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Origin of 'Daemon' in Computing

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Re: Origin of 'Daemon' in Computing

#71

Post by roywiggins »

n4r9 wrote: post #9
JD557 wrote: post #5

Unrelated to the word "daemon", but related to the article, I was a bit surprised by this assertion: > Eventually, though, the theory of quantum mechanics showed why it wouldn't work. I was familiar with the information theory arguments (the same presented in Wikipedia[1]). Is that why they mean here by "quantum mechanics" or is there another counterargument to Maxwell's daemon? 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max…

I'm guessing that the daemon's ability to allow only fast molecules through the gate depends on knowing their position and velocity simultaneously?

It seems to come from measuring the particles at all. One result is that the demon has to store information about the particles, and erasing that information to free up memory increases the entropy of the gas/demon system.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon#Criticism_...

Re: Origin of 'Daemon' in Computing

#73

Post by bbor »

saltcured wrote: post #63
bbor wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating! This is why I stick with nice, clean structural linguistics, this applied stuff gets sticky. I just confirmed on Youtube that the (some?) British people do indeed pronounce "Aesthetic" as "ah-stet-ic" not "ee-stet-ic", and upon diving a bit, it seems that the rule is "don't ask for a rule, you fool! It's 'e' now except for when it isn't." Thanks for the interesting tidbit! The letter æ was used in Old En…

Hmm, I'm a Californian and I pronounce daemon as demon, understanding the first vowel as the same vowel as for Aesop. Indistinguishable from the vowel in "beam" and "niece". But I pronounce the first vowel in aesthetic differently. For me, it's somewhat in between the vowels in "bed" and "bad" but closer to the former.

…TIL how to pronounce “Aesop”! Thanks for saving me eventual embarrassment - now I know why other people don’t mix up Aesop Rock and ASAP Rocky!

As a fellow Californian, I’d say we have authority anyway - I was taught in school that Ohio has the least specialized dialect, but that’s based on newscasters and such. The 21st century is the Californian century!

…that is, assuming Brussels’ English is out of the running, I suppose ;)

Re: Origin of 'Daemon' in Computing

#74

Post by mort96 »

_fat_santa wrote: post #42
jasoneckert wrote: post #22

The *nix world is full of dark-but-fun terminology. Daemons run the system. New files get 666 (before the umask takes away unnecessary permissions). Parents kill their children before killing themselves. And sometimes you have to kill zombies.

Almost feels like a right of passage when you inevitably google something like "kill self" (in reference to killing the current process) and get a popup telling you about suicide resources.

Or "kill orphaned children" and be put a list somewhere

Re: Origin of 'Daemon' in Computing

#75

Post by jakjak123 »

_fat_santa wrote: post #42
jasoneckert wrote: post #22

The *nix world is full of dark-but-fun terminology. Daemons run the system. New files get 666 (before the umask takes away unnecessary permissions). Parents kill their children before killing themselves. And sometimes you have to kill zombies.

Almost feels like a right of passage when you inevitably google something like "kill self" (in reference to killing the current process) and get a popup telling you about suicide resources.

"Kill orphaned child process"

Re: Origin of 'Daemon' in Computing

#76

Post by bityard »

jamesog wrote: post #37
twobitshifter wrote: post #25

Do you pronounce it as demon or like Matt Damon?

It should more properly be written as dæmon. The æ ("ash") character is usually pronounced more like "ee", as in encyclopædia. I've never heard anyone say "encycloPAYdia" :-)

Yes. Daemon is just the archaic spelling of demon. The ae is a vowel sound that didn't survive to modern times. The word was NEVER pronounced "damon." To my knowledge.

Re: Origin of 'Daemon' in Computing

#77

Post by paulnpace »

jasoneckert wrote: post #22

The *nix world is full of dark-but-fun terminology. Daemons run the system. New files get 666 (before the umask takes away unnecessary permissions). Parents kill their children before killing themselves. And sometimes you have to kill zombies.

Unics (from Multics).

Re: Origin of 'Daemon' in Computing

#79

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

jasoneckert wrote: post #22

The *nix world is full of dark-but-fun terminology. Daemons run the system. New files get 666 (before the umask takes away unnecessary permissions). Parents kill their children before killing themselves. And sometimes you have to kill zombies.

Zombies or orphans, depending on which side you want to play as today. Plenty of killing to be done on both.

Re: Origin of 'Daemon' in Computing

#80

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

vhodges wrote: post #29
jasoneckert wrote: post #22

The *nix world is full of dark-but-fun terminology. Daemons run the system. New files get 666 (before the umask takes away unnecessary permissions). Parents kill their children before killing themselves. And sometimes you have to kill zombies.

From: https://devrant.com/rants/1101391/my-daily-unix-command-list... unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep.

This is a weird thread to happen upon when my other monitor has variables named sexp.
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