Bell Labs Unix Group Disbanded 270
wandazulu writes "Peter Salus over at UnixReview.com is reporting that AT&T Department 1127, responsible for creating and maintaining Unix, has been officially disbanded. The article provides an interesting "where are they now?" list of the original authors of Unix."
we've still got Google, for now (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this is sad, and a little ominous. I worked at a telco years ago, and managed to fanagle a chat on the phone with Ritchie one time when a Bell worker was on site for some software installations. Cool.
Anyway, in my arguments to encourage research into trying new ways of doing things, I always used Bell Labs as my favorite example/reason why we should. Guess I won't have that anymore. Sigh.
What I fear most is the lack of research for research's sake. A lot of things we use today are a direct or indirect result of companies allowing a certain amount of "what if" thinking and activity to go on. Even better, some companies, like Bell Labs actually allocated specifically for that.
I don't think research in commercial context is really research at all and may even be counterproductive in creating new and better technology (if commercial research into products were for "quality", would there even be a Britney Spears?).
The last bastion I know of and trust is Google. They seem to be dedicated to the cause. But, they're young, they're new, and they haven't had to deal with stockholders in bad times yet.
Re:we've still got Google, for now (Score:1, Interesting)
Maybe and maybe not. Perhaps they believe that UNIX has run it's course, and are giving Linux the nod? Of course I don't really know what I'm talking about...
Re:we've still got Google, for now (Score:2, Interesting)
There is a lot of research that goes on you just never hear about it. How about http://www.stirlingengine.com/ [stirlingengine.com] or http://www.nanosolar.com/ [nanosolar.com] ?? Those companies founders are risking it all, and if they fail, you'll never hear about it.
Good times (Score:5, Interesting)
Another name to add to the list... (Score:5, Interesting)
I had the good fortune of meeting the gentleman when I interviewed with Mathworks a couple of years ago. I was taken aback by his humility, and the poor guy was embarrassed when I requested his autograph :) He has a former license plate in his office that reads "YACCMAN".
Remember (Score:1, Interesting)
Doug McIlroy (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean, there's something to be said for learning data structures and operating systems from a guy who helped invent the idea of pipes.
McIlroy's homepage [dartmouth.edu].
Re:we've still got Google, for now (Score:3, Interesting)
All areas of research must be funded, because they often yield interesting stuff not sought for. I can not express this strongly enough.
Rich...
IBM still does research.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Diminishing Talent Pool? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:we've still got Google, for now (Score:1, Interesting)
Jeez, this was right around the release of SVR4. Unix wasn't smelling bad, it was just starting to look like a real OS.
Re:Serious question... (Score:2, Interesting)
1) Making the command interpreter a user level process instead of an integral part of the kernel.
2) Treating all files as simple streams of data. Mainframes of the day that I've had experience with all forced some type of record format on files.
3) Making everything visible to the sytem as a file(file systems, devices, message queues). On other systems these are handled via special reserved words understood by the command interpreter or system.
4) Pipes between processes.
5) The C programming language itself.
Much of this seems like common sense today, but they were new ideas around 1970. Some of them were probably taken from other research operating sytems of the time and reimplemented as software patents were'nt the problem they are today.
Re:Good times (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Like it or not, Microsoft does a lot of researc (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:IBM still does research.... (Score:3, Interesting)
The reason IBM Research remains today is that they were able to adapt and find a balance between profitability and pure research. My grip is that Google is being portrayed as the last keeper of this "dead" field and it is my belief that they are most certainly not.
IBM Research was key in the development of the PC, relational databases, datamining, and countless other fields. One of the reasons IBM got out of the harddrive business was because research had progress so fast that noone was using it. Practically none of the harddrive businesses are profitable, except maybe Hitachi.
However, IBM still is doing harddrive research, one major is example is the super dense stamp sized 1 GB harddrives that was mentioned here at some point. I don't think it's too much to ask to give IBM Research at nod for actually performing Research!
Re:we've still got Google, for now (Score:2, Interesting)
Bell spent billions on research, the "apple man" voice was invented at bell labs, they did a whole lot of voice synthesis research that I am familiar with. They did a lot of other stuff, I am not as familiar with, but voice synthesis, voice recognition, that is research. They were on the cutting edge as a matter of fact.
I think there is supporting evidence that Microsoft actually does do valuable research, I'm not one of these anti-MS zealots, they could do more though. Bill Gates donates a lot of money to charity which is noble of him also.
Re:Serious question... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:IBM still does research.... (Score:2, Interesting)