All your Unix™ are belong to Dennis Ritchie

Bearded synchronicity

By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco • Get more from this author

Posted in Bootnotes, 27th April 2001 16:47 GMT

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Dennis Ritchie, co-author of Unix and the C language, has posted a panoramic view of the sheer versatility of his operating system.

Or more precisely, the Unix name itself. Pre-empting the All Your Bases meme (which should have expired by now, as it was on its last legs when we wrote about it), the great man has rounded up examples of Unix in the unlikeliest places.

"We've eliminated one of your biggest hassles ... loose hinge screws: Introducing UNIX!" boasts the Rodenstock UNIX spectacle frame, echoing a crie de Coeur of myopic BOFHs everywhere.

Other examples Ritchie offers include body toners, nappies and a Costa Rican barbershop.

The Unix trademark is officially owned by The Open Group, of course. Ritchie made the list on April 1 last year (oh yus...), and updated it last month, but it is Friday, and we were only just recovering from the shock of seeing the phrase Digital UNIX epoch (1952) on the Sony Playstation2 Linux boot-up sequence, and began to wonder what mysterious snake oil Ken Olsen had been brewing in his youth, before realizing we'd misread it. Don't write to us about that one. ®