Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

Vintage Computer Federation East 2019 -- Brian Kernighan Interviews Ken Thompson

posted by martyb on Tuesday May 14 2019, @02:54PM   Printer-friendly
from the looking-back-to-our-roots dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY6q5dv_B-o

In the 1960s-1970s, Ken Thompson co-invented the UNIX operating system along with Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs. He also worked on the language B, the operating system Plan 9, and the language Go. He and Ritchie won the Turing Award. He now works at Google. He's interviewed by Brian Kernighan of "K&R" fame.

This talk took place May 4, 2019. Videography courtesy of @thegurumeditation (Facebook), @thegurumeditate (Twitter)

[Ed note: We generally do not post stories that are strictly video-sourced, but given the stature of the participants in the programming world, I decided to make an exception. If videos are not interesting to you, please wait a bit and another story will be along before too long.]

Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Vintage Computer Federation East 2019 -- Brian Kernighan Interviews Ken Thompson | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 19 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @05:31PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @05:31PM (#843498)

    I don't see how Google is really different than Bell anyway.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +2  
       Interesting=2, Total=2
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Total Score:   2  

  • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @05:43PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @05:43PM (#843506)

    "I don't see how Google is really different than Bell anyway."

    Get back to us on that after anyone at Google wins a Nobel prize for their research, kid.

    • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @07:11PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @07:11PM (#843542)

      Google employees won several ACM Turing awards. Alphabet has stakes in a couple of projects of Nobel winners in medicine and energy.

  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @07:09PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @07:09PM (#843539)

    Ken Thompson explains this (at least partially) in the video. As I recall, the Bell System was a national monopoly and made a fee on every phone (instrument, line, call?). As the research arm of the Bell System, Bell Labs got 1% of that enormous fee -- so everyone with a phone was funding Bell Labs.

    Google isn't quite that much of a monopoly...(?)

    • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday May 15 2019, @04:05AM

      by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Wednesday May 15 2019, @04:05AM (#843686) Homepage Journal

      Bell System, at one time was so huge in U.S.A. Said, monopoly. Even though certain places were GTE.

      Google, in this Age of Cyber, is amazingly big. They have their cyber on 85% of the Cell Phones -- of our entire World!! Some people are saying, monopoly. Even though iPhone is very successful!