Path: csiph.com!weretis.net!feeder9.news.weretis.net!panix!.POSTED.2602:f977:0:1::5!not-for-mail From: Rich Alderson Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: fucking lies [was Re: Don Norman: The Truth About Unix] Date: 04 Feb 2026 15:29:11 -0500 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC Lines: 32 Sender: alderson+news@panix5.panix.com Message-ID: References: <10lb6d7$3she5$1@dont-email.me> <10ll48q$2vbi7$1@dont-email.me> <10llqrd$37blf$4@dont-email.me> <10ln01t$3hqko$1@dont-email.me> <10lnq6e$643$1@reader2.panix.com> <10lob1i$264s$1@dont-email.me> <10lrpph$16028$1@dont-email.me> <10ltseg$1s522$1@dont-email.me> <10ltt2q$1s9c7$2@dont-email.me> Injection-Info: reader2.panix.com; posting-host="2602:f977:0:1::5"; logging-data="24982"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@panix.com" X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 22.3 Xref: csiph.com alt.folklore.computers:233913 Lawrence =?iso-8859-13?q?D=FFOliveiro?= writes: > On Tue, 3 Feb 2026 15:22:08 -0700, Peter Flass wrote: >> Burroughs had a lot of good stuff. The problem was that no one knew >> they had it. They were like a stealth company. > Lots of people knew they had good stuff. But IBM was the master > marketing machine. > John McCarthy, the father of LISP, was an IBM man. When he went to > Stanford, IBM gifted one of their machines at the same time. But the > computing facility already had a Burroughs machine, which the people > there quite liked using. But he saw to it that access to it was made > difficult, and so pushed everybody into using the IBM machine instead. The Stanford administrative data center was an IBM shop from the get-go. McCarthy was not an IBM man, he was a computers-are-a-great-tool man. McCarthy had nothing to do with the administrative data center; he moved to the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory when he left the East Coast, where he worked on their already existing PDP-1, and was responsible for obtaining the first customer ship PDP-6 (Serial #1) for SAIL. You've moved from troll to fucking liar. -- Rich Alderson news@alderson.users.panix.com Audendum est, et veritas investiganda; quam etiamsi non assequamur, omnino tamen proprius, quam nunc sumus, ad eam perveniemus. --Galen