A lot of this won't seem funny to non-Multicians. (No offense is intended toany member ofany group by these items.)
Multics Man
Here is theMultics Man comic, done by an artist namedT R Kenney while he was at Honeywell FSO. Haven't been able to track him down to ask permission, but I hope he will accept the thanks of Multicians everywhere for drawing it.
Multics Man cover (65K)
There is also a9-panel comic strip. (54K)
God-like Master Multics Programming
Raphael Frommer proposed the following Multics Education course on 3/3/80:
- Title: God-like Master Multics Programming
- Code: F15Z
- Intended for: gurus,daemon-worshipers, masochists, people who speak toBSG daily
- Prerequisites: 10 years on Multics, PhD inLatin, 200 IQ, or equivalent experience
- Major topics:
- PL/1 to LISP translation
LISP to Latin translation
Ring 7 implementation of hell
The influence of Emmanuel Kant onpxss
Evidence ofMR 9.0 in the Old and New Testaments
The relationship between system crashes and user-community absolution
Request for Comedy
The following was circulated anonymously atMIT Project MAC in the mid-70s. Thanks toSammy Migues for unearthing it.
Computer Systems Research Division Request for Comedy No. 0TITLES FOR PEOPLE INVOLVED WITH MULTICSbyanonymous.CompSys.aNow that Multics is a marketed product, there seems to bea need for some formal titles that express one's level ofinvolvement with Multics. How about the following for astart:User - one who learns something more about Multics every time he logs in.Multician - one who knows a fair amount about several phases of the Multics design; a jack of all trades, master of none.Multicologist - one who studies part of the Multics design in depth, unearthing relics of the past, and making exciting discoveries daily.Multometrist - one who measures and characterizes, compares and scrutinizes, Multices.Multical Theorist - one who is able to talk about Multics without once referring topxss, ipc, page, or hcs.Operator - one who is certain to know less about Multics than you do._______________This note is a formal non-working paper of the Project MACComputer Systems Research Division. It should be reproducedand distributed wherever levity is lacking, and may bereferenced at your own risk.
A Multics Psalm
TheOverseer is my shepherd,I shall not get bumped.He maketh me to handleQUITs gracefully,He leadeth me past all error conditions.He restoreth mystack frame.He leadeth me into innerrings for my process's sake.Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow ofGCOS,I will fear no preemption, for theInitializer is with me.ACLs andAIM, they comfort me.He preparest aprocess before me in the presence of other users.He anointest my session with guaranteed_login,Myquota never runneth over.Surely security and data integrity will follow me all the daysof my registration, and I shall dwell in the house of MULTICSforever.
[Scott adds:] The Psalm is published inSociology, a Text Reader (2nd ed) by Brabant, Forsyth, Gramling and Mooney. The book is put out by Ginn Press (at least, the first edition was; now it's in its 4th printing) or maybe it's called Simon and Schuster Custom Publishing. The article in which it appears is "The Computer as a Construct of Social Reality" by Sarah Brabant.
Another Multics Psalm
Found the following in
ftp://ftp.sdsc.edu/pub/other/multics/:
OurSupervisor, Who art inRing 0,Multics be thy name,Thybooting come; thycommands be done,Inabsentee as it is in interactive.Give us this day our daily quota,And forgive us all our ring violations,as we forgive those who bump us.And lead us not into ring 7,But deliver us fromGCOS.For Thine is theroot and the MIP rate and the hierarchyForever and ever (or until the next release).Foo.
It was a TIFF file in old-English type. Any idea who wrote it? SDSC is San Diego Supercomputer Center.
Unix and Multics
Multics is mentioned in the widely reprinted 1991 gag CREATORS ADMIT UNIX, C HOAX
-- Joseph M. Oglesby
OS comparisons to classical literature
- Multics -Iliad
- Full of heroes & exploits.
Modern firepower renders most of its tactics obsolete. - Unix -Aeneid
- Studied in more classrooms than the Iliad.
