The groundbreaking work he did with Ken Thompson led to the operating system behind everything from set-top boxes to the iPhone, but who sings the praises of the late Dennis Ritchie?
It's funny how fickle fame can be. One week Steve Jobs dies and his death tops the news agendas in dozens of countries. Just over a week later, Dennis Ritchie dies and nobody – except for a few geeks – notices. And yet his work touched the lives of far more people than anything Steve Jobs ever did. In fact if you're reading this online then the chances are that the router which connects you to the internet is running a descendant of the software that Ritchie and his colleague Ken Thompson created in 1969.
The software in question is an operating system called Unix and the record of how it achieved its current unacknowledged dominance is one of the great untold stories of our time. It emerged from Bell Labs – the R&D facility of AT&T, the lightly regulated monopoly that ran the US telehone network for generations. Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson were two ferociously bright Bell programmers who had been assigned to work with MIT on the design of an impossibly complex multi-user operating system called Multics. In the end, the plug was pulled on the project, with the result that Bell Labs found itself with two pissed-off hackers on its books. Ritchie and Thompson badly needed a new operating system to provide an environment for their own programming, had hoped that Multics would provide it and had greatly enjoyed working on the project. Back in the lab they decided that they would just have to build the operating system themselves. So in a fantastic burst of creativity (and without asking anyone's permission) they wrote Unics (as a counterpart to Multics). Inevitably the 'cs' became 'x' and Unix was born.
Thus did AT&T find itself the astonished proprietor of a uniquely powerful and innovative operating system. The problem was that it couldn't sell it, because under the Consent Decree that gave it the telephone monopoly AT&T was not allowed to be in the computer business. So the researchers in Bell Labs did what geeks do – they gave it away to their peers in university research labs, under a licence that permitted the recipients to modify and improve it. In doing this Ritchie and Thompson unwittingly launched the academic discipline of computer science, because university departments were suddenly able to give their students software that was not only powerful (and malleable) but also free. The result was that virtually every computer science student in the world became a Unix geek in the course of his or her education. Unix was to computer science what the Bible is to divinity students. The difference was that geeks were free to modify and improve their bible – which is what Bill Joy and his fellow students at Berkeley did when they created their own version of Unix, codenamed BSD (for Berkeley Software Distribution) – of which more in a moment.
In due course, AT&T escaped the shackles of the Consent Decree and started to assert proprietary rights over Unix. This spurred an MIT programmer named Richard Stallman to embark on a project to change the world. He founded the free software movement, invented a clever way of using copyright law to preserve the freedom of programmers to modify software, and embarked on the GNU project to create a functional clone of Unix that would be free of proprietary constraints. (GNU stands for "Gnu's not Unix" which is the kind of recursive joke only programmers enjoy.) Stallman, who is one of the great figures of our time, built most of the software tools needed for his great project, but before he could write the kernel of the operating system a Finnish hacker named Linus Torvalds did it – and released it in 1991 as Linux.
The rest, as they say, is history. Linux became one of the greatest collaborative ventures the world has seen (second only to Wikipedia), in which geographically dispersed programmers collaborate over the internet to debug, improve, extend and enhance a complex operating system that is not only remarkably stable and reliable but is also free. Because it's free and malleable, every manufacturer in the world who needs a stable and flexible operating system to run an electronic device tends to use Linux – which is how your TV's set-top box and your broadband router and maybe also your smartphone comes to be a Linux box. The same goes for the millions of PCs that make up Google's server farms. In that sense, we are all now Linux (and, by inference, Unix) users.
The neatest twist of all, however, involves Apple. OS X – the operating system that now powers every Apple product – is actually built on the Berkeley distribution of Unix, so if you hack into your iPhone what you'll find is BSD 4.2. You could say, therefore, that what Apple really did was to give Unix a pretty face. I've often wondered what Dennis Ritchie would have made of that. Now that he's gone, we'll never know. What we do know, though, is that we owe him more than we realised.
LinuxComputingOpen sourceSoftwareAppleSteve JobsJohn Naughtonguardian.co.uk © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Let’s say you have two computers on your desk and, in an effort to save space, you want to operate them all using a single pair of keyboard and mouse.

