DON(1) STAFF COMMAND DON(1)
NAME
don - Dr. Schertz's login
SYNOPSIS
don [ -7BDPRS ] topic ...
AVAILABILITY
The System V version of this command is available on the
3B2's, UNIX PCs, and Solaris machines. The POSIX version
of don is available under SunOS 4.1.x and Linux.
DESCRIPTION
For each electrical engineering student present in the
current semester, don provides a rigorous testing of data
storage integrity and mental comprehension. The methods
employed in this testing are widely varied, as is described
below.
One can often locate don logged in, yet idle for a number of
hours. This feature allows don to appear to be in several
places at once, to those not bright enough to notice idle
time.
Another feature of don is to respond to talk requests with a
request for verbal communication instead. This reflects his
preoccupation with vocal communication. Often, his conver-
sation will incorporate elements of technology that are no
longer state-of-the-art, in order to broaden the scope of
such discussions. See the description of the -R ( Reminisce
) switch, and of the don protocol, below.
To further enhance don 's performance, a unique filesystem
has been developed to compliment don 's unique character.
Called ' The Office ' (tm), it encompasses the power of
entropy to maintain its organization. See the -S ( Sift
thru ruins ) switch for more information.
OPERATION
As mentioned previously, don uses a multitude of techniques
to rigorously test the data storage and mental comprehension
of aspiring electrical engineering students. Outlined below
are some of the more common techniques:
Information Synthesis
In order to verify the student's ability to create valid
inferences from incomplete data, don uses advanced
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heuristics to omit seemingly crucial details from lectures,
replacing them with various forms of topic drift. See
-R ( Reminisce ),
-D ( subject Drift ),
-7 ( Version 7 UNIX compatibility ), and
-P ( PDP emulation mode )
listed below.
Spurious Data Retention
As a productive by-product of the Information Synthesis
heuristic, the don expects the student to retain a portion
of the off-topic data to be used later during hand-shaking
and protocol negotiation. See the section on communication
protocol below for more information.
PseudoRandom Packet Retransmit
Anticipating dropped packets, don often retransmits the less
important data packets presented in his lecture to ensure
their proper arrival with the student. The onus is on the
student to properly resequence and collate these packets
into a meaningful data stream.
COMMUNICATION
In order to communicate with don, one must engage in don ' s
unique protocol. The protocol's rules are neither specific
nor enforced; however, compliance is necessary for proper
communication.
As noted earlier, attempts to communicate over electronic
channels generally evoke a verbal communication request.
Once a comm link is established, the following protocol
exchanges are typically made.
Student don
------- ------
[greeting] [greeting]
[query] [partial response]
[hold request]
[spurious info] [spurious info ack]
[spurious info]
[spurious info ack]
[repeated query] [further response]
[spurious info] [spurious info ack]
[spurious info]
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[spurious info query] [spurious info]
[spurious info ack] [spurious info]
[repeated query] [spurious info]
[repeated query] [spurious info]
[repeated query] [final query response]
[spurious info] [spurious info]
[req. to end xmit] [spurious info]
[req. to end xmit] [end xmit granted]
Notice the usage of the spurious info that was presented
previously during the lecture. Also, spurious info not
presented is also valuable for use during protocol
exchanges. A mastery of the don protocol can permit large
numbers of varied queries to be processed, limiting the
exchanges of spurious info to those periods when don is
searching the filesystem.
At first, it would appear that this is a wasteful protocol.
However, the don protocol is actually very efficient, having
its own intricate form of compression built in it. In a
typical course, the effective number of class hours is usu-
ally double the actual number that the course occupies. For
digital electives, the compression ratio can often reach
2.5:1 or higher.
OPTIONS
-7 Invokes Version 7 UNIX compatibility. All discussions
of programming will thusly center around differences
between ANSI C , and the Version 7 K&R C
-D Enables enhanced subject drift mode. Under normal
usage, the don protocol will inject spurious packets
into the data stream. Generally, these packets are all
centered around some central theme. This switch allows
the subject of discussion to vary in a much wider
range.
-P PDP Emulation Mode. This switch performs similar
actions to the -7 switch, although instead of focusing
on software, this switch causes don to focus on the
peculiarities of PDP hardware.
WARNING:
Do not use this switch if you are uninterested in
PDP's!! Use of this switch in such situations has been
known to cause several cases of death by boredom.
-R This sets the time frame on the spurious packets to
pre-1980, and can often cause don to mention topics
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from time pre-dating most current student's lives.
-S Sift thru ruins. This switch causes a don to execute a
direct filesystem search, and may cause thrashing.
SYSTEM V OPTIONS
-B Invokes 3B2/UNIX-PC context. All example source code
in resulting protocol exchanges will be printed on
faded transparencies in barely ledgible 9 pin print.
This switch is used primarily in programming contexts.
ENVIRONMENT
The environment variables DON_OFFICEHRS , DON_CLASSHRS , and
DON_AVAIL govern the scheduling of the don process. These
variables are generally set by the superuser or other
authorized staff, and are not accessible by the end user.
(For more information on authorized staff, see the bdh(1)
man page). DON_DISCUSSIONTOPIC may be set, but it's value
is often ignored.
FILES
The don process accesses a number of files; however, their
names and locations are indeterminate due to the nature of
the don filesystem. For purposes of system organization,
files in the don filesystem are generally restrained to the
/dev/office device, typically mounted as /don. Occasionally,
files belonging to the don process will be moved outside the
don filesystem, but are returned there after a short period
of time.
SEE ALSO
bdh(1), The C Programming Language (by Kernighan and
Ritche), ASCII(7), recursive(1), don(1).
AT&T System V R2 Programmers Manual
PDP-11 Architectural Reference.
Version 7 UNIX Developer's Guide.
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BUGS
Sometimes during a spurious data exchange, don will restart
the exchange after failing to ack a student request.
Occasionally, don will forget to flush the pending process
queue, causing unusual delays in data processing. To help
work around this, repeating queries is often necessary.
During discussions of C programming, the -R (Reminisce)
behavior will be invoked automatically.
This version of don only accepts parameters in uppercase due
to a reliance of an older version of the standard C library
and its use of a preliminary version of the ASCII set.
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