30 Jun
2018
30 Jun
'18
1:31 a.m.
I've told this story so much that my kids hear me start it and go "is that
the Unix guy? Yeah, we've heard this". And I think many of you have heard
it as well so you can hit delete, but for the newbies to the list here goes.
Decades ago I was a grad student at UWisc and pretty active on comp.arch
and comp.unix-wizards (I was not a wizard but I've lived through, and
written up, the process of restoring a Masscomp after having done some
variant of rm -rf / so a stupid wizard wanna be?)
From time to time, some Unix kernel thing would come up
and I'd email
...!research!dmr and ask him how that worked.
He *always* replied. To me, a nobody. All he cared was that the question
wasn't retarded (and I bet to him some of mine were but the questions showed
that I was thinking and that was good enough for him). I remember a long
discussion about something, I think PIPEBUF but not sure, and at some point
he sent me his phone number and said "call me". Email was too slow.
So yeah, one of the inventors of Unix was cool enough to take some young
nobody and educate him. That's Dennis.
I've tried to pass some of that energy forward to my kids, telling them
that if you want to learn, smart people like that and they will help you.
Dennis was a humble man, a smart man, and a dude willing to pass on what
he knew.
I miss him and cherish the interactions I had with him.
30 Jun
30 Jun
1:45 a.m.
New subject: Any Good dmr Anecdotes?
In the early 1980s my girlfriend (now my wife) and I were visiting
Bell Lab's Murray Hill research facility where a friend of mine
worked. My friend had nothing to do with Unix, but I asked him
to take us by the area where the Unix work was being done.
What my wife still remembers to this day is when we saw Dennis
Ritchie sitting at a terminal, with about 7 guys surrounding him.
They were all giggling loudly at something on the screen. My wife
couldn't understand what could be so funny to cause all those guys to
react that way.
Jon Forrest
6:43 p.m.
New subject: Any Good dmr Anecdotes?
Another DMR memory. We typically worked in the "Unix Room" up in
the attic, where there were a number of terminals and (at the time)
one phone line. I remember overhearing Dennis talking on the phone
quite patiently with a guy from another location who wanted some
feature added to C or Unix (don't remember which). Dennis explained
several time why the feature was difficult to implement, wouldn't
solve his problem, and could, in some cases, lock up the operating
system. The guy on the other end kept arguing. Finally Dennis
suggested that he arrange a meeting so we could better understand the
problem and get some other ideas on how to solve it. "Oh, I
couldn't do that! We have to make a decision by 5PM today!"
Dennis sighed and said "You mean, this problem is so important and
urgent that you don't have time to think about it?"
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jon Forrest" <nobozo(a)gmail.com>
To:<tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
Cc:
Sent:Fri, 29 Jun 2018 18:45:25 -0700
Subject:Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?
In the early 1980s my girlfriend (now my wife) and I were visiting
Bell Lab's Murray Hill research facility where a friend of mine
worked. My friend had nothing to do with Unix, but I asked him
to take us by the area where the Unix work was being done.
What my wife still remembers to this day is when we saw Dennis
Ritchie sitting at a terminal, with about 7 guys surrounding him.
They were all giggling loudly at something on the screen. My wife
couldn't understand what could be so funny to cause all those guys to
react that way.
Jon Forrest
2:27 a.m.
New subject: Masscomp oops [was: Any Good dmr Anecdotes?]
On 06/29/2018 09:31 PM, Larry McVoy wrote:
[...] (I was not a wizard but I've lived through,
and
written up, the process of restoring a Masscomp after having done some
variant of rm -rf / so a stupid wizard wanna be?)
That reminds me of preparing a Masscomp to bring out in the field for
radar data acquisition. After some minor incident, I needed to run an
fsck when a cute, slender gal came into the lab. In my flustered state
hoping to start a witty conversation I typed mkfs... Unfortunately, no
wizards around, let alone dmr, to save the day - which turned into a
very late day. On the plus side, I ended up marrying the girl.
Mike Markowski
2132
days inactive
2132
days old
3 comments
4 participants
participants (4)
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Jon Forrest -
Larry McVoy -
Mike Markowski -
Steve Johnson