Clem Cole scripsit: I don't think so. Is ;login: a peer-reviewed journal? It doesn't look like it to me. Still, the current state says: The origin of the name cron is from the Greek word for time, χρόνος (chronos), according to its author Ken Thompson[2][better source needed]. Others have suggested that the name comes from the Greek God Chronos[3] or that it is an acronym for "Command Run On Notice"[4] or "Commands Run Over Night",[5] but the references lack substantiation. Even if someone is still grumbling on the talk page, that doesn't substantially misrepresent anything that I can see. -- John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan(a)ccil.org Is it not written, "That which is written, is written"?

This has been a somewhat bizarre and troubling thread, all in all. Would anybody want to discuss the origin of 'ls'? Or 'at'? Steve PS: (that was NOT a serious suggestion!)

[sequence recovered] On Thursday, 24 December 2015 at 17:05:48 -0800, Larry McVoy wrote: Normally they aren't. I think it's this one editor. On trawling through the pages, there's this policy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ignore_all_rules That seems to apply here. Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog(a)FreeBSD.org for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft MUA reports problems, please read http://tinyurl.com/broken-mua

Got into this thread very late. Some of the posts seem to assume that Wikipedia has some sort editing oversight. I think of it as a collection of people. Somebody said that a better source was needed, but that's just his or her opinion. It doesn't mean that Wikipedia as an organization has rejected or dismissed the text in question. Anyway, I edited the article to reflect what I always knew and what apparently Ken has actually confirmed. The acronym is ridiculous. One might as well say that "cat" stands for "communicate as text" or that "ls" stands for "label status". ;-) Someone may back out my change, true, but then I can just put it in again. I've been involved in these back-and-forths before, and in the past they usually settled down after a while. We'll see what happens. --Marc On Thu, Dec 24, 2015 at 5:52 PM, <scj(a)yaccman.com> wrote:

On Wednesday, 23 December 2015 at 11:04:36 -0500, John Cowan wrote: It occurs to me that there's a difference between stamping out the use and stamping out the reference. True story (at some level of truth): In the late 18th century a member of a European exploratory mission in Australia sees a strange animal jumping around. He turns to the aboriginal guard assigned to him and says "What's that animal?". Guard answers: "kangaroo" ("I don't understand what you're saying"). I've always taken this one to be a joke, but the Oxford English Dictionary picks it up and says: The common assertion that it really means 'I don't understand' (the supposed reply of the local to his questioner) seems to be of recent origin and lacks confirmation. (See Morris Austral English s.v.) And maybe this is the correct way to handle those references. Mention them and observe that they lack any substantiation. I've been trying to find Phil Diacono, of whom you wouldn't expect many falso positives, but in fact there are two or three in Melbourne alone, none of whom seem to be the right one. In the meantime, help has come from an unlikely direction. As far as I can tell, it's nobody on this list, but there's no account behind the commit, just the IP address 2601:647:4001:bc00:c48d:fc08:b94c:dec2 It refers to an article by Kah Seng Tay at https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-etymology-of-cron , which appears undated (date "Wed"), but which goes into more detail and includes a copy of a message from Brian with essentially the same content as the one he sent to Doug. I've updated the page to note lack of substatiation in the alternative references. We're not done yet. Tedickey has once again tagged the entry with WP:RS. So a published document would still be a good idea. wkt: is it time for an informal "Proceedings of TUHS"? Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog(a)FreeBSD.org for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft MUA reports problems, please read http://tinyurl.com/broken-mua