• Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Reed

    I apologize for having to correct you, sir - but as anybody can see it should be /var/bus as it is a temporarily served file of computers.



  • (cs)

    You've got to love people with business degrees.

  • (cs) in reply to Volmarias
    Volmarias:
    that poor man spam!

    What about him?
  • (cs)

    In linux at least, there's no reason you couldn't create a device node in /etc/

    Anyway, if they have put a / at the end (/etc/bus/) then it would have been fine... The bus was containing a collection of demo systems of various CONFIGURATIONS. ;-)

  • gl (unregistered)

    Well, come on, this is Big Blue after all.  Their systems don't have a lowly 'bus'.  You have to call it a 'channel'.

     Just like you have to call their disk drives DASDs.
     

  • (cs) in reply to aquanight

    OMG, I can't believe you guys are arguing about what directory 'bus' should go into...

  • Chris Preston (unregistered) in reply to jer

    Anonymous wrote: #!/bus/(Insert company name here)

    Were the bangbus videos around back then? That would have been a truly monumental W T F!

  • Hawke (unregistered) in reply to EvanED

    To be picky, a buss has wires, a bus has wheels.

    On another note. Many years ago I was involved in writing programs for an 8 bit home micro (Spectravideo) that a company was trying to sell. I think the marketing droid didn't quite get the idea of an 8 bit buss / byte or whatever. I don't know what was thinking but one slogan he came up with was "only six bits". Those of us with a bit more knowledge privately called him "six bits" forever after.

  • Chris Preston (unregistered) in reply to jer

    And now the properly formatted reply (I hope):

    Anonymous:
    I cant believe you guys are arguing about this. Clearly it should have been:

    #!/bus/(Insert company name here)

    :)


    Were the bangbus videos around back then? That would have been a truly monumental W T F!
    This forum software needs a preview feature...
  • Jon (unregistered)

    I think there's a pretty good argument for calling it the /tmp/bus.

  • (cs) in reply to Rhamphoryncus
    Anonymous:

    According to wikpedia, "ex cetera" is a common mispronunciation. 

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Et_cetera

     

    (Woo, first post!  No no, *my* first post..)

    This is news to me... I have NEVER seen or heard etc. pronounced "ex cetera".

  • (cs) in reply to Chris Preston
    Anonymous:

    This forum software needs a preview feature...

    There is one. Enable javascript (at least for TDWTF), and you see a "Preview" tab.

  • Smith (unregistered) in reply to arno.

    As I understand it, "/etc/" stands for: Editable Text Configuration

     

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    bus is in /proc anyway.


    Rich
     

     

    How has nobody else realized this?  It doesn't belong in /etc, /dev, /usr, /opt, or /home.

     

    The bloody directory actually exists already, and it exists in /proc!

    /sys works even better - it's the system bus!

     

    Thank you, thank you, I'm here all week. 

  • RJ (unregistered) in reply to Smith
    Anonymous:

    As I understand it, "/etc/" stands for: Editable Text Configuration

    Have you seen the contents of /etc on RedHat? I think they misunderstood it as "Every Thing Confusing". And, speaking of the latin meaning "and so forth", it wouldn't suprise me if there is some actual Forth in there.

  • Cheong (unregistered) in reply to Rich
    Anonymous:

    bus is in /proc anyway.


    Rich
     

    Actually, there are three "buses" in a origional linux system.

    1) /dev/bus

    2) /proc/bus

    3) /sys/bus (for those kernel version > 2.6 systems)

     I think /home/bus can be good, but /sys/bus is also a good one, as that is a transportation system anyway.
     

  • Cheong (unregistered) in reply to Smith
    Anonymous:

    As I understand it, "/etc/" stands for: Editable Text Configuration

     

    I guess that makes /etc/selinux/modules/{active,previous} a wrong place then... 

