Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!pyrdc!pyrnj!rutgers!att!ihlpf!cem From: cem@ihlpf.ATT.COM (Malloy) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: SEA threat to other ARC utility authors Summary: AT&T vs SEA? Message-ID: <6085@ihlpf.ATT.COM> Date: 12 Sep 88 13:32:25 GMT References: <8851@cup.portal.com> Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois Lines: 53 You wrote in article <8851@cup.portal.com>, raf@cup.portal.com writes: > > I've now had a chance to locate my (rather dusty) copy of this classic: > "Software Tools" by Brian W. Kernighan and P.J. Plauger. Copyright 1976 > by Bell Telephone Laboratories, Incorporated and Yourdon inc. Published > by Addison-Wesley, softcover, 338 pages. ISBN 0-201-03669-X. > >> This used a distributed directory approach and command line syntax >> remarkably similar to those used by SEA's ARC. > > Having just re-read this material, I find the similarity quite striking. > > -- Bob Freed raf@cup.portal.com > ...sun!portal!cup.portal.com!raf > Are suggesting that AT&T sue SEA for the exact same reason that SEA sues PKWARE? All of the "LOOK AND FEEL" stuff is really getting out of hand. Maybe IBM should sue everyone that makes a computer. That would include general purpose computers (like DEC, Amdahl, Apple, Sun, etc.), but also would include anything that uses computers to work (like microwave ovens, digital watches, automobiles, etc.) But wait, why stop with IBM? You can go farther back than that. And I quote. "In any case, Bell Laboratories' early contributions to digital computers - both hardware and software - quite evidently grew from the fact that telephone switching systems used digital logic and electrical relays, which are binary "on" or "off" devices, to make connections. Importantly also, in the late 1930's principles of logic design proposed by Claude E. Shannon (who later created information theory) were first applied to the design of relay circuts. These principles, together with two basic logic circuts patented by the Laboratories in the early 1940's, still underlie digital computer technology. Also in the late 1930's, George R. Stibitz, another Bell Laboratories mathematician, designed a machine that used telephone switches and relays to perform rapid calculations in binary form. This Complex Number Calculator, as Stibitz called it, was in fact the first electriaclly operated digital computer..." "Mission Communications" by Prescott C. Mabon Copyright by Bell Laboratories 1975 Based on this AT&T should sue EVERY SINGLE manufacture in the entire country. That, of course, would make AT&T the owner of every thing that is made or sold in this country. We would all have to pay AT&T for it all or give it back. Do you all get the point? Can we please stop this stupid "who was first" discussion? Clancy "Yes, I work for AT&T" Malloy