From: "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...>
Date: 2007-07-21T13:13:06+09:00
Subject: Re: [OT] Re: Religion (was: god 0.1.0 released)

MenTaLguY wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-07-20 at 01:36 +0900, Ari Brown wrote:
>> Daemon was a reference to Maxwell's Demon, a physics demon that kept  
>> things working in the background. The MIT students then made called  
>> their background processes 'daemons' in honor of  Maxwell's Demon.
> 
> "Maxwell's Demon" is a famous thought experiment in thermodynamics:
> imagine a container of gas separated into two compartments, with a small
> closable aperture between them controlled by an extremely quick and
> perceptive creature (the "demon").  As the gas molecules move around
> randomly, the demon opens the aperture at opportune moments to permit
> "warmer" molecules to pass in one direction between the compartments,
> and "colder" molecules in the opposite.  The question Maxwell sought to
> raise is whether such an arrangement would/could violate the second law
> of thermodynamics.
> 
> I don't know offhand whether MIT students did name their background
> processes after the demon in Maxwell's thought experiment, but it seems
> unlikely.
> 
> -mental

The equivalent of Unix "daemons" were called "Ghost jobs" in Xerox CP-5,
if that matters. :)