June 28, 2004
I have been Forgiven
This morning started of with a surprise when one of the old bell-labs heroes told me
The Unix community has finally forgiven you for switching from Unix Guru to Windows Guru. Maybe we even believe you were right in that NT & XP are worthwhile modern OS technologies.
I am at the Usenix annual technical conference in Boston. It has been a while since I attended the general conference and I am amazed by how it has grown in size and professionalism. It is great to meet a lot of 'old friends', and I am amazed how the core people from the meetings from 10-15 years ago are still going strong.
The conference itself also started of in a unique way. Both the Software Tool Users Group award and Lifetime Achievement award were given to the same person: Doug McIlroy. The long time head of Computing Science Research Center at Bell-Labs, the birth place of Unix, is credited with the invention of pipes in Unix, and heralded as the organizing force behind the creation of Unix. After his retirement from Bell-Labs Doug went back to his Ivy League roots (he was a Cornell undergrad) and now is a professor at Dartmouth
Doug McIlroy receives the Usenix Lifetime Acievement award
out of the hands of Dennis Ritchie. (sorry for the fuzzy picture)
