A lot of us wouldn't be here without him. DEC made good, really reliable hardware.
mark
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/020711-kenneth-olsen-dec-obit.html
Thanks Mark, for this and your previous email.
It is always sad when anyone dies, God rest his soul. To be honest, I have never heard of him before but it appears he made a massive contribution in his life and he is probably a good inspiration to many people.
I need to read through your articles' I am now at home, sitting after a bottle of wine.
Do you think a corei7 980x with 12GB of ram could do as an emergency back-up for data analyses? I am thinking of building one.
Cheers,
John.
On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 8:17 PM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
A lot of us wouldn't be here without him. DEC made good, really reliable hardware.
mark
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/020711-kenneth-olsen-dec-obit.html
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On 2/8/2011 4:40 PM, Johnny H wrote:
Thanks Mark, for this and your previous email.
It is always sad when anyone dies, God rest his soul. To be honest, I have never heard of him before but it appears he made a massive contribution in his life and he is probably a good inspiration to many people.
Unfortunately, the thing he will probably be most remembered for is the 1977 quote: "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home."
on 17:02 Tue 08 Feb, Les Mikesell (lesmikesell@gmail.com) wrote:
On 2/8/2011 4:40 PM, Johnny H wrote:
Thanks Mark, for this and your previous email.
It is always sad when anyone dies, God rest his soul. To be honest, I have never heard of him before but it appears he made a massive contribution in his life and he is probably a good inspiration to many people.
Unfortunately, the thing he will probably be most remembered for is the 1977 quote: "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home."
That and snake oil.
In fairness, Olsen wasn't the only one to make a comically understated estimate of future widespread computer use. Ed Yourdon proclaimed in 1975 (the year Apple Computer was founded): "unless you're very rich or very eccentric, you'll never have your own computer". In fairness, he fessed up to it in a later book: http://bit.ly/hlIO1v
The snake oil comment is also interesting in context. The main thrust appeared to be that pouring the label "UNIX" over a pile of silicon and bits didn't magically make all compatibility issues disappear:
Olsen without mentioning particular companies, likened some vendors of Unix products to “snake oil” salesmen and said the claim that Unix will resolve incompatibility problems within multi-vendor networks is “a naive idea.” “It still won’t resolve the problem of interchangeability”, he said, adding that the operating system is just one of the several components needed to achieve compatibility. He cited windowing ability and communications protocols as two other major components.
Somewhat ironically, by the time Olsen made those comments (1987), interchangeability was being addressed by the GNU project (the GNU manifesto was written in 1985), windowing by the X11 project (1984), and communications by TCP/IP (in BSD UNIX as of 1983).
Still, yes, among my first UNIX experiences were the campus PDP-11 systems, and I suffered for a while on VAX/VMS and Alpha/OpenVMS.
I've resisted the impulse to declare the death of a snake-oil salesman, however.
On 02/08/2011 03:28 PM, Dr. Ed Morbius wrote:
on 17:02 Tue 08 Feb, Les Mikesell (lesmikesell@gmail.com) wrote:
On 2/8/2011 4:40 PM, Johnny H wrote:
Thanks Mark, for this and your previous email.
Unfortunately, the thing he will probably be most remembered for is the 1977 quote: "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home."
I respectfully disagree. One mis-statement in a public speech does not come close to defining the man.
The statement is generally quoted without context as it is here. He was actually speaking of computer controlled homes, (temperature, lighting, etc...) rather than the PC (entertainment and communication) found in most homes today. We are of course, sneaking up on the home control thing (energy management), so in time he will have been mistaken in the context he intended.
Ironically, in those years my well appointed apartment was furnished with a surplus PDP-8, an air mattress, stereo system and a Mr Coffee. This was of course prior to wife and family. :-) I did get to keep the stereo system.
In fairness, Olsen wasn't the only one to make a comically understated estimate of future widespread computer use. Ed Yourdon proclaimed in 1975 (the year Apple Computer was founded): "unless you're very rich or very eccentric, you'll never have your own computer". In fairness, he fessed up to it in a later book: http://bit.ly/hlIO1v
Others have made similarly short-sighted remarks in public places. Most of us make them on less exalted stages and so are not called to account.
