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UK Lab Responsible for VNC To Close

Posted by chrisd on from the we-have-the-way-in dept.

NexUK writes "Guardian Online has an article about the imminent closure of the UK based AT&T lab , the place that brought us VNC, the popular desktop remote control system. The article talks about a nice "Toys" budget where the employees could buy gadgets without prior authorization." AT&T Strikes again, I'm surprised they haven't bought PARC and closed it down too.

15 of 166 comments (clear)

  1. TightVNC is Good Version by elucidus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    TightVNC adds variable JPG compression and is optimized for slow connections.

    --
    This sig is self referential.
  2. This stinks by Psiren · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I used to drive past this place every day on my way to work. I often used to wonder what a magical place it must have been to work in. I always hoped I'd get the chance to work there myself someday. Bang goes that idea. Strangely enough I can see the new Microsoft Research Centre from my flat. I guess that would be a cool place to work too, if it weren't for the owners. Cambridge has long been known for its hotbed of innovation. I'm sad to see us lose a bit of that.

  3. Holy shit. . . . by Com2Kid · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I am still out of breath, my word, this is. . . . horrible. What the hell is AT&T thinking? Just the other day I was thinking to myself how nice it is that there is such a company still around that is willing to support pure research and development, but now. . . . holy shit.

    VNC will live on, but what new ideas might have come this lab? What technology, what science, will now never be invented, or at the very least horribly delayed? This is awful, how could any company get pissy over intellectual property rights when there is so much more at stake? For crying out loud, shutting down not only one of the premier research labs in the world, but a (I think?) profitable one at that!

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    Need help treating your acne? Come here!
    1. Re:Holy shit. . . . by sagneta · · Score: 5, Interesting


      What they think is that they are going out of business in the not-to-distant future.

      The Gartner group claims that within 5 years AT&T will be purchased by another corporation and will cease to exist as a serpate corporate entity. The time frame might be optimistic, 5 years seems a bit soon, but the conclustion is indisputable. AT&T just began a 5-1 stock reverse split. First time in its history and the first for a DOW component. That's something that soon-to-be-delisted dot-coms do. Not DOW components.

      How the mightly hast fallen.

      I'm not sure if those outside the United States realize that MA-Bell is on her deathbed. In fact, amoungst the possible purchasers of the AT&T franchise are any number of the baby-bells such as Verizon or PacBell.

      Thus the closing of the lab is just a
      sign of AT&T's time. Telco in general is cratering within the United States. The internet is crushing the old to make way for the new.

      I have to tell you that, honestly, AT&T had it coming for some time. I am sorry that many good people are getting squashed but the corporation as a while has done much to harm customers and prevent the movement towards the Internet in recent years.

      In any event, so goes AT&T and so goes the lab.

      Sorry guys.

    2. Re:Holy shit. . . . by Nexx · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The Gartner group claims that within 5 years AT&T will be purchased by another corporation and will cease to exist as a serpate corporate entity. The time frame might be optimistic, 5 years seems a bit soon, but the conclustion is indisputable. AT&T just began a 5-1 stock reverse split. First time in its history and the first for a DOW component. That's something that soon-to-be-delisted dot-coms do. Not DOW components

      Exactly. AT&T said that they're doing the reverse 5-1 split to buoy their share price to above $10, so that institutional investors will be more interested in their stocks. However, most companies would've created a plan for buoying their share price to above $10/share instead of hatching this hare-brained idea.

      It's sad to see a company like AT&T go, because of its history with the research labs, but you're right, they're hurting for money, and that's the real reason behind the closing of these labs (Bell Labs is now owned, in most part, by Lucent).

  4. No surprises here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Take a look at what Telco stocks have been doing over the last year or so. They're looking under couch cushions in the employee lounge for spare change!

  5. VNC development should continue by compugeek007 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I bet the ATT lab FTP servers are going to be slammed for quite some time as source is being leeched by every sysadmin in the world.

    I myself use VNC extensively for my network. Combined with SSH2 it makes a decent little VPN (plus it works in a browser window!)


    OT, has anyone here gotten VNC to run in the Windows CE / PocketPC OS? I like the idea of controlling servers from my wireless PDA at home.

