[X-Unix] rsync & ssh

[William H. Magill]

>> From: Stroller <MacMonster at myrealbox.com>
>> Unix is *horribly* obscure & complex, and for no good reason other 
>> than
>> compatibility with legacy systems.

Untrue. The complexity of Unix has nothing to do with compatibility.  
(And you would be amazed at how little compatibility exists with 
"legacy systems." When was the last time you used either Pascal or 
Lisp, let alone Fortran or Cobol under Unix?)

The simple reason for the complexity of unix is its flexibility!
  *** There is normally more than one way to achieve the desired 
results. ***
(and that is true even without Perl!)

Similarly, the only reason that Unix is obscure is the fact that it is 
a "foreign language."

If you are a speaker of English, American style, understanding English, 
UK style is not too difficult -- but what on earth is a Zebra Crossing? 
However, understanding French is utterly impossible. (And we won't even 
consider American's understanding Scots or Irish.)

Unix is no different -- every "brand" of Unix is different, and this 
includes all of the dialects of Linux. BSD Unix is different from 
SystemV or Solaris and Suse Linux is different from RedHat. ... and all 
are different from FreeBSD which is the root of Darwin, but is 
different from OSX. Then we have the fact that Linux on a 64-bit Alpha 
is a RADICALLY different Linux than exists on a 32-bit Wintel box.)

The "obscurity" factor is evident when you discover that there are many 
IDENTICAL terms in these variants, which have DIFFERENT meanings ... 
that is to say the parameters for the same command are different, and 
their "default" output is different. "ps" is just one such command.

Unix is like any other language -- it is a step-wise learning curve, 
with LARGE treads and high risers. To be "productive" in Unix requires 
a large base of "basic" knowledge. Then as you go along on that plateau 
of knowledge, you discover "something new" and suddenly your 
productivity increases dramatically.

This is not at all unlike learning a program as "simple" as Word (not 
to mention emacs or edt). It's "easy" to learn enough to create, read 
and modify plain text documents... but then you find one that somebody 
has stuck pictures in! Wow, how did the do that.

It has been said that 90+% of the users of Word use less than 10% of 
its features. The same is true of emacs or vi.

The computer is no different than an automobile. Some people never 
learn to use a manual transmission -- some people never learn to use 
the command line. Some people never heard of a carburetor, some people 
think "the kernel" is the guy who sells Fried Chicken. And there are 
those who can actually tune a twin-barrel carb, just as there are those 
who can write kernel modules; but the vast majority of people NEVER 
even consider, let alone understand, that level of "black magic."

Anything which you don't know is always more obscure and complex than 
that which you do know. I've never understood scoring in Tennis for 
example, but have no problems following a Fencing match.

And, in the computer business, you must be VERY careful what you call 
"legacy." VMS and Tru64 Unix have had Access Control Lists and other 
related C2-security measures for 15-20 years, which simply do not exist 
in any version of Unix or Linux today. Similarly, they have always 
supported "resource controls" also known as accounting. While BSD unix 
has historically had "some form of accounting," have you ever tried to 
turn it on in Darwin?

[BTW: Zebra crossing == cross walk -- as on the cover of Abby Road.]

T.T.F.N.
William H. Magill
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