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List: tuhs
Subject: Re: [TUHS] In Memoriam: J. F. Ossanna
From: Arthur Krewat <krewat () kilonet ! net>
Date: 2018-11-29 20:03:38
Message-ID: 33fa3ae3-f08e-4d02-96f0-85216e39f698 () kilonet ! net
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On 11/29/2018 12:07 PM, Doug McIlroy wrote:
>> Sun was sort of the Bell Labs of the time ... I wanted to go there and had
>> to work at it a bit but I got there. Was Bell Labs in the 60's like that?
> Yes, in desirability. But Bell Labs had far more diverse interests. Telephones,
> theoretical physics, submarine cables, music, speech, fiber optics, Apollo.
> Wahtever you wanted to know or work on, you were likely to find kindred
> types and willing management.
>
This sounds like the environment I went into at Nynex Science and
Technology in White Plains, NY during the mid 90's. Labs all over the
building, each one doing some groundbreaking (to me) research into cell
phone coverage, voice recognition and synthesis, and a bunch of other
things.
I did a short consulting stint there as IT support staff, probably not
more than 6 months. I generally ruffled the feathers of the older
support staff when it came to "fixing" things that were easy to fix.
Like the bright (or not, to them) idea of moving everyone from disparate
mail servers to one domain, and no longer needing to know which server a
certain person's email account was on. {suna,sunb,sunc,etc}. I was
getting tired of having to login to the boxes to see where a personal
email account was. So I stayed late one night, made it so you could
address anyone as "@*.domain" or just "@domain", and it would be routed
accordingly, and wind up in the right place. They actually made me put
it back the way it was the next day.
So, in terms of research, the place was awesome, I learned and was
exposed to a lot of interesting topics. I could spend hours in a lab
talking to the people there, brainstorming about all sorts of things.
But in terms of IT support, it was top-down committee-style system
administration, and the older/more-senior IT people were not exactly the
brightest bulbs. One of the IT managers there loved me, and would talk
to me for hours about how to make things better. But his boss would tamp
down any ideas of altering things even when the end-users wouldn't
notice a difference except there was a newer easier way of doing the
same thing.
Oh well, I never really played well with others anyway ;)
https://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/20/business/business-technology-baby-bells-moving-into-the-lab.html
art k.
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On 11/29/2018 12:07 PM, Doug McIlroy wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:201811291707.wATH7XsM107856@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU">
<blockquote type="cite" style="color: #000000;">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">Sun was sort of the Bell Labs of the time \
... I wanted to go there and had to work at it a bit but I got there. Was Bell Labs \
in the 60's like that? </pre>
</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">Yes, in desirability. But Bell Labs had far \
more diverse interests. Telephones, theoretical physics, submarine cables, music, \
speech, fiber optics, Apollo. Wahtever you wanted to know or work on, you were likely \
to find kindred types and willing management.
</pre>
</blockquote>
This sounds like the environment I went into at Nynex Science and
Technology in White Plains, NY during the mid 90's. Labs all over
the building, each one doing some groundbreaking (to me) research
into cell phone coverage, voice recognition and synthesis, and a
bunch of other things.<br>
<br>
I did a short consulting stint there as IT support staff, probably
not more than 6 months. I generally ruffled the feathers of the
older support staff when it came to "fixing" things that were easy
to fix. Like the bright (or not, to them) idea of moving everyone
from disparate mail servers to one domain, and no longer needing to
know which server a certain person's email account was on.
{suna,sunb,sunc,etc}. I was getting tired of having to login to the
boxes to see where a personal email account was. So I stayed late
one night, made it so you could address anyone as "@*.domain" or
just "@domain", and it would be routed accordingly, and wind up in
the right place. They actually made me put it back the way it was
the next day. <br>
<br>
So, in terms of research, the place was awesome, I learned and was
exposed to a lot of interesting topics. I could spend hours in a lab
talking to the people there, brainstorming about all sorts of
things. <br>
<br>
But in terms of IT support, it was top-down committee-style system
administration, and the older/more-senior IT people were not exactly
the brightest bulbs. One of the IT managers there loved me, and
would talk to me for hours about how to make things better. But his
boss would tamp down any ideas of altering things even when the
end-users wouldn't notice a difference except there was a newer
easier way of doing the same thing.<br>
<br>
Oh well, I never really played well with others anyway ;)<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" \
href="https://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/20/business/business-technology-baby-bells-movin \
g-into-the-lab.html">https://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/20/business/business-technology-baby-bells-moving-into-the-lab.html</a><br>
<br>
art k.<br>
<br>
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