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The History section contains the sentence `Multics was highly innovative, braving many new computing frontiers for the first time, including the ability to serve several users from the same computing machine all at one time. It had many problems, but eventually Multics became a functional commercial product.' This statement has a couple of problematic issues.
1. Multics was definitely not the first system that that served `several users from the same computing machine'. The article on Time Sharing says that CTSS was demonstrated in 1961. (CTSS ran on a specially modified IBM 7094, and individual jobs were swapped in and out, so one could say that `at one time' in the Multics statement is intended to refer to multiple processes in memory, I suppose. I can provide a source for that, if anyone cares.) Perhaps the intention is to refer to virtual memory, in which case `first' probably refers to Atlas 2, at Cambridge, also in the mid-1960s. Other somewhat contemporaneous systems include TSS/360, the Michigan Terminal System, and CP/CMS, which was released in 1968, and whose successors are still current today. Probably what is meant in this statement is `serve many users', which was part of the `central computer utility' notion that was prevalent at the time. If we move away from general time-sharing systems (implied but not required by the original phrasing), then SABRE, demonstrated in 1960, certainly supported many users concurrently.
2. Multics didn't have many problems, or at least many more than other systems of the time. (IBM's TSS/360, in 1967, turned out to be too slow for supporting more than one user concurrently, and of course OS/360 was plagued with bugs and performance problems). There is a common myth that Multics `failed', but in fact the system was first described in 1965, released in the early 1970s, and lasted until 2000 (see the Multics article, which also quotes Peter Salus as saying that it `failed miserably'). However, the lifespan, in particular the 13 years after development ceased in which installations continued to use it, doesn't suggest failure. It's certainly true that AT&T management decided that the project wasn't relevant to them, and that's sufficient for Unix history.
I would prefer to say that Multics was an early innovative system, but that the developers had underestimated the resources needed to bring it to fruition.
Vmanis ( talk) 20:54, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
an example of a processing software —Preceding unsigned comment added by 110.55.7.125 ( talk) 10:30, 1 August 2010 (UTC)
D*n infobox has a "logo" field, so if we can't find a real logo, why, we make our own Wikiversion. Could we get an authenticated use of a Unix logo by The Open Group or whoever holds the trademark? -- Wtshymanski ( talk) 20:01, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Right, the article's pretty inconsistent about Unix and UNIX already, but if we're going to use UNIX anywhere it should be accompanied by the trademark. Can we get some solid ground rules for when and where the capitalisation (and trademark) should be used? Should pages which currently use the capitalisation be moved to include the trademark in the title? (is that even possible?) Chris Cunningham 12:41, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
So the system itself shouldn't ever have the trademark next to it? Is that MoS policy? It seems a bit odd to bother with a trademark symbol at all if it's never going to be attached to the thing it labels... Chris Cunningham 10:14, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
I notice that Programmable logic controller has chosen to use asterisks to denote that PLC is a registered trademark of Allen-Bradley, and Unix has chosen to use the extended ASCII registered trademark character. I'll let you guys duke it out, but we really shouldn't have two standards.-- Superluser 00:35, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
As an Australian technical writer for the last 20 years, I try to weed out 'Unix' wherever I find it and have been doing so since the mid 90s because I had to look for the correct capitalisation at the time and back then, found the ONLY usage was 'UNIX' (all capitals). All the installation media cited UNIX as did all the literature and on-line references by 'official' sources. Anything else was considered a mistake by those not knowing any better or who didn't care how they capitalised (developers, sys admin, PMs, business staff—you get the point I'm sure). Around 2002, I had to set up a new Trademarks section for another company and went through the references/TM process again and still only found 'legitimate' references to UNIX, but I DO remember being annoyed when I found the use of 'Unix' WAS now being shown, but only for 'Unix-like' operating systems (I'm sure that came from Wikipedia at the time). This disappointed me because I felt it pandered to the great unwashed who don't care how they spell or capitalise. So anyway, here I am again, looking for a definitive link to educated someone and I find the inmates are now running the asylum; so my question is: WHO authorised the change in Wikiperia from 'UNIX' to 'Unix'. What are their literary and grammar credentials. What does the Open Group say about it and if UNIX is going to be demeaned to Unix, then let's all throw the baby out with the bath water and simply call it unix. <sigh> Ask yourselves why you rarely see a professional author using the term Unix. We use UNIX (or sadly, I should say that we did). 220.237.96.213 ( bja) 00:38, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
In the Unix-FAQs (e.g.: FAQ 3.16) there are references to USG-Unix. Since I was not a Unix user at that time, I added what appears to me are the correct facts, but some brave soul, who remembers that terminology should check that. Treutwein ( talk) 12:47, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
The name Steven Gladstone was added to the list of folks from AT&T that developed Unix, but without a reference (but no one on the list is supported by references). Who is Steven Gladstone and did he work on Unix at Bell Labs/ATT? Sorry, if this is something that I should know. Jeff Ogden (W163) ( talk) 00:49, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
This sentence (or fragment I extracted) is very confusing:
"in the 1980s non-blocking I/O and the set of inter-process communication mechanisms was augmented"
It either means that both things were augmented in which it should say:
"in the 1980s the non-blocking I/O and the set of inter-process communication mechanisms were augmented"
Or it means that the second thing was augmented within the first thing in which it should say:
"in the 1980s non-blocking I/O the set of inter-process communication mechanisms was augmented"
Someone who knows the history and what this actually means should make the change.
