what does "UNIX" really stand for? (also Plan 9)
Roy Smith
roy at phri.UUCP
Fri Sep 30 12:45:31 AEST 1988
The way I heard it was as follows. One night, Ken and Dennis were
working late, arguing about what to call their new operating system. After
many hours of hot debate, the finally decided to knock off around 9:00 and
go for a drink. As they walking into their favorite watering hole (the BTL
Rathskeller), the bouncer at the door saw their jeans and T-shirts and
attempted to enforce the dress code (plastic pocket protector and
belt-mounted calculator required) by pointing at them and saying, "You:
nix!", meaning of course that they couldn't come in. And so history was
made.
BTW, a little while ago there was some talk in this group about
"Plan 9", the latest experimental version of Unix under development at The
Labs. Well, I'd like to let you all know that it appears to have been
released to the public earlier than expected. I was in the village this
evening (that's Grenwich Village for you non New Yorkers) when I noticed
that Plan 9 was playing a twin bill with The Neats at a little club on
Broadway, near Houston (across the street from EMS). I knew AT&T has been
doing horrible things to Unix lately, but I never would have guess that
they would have stooped so low as to turn it into a punk rock band. I can
see it now; "We are not men! We are /dev/o!"
--
Roy Smith, System Administrator
Public Health Research Institute
{allegra,philabs,cmcl2,rutgers}!phri!roy -or- phri!roy at uunet.uu.net
"The connector is the network"
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