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Ken Thompson's Last Day At Bell Labs
A reader writes: "I was doing some research on Bell-Labs, and I stumbled across
Ken Thompson's
Chess page. ( that's not the interesting part )
The interesting part is that at the top he says that he's leaving Bell
Labs yesterday - Dec 1 2000, to pursue flight instruction full time.
I dont know about everyone else, but it
seems sort of important that one of the co-creators of Unix appears
to be retiring."
Secondly, I think it's probably time. In recent years Thompson has gone on the record saying negative things about Linux and not really getting the whole picture. When you think about torch passing and carrying on the cause, it's clear Linus, Alan, David Miller, and a group of others are carrying on the torch. Ken's time was up. It's not a bad thing or a negative thing but he didn't gracefully grow out of the scene so much as the scene kind of took over itself and took it in a different direction than he would have. Last few times I've heard anything about him he hasn't been growing gracefully but showing his age and how he doesn't fully understand or run the scene anymore. Better for him to retire than to ruin his good name, reputation, and legend.
ME!
I hope you have a strong roof.
Flying is scary and exhilerating, and sometimes better than Sex (maybe not for the average *NIX geek, but...) and uses all your senses.
Of couse, the crashes are a bit more serious.
Unix inventor Ken Thompson was killed today when his Cessna training aircraft collided with a Lear Jet being piloted by Bill Gates of Microsoft. There were no survivers.
Well, if I had any business sense whatsoever that's the avenue I'd be taking right now. Jump start a quick dot-com, make a few million bucks off lusers investing in my company's stock that has no chance of succeeding which a dismal business plan, then retiring at the age of 25 to live on a nice island in the Carribbean sipping cool drinks on the beach while thousands of people lose a few thousand dollars out of their 401k's or stock portfolios because my business failed miserably. I love the Internet generation!
Except Bill Gates will retire to a private island nation with hundreds of slave women meeting his every need while he burns hundred dollar bills in his fireplace to keep warm at night. ;-)
Well, I have my home machine as an anecdote. Running lots of servers 24/7 (http, ftp, smtp, pop3, imap, finger, dns, mysql, napster (does it count? you bet, with the network traffic it generates) and also running 24/7 icq, winamp, mozilla, ie, dnetc, emacs, tssh, dos, diablo 2 (yes, 24/7) and a bunch of utils and system stuff . This is in addition to the occasional heavy-tasking things like ripping/encoding, quake, gnutella... Phew! I'd like to see a server (any os) loaded this much. Uptime so far: 4 weeks and no problems yet (processes stuck, things that don't work consistantly, and other things Win98 used to do). This is since the last os update, when I also installed some new hardware (hey, even linux guys have to reboot on kernel patches!)
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
The bit that got me was the high-speed braking manuever that was described to him as "a courtesy maneuver to allow tailgating traffic to pass".
Troll of the year.
My Win2K workstation at work has an uptime of 83 days.
Yes, but have you logged in yet? (doubt it)
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Goddamn it...
:-/
Now I gotta get mean. I have goatse.cx in my hosts file as 127.0.0.1 and that damned link STILL worked.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
D'oh!
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
I'd rather admire someone for what they DID and not what they look like or how well they can say words that someone else wrote (actors, models etc.)
There is a difference. And there is no shame.
He's been flying planes for as long as I can remember.
I'm pouring a 40 of eight-ball on the couch for my dead homie right now.
I read most of the mixed comments on this page and then thought once, twice before replying. But I'lll still say this. For those who think that Unix is nowadays just part of the woodwork, something so obvious that anyone could have dreamed it up - and that the idea that somehow being 'a personality' is a bad thing - wow, how much you have missed. I was around in the days when Unix was a revelation of clear thinking, when it stood out amongst the products of lesser minds and buck-chasers. The work that was done by Thompson, Ritchie, Kernighan, Plauger and many others who they worked beside has fundamentally changed the way that we view things. We owe those far-sighted thinkers a huge vote of thanks, even if their names won't be at the forefront of everyone's mind. To everyone who thinks 'I could have done that if only if ...' I laugh in their faces. Bell Labs' research group (CSRG) pulled together some of the best thinkers of this century. I was one or two times lucky enough to meet most of them. You are dealing there with intellects that stand out the same way that an Olympic athlete does. We are lucky to be able to build on their thinking and exploit their ideas.
