‘Hilarious Unix admin tools’

“Maybe” seems to be removing a biggest laughs. Can we explain it for those of us not in a loop?

Wow, this was subtle. That shows an instance use, where a sysadmin will maybe clear a user’s comment today, maybe tomorrow, maybe a subsequent day. This was behind in a days when sysadmins would close user accounts for being “naughty,” and afterwards clear them someday after when they suspicion a user had schooled their lesson. I’m not certain there is an analogue today, given we are so contingent on computing. It’d be like restraint an worker from a Internet for a few days for using bittorrent; we theory they’d learn their lesson, though they’d substantially be incompetent to do their job, too.

The maybe authority itself stems from a black and white attention of computing, where all is possibly 0 or one, loyal or false. The maybe authority infrequently earnings true, and infrequently earnings false. This allows for programs to be created that have levels of grey, or indeterminate behavior, most like a genuine world, and review like it too “if maybe; do this; else do that”. Of course, this is doubtful to have any genuine use, given we design and like a computers to be predictable.

And competence we travel us by another instance or dual from a collection?

Sure: psss lists routine standing along with their star sign, formed on a routine birth time. lsss does a same with files formed on their origination time. One of a some-more worldly collection is ged, that puts a GUI on a Unix “ed” line editor, providing colors, themes and sound effects. The fun there is that ed is primitive and obsolete, and a further of a GUI does zero to urge a usability.

Did we write them or is it a collection of faves?

I wrote all of these; a few ideas came from buddies during a time, and we forsaken their names in a comments (to share a censure .

Do they have any purpose over being funny?

They are collection that are designed to have no use during all. But they are tools, and they do work.

One tool, “allslow”, slows down all CPUs by a programmable rate. Years ago we listened this was being used in prolongation to artificially extent an focus before other tenants changed in. we deliberate yanking it from a page – these aren’t ostensible to have a genuine use!

What desirous we to write a them?

Too most time on Unix, an peculiar clarity of humor, and a adore of coding. we used to learn Unix classes during a time, and they were infrequently accessible to mangle a ice.

I see a list hasn’t been updated given 2006. Why’d we stop?

I got a pursuit in heart engineering and didn’t hold my homepage for years; usually this year I’ve been starting to repair it adult again, and locate adult on projects.

I have a dozen some-more ideas for (these kinds of) “specials” that we need to formula up, some some-more ambitious. These embody an “upgrade” to a Mac OS X spinning beachball (this thing: to make it bigger, spin for longer, and play a sound outcome – maybe a siren.) Again, program that has no use (I hope), though would be comical to see written.