  • sha (unregistered) in reply to unklegwar

    Now thats the funniest post i've read so far!!  wtg

  • Your Name (unregistered) in reply to Otto

    He should have known it was a SIGTRAP instead of a SIGBUS. Of course it ended as a SIGABRT after the marketroids started using some nonstandard undocumented SIGUSR1's.

     ps: Thank god for SIGTERM limits.

     

     

  • (cs) in reply to unklegwar
    unklegwar:

    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    the point is that there is actually a folder in a unix system

    OK, that's a forfeit.  Unix systems don't have "folders", they have "directories".  Please by a round for the table.

     

    A rose by any other name....

    Same concept different name. Is it Soda or Pop? Gas or Petrol? Folder or Directory?

    I suspect you're one of the market droids who tried to cram bus into /etc.

    folderent.h anyone?
     

  • Andy (unregistered) in reply to ranthoron
    ranthoron:
    unklegwar:

    isn't "etc" short for "et cetera", "et" being latin for "and"?

    Yes, and "cetera" means "other (things)". 

    Nevertheless, /etc surely isn't a garage...

    For me that was (and still is) one of the most confusing things about UNIX file systems, because my definition of things filed under "etc" is everything that doesn't fit into other categories, but configuration files definitely belong to the category "configuration". I think I will never get behind the mystery of the reason for configuration files *not* being stored under "/config" or "/cfg" or whatever.

  • (cs) in reply to Samah
    Samah:

    This is news to me... I have NEVER seen or heard etc. pronounced "ex cetera".

    I've always pronounced it like eck-set-urr-uh.

    (Am I the only one who notices that ASP programs are monumental WTFs more often than those written in PHP?

  • Hinek (unregistered)
    No, we've got it right. "/etc" is short for "ex cetera," which means "something additional."
    Alex, please correct this to "et cetera" before you have a thousand comments about the correct spelling of the words. 
  • (cs) in reply to Steve
    Anonymous:
    Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Over.:

    Anonymous:
    This is just an anecdote, its definitely not a WTF.

    The real WTF is your post.

    Quit bringing us down with your "logic" and "reasoning"! It was an amusing story for IT geeks. Enjoy it.

     
    My point exactly.

     


    Amusing story = Anecdote
     

    Amusing story != WTF.

     

     

    And I did enjoy it. 



    The real WTF is people who can't stand losing an argument, who rehash the argument again and again, every time declaring victory.
  • (cs) in reply to Jon

     Re: /tmp/bus
     

    So, the bus is volitile data - once used the bus blows up?

  • anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Mr Ascii

    % make fire

    Make: Don't know how to make fire. Stop.

    % why not?

    No match.

    % gotta light?

    No match.

    % How's my lovemaking?

    Unmatched '.

    % "How would you rate Bush's incompetence?

    Unmatched ".

    % [Where is Jimmy Hoffa?

    Missing ].

    % [Where is my brain?

    Missing ].

    % ^How did the sex change^ operation go?

    Modifier failed.

    % ^How did the sex change operation go?

    Bad substitute.

    % If I had a ( for every $ Congress spent, what would I have?

    Too many ('s.

    % man: why did you get a divorce?

    man:: Too many arguments.

    % %blow

    %blow: No such job.

    % \(-

    (-: Command not found.

    % sh

    $ PATH=pretending! /usr/ucb/which sense

    no sense in pretending!

    $ mkdir matter; cat >matter

    matter: cannot create

    % cd /tmp

    % touch this; chmod 000 this

    % ln -s /usr/bin/touch U

    % U this

    U: cannot touch this: no write permission

    % rm meese-ethics

    rm: meese-ethics nonexistent

    % cd ~god

    Unknown user: god.

    % ar m God

    ar: God does not exist

    % make love

    Make: Don't know how to make love. Stop.

    % sleep with me

    bad character

    % ^What is saccharine?

    Bad substitute.

    % drink bottle: cannot open

    opener: not found

    % alias alias alias

    alias: Too dangerous to alias that.

    % cat catfood

    cat: cannot open catfood

    % cat "food in cans"

    cat: can't open food in cans

    % nice man woman

    No manual entry for woman.