Doesn't make it better or more of a success.
Different language, different cultural matrix, different goals. - OS/360 -Internal revenue code
- Widely studied but only a few consider it epic.
- MSDOS -Gilligan's Island
- Mac OS -Cheers
- Windows -Married, With Children
Hardcore Joke
What's purple and runs in ring zero?
wired_plm
--submitted byBob Mullen. Who'll own up to this one?
The Twelve Days of Multics
(sung to the tune ofThe Twelve Days of Christmas)
On the twelfth day of MULTICS
My true love sent to me:
Twelve analysts twitching,
Eleven options switching,
Ten stacks a-popping,
Nine aids debugging,
Eight tapes attaching,
Seven DIM's a-dimming,
SixITS a-pointing,
Five protection rings,
Four calling sequences,
Threelink pairs,
Two system dumps,
And a file tree hierarchy!
-- submitted byDon Yuniskis
-- Doug Quebbeman writes: "I've found a MulticsBASIC program with a creation date back in 1978, and the source lists Joseph W. Dehn III as the program author..."
Personal Ad
in 1983 while atGM I did an ad in theDetroit Metro Times that made it all the way to Phx, and Wash DC:
SWM (Straight White Multician) seeks interactive female to respond to my every command. Into binding, probing and peripheral I/O. ... No freaks or weirdos.
-- Brian Henk
Cookie Table
what site would be complete without a cookie table? here are some that I came up with:
L{in~re N~r{oise}window_wakeup_waiver_: Window wakeup was waived when wegionwas wipped.fim_fault_flag_facility_: FallaciousFIM fault flag found.abacus_util_$abacus_math: Fixed bead overflow.abacus_util_$abacus_math: Fixed bead underflow.abacus_util_: Attempt to divide.absentee_abort_action_: Attempted action aborted andadmonished.command_processor_: Trite expression encountered.dcl num dewey_decimal (72);Have you yanked your minibuffer lately?emaques: Not in French mode.dewey_decimal_util_$generic_add: Attempt to addfictional/non-fictional numbersdim_device_driver_daemon_: DIM driver daemon doesn't drivedetached device.error_table_$faux_pasobscure_object_organizer_: Object organization out of originalorder.pick_page_pin_postorder_: Perprocess pinned picked pagespreviously paired.raw_ring_record_retriever_: Relative recursive referenceresolved.ring_zero_sneek_peek_: Attempt to sneek peek at ring-0.task_trap_timer_taboo_: The task trap toggle timer 'twastranscended.raw_ring_record_retriever_: Relative recursive referenceresolved..edom oediv esrever ni si lanimret ehT :_oi_lanimretAnother JERK is now logging in from DCA terminal 'none'. EUNUCHS: COULD NOT PERFORM CRITICAL PERIPHERAL I/O.EI$:()I%:<>I[:{}I;*-@I#:OE - Indian Totem smiley&:^=[ - A. Hilter(:-E= - Shroud of Turin-- Brian Henk
ENWGS Humor
Robert Matern preserved several examples ofMultics humor from NWGS, enough to merit their own page.
Multics Is Not An Acronym
Jerry Saltzer was very firm about this: it's not an acronym. It's supposed to be a (new) English word. (It's in the Oxford English Dictionary.) But some wag early on in the history of the project at MIT suggested that Multics stood for "ManyUnnecessaryLongTablesInCoreSimultaneously" in allusion to the then-striking complexity of data-structure required for the management of the system's ground-breakingvirtual memory. While the virtual memory itself reduced the amount of data that actually had to be incore (main memory), the size of theSST, which contained thepage tables, limited the actual number of long tables thatcould be in core simultaneously. At any rate, there were means of managing their lengths, and none of them were unnecessary.
--bsg 12/3/98
Titian
There once was an artist named TitianWho worked like a futureMultician.With models ramshackle,He'd just change theirACL,And give them allaccess permission.
