3 Nov
2020
3 Nov
'20
4 p.m.
On Nov 3, 2020, at 7:40 AM, Ron Natalie <ron(a)ronnatalie.com> wrote:
This memory just came back to me. There was a UNIX
disribution (PWB/UNIX?) that had a program called 1.
It printed tis quaint bit of propaganda.
One Bell System. It works.
This was fine until one day I’m at work in a big bull pen computer room when Bernie, one
of my co-workers, shouts.
“What’s all this Bell System crud in the editor?”
My reaction is, “Well, it’s all Bell System crud.” I walk over to his terminal and
find he is typing 1 repeatedly at the shell prompt and getting the above message. (This
was back in the old /bin/ed days where 1 got you to the top of the file). I had to
point out he wasn’t in the editor.
Later that day, the program was changed to say:
You’re not in the editor, Bernie.
This I think made it into one of the BRL releases and occassionally got inquiries as to
who Bernie is.
Yes, PWB/UNIX.
I seem to recall it also had /usr/bin/flog. You pass it a process ID as argument, and it
was supposed to make the process work harder. (I can't remember the exact wording on
the web page. In fact, I could be confused about it being in PWB.)