[ih] Review: Yasha Levine's "Surveillance Valley"

[Dan Cross]

On Thu, Jul 5, 2018, 10:49 AM Dave Crocker <dhc2 at dcrocker.net> wrote:

> On 7/4/2018 12:16 PM, Richard Bennett wrote:
> > You mean the guy who copied Unix, a creation of America’s 11th largest
> > company at the time?
>
> and yet, the specifics of who did what and with what, then, describes a
> classic garage activity.
>

I would describe it more as "skunkworks" than garage.

the only difference worth noting is that the big company was paying
> their salaries.  in terms of critical components to the event, that
> point doesn't impress me.


Ken Thompson wrote the first "Unices" kernel on a cast-off PDP-7. While
perhaps antiquated for 1969, is that really something that would have been
accessible to an individual? 1st Edition was on a PDP-11/20; almost
certainly out of the reach of individuals in the early 1970s. And the fact
that they were getting *paid* to work on this is not a small point.

        - Dan C.
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