Bugefun (
talk)
22:06, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
I wrote:
"Unix programmer's prefer Software prototyping, Rapid application development, Iterative and incremental development over the Waterfall model. Prototype before polishing. Get it working before you optimize it. [1]"
The Unix philosophy states that:
A user undid my version: "too general a statement - and not true. I am a Unix programmer, and I prefer the waterfall model"
-- Christopher Forster ( talk) 23:13, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
No Mention that Apple has by far the largest distribution of Unix. It is used on both Macintosh Mac OS X (75 Million?) and iOS (300 Million). These both feature BSD Unix. Which has passed all the UNIX approvals. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.149.31.231 ( talk) 13:53, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
In common with some others, I feel this should be referred to as UNIX, and not Unix. Arguments for this are:
1) It was originally called UNIX by the developers (my comment on the main page about Kerningham and Ritchie calling it UNIX in their C programming book has been removed, despite this clearly indicating it was called that originally. Someone has changed that to indicate upper case was a convention at the time, I accept is true. Either way, it was called UNIX when developed.
2) The operating system is trademarked at UNIX and not Unix. See the web site of the owners of the trademark.
See for example the trademark page.
http://www.unix.org/trademark.html
To quote from there:
The correct attribution is:
"UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group"
Given it was originally called UNIX and the current trademark owners refer to it as UNIX, any references to Unix or unix, which have occured in other publications should be treated as incorrect usage, and not as any authorative standard.
Although I'm not suggesting the following is in itself a good argument for the use of UNIX rather than Unix, a look at the manual pages (man pages) on a modern UNIX system (Sun's Solaris), clearly shows UNIX in the title of all the pages, except one, for 'brltty' which is a braille display driver - hardly very authoritave, since braile drivers are neither part of the UNIX specification nor developed by the original developers. In other words, that one is in error - all the sytem pages, produced by Sun, use UNIX and not Unix or unix.
Here are the UNIX related man pages on a modern UNIX system
teal /export/home/drkirkby % man -k unix authunix_create rpc_soc (3nsl) - obsolete library routines for RPC authunix_create_default rpc_soc (3nsl) - obsolete library routines for RPC crypt_unix crypt_unix (5) - traditional UNIX crypt algorithm cu cu (1c) - call another UNIX system dos2unix dos2unix (1) - convert text file from DOS format to ISO format kernel kernel (1m) - UNIX system executable file containing basic operating system services pam_unix_account pam_unix_account (5) - PAM account management module for UNIX pam_unix_auth pam_unix_auth (5) - PAM authentication module for UNIX pam_unix_cred pam_unix_cred (5) - PAM user credential authentication module for UNIX pam_unix_session pam_unix_session (5) - session management PAM module for UNIX un un.h (3head) - definitions for UNIX-domain sockets un.h un.h (3head) - definitions for UNIX-domain sockets unix2dos unix2dos (1) - convert text file from ISO format to DOS format uucp uucp (1c) - UNIX-to-UNIX system copy uuglist uuglist (1c) - print the list of service grades that are available on this UNIX system uulog uucp (1c) - UNIX-to-UNIX system copy uuname uucp (1c) - UNIX-to-UNIX system copy uupick uuto (1c) - public UNIX-to-UNIX system file copy uuto uuto (1c) - public UNIX-to-UNIX system file copy uux uux (1c) - UNIX-to-UNIX system command execution xdr_authunix_parms rpc_soc (3nsl) - obsolete library routines for RPC brltty brltty (1) - refreshable braille display driver for Linux/Unix
I've not edited the above list in any way, so some are not too relavant. Neither have I removed the single page on the braile display driver which does use Unix.
Overall, despite the fact UNIX, Unix and unix can all be found in publications, the fact remains it was originally called UNIX and the current trademark owner calls it UNIX.
PS, I guess I should have signed, this, so will do now Drkirkby 21:06, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
I agree -- Unix jaick 03:25, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
The article for PINE uses "Pine", the article for EMACS uses Emacs. Historically, these were in uppercase, too. -- 69.173.175.94 17:51, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
{{
cite book}}
: More than one of |pages=
and |page=
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help)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | → | Archive 8 |
The History section contains the sentence `Multics was highly innovative, braving many new computing frontiers for the first time, including the ability to serve several users from the same computing machine all at one time. It had many problems, but eventually Multics became a functional commercial product.' This statement has a couple of problematic issues.