--Peter Neumann 02/23/99
Multics and Mr. Rogers
Multics and Mr. Rogers both retired in the same month, October 2000. Angela Gunn wrote a cute article about this coincidence for theSeattle Weekly.
-- Angela Gunn
A Child's Garden of Multics
Contained in a file namedCGM.poetry, dated 2/11/1981, no author listed, from the MITSIPB Multics files, submitted byDouglas Quebbeman.
If all the world werecore stores,
And input fell in rains,
And trees were file hierarchies,
Would we still need our brains?
Multics was muddled;
Programmers befuddled.
The files ignored the drumDIM.
The overseer whipped every primitive.
And I/O ran away in theGIM.
Mary had a little code
To check out with a file.
She sat at a1050
For quite a while.
The janitor found Mary
In 1983
Still trying to run checkout
With no priority.
Sing a song of Multics
And problems to explore.
Four and twenty modules,
Won't fit into core.
IfEPL is tightened,
These modules just might fly.
Until they do, this project
Still is pure blue sky.
Hickory dickory dock
We've brought up the calendarclock.
Though it's Gregorian,
Any historian
Can program odd ticks to each tock.
Ring gatekeeper sat in a wall
But failed to reject each invalid call.
All the procedures in ring one and two
Wound up inring zero with Multics in a stew.
Library, library,
This process
Should compute a maximum stress.
Why does it give me my home address?
Library, library,
This process.
EPL breeds object code,
Object code, object code.
EPL breeds object code
Like a rabbit.
Program it with hormone pills,
Hormone pills, hormone pills,
Program it with hormone pills.
Break this habit.
Little programmer
Sat with a grammar.
Wrote a language he called NPL.
It was potent, presentable,
And so unimplementable,
That he laughed all the way back to hell.
Core store, core store, ever more core,
How does each process grow?
Withwired-down code
In master mode
And data bases all in a row.
SimpleDaemon
Got a gleam in
His one and only eye.
"Human users
Are system abusers."
He said, with a sigh.
"My only recourse is
All system resources
To daemons I shall tie."
Poor Mr. Bonsell
Sat at his console,
Writing a Multics command.
He couldn't log in
When the audit system
Sent out a back payments demand.
Backup, backup
Have you any dumps?
User, user,
we've written them in clumps,
Incremental, checkpoint,
And singlesegment too.
If you're still not happy,
We'll write one just for you.
Rockabye process;
Back to the file.
Restart has scheduled you
In just a while.
When on the ready list
You reach the top,
Back on a processor
Once more you'll pop.
Oh where, oh where is queue control?
Oh where, oh where can it be?
With its functions split up
Among D I M's
It's gone out of section BG.
As I was going on the drum,
I met a process that just had run.
This process had seven files;
Each file had seven pages;
Each page had sixty-four words;
Each word had thirty-six bits.
What am I doing on the drum.
One process group.
See how it will run.
Run on a 6 4 5 processor.
Blocked behind and blocked to the fore;
No process to wake it; 'twill run never more.
One process group.
A pair of ITS
Has dropped some bits,
And no one yet has missed them.
Find them again
Or some path may remain
Ever unknown to the system.
Pussycat, pussycat where have you been?
"AtTechnology Square I've been making the scene."
"Man I wrote command code so no dogs can log in,
And a library rodent retrieval routine."
With bootstrap, loader, trigger set,
All needed checkout done,
With core enough and hardware up,
'Twas time to checkPhase One.
The Operator pressed bootload;
Programmers cried, "A toast!"
Just as power failures blacked out
The entire Northeast coast.
Don Wagner has a paper copy, attributed toJackie Bash, a tech writer for GECISL, about 1966.
The PW Stankee Order
Multics Marketing had its own moments of humor. The lateRon Riedesel provided us with thisletter and response (731KB PDF). You can guess where Ron grew up.