Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived theSteelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spatsin their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of themoon, no trouble from matter or antimatter -- for they had a machine, adream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in everyrespect. And they lived with it, and on it, and under it, and insideit, for it was all they had -- first they saved up all their atoms,then they put them all together, and if one didn't fit, why theychipped at it a bit, and everything was just fine ... -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
There are three ways to get something done: do it yourself, hiresomeone, or forbid your kids to do it.
A novel approach is to remove all power from the system, whichremoves most system overhead so that resources can be fully devoted todoing nothing. Benchmarks on this technique are promising; tremendousamounts of nothing can be produced in this manner. Certain hardwarelimitations can limit the speed of this method, especially in thelarger systems which require a more involved & less efficientpower-down sequence. An alternate approach is to pull the main breaker for thebuilding, which seems to provide even more nothing, but in truth hasbugs in it, since it usually inhibits the systems which keep the beercool.
A successful [software] tool is one that was used to do somethingundreamed of by its author. -- S. C. Johnson
Real Users never know what they want, but they always know when yourprogram doesn't deliver it.
Get GUMMed --- ------The Gurus of Unix Meeting of Minds (GUMM) takes place Wednesday, April1, 2076 (check THAT in your perpetual calendar program), 14 feet abovethe ground directly in front of the Milpitas Gumps. Members will grepeach other by the hand (after intro), yacc a lot, smoke filteredchroots in pipes, chown with forks, use the wc (unless uuclean), fseeknice zombie processes, strip, and sleep, but not, we hope, od. Threedays will be devoted to discussion of the ramifications of whodo. Twoseconds have been allotted for a complete rundown of all the user-friendly features of Unix. Seminars include "Everything You Know isWrong", led by Tom Kempson, "Batman or Cat:man?" led by Richie Dennis"cc C? Si! Si!" led by Kerwin Bernighan, and "Document Unix, Are YouKidding?" led by Jan Yeats. No Reader Service No. is necessary becauseall GUGUs (Gurus of Unix Group of Users) already know everything wecould tell them. -- Dr. Dobb's Journal, June '84