Son of WeirdNIX
Jeffrey S. Haemer
jsh at usenix.org
Fri Jul 27 03:36:58 AEST 1990
From: Jeffrey S. Haemer <jsh at usenix.org>
Son of WeirdNIX
USENIX Association
23 July 1990
Norman Bangerter, Governor of Utah, declared April 23-27
``POSIX week'' in the state of Utah. Spurred on by the
spirit of that declaration, the USENIX Association is
announcing its 1990 POSIX contest.
Prizes (besides notoriety) include
+ a copy of the ``POSIX Week'' declaration,
+ an official, 40-foot, red-and-white ``Welcome POSIX''
banner,
+ and -- thanks to UNISYS and the state of Utah --
+ two round-trip tickets to Salt Lake City, plus
+ weekend accommodations at a hotel yet to be named.
If you were at the Snowbird meetings, or have ever been to
Utah for any reason, you'll know this is a great prize. If
you haven't, take our word for it.
``What,'' you're asking, ``do I have to do to win?''
Designing a contest isn't easy. We toyed with the idea of
holding a Roger Martin look-alike contest. We almost
decided on, ``If POSIX were made into a movie, who would
play the attendees?'' [Sample answer: Jack Nicholson as Jim
Isaak (Jim says he'd prefer ``Cary Grant''), Oscar the
Grouch as John Quarterman, ...]
Finally, we decided on a second, not-at-all-annual, WeirdNIX
Contest. As with the first one, which is described in
section B.1.2.12 of ANSI/IEEE 1003.1-1988, the goal is to
find:
the best new and technically legal interpretation of the POSIX standard
which nevertheless violates the intuitive intent of the POSIX standard.
Both
+ 1003.1 (``The Ugly Green Book''), and
+ 1003.2 (draft 10 or later)
are fair game. The former is available from
- 2 -
IEEE Service Center
445 Hoes Lane
Piscataway, NJ 08854
U.S.A.
(201) 981-0060
the latter from
Lisa Granoien
IEEE Computer Society
1730 Massachusetts Ave NW
Washington, DC 20036-1903
(202) 371-0101
While the only version of 1003.1 currently available is IEEE
1003.1-1988, we won't give high marks to cheap shots, so
problems fixed in IEEE 1003.1-1990 (soon to be published,
and formerly found in documents labeled 1003.1a) aren't good
targets.
In the earlier contest, separate prizes were awarded for
``Best'' and for ``Most Demented.'' We debated doing this
again but, in the end, decided that one prize of two tickets
makes more sense than two prizes of one ticket. The judges
may choose to announce winners in a variety of categories,
but the prize mentioned above is a grand prize: we'll award
the prize to whichever entry we think is the best, whatever
its orientation.
Judges are:
Donn Terry (Chair, 1003.1),
Hal Jespersen (Chair, 1003.2),
N. Ray Wilkes, (Vice chair, 1003.3),
John Quarterman (USENIX Standards liaison), and
Jeffrey S. Haemer (USENIX report editor).
Please mail entries to Jeffrey S. Haemer <jsh at usenix.org>.
If you don't get an acknowledgement, I haven't gotten it.
Previous winners may compete, but previous entries aren't
allowed.
Entries must be submitted by November 21, 1990, to give us
time to judge them.
We'll announce the winner at the Winter USENIX Conference in
Dallas, January 21-25, 1991.
Volume-Number: Volume 20, Number 147
More information about the Comp.std.unix
mailing list