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Ken Thompson's Last Day At Bell Labs 115

Posted by Hemos from the bye-bye-american-pie dept.
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."
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Ken Thompsons Last Day At Bell Labs More

Ken Thompsons Last Day At Bell Labs

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  • It's probably time (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    First off, thanks Ken. I'm not sure what else to say but "Thank you" for all the wonderful things.

    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.

  • old people flying planes. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I hope you have a strong roof.

  • Flying is the opposite of UNIX (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    And he'll be happier than ever.

    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.

  • Ken Thompson Killed in Plane Crash (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    CNN DEC 2 2000 Hackensack NJ.

    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!)
  • 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)
  • 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. :-/
  • 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.

  • 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

  • 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

  • Why yes, yes it does. Thank you for noticing.

  • 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.

  • That explains all the daemons in UNIX...
  • 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.

  • This is since the last os update, when I also installed some new hardware (hey, even linux guys have to reboot on kernel patches!)



    That's until I can interest someone in coding some userfriendly "on-the-fly" kernel patch.

    I mean, Tandem (now Compaq Non-stop whatever) does this. You can install a new os rev. without even coming so close as interupting service on the machine. Now, how hard could it be to implement this on your run-of-the-mill Linux ?
    (Granted. very hard, but possible.)

    I guess if that particular itch raises it's ugly head, some Alan, Linus or other will scratch it badly...

    I can see it already "Uptime: 4 years, 364 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes, 59 seconds

    Kernel patch applied: 600"

    Ahhhh...
  • Ken Thompson isn't the only gray-beard to move away from Bell Labs this year. Just last summer, Brian Kernighan [bell-labs.com], 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

  • When microsoft publishes 'NT' or 'new technology'.

    Don't forget about Win2000, which according to marketing materials [yahoo.com] is "built on NT technology".
    --
  • Well, Steve Wozniak is a teacher...
  • 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.

  • WinME does use MS-DOS.

    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 /c. MSDOS is loaded. Type ver /r. It says something like

    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.
  • What more can I say?
    --
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • yeah i agree.. those New Jersey people.. =x
  • FYI, I use Windows 2000 on my personal desktop as yes, I agree that Linux still hasn't reached mainstream acceptance as a desktop OS.

    However, UNIX continues to thrive in the server market; one only has to look at the Netcraft Web Server Survey [netcraft.com] 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

  • It was Leibniz.

    Newton is credited for it because he was better-known a the time. This is the reason that we use Newton's notation rather than Leibniz's in calculus.

  • 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.

  • 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().


    --

  • Okay, everyone on Earth seems to have gotten in a reply before I did, but that's okay; I'm going to run my mouth just like everyone else. ;-)

    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 [landings.com] 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.
    ---
  • 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!
  • I agree. Worshipping actors is stupid, and I cant stand people that do. But this guy made an actual contribution to society. Give credit where credit is due.
  • Between Dennis Ritchie and Brian Kernighan actually. But I will agree that Thompson was pretty important with C.

  • a little subtle humor. we don't get that much around here.

  • 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.
  • Are you sure BWK & Ken didn't leave to become the 4th & 5th members of ZZ Top?

    Anyhoo -- that just leaves DMR there as THE BIG NAME at Bell Labs (with all due respect to Rob Pike, et. al.). Let's hope he sticks around for a while longer.

    AWK on, Kernighan!

    Thus sprach DrQu+xum, SID=218745.
  • Sure, he's done an amazing job steering Linux in addition to the early coding he's done. But in the here-and-now, how much of the actual 2.4 kernel is he personally responsible for coding? Any of it, or just a lot of leftover bits from 2.2 or 2.0?

    Before you make lame comments like that, you should do some research. If you bother to read kernel changelogs at all, you'll notice Linus still codes and proofreads many patches. To insinuate he is coasting now is rediculous.

  • ...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.

  • Re:One hit wonder (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Fucking supermodels.
    Just like all hackers after an all-night coding session. Right?

  • Possibly bad taste (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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."

  • Re:this for Ken (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Linux, I am your father. [bell-labs.com]
  • Now, you may think its the worst thing in the world, but we never hear about Max Microserf and his great contributions to Win2k...

    Well, err, umm, at one point, there was a "Dave Cutler's Fan Club Page" - see the reference to it in one of the comments in this Slashdot article [slashdot.org] - but it seems to have disappeared.

  • 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
  • ...the retirement of Ken Thompson reminds us of how recently Unix was created. Unix is an OS that most /. readers take for granted, and I suspect many would agree that it feels as though it's always been there - for most readers, it has.

    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 [natureimages.com]. (Personally, I think his stint at General Magic burned him out on programming.)
  • Well, Arno Pendias (Nobel Laureate and co-discoverer of cosmic background radiation) is a HELL of a lot bigger name than any of the computer folks, and he still works part time at Bell Labs.

  • 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, or RMS?

    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++.