In a world where mediocrity rules it's more important than ever to recognise and acclaim brilliance. Whether they might or might not be flawed human beings, who cares? The legacy lives on and we are the richer for it. We are lucky that there were people with the vision and the determination to make it real.
Brilliant...bravo!
I greatly admire anybody who does what they do better than everyone else, and especially if they're polite, modest and reserved about it.
I don't know the guy. I'm never going to send him fan mail. But I have immense respect for his achievements.
I also love the fact that from time to time, Slashdot does take a moment to sit back, find someone that's changed all our lives (literally) and celebrate it.
~Cederic
Not that I'm nocking Ken in any way©
--
James Michael Keller
"Linux is not our destination, it is simply the open road to tommorow"
Back up the URL to his home page there©©©
His office:
666 Mountain Ave©
Room 2C-519
Murray Hill, New Jersey 07974-0636, USA
Could explain a lot eh? :
--
James Michael Keller
"Linux is not our destination, it is simply the open road to tommorow"
Why yes, yes it does. Thank you for noticing.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
The bit about the groundcrew not hooking up his pressure suit was priceless. Nice link.
I wouldn't take away from his or any other individual's accomplishments, but when is everyone going to get over this cult of personality thing? Linus Torvalds, RMS and on and on. They're just people who contributed something within their skill levels. STOP making them into these ubermensch heroes, it's really sickening, kind of like Entertainment Tonight, except its mostly filled with homely white guys instead of sexy movie stars.
Considering that bwk is a Princeton Ph.D I am sure that he has published in refereed journals.
There is also that little fact of a National Medal of Technology.
In fact if you look at his bibliography page, you will see that he has 89 publications, many of which appear to be in refereed journals.
Ken Thompson isn't the only gray-beard to move away from Bell Labs this year. Just last summer, Brian Kernighan, who wrote The C Programming Language with Dennis Ritchie and The UNIX Programming Environment with Rob Pike, left full time work there for a professorship at Princeton.
Hi!
... :)
I just wonder why everybody thinks becoming a flight instructor means retirement?
I know flight students where I (would I be an instructor) would say: "Hey, okay, you got me - I agree to do debugging Microsoft code for the rest of my life - just get me away from this guy" - and this at soaring where the instructor isn't paid at all
I wasn't one of the easiest myself - but someday I got it
just kidding - but it is a very cool job to finish you working life.
Have fun, Ken.
Woz is a school Teacher
http://Lenny.com
When microsoft publishes 'NT' or 'new technology'.
Don't forget about Win2000, which according to marketing materials is "built on NT technology".
--
+&x
Well, Steve Wozniak is a teacher...
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
You're right. I meant fbcon, not SVGAlib.
The closest simulation of how NT works that you could do on linux would be to move all of X, _and_ GTK+ (or QT or Motif or whatever) into a kernel module.
That's not true. GDI (compare with X) is not in the kernel.
Hands in my pocket
WinME does use MS-DOS.
/c. MSDOS is loaded. Type ver /r. It says something like
1. Put bootgui=0 in config.sys, dos=noauto in autoexec.bat and reboot. You're in DOS.
2. Format a floppy disk and sys it. Boot from it. You're in DOS.
3. Open a command prompt. Type mem
Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition [4.90.3000]
DOS is in HMA.
Also, the GDI is not in the NT kernel. The graphics drivers do run in ring 0 however (kind of like SVGAlib).
Furthermore, NT was not designed as a "server OS". It was designed as a "networked OS" that could be dropped in as client or server. The networking is exactly what Microsoft pushed when they created NT 3.1 from the OS/2 codebase.
Hands in my pocket
What more can I say?
--
keete
finally ken decided to have a life. :)
The chess table is much more interesting. Thompson was the first guy to solve various piece endings, by using his mainframe systems, and answer once and for all questions of who wins what endings. The page in the story in fact gives some of those results. Hurrah!
Yeah, Ed Roberts is a doctor in Cochran, Georgia. I actually went to him when I had a strep throat when I was going to Midle Georgia College (also in Cochran).
