warrent death threats. With Linux, it is like stirring

> I must say the Linux community is a lot nicer than the Unix community. A negative comment on Unix would warrent death threats. With Linux, it is like stirring up a nest of butterflies. Interesting comment on the Linux, UNIX communities.

DonHopkins 9y ago
Death threats for negative comments on Unix??! Pththththt! The Unix Haters Handbook [1] was dedicated to Ken and Dennis, and Dennis [2] wrote the anti-forward [3]. [1] http://simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf http://simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf [2] http://www.donhopkins.com/home/images/DennisRitchiePththththth.png http://www.donhopkins.com/home/images/DennisRitchiePthththth... [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3106271 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3106271 From: dmr@plan9.research.att.com Date: Tue, 15 Mar 1994 00:38:07 EST Subject: anti-foreword To the contributers to this book: I have succumbed to the temptation you offered in your preface: I do write you off as envious malcontents and romantic keepers of memories. The systems you remember so fondly (TOPS-20, ITS, Multics, Lisp Machine, Cedar/Mesa, the Dorado) are not just out to pasture, they are fertilizing it from below. Your judgments are not keen, they are intoxicated by metaphor. In the Preface you suffer first from heat, lice, and malnourishment, then become prisoners in a Gulag. In Chapter 1 you are in turn infected by a virus, racked by drug addiction, and addled by puffiness of the genome. Yet your prison without coherent design continues to imprison you. How can this be, if it has no strong places? The rational prisoner exploits the weak places, creates order from chaos: instead, collectives like the FSF vindicate their jailers by building cells almost com- patible with the existing ones, albeit with more features. The journalist with three undergraduate degrees from MIT, the researcher at Microsoft, and the senior scientist at Apple might volunteer a few words about the regulations of the prisons to which they have been transferred. Your sense of the possible is in no sense pure: sometimes you want the same thing you have, but wish you had done it yourselves; other times you want something different, but can't seem to get people to use it; sometimes one wonders why you just don't shut up and tell people to buy a PC with Windows or a Mac. No Gulag or lice, just a future whose intellectual tone and interaction style is set by Sonic the Hedgehog. You claim to seek progress, but you succeed mainly in whining. Here is my metaphor: your book is a pudding stuffed with apposite observations, many well-conceived. Like excrement, it contains enough undigested nuggets of nutrition to sustain life for some. But it is not a tasty pie: it reeks too much of contempt and of envy. Bon appetit!
- craftyguy 9y ago
  > Pththththt I've been trying to figure out what this is supposed to sound like.
  - combatentropy 9y ago
    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Blowing_a_raspberry.ogv https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Blowing_...
    - craftyguy 9y ago
      Excellent

DonHopkins 9y ago

Death threats for negative comments on Unix??! Pththththt! The Unix Haters Handbook [1] was dedicated to Ken and Dennis, and Dennis [2] wrote the anti-forward [3]. [1] http://simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf http://simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf [2] http://www.donhopkins.com/home/images/DennisRitchiePththththth.png http://www.donhopkins.com/home/images/DennisRitchiePthththth... [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3106271 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3106271 From: dmr@plan9.research.att.com Date: Tue, 15 Mar 1994 00:38:07 EST Subject: anti-foreword To the contributers to this book: I have succumbed to the temptation you offered in your preface: I do write you off as envious malcontents and romantic keepers of memories. The systems you remember so fondly (TOPS-20, ITS, Multics, Lisp Machine, Cedar/Mesa, the Dorado) are not just out to pasture, they are fertilizing it from below. Your judgments are not keen, they are intoxicated by metaphor. In the Preface you suffer first from heat, lice, and malnourishment, then become prisoners in a Gulag. In Chapter 1 you are in turn infected by a virus, racked by drug addiction, and addled by puffiness of the genome. Yet your prison without coherent design continues to imprison you. How can this be, if it has no strong places? The rational prisoner exploits the weak places, creates order from chaos: instead, collectives like the FSF vindicate their jailers by building cells almost com- patible with the existing ones, albeit with more features. The journalist with three undergraduate degrees from MIT, the researcher at Microsoft, and the senior scientist at Apple might volunteer a few words about the regulations of the prisons to which they have been transferred. Your sense of the possible is in no sense pure: sometimes you want the same thing you have, but wish you had done it yourselves; other times you want something different, but can't seem to get people to use it; sometimes one wonders why you just don't shut up and tell people to buy a PC with Windows or a Mac. No Gulag or lice, just a future whose intellectual tone and interaction style is set by Sonic the Hedgehog. You claim to seek progress, but you succeed mainly in whining. Here is my metaphor: your book is a pudding stuffed with apposite observations, many well-conceived. Like excrement, it contains enough undigested nuggets of nutrition to sustain life for some. But it is not a tasty pie: it reeks too much of contempt and of envy. Bon appetit!

craftyguy 9y ago
> Pththththt I've been trying to figure out what this is supposed to sound like.
- combatentropy 9y ago
  https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Blowing_a_raspberry.ogv https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Blowing_...
  - craftyguy 9y ago
    Excellent