25 Sep
2000
25 Sep
'00
2:20 p.m.
Ah, well, I don't know about his mouth, but for awhile there several
non-stupid things came off his drawing pencil. It's kind of tough for a
person who has built a multi-billion-dollar company from scratch over 20
years to realize, let alone admit, that the magic may well have moved
on, and that then-current realities may be different from those abroad
in "The Good Old Days." Ken's quote is a particularly egregious example
of this problem, but the thinking behind it was not unique to him, as
anyone who's worked for the now-defunct Massachusetts minicomputer
makers can surely attest. That mode of thinking, if not about that
particular topic, is afoot today in Silicon Valley, and ten-odd years
from now we'll look back in scorn at the obviously
self-evident
stupidity of industry pundits currently acknowledged as geniuses. As
Yogi Berra is purported to have said, "It's tough to predict, especially
the future."
-----Original Message-----
From: Sellam Ismail <foo(a)siconic.com>
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Date: Monday, September 25, 2000 1:49 PM
Subject: Re: Our fine educational system (was: Login on VMS)
On Mon, 25 Sep 2000, Bill Pechter wrote:
stupid?
"There is no reason for any individual to
have a computer in their
home."
-- Ken Olson, President of DEC, World Future Society
Convention, 1977
-+-+=-+-
...and then again there's the following. (Both quotes are in my
FreeBSD box MOTD as a reminder.
One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How
enthusiastic is our support for UNIX?
<...>
-- Ken Olsen, president of DEC, DECWORLD Vol. 8 No. 5, 1984
Did anything ever come out of Ken Olsen's mouth that was not very
Sellam International Man of Intrigue and
Danger
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Looking for a six in a pile of nines...
VCF 4.0 is September 30-October 1
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25 Sep
25 Sep
1:42 p.m.
On Mon, 25 Sep 2000, Geoffrey G. Rochat wrote:
Ah, well, I don't know about his mouth, but for
awhile there several
non-stupid things came off his drawing pencil. It's kind of tough for a
You mean Gordon Bell's pencil :)
makers can surely attest. That mode of thinking, if
not about that
particular topic, is afoot today in Silicon Valley, and ten-odd years
from now we'll look back in scorn at the obviously self-evident
stupidity of industry pundits currently acknowledged as geniuses. As
You mean like all these dot.com morons?
(Actually, that shake out has already begin.)
Sellam International Man of Intrigue and Danger
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Looking for a six in a pile of nines...
VCF 4.0 is September 30-October 1
San Jose Convention Center, San Jose, California
See http://www.vintage.org for details!
3:04 p.m.
New subject: Getting out of touch (was Re: Our fine educational system (was: Login on VMS))
At 02:20 PM 9/25/00 -0400, Geoffrey G. Rochat wrote:
It's kind of tough for a
person [Ken Olsen] who has built a multi-billion-dollar company from
scratch over 20
years to realize, let alone admit, that the magic may well have moved
on, and that then-current realities may be different from those abroad
in "The Good Old Days."
Actually this is an extremely dangerous condition that kills companies all
the time. When you are a "pioneer" you create the rules, having created the
rules you forgot that you created them, someone who is trying to beat you
thinks outside the rules, and kills you.
Sun actually killed DEC, and sometimes I think having a collection of the
real milestones in that battle would be good. For example the Sun 3/280 was
the 19" rack mounted Sun 3 architecture machine. It typically had a couple
of SMD drives (Eagles) in the lower half and the card cage in the upper
half of a rack. Some had a tape drive on top. This machine was directly
aimed at the MicroVAX 3900 which was DEC's one-rack "killer" VAX at one
time.
Sun broke two key rules:
You can build "commercial" timesharing systems on a commodity
microprocessor.
You don't have to write your own Operating System.
By using the 68020 and using BSD, the Sun 3 only needed to pay for a modest
OS and hardware staff (and no chip design guys), whereas DEC had to cover
the cost of their custom chips, their own OS, and their own hardware and
busses. Thus Sun was able to sell "tims sharing servers" for less than the
equivalent VAX cost and still make enough profit to grow the company.
Interestingly, Sun now sits where DEC was (their own CPU
architecture/busses + OS) and so they are very vulnerable to someone to
come along and kill them with open software based X86 servers.
--Chuck
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