You probably mean, Windows 2000 can't be more stable than X because of the kernel-graphics integration.
Believe me, when something go wrong in kernel, it's usually not cool
I think it would be pretty cool to take lessons from Ken. Always wanted to fly... but sadly, I don't live in the US, let along NJ.
~~~NO CARRIER~~~
Solaris is $75 for any use, on any machine
with 8 processors or less, sparc or intel.
MacOS sells for around the same price as Windows most places.
FUD. I am sorry, but my clients and users do not wake up and go, ah Bill Gates is the founder of the OS. Lets get real here man. KT made great contributions granted, but Windows has not faded since day one, so give it some credit, even if its because of marketing. But really. if you unix zealots were so damn interested in getting Windows destoyed, make unix useable for the common user. I am sorry, as nice as GNOME and KDE are (to me anyway), thats not going to cut it by a long shot, there is many things left to do.
However, UNIX continues to thrive in the server market; one only has to look at the Netcraft Web Server Survey to see the sheer majority of ISPs prefer UNIX over a Microsoft solution.
A user-friendly interface does NOT always make sense when a user should never have to play around with a server.... a real server is one that just sits in the corner and does its job, not one that requires the admin to keep rebooting it every 48 hours (before you flame me, I have to do this frequently to an NT machine which has the latest SP installed, all security patches, and yes, it's firewalled, so don't blame skr1pt-k1dd1e5 either :-} ).
As for Windows fading, perhaps you are right, but I don't see it getting any brighter either... for instance:
Windows 3.1 - Perhaps the last version of Windows to actually contain some innovative stuff (TrueType springs to mind).
Windows 95 - Mixture of 16-bit code and 32-bit code that played with the processor akin to balancing multiple plates on sticks and not quite getting the balance right.
Windows 98 - Windows 95 + Internet Explorer 4.
Windows ME - Windows 95 - MS-DOS + Internet Explorer 5 + Media Player 7.
NT would have been a good idea except for Microsoft putting the GDI into the kernel... geez, who cares about the speed of the fancy pointy-clicky graphics when it was designed as a server operating system in the first place!
Windows has user-friendliness but very little stability and Microsoft doesn't seem to be doing anything to address this issue.... Linux has the stability but admittedly not the user-friendliness, but as you already have said, GNOME and KDE are steps in the right direction which does indicate the free software community are making inroads towards making Linux/xxxxBSD more usable to people familiar with GUIs...
Perhaps we'll just have to see who achieves both these goals first... I don't need to say which one my money is on :-p
"Hmmm.... the Internet is on computers now ?" - Homer Simpson
"Be vewy vewy quiet, I'm hunting wuntime ewwors!" - Elmer Fudd
I agree.
Support The GNU Project!! http://www.gnu.org
I worked at Bell Labs in 1996 on a research contract and played chess with these guys during lunch. It was like playing against machines. They knew what I was going to do before I did. I got beat by one guy in 2 minutes. It was sad. Seriously.
Ummm, Jon, aren't you supposed to be dead...? - Otter(3800)
that we'll have to wait() to find out what he'll do next?
Fuggit. Too tired to be funny for you slashdot fools. Time to sleep().
--
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
As a big-time geek and a private pilot, I think it's just too cool that Ken Thompson's quitting the corporate life to pursue flight instruction. I don't know how many of you know this, but flight instruction is really a bottom-rung aviation career, used all too often as nothing more than a stepping stone on the way to flying for the airlines. It doesn't pay well at all. Sure, students pay you $35/hour, but you're lucky to clear $12/hour after all your expenses. A lot of student pilots get some piss-poor instruction and/or have bad experiences with these guys because all they care about is racking up hours until they can get picked up by the airlines.
There are other flight instructors, however, who teach just for the pure pleasure of it. They're the great ones - they stick with flight instruction because they love doing it. Certainly if a UNIX god like Ken Thompson quits his Bell Labs job to be a full-time flight instructor, he's doing it because he loves it. He sure as hell isn't doing it for the money. I envy his students - I'll bet every student he trains will benefit tremendously from his teaching.
If you're interested, here's his pilot certificate information from the database at landings.com.
Ken wrote the B programming language, not C. He did later re-write Unix in C though.