1. Multics was definitely not the first system that that served `several users from the same computing machine'. The article on Time Sharing says that CTSS was demonstrated in 1961. (CTSS ran on a specially modified IBM 7094, and individual jobs were swapped in and out, so one could say that `at one time' in the Multics statement is intended to refer to multiple processes in memory, I suppose. I can provide a source for that, if anyone cares.) Perhaps the intention is to refer to virtual memory, in which case `first' probably refers to Atlas 2, at Cambridge, also in the mid-1960s. Other somewhat contemporaneous systems include TSS/360, the Michigan Terminal System, and CP/CMS, which was released in 1968, and whose successors are still current today. Probably what is meant in this statement is `serve many users', which was part of the `central computer utility' notion that was prevalent at the time. If we move away from general time-sharing systems (implied but not required by the original phrasing), then SABRE, demonstrated in 1960, certainly supported many users concurrently.
2. Multics didn't have many problems, or at least many more than other systems of the time. (IBM's TSS/360, in 1967, turned out to be too slow for supporting more than one user concurrently, and of course OS/360 was plagued with bugs and performance problems). There is a common myth that Multics `failed', but in fact the system was first described in 1965, released in the early 1970s, and lasted until 2000 (see the Multics article, which also quotes Peter Salus as saying that it `failed miserably'). However, the lifespan, in particular the 13 years after development ceased in which installations continued to use it, doesn't suggest failure. It's certainly true that AT&T management decided that the project wasn't relevant to them, and that's sufficient for Unix history.
I would prefer to say that Multics was an early innovative system, but that the developers had underestimated the resources needed to bring it to fruition.
Vmanis ( talk) 20:54, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
an example of a processing software —Preceding unsigned comment added by 110.55.7.125 ( talk) 10:30, 1 August 2010 (UTC)
D*n infobox has a "logo" field, so if we can't find a real logo, why, we make our own Wikiversion. Could we get an authenticated use of a Unix logo by The Open Group or whoever holds the trademark? -- Wtshymanski ( talk) 20:01, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Right, the article's pretty inconsistent about Unix and UNIX already, but if we're going to use UNIX anywhere it should be accompanied by the trademark. Can we get some solid ground rules for when and where the capitalisation (and trademark) should be used? Should pages which currently use the capitalisation be moved to include the trademark in the title? (is that even possible?) Chris Cunningham 12:41, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
So the system itself shouldn't ever have the trademark next to it? Is that MoS policy? It seems a bit odd to bother with a trademark symbol at all if it's never going to be attached to the thing it labels... Chris Cunningham 10:14, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
I notice that Programmable logic controller has chosen to use asterisks to denote that PLC is a registered trademark of Allen-Bradley, and Unix has chosen to use the extended ASCII registered trademark character. I'll let you guys duke it out, but we really shouldn't have two standards.-- Superluser 00:35, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
As an Australian technical writer for the last 20 years, I try to weed out 'Unix' wherever I find it and have been doing so since the mid 90s because I had to look for the correct capitalisation at the time and back then, found the ONLY usage was 'UNIX' (all capitals). All the installation media cited UNIX as did all the literature and on-line references by 'official' sources. Anything else was considered a mistake by those not knowing any better or who didn't care how they capitalised (developers, sys admin, PMs, business staff—you get the point I'm sure). Around 2002, I had to set up a new Trademarks section for another company and went through the references/TM process again and still only found 'legitimate' references to UNIX, but I DO remember being annoyed when I found the use of 'Unix' WAS now being shown, but only for 'Unix-like' operating systems (I'm sure that came from Wikipedia at the time). This disappointed me because I felt it pandered to the great unwashed who don't care how they spell or capitalise. So anyway, here I am again, looking for a definitive link to educated someone and I find the inmates are now running the asylum; so my question is: WHO authorised the change in Wikiperia from 'UNIX' to 'Unix'. What are their literary and grammar credentials. What does the Open Group say about it and if UNIX is going to be demeaned to Unix, then let's all throw the baby out with the bath water and simply call it unix. <sigh> Ask yourselves why you rarely see a professional author using the term Unix. We use UNIX (or sadly, I should say that we did). 220.237.96.213 ( bja) 00:38, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
In the Unix-FAQs (e.g.: FAQ 3.16) there are references to USG-Unix. Since I was not a Unix user at that time, I added what appears to me are the correct facts, but some brave soul, who remembers that terminology should check that. Treutwein ( talk) 12:47, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
The name Steven Gladstone was added to the list of folks from AT&T that developed Unix, but without a reference (but no one on the list is supported by references). Who is Steven Gladstone and did he work on Unix at Bell Labs/ATT? Sorry, if this is something that I should know. Jeff Ogden (W163) ( talk) 00:49, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
This sentence (or fragment I extracted) is very confusing:
"in the 1980s non-blocking I/O and the set of inter-process communication mechanisms was augmented"
It either means that both things were augmented in which it should say:
"in the 1980s the non-blocking I/O and the set of inter-process communication mechanisms were augmented"
Or it means that the second thing was augmented within the first thing in which it should say:
"in the 1980s non-blocking I/O the set of inter-process communication mechanisms was augmented"
Someone who knows the history and what this actually means should make the change.
