hi, Jack: I know the guy who wrote this <geekdom rules!> ... he's a BMW motorcylist <g> and first posted this to WetLeather (the MC social group that's composed of lots of UNIX-and-other-computer geeks). He lives on Whidbey Island and is a UNIX admin in Everett. It's TRUE, not an urban legend. > ---------- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED][SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Friday, September 04, 1998 2:40 PM > To: Web Consultants List > Subject: WC:>: NT Unix shell story > > Hi All, > > Here's a humorous story I got from my devnull/geek news list. No > credits on > it because I couldn't determine the original author. > > ---------------- > I've been attending the USENIX NT and LISA NT (Large Installation > Systems > Administration for NT) conference in downtown Seattle this week. > > One of those magical Microsoft moments(tm) happened yesterday and I > thought that I'd share. Non-geeks may not find this funny at all, but > those in geekdom (particularly UNIX geekdom) will appreciate it. > > Greg Sullivan, a Microsoft product manager (henceforth MPM), was > holding > forth on a forthcoming product that will provide Unix style scripting > and > shell services on NT for compatibility and to leverage UNIX expertise > that > moves to the NT platform. The product suite includes the MKS (Mortise > Kern Systems) windowing Korn shell, a windowing PERL, and lots of > goodies > like awk, sed and grep. It actually fills a nice niche for which > other > products (like the MKS suite) have either been too highly priced or > not > well enough integrated. > > An older man, probably mid-50s, stands up in the back of the room and > asserts that Microsoft could have done better with their choice of > Korn > shell. He asks if they had considered others that are more compatible > with existing UNIX versions of KSH. > > The MPM said that the MKS shell was pretty compatible and should be > able > to run all UNIX scripts. > > The questioner again asserted that the MKS shell was not very > compatible > and didn't do a lot of things right that are defined in the KSH > language > spec. > > The MPM asserted again that the shell was pretty compatible and should > work quite well. > > This assertion and counter assertion went back and forth for a bit, > when > another fellow member of the audience announced to the MPM that the > questioner was, in fact David Korn of AT&T (now Lucent) Bell Labs. > (David > Korn is the author of the Korn shell) > > Uproarious laughter burst forth from the audience, and it was one of > the > only times that I have seen a (by then pink cheeked) MPM lost for > words > or momentarily lacking the usual unflappable confidence. So, what's a > body > to do when Microsoft reality collides with everyone elses? > ------------- > > Kathy Kathy E. Gill DCAC/MRM Web -- 425.234.2004, pager 425.568.0195 Empty pockets never held a man back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that. - Norman Vincent Peale Microsoft Exchange: the perfect name for its users' greatest desire! ____________________________________________________________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------- Join The Web Consultants Association : Register on our web site Now Web Consultants Web Site : http://just4u.com/webconsultants If you lose the instructions All subscription/unsubscribing can be done directly from our website for all our lists. ---------------------------------------------------------------------
