Slashdot Mirror

• Kirk McKusick, for his more than two decades of tireless service and personal sacrifices for our community.
• Gurusamy Sarathy, Perl project release manager, responsible for bringing fork(2) to Microsoft ports of Perl and a million other things to make Perl code truly robust and portable between Microsoft and Unix platforms, a true Godsend for those of us forced to co-exist on both.
• Malcolm Beattie, for trailblazing the Perl-to-C compiler, the Perl external byte-code interpreter, the first Perl/Tk implementation,threading in Perl, and safe blackbox compartments for mobile agents in Perl.

• Kirk McKusick, for his more than two decades of tireless service and personal sacrifices for our community.
• Gurusamy Sarathy, Perl project release manager, responsible for bringing fork(2) to Microsoft ports of Perl and a million other things to make Perl code truly robust and portable between Microsoft and Unix platforms, a true Godsend for those of us forced to co-exist on both.
• Malcolm Beattie, for trailblazing the Perl-to-C compiler, the Perl external byte-code interpreter, the first Perl/Tk implementation,threading in Perl, and safe blackbox compartments for mobile agents in Perl.

• Most Improved Kernel Module: FreeBSD's Linux emulation module.

• Unsung Hero: In descending order:
  • Kirk McKusick, for his more than two decades of tireless service and personal sacrifices for our community.
  • Gurusamy Sarathy, Perl project release manager, responsible for bringing fork(2) to Microsoft ports of Perl and a million other things to make Perl code truly robust and portable between Microsoft and Unix platforms, a true Godsend for those of us forced to co-exist on both.
  • Malcolm Beattie, for trailblazing the Perl-to-C compiler, the Perl external byte-code interpreter, the first Perl/Tk implementation,threading in Perl, and safe blackbox compartments for mobile agents in Perl.

• Best Newbie Helper: Mike Stok from comp.lang.perl.misc. He is patient and kind, never chiding nor arrogant. He has been doing this job for many years.

• Most Deserving Open Source Charity: The Usenix Association. They don't take sides. They promote technology and open standards while remaining vendor neutral. They promote all aspects of advanced technology, but are especially supportive of open source solutions. No organization has done more to legitimize us over the last twenty-five years.

• Best Open Source Advocate: Larry Wall. He doesn't rant against anyone, tries to help everyone, and gives his code away for use by anyone, even Microsoft users. He doesn't restrict his good works to things that only benefit his friends. He doesn't preach, but lives by example.

• Best Unix Desktop Eyecandy: The newest version of the randomizing X screensaver. It's really great in a room full of people on acid.

• Best Unix Desktop Earcandy: The following entry in one's .Xdefaults file:

  *visualBell: on

• Best Desktop Theme: ShinyMetal

• Best Open Source-Related Book: In order of highest to lowest, all worthy of the award:
  • Writing Apache Modules with Perl and C by Lincoln Stein and Doug MacEachern.
  • Damian Conway's Object-Oriented Perl.
  • Elements of Programming With Perl by Andrew L. Johnson.

• Best Perl Module: Damian Conway's Class::Multimethods module for traditional OO in Perl.

• Best Apache Module: mod_perl; how can there be any question?

• Best Open Source Text Editor: The vim editor (vi improved), complete with its gvim graphical incarnation and its perl and python plug-ins.

• Best Deserving of a $2,000 Award:
  1. The late, great Rich Stevens's children's college fund
  2. Larry Wall's children's college fund
  3. Dennis Ritchie's retirement fund.
  (Perhaps those count as charities :-)

• Best Designed Interface in a Graphical Application:
  1. The eesh shell for controlling Enlightenment.
  2. The ddd debugger
  3. MacOS X's environment.

• Best Designed Interface in a Non-Graphical Application:
  1. The {Free,Open}BSD ports collection: being able to just cd and type make and have everything happen is the best thing that ever happened to third-parts apps.
  2. The make menuconfig directive for building Linux kernels.
  3. The v4.0 trn newsreader, with scoring and plug-ins.

• Best Dressed: Larry Wall, whether he's wearing Hawaiian shirts, tie-dies, or best of all, his outlandish, pastel-coloured tuxedos.

• Favorite Slashdot Comment Poster:
  1. Guy Harris
  2. Tom Christiansen
  3. Enoch Root
  4. Jay Maynard

• Favorite Slashdot Author: David Brin wins this one hands down.

• Best Slashdot Story of 1999: Eric Raymond's story about viruses on Microsoft vs Unix.

• Big Dumb Patent Bully: Amazon, followed by Unisys.

• Big Dumb Domain Bully: NSI, followed by Etoys.

• Clue Stick Award for FUD in Journalism: Slashdot.

Generally BSD used UFS, but free varients are now incorperating SoftUpdates into the filesystem. I've been told that for the most part, UFS is slightly slower than ext2, but safer. The main reason is because ext2 doesn't sync as often, though both can be tweaked either for the speed or for the safety. Softupdates will do the same as a JFS for Linux, so both systems can have safe and speedy filesystems.

I haven't seen to much of an explanation of softupdates, only on McKusick's page.

Nope, not inappropriate at all. :)

The Daemon (he's not a devil) is the mascot of all the BSDs...
Marshall Kirk McKusick (the guy that holds the copyright on the daemon artwork)
has a page devoted to the little Beastie and his history.

--Kevin

=-=-=-=-=-=
"I think the P-Funk Mothership just landed in my back yard!"

The Daemon has been the emblem of BSD for a long time. The one you associate with FreeBSD appeared long ago on the "Design and Implementation of 4.3 BSD" cover. He is copyrighted by Marshal Kirk McKusick. Please have a look at Kirk McKusick's site if you are still confused. How you came to your assumptions is beyond me.

Adam

1. It lacks the BSoD (even given the attempt to indicate compatibility with BSoD-enabled systems through a misleading name).
   
2. Its mascot is a cute, little devil. That's DEVIL, folks. Just ask Phil Foglio! It's SATAN! Prince of lies! (Hmmm... I feel a filk coming on: "BSD Went Down to Georgia", based on the old urban legend about the woman who walked into a diner in texas wearing the Daemon on a shirt)
   
3. It's too fast to promote conventional chip design bloat.
   
4. GNOME doesn't run as stably on BSD as it does on Linux, and we can't figure out how to load background images if we don't have GNOME! (xload...WHAT?)
   
5. Two words: Splash Screen. Where's the cute flying widgets in space while my diagnostics are being packaged up and thrown into /dev/null? Or, at least the smiling computer icon.
   

Intosi

BSD daemon is owned by this guy, Marshall Kirk Mckusick. You have to ask permission to use it. I found that on the FreeBSD website.

Marshall Kirk McKusick owns the copyright to it, but I don't remember who came up with it, if it was he or not. He has a web page devoted to it at at his site. that may shed some light on it's history.