  • Is something going on at Lucent? I know their stock has been taking a serious hit lately. Is the Bell Labs component under stress because of it?

    Was Rob Pike looking for a job at Microsoft Research when this [slashdot.org] 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 [demon.co.uk] by Apple.
  • Recall also that KT showed how even open source cannot be trusted [acm.org].
  • But the only consistancy Windows has had since day one has been its name. The API has radically changed over the years. You are right, the marketing has been great. How else does someone need to convince the public that continual ground up rewrites are the magnificent evolvement of a product line.

    Unix on the other hand has been extended, but its core concepts have not been removed. It is a testament to good design.

  • I have to agree with another poster about the hero worship thing and the lack of criticsm.

    With regards to Linux - there is a classic and well known email debate between Linus Torvalds and Andy Tanembaum (it is reproduced in the back of a book about Linux, someone must know the reference, I forget it) where first the argument begins about Linux and Minix, and the purpose of Linux and why it tries to be different from Minix, but the significant points in the discussion are the criticism of Linux not being microkernel based, or being a truly distributed operating system. These criticisms are invalid if you just want a stand alone operating system, but they are valid if you want the "next generation operating system for the computing world" that Linux is often touted at being (when it was not designed to be that, and has sort of evolved into being it in a fuzzy way). One only has to look at the criticisms levied at DLLs and shared libraries (although, they are sort of at the periphery). By virtue of being ported to many platforms, Linux does have a sort of "ad hoc" microkernel.

    I am sure many academics and specialists in operating systems would have to agree that Linux is not designed from the ground up to embody the state of the art operating system approachs, but rather it has sort of evolved that way simply because of mass popularity - what people really want to do now and in the future is distributed computing, and Linux does this not in an inherent way.

    In the same way, people in the field of information engineering will tell you that they wish Tim Berners Lee did not invent HTML, because the internet as it has become should have been based on something else (which is why XML/Java/etc is now taking over, if only because people are finding engineering problems with using HTML, and realise now how XML/Java/etc scales better). That's not to say that TBL did not do something amazing for humanity, because he did, and obviously he did not forsee what was going to happen, and he cannot be denied that acclaim, but it is fair to make objective criticism about the technologies being used.

    Coming back to Linux - the importance of Linux is not so much in the nature of the operating system itself, but lies in the development model (global community, open source, etc) that can be seen as a culmination of many things before it (GNU, fsf, ietf, etc). An analogy is in the fine arts : in the history of fine arts, there are masterpieces, and those are undoubtedly masterpieces, and it is possible to trace the developments of style and technical issues to understand how they was evolving and then took full force in a particular masterpiece - for instance, the amazing works of the mid renaissance are built upon the developments of brunelleschi, giotto and leonardo da vinci who pioneered the development of perspective and broke away from classicism. So, the similiarity is that Linux is a sort of masterpiece that embodies a suite of many different things that were evolving - unfortunately, the internal technical construction of Linux is definitely not state of the art, and I am sure experts would agree, unfortunately many of the people on Slashdot are not experts or academics and do not have extensive experience or understanding of operating systems.

    The sad thing is that the mass popularity driving Linux is now upsetting companies that were developing seriously robust operating systems (e.g. real time operating systems for embedded systems), and perhaps they will have problems funding the kind of research that should be carried out into operating system design.

  • Take a look at where he writes [bell-labs.com] 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.

  • 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
  • . In recent years Thompson has gone on the record saying negative things about Linux and not really getting the whole picture.

    Well, you say "whole picture" as some sort of objective truth; maybe he interprets the whole picture differently than the linux community. His claims aren't particularly outrageous; he said that the code quality in linux varies (I think few people will argue with that), and that while it's fine for a PC, it's not that great for embedded systems or firewalls. Now that last part is definitely debatable, but considering this one of the men that a) created UNIX, and b) has been involved in the OS field for 30 years or so, I think he definitely has a right to make those kinds of judgements. More so than the average linux coder, who seems only to know MS and linux.
    --
  • Sometime this month. Forgot the exact date. Cheers, e.
  • Look to Ken's flight page to read a story about him flying in a MiG-29, along with a picture of him in front of the plane.

    I think that's a L39 Albatross trainer on the second link.

    Calum

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • "I'll grant that Unix may not have been what it was without Ken, but was the institutional culture such at Bell Labs that Bell Labs would have come out with something similar to Unix even if he had never been involved?"

    In a word, no. I'm sure you think you're being very clever as you ask this rhetorical question. However, if you had even the faintest idea about the early history of Unix, you'd realize how off-track you are being. Without Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, there would have been no UNIX or UNIX-like operating system at Bell Labs at all.

    Bell Labs management didn't ask for a simple OS coded in a HLL at all. KT and DR just went ahead and did it for their own reasons. I do attibute the success of Unix to "institutional culture" (Bell Labs providing a happy little sandbox for people to play in, Bell Labs not being able to commercialize Unix immediately because of the consent decree). However, no such project would have ever happened without the individual contributions of two very unique and talented personalities.

