November 26, 1984
Because so many users have asked for an Operating System of even greater capability than VM, IBM announces the Virtual Universe Operating System - OS/VU.
Running under VU, the individual user appears to have not merely a machine of his own, but an entire universe of his own in which he can set up and take down his own programs, data sets, systems networks, personnel and planetary systems. He need only specify the universe he desires and the OS/VU system generation program (IEHGOD) does the rest. This program will reside in SYS1.GODLIB. The minimum time for generation is 6 days of activity and one day of review. In conjunction with OS/VU, all systems utilities reside in SYS1.MESSIAH. The generation program has no parameters or control cards as it knows what you want to do when you execute it.
Naturally, the user must have attained a certain degree of sophistication in the data processing field if an efficient utilization of OS/VU is to be achieved; frequent calls to non-resident galaxies can, for instance, lead to unexpected delays in the execution of a job. Although IBM, through its wholly owned subsidiary -- the United States, is working on a program to upgrade the speed of light and thus reduce the overhead of extraterrestrial and metadimensional paging, users must be careful, for the present, to stay within the laws of physics; IBM must charge an additional fee for all violations.
OS/VU will run on any IBM x0xx equipped with the extended WARP feature. Rental is twenty million dollars per cpu/nanosecond.
Users should be aware that IBM plans to migrate all existing systems and hardware to OS/VU as soon as their engineers effect one output that is (conceptually) error free. This will give them a base from which to develop an even more powerful OS, target date 2001, designated 'VIRTUAL REALITY'. OS/VR is planned in order to allow the user to migrate to totally unreal universes. To aid the user in identifying the difference between 'VIRTUAL REALITY' and 'REAL REALITY', a file containing a linear record of multisensory checkpoints of successive moments-of-now will be established. Its name will be SYS1.EST.
For more information, contact your IBM data processing representative.
Author unknown.
