Unix has always lurked provocatively in the background of the operating system wars, like the Russian Army. Most people know it only by reputation, and its reputation, as the Dilbert cartoon suggests, is mixed. But everyone seems to agree that if it could only get its act together and stop surrendering vast tracts of rich agricultural land and hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war to the onrushing invaders, it could stomp them (and all other opposition) flat.

Neal Stephenson is very cool and this just made me laugh

Pre-Hole Hawg, I used to examine the drill selection in hardware stores with what I thought was a judicious eye, scorning the smaller low-end models and hefting the big expensive ones appreciatively, wishing I could afford one of them babies. Now I view them all with such contempt that I do not even consider them to be real drills--merely scaled-up toys designed to exploit the self-delusional tendencies of soft-handed homeowners who want to believe that they have purchased an actual tool. Their plastic casings, carefully designed and focus-group-tested to convey a feeling of solidity and power, seem disgustingly flimsy and cheap to me, and I am ashamed that I was ever bamboozled into buying such knicknacks.

It is not hard to imagine what the world would look like to someone who had been raised by contractors and who had never used any drill other than a Hole Hawg. Such a person, presented with the best and most expensive hardware-store drill, would not even recognize it as such. He might instead misidentify it as a child's toy, or some kind of motorized screwdriver. If a salesperson or a deluded homeowner referred to it as a drill, he would laugh and tell them that they were mistaken--they simply had their terminology wrong. His interlocutor would go away irritated, and probably feeling rather defensive about his basement full of cheap, dangerous, flashy, colorful tools.

Unix is the Hole Hawg of operating systems, and Unix hackers, like Doug Barnes and the guy in the Dilbert cartoon and many of the other people who populate Silicon Valley, are like contractor's sons who grew up using only Hole Hawgs. They might use Apple/Microsoft OSes to write letters, play video games, or balance their checkbooks, but they cannot really bring themselves to take these operating systems seriously.

This is funny. I like Unix and Drills too.

I realize this is an analogy and everything, but its one I relate to. I spent months last year building a house. When running electrical wire, one uses a dril like this with a 1" or so bit. If it catches on a knot, one is in for some pain. The trick is to hold it tight enough to drill, but loose enough to let go if it catches. One does indeed hear stories of people being spun around by these drills. Thats because sometimes you've got to give it all you've got, really lean in there, to get the hole drilled so when it starts spinning, you're committed to spinning with it.

So they invented a drill clutch. You set the tension you want it to cut out at, and when it catches, if you've got it set right, the clutch will let go and you won't get spun around. These drills cost several thousand dollars, and so are only available to dedicated crews who have someone in them with authority who has done got 'spun.' They also add complexity to each drilling operation: the clutch tension must be set.

I don't know how this affects the Unix situation except to say that this problem was addressed in drills, but Unix still can't get undelete?