Maybe nerds do need slappin'

[avram]

A typical Unix distro has a bunch of files for use with the calendar program — lists of historical events, holidays, etc. I’ve got my web browser home page set to show me today’s events and holidays, which is how I learned that calendar.history also contains events from Lord of the Rings.

I don’t mean real events, like the date The Two Towers was published, but fictional events, like the date Frodo crossed the Mitheithel. When I was a teenager I probably would have thought this was cute and clever, but now it makes me want to just find the responsible person and ask what other parts of my operating system he might have worked on while stoned.

Comments

[akawil]

"There are two things to come out of Berkeley: BSD and LSD. This is not a coincidence."

A bit of historical digging seems to reveal that this was added to BSD sometime between the release of 4.3BSD in 1984 and 4.3BSD-Reno in 1990. If that helps you figure out who needs slapping.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I've got a program like that for DOS, I wrote it myself. It contains lots of useful dates like people's birthdays, dates of various battles, dates of death of historical figures I like, and um, yes, also the LOTR events. I wish I could say I wrote it when I was 15, but actually I wrote it when I was 32.

[avram]

What’s up with that? I mean, Middle Earth cultures aren’t even using our calendar. The Shire’s got months like Afteryule and Forelithe, and Rivendell’s calendar has really long months, and the year starts in a different place.

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

Does cal "know" jewish holdiay start times?

[avram]

These are for calendar, not cal. (Or maybe cal uses them too, I dunno.)

The answer: No it doesn’t, really, but it thinks it does.

[cattitude.livejournal.com]

I was working on a DEC-20 in 1979 that had those dates in its calendar program. I don't know whether they went from DEC-20 to Unix or the other way, though I'd suspect the former.

On a guess, given where we got most of our system software from, I'd say they came from MIT, not Berkeley.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

I like using the LotR calendar -- the one I buy in a store each year, y'understand, not the thingy you're talking about. And I definitely prefer it when a) they remember the difference in our calendar and get the days right and b) include a few non-LotR days, like, say, Yom Kippur.