Re: gz2zip app

[nathan@visi.com (Nathan Mates)]

In article <32b8bdf6.2025650@news.emi.com>,
Edhel Iaur, Esq. <drsmooth@relex.com> wrote:
>> You can't decode them on an AppleII. 'gz' means gzip which is a
>> popular unix compression scheme. If you have access to an unix
>> host, you may 'gunzip' them there.

>Although I believe it, it sounds kinda funny that GZIP would be
>available for Unix.  Doesn't GZIP stand for "GNU Unzip"?  And doesn't
>"GNU" stand for "Graphical Not Unix"?

   Nope. GNU stands for "GNU's not Unix" [infinitely recursive
acronym.]  They're one of the leading sources of free tools for the
unix environment; gzip, gcc, and a few more tools are pretty nice.
However, they have this ideal of rewriting every dang thing
themselves, including a unix-like kernel (called 'hurd'), etc. Then,
it'll be no unix, but GNU.

   Unfortunately, GNU's rather much reached a plateau. They were
promising hurd for a number of years, then linux came out of a college
kid's room and totally blindsided them. [And a while back, Richard
Stallman, head of GNU, decided to try and rename Linux to 'LiGNUx'
"just because there's so many gnu things running under it."  Nice try
to hitch a fading star to a better one, but it got roundly shot down.]

   Also, much GNU code is not for mere mortals to deal with-- they had
the very bad habit of assuming pointers and integers were
interchangeable (works great on a 32-bit machine. Breaks hard on a 8,
16, or 64 bit machine), their code looked like a worn out college kid
had coded some hacks at 3AM, and was unreadable to the point of being
a different language. Their code may compile and run out of the box on
pretty much all common 32-bit unices, but woe to the types that try
and port or modify the code.

Nathan Mates

--
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.visi.com/~nathan/      <*>
# What are the facts? Again and again and again-- what are the _facts_?
# Shun wishful thinking, avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors
# think-- what are the facts, and to how many decimal places?  -R.A. Heinlein