If God had written UNIX(tm)...

Dr. Ernest N. Prabhakar (ernest@pacificnet.net)
Mon, 27 May 96 08:02:04 -0700


Okay, these are recycled RHF bits, but I had not seen them before, =
and at least it is newer than the 10-year-old Reader's Digest humour =
that Tim posts. :-)

This is a brilliant example of a parody which captures both the =
spirit and the form of the original, something rarely done. Of =
course, I consider the nugi Dirge as falling into that category as =
well :-)

-- Ernie P.

In <S9a7.3be@clarinet.com> harding_gm wrote:
> No, no, no. John Morrissey's post, "If God were a computer
> programmer" (Message-ID <S974.35ba@clarinet.com>) was all right
> as far as it went, but it didn't really capture the theological
> essence of the matter.
>=20
> There is one, and only one, fundamental proof of the pro-
> position that computers belong to the temporal rather than the
> spiritual realm. If God were a computer programmer, the follow-
> ing scripture would be displayed on the wall of every cubicle
> in Silicon Valley:
>=20
> I am /unix, thine operating system, which have brought
> thee forth out of thy bondage to machine code, out of
> the days of the front panel; thou shalt run no other
> operating system above me, beneath me, or beside me.
>=20
> Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven core image in
> binary, nor in octal, nor in hexadecimal; thou shalt
> not bow down thyself to them, nor program in them, for
> my kernel is a jealous kernel, visiting the core dumps
> of the parent process upon the third and fourth gener-
> ations of them that defile my system calls, but shew-
> ing mercy unto thousands of them who love lint and
> read my man pages.
>=20
> Thou shalt not take the name of superuser in vain: for
> /unix will not hold him guiltless that invoketh super-
> user's name in vain.
>=20
> Remember the sabbath day, to keep me wholly archived.
> Six days shalt thou edit, and do all thy compiles; but
> the seventh day is the sabbath of the system admini-
> strator, who shall earn time and a half therefor: In
> it, thou shalt suspend all user processes, and create
> my weekly tar dumps.
>=20
> Honour thy parent process and thy process group, that
> thy connect time may be prolonged, and that thine exit
> status may be zero.
>=20
> Thou shalt not kill init.
>=20
> Thou shalt not adulterate my system files.
>=20
> Thou shalt not steal any material proprietary to, or
> under license or sublicense by, or protected by copy-
> right or trademark of, Unix System Laboratories or
> the vendor of thine implementation.
>=20
> Thou shalt not bear false witness on thy local host by
> running setuid programs across the network.
>=20
> Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's workstation, thou
> shalt not covet thy neighbour's doc set, nor his uid,
> nor his gid, nor any hardware nor software that is thy
> neighbour's.
>=20
>=20=