    % man p***y

    No manual entry for p***y.

    % rm God

    rm: God nonexistent

    % ar r God

    ar: creating God

    % Unmatched ".

    Unmatched ".

    % write desert

    desert is not logged on.

    % man you

    No manual entry for you.

    % !bluemoon

    bluemoon: Event not found.

    % scan for "Arnold Schwarzenegger": % cat 'the can of tuna'

    cat: cannot open the can of tuna

    % rm Quayle-brains

    rm: Quayle-brains nonexistent

    % cat "door: paws too slippery"

    cat: cannot open door: paws too slippery

    % look into "my eyes"

    look: cannot open my eyes

    % lost

    lost: not found

    % make war

    Make: Don't know how to make war. Stop.

    % mkdir yellow_pages; cat > yellow_pages

    yellow_pages: Is a directory

    %touch me

    %chmod 000 me

    %touch me

    touch: cannot touch me: permission denied

    % ar x "my love life"

    ar: my love life does not exist

    % ar x "matey, the treasure"

    ar: matey, the tresure does not exist

    % talk Gorvachev@Kremlin

    talk: Kremlin: Can't figure out network address.

    % talk Comrade Khruchev

    [Your party is not logged on]

    make "bottle open"

    make "heads or tails of all this"

    make love

    make mistake

    make sense

    man woman

    man -kisses dog

    % echo

    '[q]sa[ln0=aln256%Pln256/snlbx]sb31350717901017685 42287578439snlbxq'|dc

    GET A LIFE!

    % ping elvis.rice.edu | awk '{print substr($1,1,5), $2, $3}'

    elvis is alive

    % finger [email protected]

    Unknown host

    % finger huge-keg-party@big-house

    Unknown host

    % make ' ' bang ' ' with gun

    make: Fatal error: Don't know how to make target ` '

  • TommyG (unregistered) in reply to anonymous

    Is this really worthy of a spot on this site? Students are expected to do a lot of stupid stuff. That is the reason they are students, and don't yet have any experience.

  • (cs) in reply to anonymous
    Anonymous:

    % make fire

    Make: Don't know how to make fire. Stop.

    % why not?

    No match.

    And so on...

    Yeah, OK... Someone found one of those computer funnies sites. A pile of those are repeats of the same joke with slightly different wording.

    I did like the echo one that spits out "GET A LIFE!" though.

  • Jakub Narebski (unregistered)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    [image]Steve tried to explain what "/etc" is actually used for -- configuration and system administration related things -- but didn't really go anywhere. Thankfully, neither did the "/etc/bus." The project was canceled and Steve learned to keep marketing ideas to himself.

    Perhaps he should explain that "etc = editable text configuration" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//etc

  • (cs)

    Stick it in "My Computer\Control Panel" and be done with it...
     

  • Renan renan_s2 (unregistered) in reply to anonymous
    Anonymous:

    % make love

    Make: Don't know how to make love. Stop.

     

    This joke is old and don't work in most recent UNIX. This under Cygwin: 

    renan@renan ~$ make fire
    make: *** No rule to make target `fire'.  Stop.

       

    Captcha: mustache. Like the UNIX gurus have.
     

  • dasmb (unregistered) in reply to Slippery Jim
    Anonymous:

    A bus is just a set of wires. It plugs into a bridge.

     

    Um, this kind of bus is more than a set of wires.  I think there might be an internal combustion engine in there at a minimum, possibly some kind of pneumatic system for absorbing shock.

    It does encounter bridges, but rarely does it plug into one.

     

  • Franz Kafka (unregistered) in reply to unklegwar
    unklegwar:

    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    the point is that there is actually a folder in a unix system

    OK, that's a forfeit.  Unix systems don't have "folders", they have "directories".  Please by a round for the table.

     

    A rose by any other name....

    Same concept different name. Is it Soda or Pop? Gas or Petrol? Folder or Directory?

