[clug] Kernels are easy, ls is the hard part!

[steve jenkin]

Craig Small wrote on 14/9/07 8:45 PM:


> On Fri, Sep 14, 2007 at 08:25:34PM +1000, Sam Couter wrote:
>> [ I'm starting to think you're not really this ignorant and I'm
>> being trolled ]

No, I wasn't trolling you.  I have (shock, horror) different opinions...

Murray Hill's department 1127 has an impressive list of Alumni:
<http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/alumni.html>

and had a definite culture that led to Unix and a lot of other good work:
- Ideas, information, code were freely shared.
- Strongly held opinions were OK.
- Differing positions were respected.
- Robust debate was encouraged.
- Vigorous discussion was the norm.
- The final arbiter was "Show me" - i.e. produce code or action

All this was done with humour and there were also quite irreverent,
anti-authoritarian and even mischievous streak:
<http://spinroot.com/pico/pjw.html>

> `For some reason, the portrait of Peter Weinberger has always been
> our most popular target for picture editing experiments. It started
>  a few years ago when Peter was raised to the rank of department
> head and was careless enough to leave a portrait of himself
> floating around. On a goofy Saturday evening at the lab, Rob Pike
> and I started making photocopies and, to emphasize Peter's rise in
> the managerial hierarchy, prepared a chart of the Bell Labs Cabinet
>  with his picture stuck in every available slot. Peter must have
> realized that the best he could do was not to react at all, if at
> least he wanted to avoid seeing his face 10 feet high on a
> watertower. Nevertheless, Peter's picture appeared and reappeared
> in the most unlikely places in the lab.
>
> Within a few weeks after AT&T had revealed the new corporate logo,
> Tom Duff had made a Peter logo that has since become a symbol for
> our center. Rob Pike had T-shirts made. Ken Thompson ordered coffee
>  mugs with the Peter logo. And, unavoidably, in the night of
> September 16, 1985, a Peter logo, 10 feet high, materialized on a
> watertower nearby.''

You can do a lot worse than emulate these people...


-- 
Steve Jenkin, Info Tech, Systems and Design Specialist.
0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
PO Box 48, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA

sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin