Dr. CatmanMay 15, 2024
ghorwood↙↙↙

you want enshittification? the bell phone monopoly gave us, free of encumbrance, the transistor, the solar panel, telstar, three different types of lasers, pressure treated lumber, and two operating systems, one of which i like.

and today at&t is bribing the friends of public officials to get out of providing landlines.

May 14, 2024 at 8:44pmPinafore
Show threadJohn TimaeusMay 14, 2024

@ghorwood

Curious, which operating systems? Unix of course, but which is the second?

Show threadghorwood↙↙↙May 14, 2024
@johntimaeus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs
Plan 9 from Bell Labs - Wikipedia

Show threaduoou (moved to @[email protected])May 14, 2024
@ghorwood Important to note that they were a regulated monopoly and were obliged by law to spend a proportion of their profits on researching cool shit (essentially).
Show threadghorwood↙↙↙May 14, 2024
@uoou oh yeah, unregulated monopolies, especially for low-elastic things like the phone, are always a disaster.
Show threadM HorstmeierMay 14, 2024

@ghorwood
Western Electric and Bell Labs have little in common with what is now called ATT.

WE was the practical arm and Bell Labs was the research. With oodles of money, BL was one of the last bastions of pure research in corporate America and we are less for its loss

Show threadmiketcopeMay 14, 2024
@ghorwood free of encumbrance in what sense?
Show threadghorwood↙↙↙May 15, 2024
@copito in the sense that you can design a transistor or a solar panel and not have to pay a licensing fee to the phone company. how many transistors are in that chip?
Show threadmiketcopeMay 15, 2024
@ghorwood they didn’t enforce their patents?
Show threadmiketcopeMay 15, 2024
@ghorwood when I was growing up all the telephones were rented from the local Bell phone company and it was illegal to plug anything else into the phone socket, so I guess I have a different memory of the benevolence of Bell
Show threadghorwood↙↙↙May 15, 2024
@copito by law they were only allowed to make money from the phone service. if they developed, ie. the solar panel, they couldn’t sell or license it. they built these things to make running the phones cheaper, but they had to foss those techs.
Show threadGarrett WollmanMay 15, 2024

@copito @ghorwood They filed for and received (and enforced) almost as many patents as IBM.

The difference is that AT&T was broken up on 1 January 1984, so the last of those patents would have expired in 2003.

Show threadLAURENMay 15, 2024
@ghorwood Yes and the money they are using to bribe these friends was provided by the taxpayers to boost infrastructure of their network.