     

    This is Unix - it's a directory. Start calling it a folder and people will wonder what other jargon you mangled because 'It's all the same thing, anyway' 

  • (cs) in reply to dasmb
    Anonymous:

    It does encounter bridges, but rarely does it plug into one.

     

    And when they do, there are rarely any survivors. Collision detection failures don't help people in that case either.

    Oh no. I could probably go on.

  • (cs)

    Marketer: No, we've got it right. "/etc" is short for "ex cetera," which means "something additional." Therefore, "/etc/bus" is a perfectly correct name.

    This is why technology businesses should be run by people who know and use technology. 

  • Mads Hvelplund (unregistered)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    The project was canceled and Steve learned to keep marketing ideas to himself.

    Steve should learn to keep his boring Unix warstories in /dev/null .
     

  • (cs) in reply to Slippery Jim

    Anonymous:
    A bus is just a set of wires. It plugs into a bridge. When people talk about configuring a bus, they're probably referring to the bridge, which is a device, so it would make sense for it to have a node in /dev.

     I can't help but get the image of a bus driving around with "/dev/bridge" on the side of it...
     

  • wtf (unregistered)

    /dev/cut is just as dumb as /etc/bus

    ~ $ which cut /bin/cut

  • wtf (unregistered) in reply to wtf

    wtf is up with the newlines in this forum?

  • (cs) in reply to rycamor

    Samah:

    This is news to me... I have NEVER seen or heard etc. pronounced "ex cetera".

    Probably the same idiots who say 'congradulations' 

     

    Anonymous:

    /usr/local/bin/diesel for the engine

    wasn't he the wooden actor in Fast and Furious?

  • bla (unregistered)

    I was new to Solaris and was looking to configure something. So I did

    a grep -r something /etc/*. After a minute the grep still didn't return.

    After some headscratching it turned out that /etc contained a symlink to

    some device that just feed grep endless data when opened.

     

    But then they're weird anyways. Their real devices are not even in /dev,

    but in another directory. 

     

  • (cs) in reply to Jakub Narebski
    Anonymous:

    Perhaps he should explain that "etc = editable text configuration" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//etc

    Or that it stands for "erudite technical content", which is just as accurate - that is, not at all.

    Unix's /etc was named after the common abbreviation for et cetera.  See for example:

    http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.linux.development.system/msg/66e2aa80872964b6

    which quotes a relevant passage from Kernighan & Pike's The Unix Programming Environment.  (Note that in traditional Unixes, as K&P describe, /etc contained some binaries, such as /etc/getty; init, the most important user-space process, was also traditionally in /etc.  It was never solely for text, nor for configuration files.)

    The Wikipedia page you cited doesn't support the bogus, obviously back-formed etymology you provided.  (And, of course, citing Wikipedia is the rhetorical equivalent of sticking out your tongue in a boxing match.)

    I have to agree with several others that this is a pretty poor WTF.  There's nothing about the name "bus" to imply it refers to a device node; there's nothing to stop a user with the proper permissions from creating a device node in /etc; and it was a weak joke in the first place.  And in the early 1990s, IBM (if that is indeed the source of this story) was a major player in the Unix market: the RISC System/6000 went GA in 1990 and was very popular, despite IBM's prior poor reputation in the Unix market (thanks to the underperforming PC RT and the firm's hostility toward open systems) and controversies over AIX's idiosyncracies.

    And the smallest of the original RS/6000s, the model 320, was a desktop machine.  Even the larger 5xx systems were not "refrigerator" sized, unless your unit is a very small refrigerator.

     

  • grg (unregistered)

    The real WTF here is that anybody should care what is written on the bus.  It's sorta like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.  Worrying about Paris Hilton's  soul. 

     

     

  • drag (unregistered) in reply to aquanight

    I'm obviouslly too young, ... what company was that came up with this big ideea?

  • W Sanders (unregistered) in reply to GoatCheez

    Followed everywhere by 19 Fiat 600s named /usr/local/share/lib/bus.[...].properties.......

  • Derekwaisy (unregistered)
    Comment held for moderation.

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