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1 Unix The World’s First Computer Virus “Two of the most famous products of Berkeley are LSD and Unix. I don’t think that this is a coincidence.” —Anonymous Viruses compete by being as small and as adaptable as possible. They aren’t very complex: rather than carry around the baggage necessary for arcane tasks like respiration, metabolism, and locomotion, they only have enough DNA or RNA to get themselves replicated. For example, any par- ticular influenza strain is many times smaller than the cells it infects, yet it successfully mutates into a new strain about every other flu season. Occa- sionally, the virulence goes way up, and the resulting epidemic kills a few million people whose immune systems aren’t nimble enough to kill the invader before it kills them. Most of the time they are nothing more than a minor annoyance—unavoidable, yet ubiquitous. The features of a good virus are: • Small Size Viruses don’t do very much, so they don't need to be very big. Some folks debate whether viruses are living creatures or just pieces of destructive nucleoic acid and protein.

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xxxvi Anti-Foreword patible with the existing ones, albeit with more features. The journalist with three undergraduate degrees from MIT, the researcher at Microsoft, and the senior scientist at Apple might volunteer a few words about the regulations of the prisons to which they have been transferred. Your sense of the possible is in no sense pure: sometimes you want the same thing you have, but wish you had done it yourselves other times you want something different, but can't seem to get people to use it sometimes one wonders why you just don't shut up and tell people to buy a PC with Windows or a Mac. No Gulag or lice, just a future whose intellectual tone and interaction style is set by Sonic the Hedgehog. You claim to seek progress, but you succeed mainly in whining. Here is my metaphor: your book is a pudding stuffed with apposite observations, many well-conceived. Like excrement, it contains enough undigested nuggets of nutrition to sustain life for some. But it is not a tasty pie: it reeks too much of contempt and of envy. Bon appetit!

xxxvii

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Page 1The UNIX- HATERS Handbook click to expand contents

Page 3The UNIX- HATERS Handbook click to expand contents

Page 17Foreword click to expand contents

Page 21Preface click to expand contents

Page 37Anti-Foreword click to expand contents

Page 43Unix click to expand contents

Page 57Welcome, New User! click to expand contents

Page 83Documentation? click to expand contents

Page 101Mail click to expand contents

Page 131Snoozenet click to expand contents

Page 149Terminal Insanity click to expand contents

Page 161The X-Windows Disaster click to expand contents

Page 185csh, pipes, and find click to expand contents

Page 211Programming click to expand contents

Page 239C++ click to expand contents

Page 257System Administration click to expand contents

Page 279Security click to expand contents

Page 295The File System click to expand contents

Page 315NFS click to expand contents

Page 335Epilogue click to expand contents

Page 337Creators Admit C, Unix Were Hoax click to expand contents

Page 341The Rise of Worse Is Better click to expand contents

Page 347Bibliography click to expand contents

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