50 Years Later, MIT Looks Back At AI and Networking Pioneer Project MAC

v3rgEz (125380) writes "Fifty years ago, a major project that ultimately seeded much of today's computer technology was created at MIT: Project MAC, and the Multics operating system initiative within the project. Daniel Dern interviews some of the key figures involved in the pioneering project, looking at how one laboratory helped spawn Ethernet, AI, and dozens of tech companies and other innovations that took ideas from the lab to the personal computer."

Comments

Multics is not Unix....

[mbone]

Unix is not Multics (thus the name) and that is really all you need to know about Multics (except that a generation of MIT hackers cut their teeth in figuring out how to hack it).

Re:Multics is not Unix....

[hcs_$reboot]

Unix is not Multics and that is really all you need to know about Multics

There are many interesting aspects about Multics that deserve to be heard about if not studied. To name a few: the second-dimension access system or protection rings via "ring brackets" that allowed a 'r', 'w' or 'x' access to a "segment"/file depending on the caller (user or daemon) own "running ring". Thus, a lower (higher privilege) ring program would extend its r&|x access via brackets to allow a user to enter that program (a "gate"). For instance the continuums (now forums) were usually running in ring 3, while a simple user was in 4 (the core system was in 0). Multics had also convenient and powerful ACL, accesses provided to user/group-project/login-mode. Using long names or short names for a file(segment)... Studying a bit of Multics helps to realize that most of OSes concepts were already invented ~50 years ago...

Re:Project MAC?

[mbone]

Machine Aided Computation.

It's the typical Cambridge (Mass) conceit that if it doesn't happened within 50 miles of Kendall Square (or Harvard Square, depending on your persuasion) it doesn't count, and if it does, you should know about it.

You seem to have posted in the wrong thread.

[mmell]

You want the "forgot to take my meds this morning" thread.

Re:Project MAC?

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Then why was it called God's Chosen Operating System? Huh, smartass?

Re:Project MAC?

[50000BTU_barbecue]

Youtube has many films from the era.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Mr Corbato himself.

Re:This is a *LIE*

[Anonymous Coward]

Knowledge of history isn't a sign of mental illness at all, but an overwhelming urge to make others read your views on history even in discussions of another subject might be. The Slashdot submission did not claim any link between this technology and the space race, and the comments section could not have either since yours was the first post.

So, the other commenter's comparison of you to APK is apt. You are not educating anyone here on history, you are only making others concerned about your sanity.

Re:Project MAC?

[chipschap]

Multics was amazing for its time. Then Honeywell took it on as a commercial product and didn't know how to sell it, or more like their sales people were clueless and didn't want it competing against their own home-grown crappy operating system and hardware. So Multics died.

In the minicomputer era, Prime Computers (a competitor to DEC) built an operating system that they called a "mini" Multics, because it used the same security ring idea, but it wasn't a tenth as good.

And I do myself remember Project MAC as I was a student at MIT in those days.

Re:This is a *LIE*

[blue trane]

Biz saw no need for computers at first. Market of six, etc. Govt drove the industry with orders during the 50s and 60s. NASA was like 4% of GDP and represented a big part of the orders. Conservative short-sighted biz would have been content to wait for centuries before responding to a pure market signal for miniturization. So yes, NASA played a large role.