Daemons

[Andrewski]

OK, for all you Brits (or Aussies) out there, including those Anglophiles like myself who prefer some things the British way:

daemon =

(Right?)

 

And yet for us Linux users,

daemon = programd

 

Whence cometh such an appelation?

[VeeDubb]

Yup, here's two dictionaries:

1:

Demon \De"mon\, n. [F. d['e]mon, L. daemon a spirit, an evil

  spirit, fr. Gr. ? a divinity; of uncertain origin.]

  1. (Gr. Antiq.) A spirit, or immaterial being, holding a

      middle place between men and deities in pagan mythology.

 

            The demon kind is of an intermediate nature between

            the divine and the human.            --Sydenham.

 

  2. One's genius; a tutelary spirit or internal voice; as, the

      demon of Socrates. [Often written d[ae]mon.]

 

  3. An evil spirit; a devil.

 

            That same demon that hath gulled thee thus. --Shak.

 

 

 

Daemon \D[ae]"mon\, n., Daemonic \D[ae]*mon"ic\, a.

  See Demon, Demonic.

 

 

2:

daemon

    n 1: one of the evil spirits of traditional Jewish and Christian

          belief [syn: devil, fiend, demon, daimon]

    2: a person who is part mortal and part god [syn: demigod]

 

 

 

and now the geek def.

daemon /day'mn/ or /dee'mn/ n. [from the mythological meaning, later

  rationalized as the acronym `Disk And Execution MONitor'] A program that

  is not invoked explicitly, but lies dormant waiting for some

  condition(s) to occur. The idea is that the perpetrator of the condition

  need not be aware that a daemon is lurking (though often a program will

  commit an action only because it knows that it will implicitly invoke a

  daemon). For example, under {ITS}, writing a file on the LPT

  spooler's directory would invoke the spooling daemon, which would then

  print the file. The advantage is that programs wanting (in this example)

  files printed need neither compete for access to nor understand any

  idiosyncrasies of the LPT. They simply enter their implicit requests

  and let the daemon decide what to do with them. Daemons are usually

  spawned automatically by the system, and may either live forever or be

  regenerated at intervals.

 

In all likelyhood, there is no relationship what so ever between the middle english spelling of demon (daemon) and the acronym d.a.e.mon.

Edited July 17, 2004 by VeeDubb

[Andrewski]

and now the geek def.

daemon /day'mn/ or /dee'mn/ n. [from the mythological meaning, later

   rationalized as the acronym `Disk And Execution MONitor']

 

In all likelyhood, there is no relationship what so ever between the middle english spelling of demon (daemon) and the acronym d.a.e.mon.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Except your citation says that the acronym came after the name was given....

Where's this geek dictionary anyway? :)

[VeeDubb]

Wow, I guess I didn't read that closely enough, oops. oh well, so i guess that still totaly fails to explain a darn thing.

 

Oh, and the geek dictionary is called the jargon file. http://www.jargon.org

 

 

I would guess, mind you, this is puely 'talking out of my ass here,' that it has to do with the sneakiness of daemon programs. Particularly as described in that deffinition. The idea of a demon waiting for you to do something bad so it can jump out, grab your soul and scream 'gotcha!" Kind of the way some daemons work, they sit around and wait for an event and then go boo. there's actualy a number of windows virii that opperate as daemons, waiting for you to do something seemingly harmless like open c: in explorer or try to reboot your computer that then suddenly activate and kill your box.

Edited July 17, 2004 by VeeDubb

[Padma]

You're actually pretty close, VeeDubb. ;)

 

The reference is actually to Maxwells Demon (google for it if you have never heard of it). It was coined by the developers of CTSS, and all of its derivatives, including Unix, have continued its use. Actually here is a good page about it. :)