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I think the key came from this video in the first few minutes, when Kernighan talked about a Government Controlled Monopoly where Bell Labs got predictable fixe

I think the key came from this video in the first few minutes, when Kernighan talked about a Government Controlled Monopoly where Bell Labs got predictable fixed funding from ATT. I think this is the only way Open Allocation can work on such a scale.

moonchrome 11y ago
Not really, companies like Apple/Microsoft are sitting on so much cash they can literally piss away billions on R&D and it would never threaten their viability (how much did Microsoft just write off on failed Nokia deal ?) - but it seems that modern corporate doesn't see this as valuable approach - I can only speculate why.
- angersock 11y ago
  To be fair, that's what Apple did in the late 80s/early 90s, and it damned near killed them.
- herge 11y ago
  And Microsoft has been literally been pissing away billions on R&D for the last 10 years.
  - moonchrome 11y ago
    Sure but we are talking about Bell labs organizational structure - I haven't heard Microsoft doing such a thing in their R&D - I'd be interested to know if I'm wrong on this actually.
  - sytelus 11y ago
    Bell Labs was massive. It had 11,000 people who were involved in pretty much every nukes and cranny ranging from cosmology to transistors to UNIX. Microsoft research probably comes closest to modern equivalent of Bell Labs and it has only 1000 people. So Bell Labs was like 10 MSR combined in to one! It's really a pity we don't have anything like Bell Labs any more even though profits have grown by leaps and bound. As it is investors would be more than happy to shutdown something like MSR and constantly force the company to "justify" its existence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs#Origin_and_historical_locations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs#Origin_and_historica... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Research
    - burger_moon 11y ago
      I don't know if it's an entirely fair comparison to go by body count. Things have gotten a lot more efficient since the Bell Labs days. Even Richard Hamming stated "when I first started working there was a woman who walked around handing out the coffee and donuts, now a machine does that and her job no longer exists."

moonchrome 11y ago

Not really, companies like Apple/Microsoft are sitting on so much cash they can literally piss away billions on R&D and it would never threaten their viability (how much did Microsoft just write off on failed Nokia deal ?) - but it seems that modern corporate doesn't see this as valuable approach - I can only speculate why.

angersock 11y ago
To be fair, that's what Apple did in the late 80s/early 90s, and it damned near killed them.
herge 11y ago
And Microsoft has been literally been pissing away billions on R&D for the last 10 years.
- moonchrome 11y ago
  Sure but we are talking about Bell labs organizational structure - I haven't heard Microsoft doing such a thing in their R&D - I'd be interested to know if I'm wrong on this actually.
- sytelus 11y ago
  Bell Labs was massive. It had 11,000 people who were involved in pretty much every nukes and cranny ranging from cosmology to transistors to UNIX. Microsoft research probably comes closest to modern equivalent of Bell Labs and it has only 1000 people. So Bell Labs was like 10 MSR combined in to one! It's really a pity we don't have anything like Bell Labs any more even though profits have grown by leaps and bound. As it is investors would be more than happy to shutdown something like MSR and constantly force the company to "justify" its existence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs#Origin_and_historical_locations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs#Origin_and_historica... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Research
  - burger_moon 11y ago
    I don't know if it's an entirely fair comparison to go by body count. Things have gotten a lot more efficient since the Bell Labs days. Even Richard Hamming stated "when I first started working there was a woman who walked around handing out the coffee and donuts, now a machine does that and her job no longer exists."