Motorola used Linux company-wide for firmware development in 1992? That's not impossible, but seems pretty unlikely. Of course, "Linux" might just be laymen for "a Unix."

I don't disbelieve the story, since his primary thing was social engineering, but I don't know if I buy the "I was going to hack the firmware on my phone to fool the feds" angle. He would need their tool chain to build it and then a way to get the modified firmware on the phone. Back then a commercially available handset was probably not field programmable. I don't know that he's been connected to any particular technical hacking achievements.

I think his stories need to be taken with a grain of salt. Plenty of truth, but also exaggeration and self-promotion.

Unix\Windows at work and home here. Android for mobile.

The average PC user would start up a mac, try to play some games, go "oh i can't play most games", get confused because the operating system doesn't work like windows, then close it down and say it's shit.

If you're criticising Apple about anything other than price then you're criticising Unix which is pretty stupid. For coding or science i would not use a PC unless i had absolutely no other choice. But of course, that's mainly a compliment about unix-like machines which include apple but also your favourite linux distro.

People seem to think you have a lot more control over a PC than a mac and whilst that used to be true, it's not really true anymore. I personally feel i have a lot more control over how my airbook works (via command line and within OSX itself) than my windows desktop machine.

I always said if you know a lot about computers, you think macs are crap. But if you learn a bit more about computers, you realise what macs are good for.

In many English dialects it is common to say something like "August twenty fourth, 1976" and since, as Unitedstatesians we(by which I implicate myself, not necessarily the reader) are obsessed with not using British standards, it not totally unexpected that we would do it that way.

I advocate simply moving to unix timestamps.

Reverse engineering the Linotron 202 fonts at Bell Labs has been added as a related post - related requested by oritteropo.

AT&T Archives: The UNIX Operating System has been added as a related post - related requested by oritteropo.

I was actually wondering if anyone else had heard of Brian Kernighan, Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson... this video is going to be more interesting to people with a comp sci background (or at least a Unix or linux background).

These are the guys from Bell Labs who used a spare minicomputer to write an operating system and a sort of word processor or computerised publishing system in the 70s, before you could just buy a word processor.

The system had some interesting features, like being more portable than was normal of operating systems before it (the subject of this video) and its habit of treating every file as a text file (previous operating systems tended to treat a text file as different to a database file as different to a video file for instance).

I'm sure there are videos around here somewhere that explain it.... I know computerphile had another interview about the typesetting part:

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Reverse-engineering-the-Linotron-202-fonts-at-Bell-Labs

I haven't watched this video on Unix, but it's very likely *related=http://videosift.com/video/AT-T-Archives-The-UNIX-Operating-System too.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'apps, tech, conundrum, solved, headasplode' to 'apps, tech, conundrum, solved, headasplode, unix time, time zones' - edited by xxovercastxx

I recently read another (short, interesting) article on these Linotype machines at Bell Labs, from Diomidis Spinellis's blog, about how they encouraged the development of the Unix standard error stream - http://www.spinellis.gr/blog/20131211/index.html

This is true in every organization, and apparently in the most secret one in the world, that you have to have someone who runs the infrastructure, and it's probably going to be 29 year old unix geeks like this guy. The administrators of these secret networks will have unmitigated access to everything, which means they will see everything, and no one will be able to monitor them because no one understands what they do. The fact that this guy had that kind of access level is pretty mindblowing in itself. Seems like system admins in intelligence agencies are able to see more about what is really going on behind the scenes than almost anyone else. My guess is that they will more heavily compartmentalize the access of their IT departments in the future and be a little more selective about whom they are contracting these things out to.

We have a guy at work who uses Comic Sans in all his emails. Yes, it's pretty legible at 12pt and up, but not so much at 10pt and down.

Plus, we work in software support with a focus on Unix platforms. We're frequently sending snippets of log files or other cryptic, not-natural-language text. Lastly, to top it all off, he can't type. It's a wonder anyone responds to him.

I'm a month into a new job in support, in the Unix and database group, at one of the premier enterprise backup providers in the world.

The company is really cool, and the people are really nice, but the job is difficult and soul-destroying. It's a 6mo contract-to-hire, so I'm sticking it out for now and I'll see what I want to do come fall.

It's very close to the unix epoch time, which in this case is very likely to indicate that the camera runs some form of embedded linux and the owner never set the date.
>> ^RFlagg:

I noticed that too... and assuming it is using ISO 8601, then it is also early January and the trees are very green for January...
>> ^Bad-Wolf:
Wow, and all that happened in 1970...

It's good practice The original advice from the early Unix days was to wait for one second before hitting return on any rm line (particularly as root)... that just about gives your brain a chance to say "waaaiiiitttt!" if it's not right.

I doubt the files would've really been gone after 20 seconds, but it might've been weeks of work to get them back. The unofficial offsite backup was a better option here, for sure.
>> ^StukaFox:

At work, whenever I do an rm -rf on -anything-, I sit down on my hands and CAREFULLY read what I've typed, then re-read it, THEN hit ENTER.
The habit has saved my ass more than once.

Been there, done that. Not as recommended when on acid though.
>> ^gwiz665:

Try saying gwiz665 5 times in a mirror....
>> ^luxury_pie:
Or gwiz comes out?
>> ^gwiz665:
Don't stick your dick in crazy!
>> ^luxury_pie:
I'm already having sex with the internet, no sandwiches needed.
And when there is sandwich-proof love, sudo isn't required anymore.
>> ^ant:
>> ^luxury_pie:
>> ^ant:
>> ^luxury_pie:
Ahh internets, I like you.

Ditto, but <3 for me.
The day the internet can make me a sandwich, there will be love.

Oh yeah. Does that include sex with the Internet too?
Do you use sudo command for sandwiches from your UNIX/Linux computers?

Try saying gwiz665 5 times in a mirror....
>> ^luxury_pie:

Or gwiz comes out?
>> ^gwiz665:
Don't stick your dick in crazy!
>> ^luxury_pie:
I'm already having sex with the internet, no sandwiches needed.
And when there is sandwich-proof love, sudo isn't required anymore.
>> ^ant:
>> ^luxury_pie:
>> ^ant:
>> ^luxury_pie:
Ahh internets, I like you.

Ditto, but <3 for me.
The day the internet can make me a sandwich, there will be love.

Oh yeah. Does that include sex with the Internet too?
Do you use sudo command for sandwiches from your UNIX/Linux computers?