UNIX V7

I reckon Zane is bang on the nail, actually. *Most* "techies" now know nothing except the x86-32 PC and Windows. DOS is a forgotten mystery; Windows 9x is historical and unknown. PCs have always been 32-bit and the 64-bit transition scares them. They have never seen or used any networking protocol other than TCP/IP (and that is a mystery except to specialists). They don't know how to use the command prompt and increasingly they have never used floppy disks.

And yet, these are the "technical experts" who are building the systems upon which we all rely. These people think it's efficient to run a copy of Windows 2003 on a server (which needs a couple of gig of RAM to work well) and then run multiple VMs on that containing copies of Windows 2003 or other flavours of Windows. They think virtualisation is new and clever and it doesn't occur to them that not only is this wasteful of resources, but it's a nightmare to keep all those copies patched and current. They think that encapsulating SCSI over TCP/IP is an efficient way to connect servers to disk farms. They think that a full-screen GUI session at 1024x768 in 16,385 colours, carried over 100Mbit Ethernet, is an efficient way to remote-control a server. They can just about stand to use such a session carried over an 8Mbit ADSL connection, but they'll whinge about it. And these people build the systems that keep us alive in hospital, that contain and manage our money and taxes, that schedule and control our planes and trains. I find it terrifying, myself.