    --
    Jesse Wolfe Sr. Manager Systems Integration
  6. There's been more to them than VNC... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    We do not just owe them the VNS stuff, but also things like omnyORB, one of the free CORBA implementations available. And moreover, have you ever looked at such fine projects as PEN or CLAN over at their site? Less of practical use for the meek of us, but really interesting and insightful. A shame they will get shut down...

  7. Re:Tragic? Maybe. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
    > Nothing terribly revolutionary has come out of the UK Research group recently...

    Things that have come out of AT&T Labs Cambridge recently:

    The Active Bat system, which can locate in 3D better than any other deployed system. They are using Bat transmitters as mice in the air, on 50 inch plasma screens. Now that's a cool interface.

    A broadband phone, rolled out across the entire staff, which lets then see train timetables, share a doodling screen during phone calls, have active directories so that they can call the nearest phone to someone (c.f. Bat above)

    At least visit their website before you start trolling. You might even learn something.

  8. Toys Budgets Anyone? by squaretorus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Does anyone else have a toy budget - surely the /. crew do?

    We have a CD budget at work - idea being that we all listen to CDs all the time and if anyone takes on in it gets assimilated into the office collection so we ended up buying replacements all the time.

    By having a 'CD a week' thing anyone can order up a new CD on the Amazon account whenever they like. Beats being able to take money out of petty cash for milk!

    Costs what - 50 x £20 a year and keeps us happier than a bunch of pigs in poop!

  9. Buying out and closing down PARC by wjr · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I don't think there'a ny need for AT&T to buy out and close down PARC - Xerox seems to be doing a good enough job of that. They've been trying to sell it to venture capitalists for a while, with a notable lack of success. I don't think that PARC will last another 12 months, which is very sad.

    Xerox also has (had?) a research lab in Cambridge, colloquially known as EuroPARC. I visited there a few times and saw some quite neat stuff.

  10. Current VNC D/L Sites by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I, being the paranoid vnc junkie that I am, just cruised over to the ATT - VNC website, to get copies for each OS, and found the downloads are gone beyond the forms.

    Hopefully someone out there has them all for download at their website. Anyone know any sites?

    Being GPL, I imagine that there are several. I need to feel assured that the source is untouched as well.

    Thanks be to any who finds this info.

    And screw "The Man" for making another horribly morbid decision.

  11. "Gartner group claims" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Do these guys have ANY CREDIBILITY left at all after the dot com implosion? I don't think so.

  12. Bazaar by PigleT · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Find your favourite distribution's source archive, and grab 'em from there. (Debian would be my first port of call, seeing as I *know* they've packaged VNC before now.)

    I'm thinking, in this day & age of open-source, it's slightly weird that projects can be "removed" from public distribution - cf ?Blender?, the Net::DNS CPAN module, and/or that nice movie editor thing - when so many distributions have used the sources in the past, it can very rapidly become quite hard to find something once it *is* removed; reason being, freshmeat refers people only to the project's listed homepage, it doesn't copy stuff locally.

    Seems to me that within the "bazaar" that is open-source development, there's quite a lot of "one package, one home site" going on.

    --
    ~Tim
    --
    .|` Clouds cross the black moonlight,
    Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
  13. Re:This is what breeds true innovation... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Heh, I have to post anon for this one, lest my chain-o-command get sacked for allowing me to exist.

    In Hopper's lab there was a rule that anyone could buy anything on his own authority so long as it cost less than £1,000.

    I'm 3 years out of school and working for a major research lab. I have a Visa card that will do $2000/transaction, $5000/month unaudited. Usually I keep purchases around $500-$700/month, but it's nice to have the leeway. Let me tell you, this "toy" budget is absolutely invaluable. In recent past I have picked up a couple of HP products, the 100 model (4*6) scanner and printer that have been extremely useful to the business that wouldn't have been purchased otherwise. I snagged a Kangaru 128MB USB flash drive that works with Win, Mac, and Linux. (no fscking drivers needed!) Seeing as none of our Ultralight machines have disk drives anymore, (and we're too paranoid for wireless) this has proved incredibly useful. I've bought large IDE hard disks liberally, and vast quantities of cheap ram from crucial.com. (Compaq and IBM ream corporations for memory, so I saved the company at least 15k last year buying from crucial.com)

    "Toy" budgets are totally acceptable, IMNSHO, and in the end, when used by reasonably responsible employees, save the corp some major $$$.

    I don't think it's a liberal policy, or even an excess. I think it's the way research organizations need to do business to survive.