    By all means criticize Slashdot heroes, if you like. I don't worship everything that came out of the Unix Room at Bell Labs or idolize KT et al. But get your facts correct, first.
  • i dunno maybe he means "SECOND POST"???


  • > If the old Bell Labs is imploding, it would be a terrible shame.

    Imploding? If I'm not mistaken it has imploded. As the stock price fell, senior management started taking desperate measures in hopes of shoring it up. As part of this, the Lucent Microelectronics division, which accounts for a good bit of work at the Labs, was spun off, as were consumer and business products (a rough rememberance). Products too, like Plan 9, have been sold. At this point Lucent is doing more-or-less only telco switching and wireless, rather circumscribing what remains for The Labs to do.

    The fact is that it was probably time for the old gaurd to leave. I suspect there isn't much left for them.

    James Mitchell

  • Re:Kernighan is retiring as well (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 02, 2000 @12:23PM (#586620)
    He's "retiring" from Bell Labs, but he's joining the faculty of Princeton as a Full Professor - not quite leaving the field. See http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~bwk/ [princeton.edu]

  • Re:More stupid personality cults (Score:3)

    by swb ( 14022 ) on Saturday December 02, 2000 @03:24PM (#586621)
    [I'm laughing that I got modded down for trolling, anyway...]

    You're right that there's certainly some hero worship everywhere, I guess on Slashdot in particular it goes too far, especially when it comes to Linus who never seems to get ANY criticism.

    Sure, he's done an amazing job steering Linux in addition to the early coding he's done. But in the here-and-now, how much of the actual 2.4 kernel is he personally responsible for coding? Any of it, or just a lot of leftover bits from 2.2 or 2.0?

    The other thing that rankles me is that many of these people are being given personal credit for an institutional product that might have been developed anyway, with or without them. I'll grant that Unix may not have been what it was without Ken, but was the institutional culture such at Bell Labs that Bell Labs would have come out with something similar to Unix even if he had never been involved?

    The same holds true for Linux. Sure, it wouldn't have been Linux but it's also not like it's the only open sourced Unix around. Given the nature of the BSD world, why wouldn't someone else have said "Let's do a free Unix from scratch."

    The counterpoint is something like Windows 2000. Now, you may think its the worst thing in the world, but we never hear about Max Microserf and his great contributions to Win2k, primarily because we rightly see the institutional nature of Win2k and don't associate the major personality Bill Gates with the actual coding or force behind its technical development.

    Mostly its the herosim and lack of critcism of the Slashdot heroes list that bugs me. I'm all for lauding the contributions of individuals, but I'm also sure that these same individuals are very open to criticism that they'll never get precisely because of the hero worship.

  • Re:First Ed Roberts, now this (Score:3)

    by uncleFester ( 29998 ) on Saturday December 02, 2000 @06:36PM (#586622) Homepage Journal
    Bill Gates emptying Port-O-Lets.

    "oh what a relief it whiz..."

  • Gotta love the stereotype. (Score:3)

    by dal3 ( 195148 ) on Saturday December 02, 2000 @10:06AM (#586623)
    Look to Ken's flight page [bell-labs.com] to read a story about him flying in a MiG-29, along with a picture [bell-labs.com] of him in front of the plane.

    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.

  • passing the torch (Score:3)

    by SouperMike ( 199023 ) on Saturday December 02, 2000 @09:05AM (#586624)
    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?

  • And? (Score:3)

    by Malevolent ( 231436 ) on Saturday December 02, 2000 @09:08AM (#586625)
    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...

  • Yep, that's him. (Score:3)

    by Nick Driver ( 238034 ) on Saturday December 02, 2000 @11:38AM (#586626)
    And holding a cup of coffee too.

  • Ground Control to major ken (Score:3)

    by Calle Ballz ( 238584 ) on Saturday December 02, 2000 @03:48PM (#586627) Homepage
    Commencing countdown, major ken.......

  • this for Ken (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 02, 2000 @08:57AM (#586628)
    FP for the man

  • First Ed Roberts, now this (Score:5)

    by allanc ( 25681 ) on Saturday December 02, 2000 @09:20AM (#586629) Homepage
    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?

  • A round of applause.... (Score:5)

    by LiteForce ( 102751 ) on Saturday December 02, 2000 @09:12AM (#586630) Homepage
    This man helped to give the world an operating system that has survived the test of time and will most likely outlive anything Bill Gates or his gang will ever create... what greater legacy could this man have left to his profession or his peers ?

    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...

    ... and let's not even forget his contribution in the form of the C programming language!

    I think I speak for everyone here when I say "THANKS FOR EVERYTHING KEN!!"

    "Hmmm.... they have the Internet on computers now ?" - Homer Simpson

  • I can see where this is going... (Score:5)

    by StandardDeviant ( 122674 ) on Saturday December 02, 2000 @09:04AM (#586631) Homepage Journal

    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...


    --

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