---
Desperation is a stinky cologne
After that long in one job, it is no wonder Ken is calling it a day.
First off, this is off-topic, as is any other windows pissing that's showing up here.
Second, Win2K seat licenses (so does Solaris, but only if you're using it commercially). MacOS X Server doesn't -- US$500/server, no matter how many users (and with Darwin being open source, there'd be no point anyway -- just hack the Netinfo source to ignore any license managers in the way). Linux... can't, nor would it want to.
/Brian
KT invented regular expressions. Where would we be without them? Hope he has a great second career - he deserves it!
Be ot or bot ne ot, taht is the nestquoi.
Be ot or bot ne ot, taht is the nestquoi.
Boy, and I thought the creation of UNIX and C were showstoppers.
I sort of agree. Overall, RMS's philosophy is more sound and his goals are more admirable. However, following "the proof is in the puddin'" theory, I gotta vote for one of the creators of UNIX. Overall, better than any tangible things RMS produced for the world.
Last week when Mike Muuss (the inventor of ping) died, someone posted that we should pay our respects to our heroes and legends of computing before they're gone forever.
:)
Thanks, Ken, for everything. Just don't get behind the stick of them MiG-25s again.
Thus sprach DrQu+xum, SID=218745.
DrQu+xum: Proof that the lameness filter doesn't work.
...a rewrite of 'if OSes were airlines' is in order.
Yes, I know what good contributions Ken has made to the world of computing, but give the man a break. He did what he did, and now it seems that he wants to do something else. :)
People are able to have hobbies other than computers.
I kissed a girl - Jill Sobule
Although it doesn't say so on the page, Steve Wozinak is designing the planes he's flying.
Trolls throughout history:
Jonathan Swift
Forgive me for being correct, but did Brian Kernighan and
Dennis Ritchie create the C language? Whilst not undervaluing what amazing things Ken did with the language,
give credit where credit is due.
I thought he was still exploring the telephone company with his Cap'n Crunch flute.
try The Linus Torvalds Documentation Project
I just recently got my pp-asel. What I wouldn't give to take a lesson from you someday ;-)
the average *NIX geek doesn't have sex... so flying really is better.
Windows is one of the cheapest OS around. Taken, Linux is Free, but to state that a copy of WIndows 95 for $80 as expensive is just so narrow minded. How much do you think Solaris goes for? Or Apple OS? We all like reading criticisms, but please do so fairly. Long live Thompson. He left a legacy and I am sure that's all he wants as he moves forward in his life to gain even greater experience flying ...
--
This is simply incorrect. Ken Thompson wrote the first C compiler; the design of C (as far as I remember) was shared between him and Dennis Ritchie. Ken is a fantastically talented person with a talent for seeing in one step what would take a normal person several plodding steps. Wonderfully weird sense of humor, too.
Folks who have called unix 'old technology', like bill gates and co., have always left me smiling. When microsoft publishes 'NT' or 'new technology', you can bet what has proven to work in the past has been thrown out, as in 'not invented here'. (I can't comment on W2K, except that it has a pretty mouse cursor.) Good programming can avoid entrophy IMHO.
Spare account? I know I like having them, theres nothing better than AOL for usenet trolling (the art form, not what you newbie slashdot kids call trolling).
I used to work as a programmer for Lucent in a shared building with Bell Labs. No one in either company was happy.
Lucent has become so geared toward profit rather than innovation that Bell Labs has been forced into a lesser role. I don't suppose Ken was happy these last several years.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
He's probably met his match. Todays techies can do stuff he couldn't imagine. But flight instruction? Techies should retire to luxury, not flying. Tsk Tsk Tsk.
Ken Thompson is great, but look at the bell labs page for what they actually work on.
Nothing that belllabs works on seems plausible/practical. For the most part, Ken Thompsons
contributions to the UNIX/C community ended a long time ago
Fucking supermodels.
Just like all hackers after an all-night coding session. Right?
Reminds me of an old line: "When I die, I want to go like my grandfather did, gently while sleeping, and not like his passangers, screaming in a panic, looking for the inflatable raft."
Linux, I am your father.