Bugefun (
talk)
22:06, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
I wrote:
"Unix programmer's prefer Software prototyping, Rapid application development, Iterative and incremental development over the Waterfall model. Prototype before polishing. Get it working before you optimize it. [1]"
The Unix philosophy states that:
A user undid my version: "too general a statement - and not true. I am a Unix programmer, and I prefer the waterfall model"
-- Christopher Forster ( talk) 23:13, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
No Mention that Apple has by far the largest distribution of Unix. It is used on both Macintosh Mac OS X (75 Million?) and iOS (300 Million). These both feature BSD Unix. Which has passed all the UNIX approvals. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.149.31.231 ( talk) 13:53, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
In common with some others, I feel this should be referred to as UNIX, and not Unix. Arguments for this are:
1) It was originally called UNIX by the developers (my comment on the main page about Kerningham and Ritchie calling it UNIX in their C programming book has been removed, despite this clearly indicating it was called that originally. Someone has changed that to indicate upper case was a convention at the time, I accept is true. Either way, it was called UNIX when developed.
2) The operating system is trademarked at UNIX and not Unix. See the web site of the owners of the trademark.
See for example the trademark page.
http://www.unix.org/trademark.html
To quote from there:
The correct attribution is:
"UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group"
Given it was originally called UNIX and the current trademark owners refer to it as UNIX, any references to Unix or unix, which have occured in other publications should be treated as incorrect usage, and not as any authorative standard.
Although I'm not suggesting the following is in itself a good argument for the use of UNIX rather than Unix, a look at the manual pages (man pages) on a modern UNIX system (Sun's Solaris), clearly shows UNIX in the title of all the pages, except one, for 'brltty' which is a braille display driver - hardly very authoritave, since braile drivers are neither part of the UNIX specification nor developed by the original developers. In other words, that one is in error - all the sytem pages, produced by Sun, use UNIX and not Unix or unix.
Here are the UNIX related man pages on a modern UNIX system
teal /export/home/drkirkby % man -k unix authunix_create rpc_soc (3nsl) - obsolete library routines for RPC authunix_create_default rpc_soc (3nsl) - obsolete library routines for RPC crypt_unix crypt_unix (5) - traditional UNIX crypt algorithm cu cu (1c) - call another UNIX system dos2unix dos2unix (1) - convert text file from DOS format to ISO format kernel kernel (1m) - UNIX system executable file containing basic operating system services pam_unix_account pam_unix_account (5) - PAM account management module for UNIX pam_unix_auth pam_unix_auth (5) - PAM authentication module for UNIX pam_unix_cred pam_unix_cred (5) - PAM user credential authentication module for UNIX pam_unix_session pam_unix_session (5) - session management PAM module for UNIX un un.h (3head) - definitions for UNIX-domain sockets un.h un.h (3head) - definitions for UNIX-domain sockets unix2dos unix2dos (1) - convert text file from ISO format to DOS format uucp uucp (1c) - UNIX-to-UNIX system copy uuglist uuglist (1c) - print the list of service grades that are available on this UNIX system uulog uucp (1c) - UNIX-to-UNIX system copy uuname uucp (1c) - UNIX-to-UNIX system copy uupick uuto (1c) - public UNIX-to-UNIX system file copy uuto uuto (1c) - public UNIX-to-UNIX system file copy uux uux (1c) - UNIX-to-UNIX system command execution xdr_authunix_parms rpc_soc (3nsl) - obsolete library routines for RPC brltty brltty (1) - refreshable braille display driver for Linux/Unix
I've not edited the above list in any way, so some are not too relavant. Neither have I removed the single page on the braile display driver which does use Unix.
Overall, despite the fact UNIX, Unix and unix can all be found in publications, the fact remains it was originally called UNIX and the current trademark owner calls it UNIX.
PS, I guess I should have signed, this, so will do now Drkirkby 21:06, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
I agree -- Unix jaick 03:25, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
The article for PINE uses "Pine", the article for EMACS uses Emacs. Historically, these were in uppercase, too. -- 69.173.175.94 17:51, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
{{
cite book}}
: More than one of |pages=
and |page=
specified (
help)