On Thu, Oct 5, 2017 at 10:26 AM, Ron Natalie <ron(a)ronnatalie.com> wrote:
At the 83 USENIX Sun handed out buttons that said the
"The Joy of UNIX."
Peter Langston thought that was a bit conceited on Bill's part, so he made
up buttons for the next show that read "The PSL of UNIX", "The DMR of
UNIX,"
etc... and handed them out. I still have the Joy of UNIX button, but I
lost my "Ron of UNIX" button shortly after the show.
The "is a trademark of bell labs" generated lots of jokes over the year.
I have somewhere a button that says "Eunuchs are a hallmark of the Ottoman
Empire." At one of the early UUGs someone tried to make "UNIX is a
Trademark of Bell Labs" pencils except the custom pencil place only allowed
18 letters or something so the pencils just ended up saying "UNIX is a
Trademark." I'm not sure I've ever come across another Trademark that
the footnote status was as widely propagated as UNIX's. AT&T's lawyers
even got up at one of the conferences (in a talk about licensing changes or
such) and thanked the community for defending the trademark.
A running gag throughout the Mel Brooks movie, "Spaceballs" is
recurring product spots for the film's promotional materials
("Spaceballs: the toiler paper" was my favorite:
https://i.pinimg.com/474x/c3/53/c3/c353c3a52c70a66b2d7cf456756a361c--movie-…)
This sounds similar in both character and execution.
- Dan C.