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Fascinating.

I was at Columbia University last week for a meeting sponsored by the local ACM chapter and LXNY, the speaker was Stephen Bourne (he who is sh).

At some point during his excellent talk on the history of Unix and his place in it, someone asked what he thought was the reason for the success of the operating system, and without hesitating, he talked about the room where all the terminals were located (he never specifically referred to it as the "Unix room" though) and how when you released software it was used immediately by those in the room and if something broke, you were called "idiot" (and probably worse) by your peers -- it was in your best interest to make sure you didn't put out junk as you really didn't have that dilution of responsibility that engineers have in a large corporation where the design team is in one wing of the building, the coders are in another, and the testers in yet another location, etc.

It was a great speech, anyone who hasn't seen Dr. Bourne speak should do so, he is an excellent source of insight into the early years of Unix and software engineering in general. He is now working for a venture capital firm and roughly a third of his talk was spent talking about that, it's a testament to his great speaking skills that most of the people in the room didn't lose interest when he switched topics like that (I'm convinced that most hackers suffer from ADD).

Thomas

BTW, it's important to know that today is the last day you can submit comments to the FCC telling them what you think about the broadcast flag. For more details:

http://www.lxny.org/announce/2002/FCC.6.December.2 002.html

I was there at the commerce committee roundtable hearing on 7/17 with Berman's Committee. Check the transcript. Although some of the comments were left out, all of the comments from NYFairUse, NYLXS, LXNY, Information Producers Initiative were left out, one of the leeches in favor of drm restrictions actually said that P2P users sitting at home can use P2P to upload military secrets. He compared (towards the end of the meeting when everyone was tired, getting ready to go home, and paying less attention) a kid sitting a home trading songs to Wen Ho Lee, Robert Hanssen, and Jonathan Pollard. His first or last name was Myron.(Content Guard I think?)

It should be noted that NYFairUse and NYLXS tactics at the 7/17 meeting (and our unreported by Slashdot YRO attempts to get on the invite list prior to the meeting) were severely criticized by some in a slashdot story prior to all the facts getting out. Now that time has passed, and we have seen direct results of our actions, perhaps it is time to reconsider whether those actions should have been taken or not. Especially in light of this and this, which never would have happened if we had just sat there quietly like some have suggested, and news that the drm bills (all of them, Holling, Leahy, Biden, others) are dead for the year.

I know that Jay Sulzberger of LXNY thinks that having Gates and Microsoft get tax deductions for donations to schools tied with restrictive clauses is grounds for a lawsuit.

You never know with Jay how to take what he says, he is serious but he is not known as...put it this way...the most calm and rational individual in the world. OTOH he is pretty intelligent and does generally know his stuff.

Cheers,
Ben Tilly

I know that Jay Sulzberger of LXNY thinks that having Gates and Microsoft get tax deductions for donations to schools tied with restrictive clauses is grounds for a lawsuit.

You never know with Jay how to take what he says, he is serious but he is not known as...put it this way...the most calm and rational individual in the world. OTOH he is pretty intelligent and does generally know his stuff.

Cheers,
Ben Tilly