[2439] in Humor
M$ and ksh
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Joseph Sokol-Margolis)
Thu Sep 3 12:51:18 1998
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 03 Sep 1998 12:48:10 EDT
From: Joseph Sokol-Margolis <seph@MIT.EDU>
I have not verified this.
-seph
------- Forwarded Message
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1998 00:29:03 -0600 (MDT)
From: steve <armijo@cs.unm.edu>
Subject: [Fwd: True is stranger than fiction] (fwd)
> 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? Next topic for demonstration, please...
>
>
> --
> Steve Armijo (armijo@cs.unm.edu)
> CS System Support Group
> cssupport@cs.unm.edu
------- End of Forwarded Message
