This month has been Unix month in Japan, with three events centered on the operating system. The 15th Japan Unix Society’s Symposium was held on July 9 and 10 and from small but enthusiastic beginnings several years ago, this technically-oriented symposium has become more commercial as the market acceptance of Unix in Japan has increased. This time several international guests gave keynote speeches and participated in panel discussions, including John Mashey, vice-president of Systems Technology at MIPS Computer Systems Inc, who predictably spoke on the theme CPU Technology and Trends: More MIPS, cheaper MIPS; never too many, and Evan Schaffer and Mike Wolf from Robinson Schaffer Wright, who spoke on use of the Unix shell as an applications generation language. There were attendees from South Korea, China and Taiwan who participated in a panel discussion on internationalisation. Other speakers from Japanese vendor companies spoke on a wide range of topics including Sony Corp on database construction using an object-oriented language; NEC Corp on a high-performance file system for supercomputers; and Ricoh Co and Sony again discussed communications interfaces between Unix and devices such as facsimile machines and ISDN-based local area networks.
