Vint Cerf, “father of the Internet”, is retiring

Just the nicest guy you could imagine. He took the note-takers job during our breakouts, had beers with us after the session, and asked really good questions and never asserted anything the whole time.

What a legend.

However I never forget my surprise, Idly flicking through TV one evening and coming across Earth Final Conflict - and there was Vint in a fairly substantial role

It’s like two lifetimes in tech years. I remember that summer Google Earth was launched, we were a year removed from the Gmail launch, and I worked on shipping the first Summer of Code.

For all that we complain, it’s still the most amazing thing ever.

Legends

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5275828/

Maybe having multiple streams within a single connection, like QUIC does, would have been a better choice. Also being able to demarcate message boundaries within the protocol itself, perhaps, instead of it being a simple byte stream.

No matter what you think of Google

What's that for?

An anecdote: I wrote a program (in Sigma-7 assembler I think) to play Jotto--a bit like Mastermind but with 5 letter words. Vint loved to poke around in people's directories to see what they were up to and found my program. He played it a few times, and then collared me to ask me a couple of questions: 1) It seemed to know some of the words he entered but not all -- what was up with that? 2) What sort of AI algorithm was I using for the program to make guesses? (It usually beat the human player.)

Answers: 1) I didn't have a digitized dictionary (it was 1969!) so I hand-entered the five letter words from a pocket dictionary but got tired halfway through so it only knew words starting with a-l. 2) The program would eliminate any words that didn't fit the responses to its guesses so far and then pick a remaining word at random.

Upon hearing my answers Vint walked away in disgust! But years later he gave me a recommendation when I interviewed with Google (it didn't work out for other reasons).

I also shared a cubicle wall with another Van Nuys High alumni, Jon Postel, aka "God of the Internet". Sartorially, Jon was the complete opposite of Vint--long scraggly beard, blue jeans, forever barefoot--but those weren't the things that mattered. Man, those were the days.

I wonder what he feeling about it

   “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on 
    his not understanding it.”
    
    ― Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked 

[1] open access journals were a big step forward, but I was open access decades before

[2] i'll join a club which is neutral on the issue, but I can't accept the positive position, not because I feel it threatens me but because it pains me to see a brilliant data scientist being jerked around (bad enough that the HR lady leaves) and not being able to tell him "your skills are in demand and you can find another employer on the other side of the street" (this is NYC) And the argument that "startups" need it is bogus: Google can take a chance on a lottery, a key employee at a startup is key however.