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davePremium,MVM
join:2000-05-04
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| Yeah, but, no, but ... It's fine to find an example of a successful technology, and then have a laugh at the old memo that said "this can never work".
But what about the no-doubt numerous examples of failed technologies, and the old memos that said "this can never work"? Why no news postings on how great the memo writers were?
(But it is a pretty amusing memo, now we have the benefit of hindsight).
The viewpoint in that memo, that you can't run a reliable network without solid guarantees about the maximum time to getting a transmit slot, etc., was pretty common at the time. It was the official viewpoint of IBM (for obvious reasons), to give but one example.
Of course, the Ethernet we run today is nothing like the Ethernet being criticized in that memo. As Metcalfe once said, Ethernet will be around for ever, because whatever replacement technology gets invented, it'll be called "Ethernet". | |
 PolarBear03The bear formerly known as aaron8301Premium
join:2005-01-03 | said by dave:But what about the no-doubt numerous examples of failed technologies, and the old memos that said "this can never work"? Why no news postings on how great the memo writers were? Same reason the 6 o'clock news only reports tragic, sad stories of bad things, never good news - it's more entertaining.
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A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention, with the possible exceptions of handguns and Tequilla. -- Mitch Ratcliffe | |
Time4aNAPPremium
join:2007-04-09
Des Plaines, IL | reply to dave
said by dave:(But it is a pretty amusing memo, now we have the benefit of hindsight). Hindsight is one thing. What I found amusing were references to statistics that Mr. Bachrach used to bash the proposal. This guy had to have been a bean counter who truly believed that he knew more about engineering than engineers.
This one is the capper: "The fallacy in your conception is that the stations should be transmitting randomly." Remember that this memo is dated after Vint Cerf had set up shop at Stanford, and had made great progress on TCP/IP. By 1974, the writing was on the wall that Bellcore technology was not the future. Mr. Bachrach may have been the only one in Palo Alto who was oblivious to this. | |
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