satan, 666, goat's blood

[jsq at im4u.UUCP]

In article <711 at bucsb.bu.edu.UUCP> alicia at bucsb.bu.edu.UUCP (alicia h) writes:
>
>	Hey out there, it's late and we're tired... but we have a 
>  question. Why are daemons (like,"rwhod", "talkd", "rsendd"...)
>  called "daemons". I mean, we know it's Latin for something that's
>  not quite a God, but more than a man - but how does that relate.
>        My first association is that daemons are eternal... but I
>  don't know....    just curios....
>
>
>		   alicia

The following definition comes from the jargon file, long maintained
in the distant past (more than five years ago) on several ARPANET machines.
An updated version appeared in print in the near past as The Hacker's
Dictionary, which you should run out and buy a copy of (I have no
connection, financial or otherwise, with the book); it being a curio
like yourself, no doubt you'll like it.  :-)


DAEMON (day'mun, dee'mun) [archaic form of "demon", which has slightly
   different connotations (q.v.)] n. A program which is not invoked
   explicitly, but which lays 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, writing a file on the lpt spooler's
   directory will invoke the spooling daemon, which prints the file.
   The advantage is that programs which want (in this example) files
   printed need not compete for access to 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.  Usage:
   DAEMON and DEMON (q.v.) are often used interchangeably, but seem to
   have distinct connotations.  DAEMON was introduced to computing by
   CTSS people (who pronounced it dee'mon) and used it to refer to
   what is now called a DRAGON or PHANTOM (q.v.).  The meaning and
   pronunciation have drifted, and we think this glossary reflects
   current usage.
-- 
John Quarterman, UUCP:  {gatech,harvard,ihnp4,pyramid,seismo}!ut-sally!im4u!jsq
ARPA Internet and CSNET:  jsq at im4u.UTEXAS.EDU, jsq at sally.UTEXAS.EDU