Regards, Ray
on 16:34 Tue 08 Feb, Raymond Lillard (ryl@sonic.net) wrote:
On 02/08/2011 03:28 PM, Dr. Ed Morbius wrote:
on 17:02 Tue 08 Feb, Les Mikesell (lesmikesell@gmail.com) wrote:
On 2/8/2011 4:40 PM, Johnny H wrote:
Thanks Mark, for this and your previous email.
Unfortunately, the thing he will probably be most remembered for is the 1977 quote: "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home."
I respectfully disagree. One mis-statement in a public speech does not come close to defining the man.
The statement is generally quoted without context as it is here. He was actually speaking of computer controlled homes, (temperature, lighting, etc...) rather than the PC (entertainment and communication) found in most homes today. We are of course, sneaking up on the home control thing (energy management), so in time he will have been mistaken in the context he intended.
Ironically, in those years my well appointed apartment was furnished with a surplus PDP-8, an air mattress, stereo system and a Mr Coffee. This was of course prior to wife and family. :-) I did get to keep the stereo system.
In fairness, Olsen wasn't the only one to make a comically understated estimate of future widespread computer use. Ed Yourdon proclaimed in 1975 (the year Apple Computer was founded): "unless you're very rich or very eccentric, you'll never have your own computer". In fairness, he fessed up to it in a later book: http://bit.ly/hlIO1v
Others have made similarly short-sighted remarks in public places. Most of us make them on less exalted stages and so are not called to account.
Most of us aren't CEOs of leading tech firms, with a core professional competency being to sort which way the wind blows (or self-proclaimed tech visionaries in Yourdon's case).
That said: in tech, the wind changes direction often, and there are many examples of the one-time pack leader making what are seen to be highly inaccurate dismissals of an upstart technology or products. Usually in the midst of trying to turn back the tide.
I'm just wracking my brains right now to think if there might possibly be some examples involving Linux, but I can't for the life of me think of one.
Quoting "Dr. Ed Morbius" dredmorbius@gmail.com:
on 16:34 Tue 08 Feb, Raymond Lillard (ryl@sonic.net) wrote:
On 02/08/2011 03:28 PM, Dr. Ed Morbius wrote:
on 17:02 Tue 08 Feb, Les Mikesell (lesmikesell@gmail.com) wrote:
On 2/8/2011 4:40 PM, Johnny H wrote:
Thanks Mark, for this and your previous email.
Unfortunately, the thing he will probably be most remembered for is the 1977 quote: "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home."
I respectfully disagree. One mis-statement in a public speech does not come close to defining the man.
The statement is generally quoted without context as it is here. He was actually speaking of computer controlled homes, (temperature, lighting, etc...) rather than the PC (entertainment and communication) found in most homes today. We are of course, sneaking up on the home control thing (energy management), so in time he will have been mistaken in the context he intended.
Ironically, in those years my well appointed apartment was furnished with a surplus PDP-8, an air mattress, stereo system and a Mr Coffee. This was of course prior to wife and family. :-) I did get to keep the stereo system.
In fairness, Olsen wasn't the only one to make a comically understated estimate of future widespread computer use. Ed Yourdon proclaimed in 1975 (the year Apple Computer was founded): "unless you're very rich or very eccentric, you'll never have your own computer". In fairness, he fessed up to it in a later book: http://bit.ly/hlIO1v
Others have made similarly short-sighted remarks in public places. Most of us make them on less exalted stages and so are not called to account.
Most of us aren't CEOs of leading tech firms, with a core professional competency being to sort which way the wind blows (or self-proclaimed tech visionaries in Yourdon's case).
That said: in tech, the wind changes direction often, and there are many examples of the one-time pack leader making what are seen to be highly inaccurate dismissals of an upstart technology or products. Usually in the midst of trying to turn back the tide.
I'm just wracking my brains right now to think if there might possibly be some examples involving Linux, but I can't for the life of me think of one.
How about, "this will be the year of Linux on the desktop!"
-- Dr. Ed Morbius Chief Scientist / Robot Wrangler When you seek unlimited power Krell Power Systems Unlimited Go to Krell! _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 3:42 PM, Ian Murray murrayie@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home."
Google thinks the same, don't they?
Yes, let's blame cloud computing on Google....
-
Dave Stevens -
Dr. Ed Morbius -
Ian Murray -
John R Pierce -
Johnny H -
Les Mikesell -
m.roth＠5-cent.us -
Mark -
Raymond Lillard