You are very good at something does not mean you what to do it for the rest of life. Ken just has other goals in his life so he wishes to pursue them. More power to ya Ken
Ken's retirement is indicative of the amazing progress that we've made in the last 30 years. If you look at what's been built on his foundation in that time, it's rather mind-boggling. Ken's invention became a crucial part of the foundation for a global Internet that has had far-reaching effects on human society worldwide.
Certainly, a major milestone in the life of one of the founders of the technology which we all use heavily, is an event worthy of note.
Bill Atkinson (creator of much of the Mac's user interface, developer of QuickDraw, MacPaint and Hypercard) is now a photographer. (Personally, I think his stint at General Magic burned him out on programming.)
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
Uh, well Ken Thompson actually helped do the gruntwork WRITING an OS that's lasted this long. Gates is not on the same level- he can't take credit for the windows code the way Thompson can for UNIX.
I hope he was given a gold Itsy at the retirement party.
Ken helped make a good OS. Stallman changed the way we'll think about software, forever.
I can guarantee all of you wouldn't be talking about how great UNIX is if you were paying Bell Labs' license fees.
Ken, thanks. RMS - thanks++.
Carefree highway, let me slip away on you.
Was Rob Pike looking for a job at Microsoft Research when this was reported here on /.?
If the old Bell Labs is imploding, it would be a terrible shame.
---
Windows 3.1 - Perhaps the last version of Windows to actually contain some innovative stuff (TrueType springs to mind).
And TrueType was developed by Apple.
Recall also that KT showed how even open source cannot be trusted.
Unix on the other hand has been extended, but its core concepts have not been removed. It is a testament to good design.
Take a look at where he writes about his trip to moscow to fly the MIG 29 and L 39 trainers.
Oh yeah, so long Ken. You've done great things that helped a lot of people get through their day.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
I sure hope he posts his flight training syllabus somewhere on the Net. I can only imagine what it's going to look like. Hmmmmmm, wonder if this means we will see more flight training and planning software coming out...
Dammy
Comm/Multi/Inst Fixed/Land
BGI/AGI/IGI
Sometime this month. Forgot the exact date. Cheers, e.
I think that's a L39 Albatross trainer on the second link.
Calum
Or something like that anyway...
--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
i dunno maybe he means "SECOND POST"???
Visit my website xpenguin.com -- A linux penguin website
Bill Gates emptying Port-O-Lets.
"oh what a relief it whiz..."
-'fester
I've never seen what he looks like, but I'm guessing the Unix engineer is the heavy-set bald guy with a bushy beard.
well, who is the man going to pass the torch onto? i mean, all of the great minds throughout history have an understudy who either turns out evil or succeeds again. but seriously, it seems like the old guard of technology is being replaced by profit-driven dot-com people. is that the direction we want to take?
it seems sort of important that one of the co-creators of Unix appears to be retiring
Er yes. People retire. This is not unusual - its what they do when they get old, whether they created Unix, Windows or Novelty Mugs...
-Tom
And holding a cup of coffee too.
Commencing countdown, major ken.......
FP for the man
Ed Roberts, founder of MITS and creator of the Altair 8800 (widely acknowledged as the first personal computer), is now a small-town doctor.
Ken Thompson, co-creator of Unix, is now a flight instructor.
What's next? Douglas Engelbart becoming a professional bowler? Tim Berners-Lee realizing his life-long dream of becoming a plumber?
99% of the world would like to think of Mr. Gates as the father of the operating system revolution - but the remaining 1% of the world who use and appreciate the elegance of Ken Thompson's work are enough to make him a character sorely missed from the field of computing...
I think I speak for everyone here when I say "THANKS FOR EVERYTHING KEN!!"
"Hmmm.... they have the Internet on computers now ?" - Homer Simpson
"Be vewy vewy quiet, I'm hunting wuntime ewwors!" - Elmer Fudd
Yeah, sure, it starts out all innocent. He's just flying planes, right?
Hmm, next thing you know he's taking lessons at SpaceCamp. Just a retirement hobby...
Then first thing you know he's launched himself into space (who wouldn't want to curry favor with the phone company?), and is paradropping Plan 9 media kits into Linux/*BSD strongholds.
Yes, it could be pretty successful, dropping Plan 9 from Outer Space...
--
News for Geeks in Austin, TX