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kottke.org posts about Unix

“It’s a Unix system, I know this”

posted by Jason Kottke   Jul 22, 2015

Jurassic Park OS

Hold onto your butts, gang… I just found out, via Pixar’s Michael B. Johnson, that the 3D file manager that Lex uses in Jurassic Park — “It’s a Unix system, I know this” — was a real thing. FSN (File System Navigator) was a demo tool for Silicon Graphics’ IRIX operating system that you could download from their web site.

P.S. In that same thread, Johnson shares that his office was the inspiration for Dennis Nedry’s work area.

Where’s “sudo make me a sandwich”?

posted by Jason Kottke   Mar 24, 2009

Command-Line-Fu is an archive of the “best UNIX commands on the Web”. The “sort by votes” page is a trove of what the community there thinks are the best commands. (via paul)

1234567890 Day

posted by Jason Kottke   Feb 11, 2009

This Friday, in addition to being Friday, is also 1234567890 Day. At 6:31 pm EST on that day, the Unix time will be 1234567890.

Unix time [is] defined as the number of seconds elapsed since midnight Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) of January 1, 1970, not counting leap seconds. It is widely used not only on Unix-like operating systems but also in many other computing systems.

(via scribbling)

25-year-old computer bug fixed

posted by Jason Kottke   May 14, 2008

A developer just fixed a bug in the BSD flavor of Unix that had gone undiscovered for 25 years. I guess it finally accrued enough eyeballs to make it shallow.

Ken Thompson built a backdoor into the “

posted by Jason Kottke   Apr 17, 2007

Ken Thompson built a backdoor into the “login” Unix program by inserting commands into the C compiler that ensured that not only would the backdoor code be inserted into the login program, but also into the C compiler itself when compiled.

For a rainy day: learning the Unix shell.

posted by Jason Kottke   Feb 23, 2007

For a rainy day: learning the Unix shell.

Nerd cartoon: “Sudo make me a sandwich.”

posted by Jason Kottke   Sep 26, 2006

Nerd cartoon: “Sudo make me a sandwich.”

Overheard: woman issues “rm -r *” command over the phone.

posted by Jason Kottke   Jun 28, 2006

Overheard: woman issues “rm -r *” command over the phone.

Hot topless girls spotted on the beach

posted by Jason Kottke   Jun 15, 2006

Hot topless girls spotted on the beach reading a UNIX book. NSFW.

Misleading article on how to look like a Unix guru

posted by Jason Kottke   Jul 14, 2005

Misleading article on how to look like a Unix guru. I thought this was going to contain advice on maintaining a long, gray beard and such.