SmashTech

March, 1974.

This new ‘ethernet’ idea would never work.  With its concept of variably sized packets and random backoff timings, it would be too unpredictable to deliver any reliable amount of bandwidth.  Well, they say hindsight is 20/20, as this Xerox memo in 1974 shows.

“Your transmission medium or environment is not quantum noise limited. Simple analysis shows that imposing a [P]oisson (i.e., random) statistics on message transmission drastically reduces the available effective bandwidth.”

Somewhat dry reading if you’re not familiar with network terminology, but interesting if you are. Read the  full article and scanned copy at byteCoder

(from CNet)

Several sites are running stories about how a DC think tank, the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, is raising questions of whether Linus can really be considered the father of the OS.

AdTI claims that more credit should go to Andrew Tanenbaum, who was at the same university as Linus, and developed Minix, which Linus admits (in his first usenet post about linux) is supposed to be a free Minix clone for PCs.

The main question is: Does anyone care?