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In defense of Google, I think their machine translation is highly underrated, its simply incredible how good it is, at least for European languages. As is their

In defense of Google, I think their machine translation is highly underrated, its simply incredible how good it is, at least for European languages. As is their contribution to building large data centers and manipulating large amounts of data (mapreduce, Bigtable was the first major nosql). Facebook is too young to tell. Still, IBM is the gold standard for CS research - Microsoft appears to have many productive researchers but I'm not sure they have made fundamental advances like virtual memory, hard disks, relational databases (all of which came from IBM).

gruseom 15y ago
I thought virtual memory came from Burroughs.
- bane 15y ago
  I think it was the first commercial computer to support it, but much of the theoretical groundwork wasn't really figured out till 68 and 70 http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=363095.363141 http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=363095.363141 http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=356571.356573 http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=356571.356573
  - gruseom 15y ago
    That sounds like the old joke, "I can see that it works in practice but will it work in theory?" If the Burroughs guys both invented it and commercialized it then surely they should get the credit for it. The story is in this wonderful memoir: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2856567 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2856567 (with the relevant passage quoted here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2928672 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2928672).
    - bane 15y ago
      I agree, I hadn't heard of the Burroughs guys until this post. The two papers I linked to were always the earliest ones I was aware of. There's a surprising amount of stuff that gets built though without understanding all of the theory behind it. So it doesn't surprise me if a "pre-theory" example of VM was built. After all, we had the wheel for thousands of years before figuring out PI.
- wglb 15y ago
  In fact it did. It didn't enter into "mainstream" consciousness until IBM "invented" it.

gruseom 15y ago

I thought virtual memory came from Burroughs.

bane 15y ago
I think it was the first commercial computer to support it, but much of the theoretical groundwork wasn't really figured out till 68 and 70 http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=363095.363141 http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=363095.363141 http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=356571.356573 http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=356571.356573
- gruseom 15y ago
  That sounds like the old joke, "I can see that it works in practice but will it work in theory?" If the Burroughs guys both invented it and commercialized it then surely they should get the credit for it. The story is in this wonderful memoir: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2856567 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2856567 (with the relevant passage quoted here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2928672 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2928672).
  - bane 15y ago
    I agree, I hadn't heard of the Burroughs guys until this post. The two papers I linked to were always the earliest ones I was aware of. There's a surprising amount of stuff that gets built though without understanding all of the theory behind it. So it doesn't surprise me if a "pre-theory" example of VM was built. After all, we had the wheel for thousands of years before figuring out PI.
wglb 15y ago
In fact it did. It didn't enter into "mainstream" consciousness until IBM "invented" it.