There are two solutions here. If the computers are connected to the same network, you can use software programs like Input Director or Synergy to operate them with a common keyboard and mouse. In the other scenario where the machines aren’t connected, you can get a KVM switch to share one keyboard and mouse between them.

A Better Alternative – Mouse without Borders
My work setup is quite similar to what you see in the illustration above and I have been using the Input Director software all this while to control the two Windows PCs with one keyboard and mouse. Input Director is reliable and (mostly) works without problems though it does require some understanding of the Master and Slave concept.

Last week, I switched to a new Windows utility called Mouse without Borders and find it so much better than my previous solution. Wondering why?

The best part about Mouse without Borders is how easy it is to set up. You install the utility on all your Windows computers, enter the security code provided by the software and your computers will get linked. This is almost as simple as pairing a set of Bluetooth devices.

Installing Mouse without Borders – Step by Step
     

Once installed, you can not only use the same keyboard and mouse across your computers in a seamless manner but you can also drag and drop files between them. This is so convenient. Earlier, I had to create shared network folders or had to use Dropbox to transfer files but now I can simple drag them from desktop A to desktop B as if they were on the same computer.

With the Mouse without Borders utility installed, you can also send screen capture of one desktop to another by pressing a hotkey or from the system tray menu. After having used the tool for about a week, I never experienced a crash though I did have problems sharing clipboard especially when the copy operation was done inside a Flash application.

Mouse without Borders can only be used to control Windows based computers. If your work environment involves a mix of Windows, Linux or Mac computers, Synergy could still be the only good choice for you.


This story, Control Two Computers with a Single Keyboard and Mouse, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on September 23, 2011 under Keyboard, Mouse, Software.

With each new product that Apple announces, including the revamped Apple TV and the new Ping social network, Steve Jobs reveals a little bit more of his plan to dominate the media universe. But I can summarize that plan’s fatal flaw in one word: iTunes.

Considering that iTunes is the software behind one of Apple's money making streams, it is very unlike-Apple in terms of aesthetics and use. Steve Jobs insists, less is more but I wish he would take a look at iTunes.

1. Pick your favorite software below.
2. Click "Get Installer" and run it.
3. You're done!

"Then Steve comes in," Evangelist recalls. "He doesn't look at any of our work. He picks up a marker and goes over to the whiteboard. He draws a rectangle. 'Here's the new application,' he says. 'It's got one window. You drag your video into the window. Then you click the button that says burn. That's it. That's what we're going to make.' "

"We were dumbfounded," Evangelist says. This wasn't how product decisions were made at his old company. Indeed, this isn't how products are planned anywhere else in the industry.

"YAY! Multitasking is coming to your iPhone*, iPod touch and iPad, allowing you to quickly switch between applications, and use one while others keep doing other tasks in the background. This is how it works."

"Apple should not charge to put applications you’ve written onto your personal iPad (or iPhone, for that matter). If you purchase one of these devices, you should be able to install software of your own creation on it without any intervention or approval on Apple’s part, other than creating a free developer account. Essentially, take today’s iPhone/iPad developer program, and make it free."

"It disappoints me to see commentators on TV today dinging the iPad for a lack of multitasking."

A visual record of beautiful software

"I feel for Google – Steve Jobs threatened to sue me, too."

Whether the iPad is revolutionary or evolutionary is still hotly debated, but what we do know is that the computer, despite its elegance and blazing fast speed, is a decidedly first generation device. Although one day after the product's announcement may be too soon to discuss what's coming in the next version of the iPad, we've already come across several reasons to wait

CoverSutra gives you a handy and attractive way to control iTunes without having to leave your current application.

BumpTop is a full 3D experience with smooth, realistic physics, making your Mac’s desktop act more like the real desktop it’s sitting on.

Ommwriter is a simple text processor that firmly believes in making writing a pleasure once again, vindicating the close relationship between writer and paper. The more intimate the relation, the smoother the flow of inspiration.

SketchBox is a new – multifunctional yet uncluttered – Sticky Notes Manager for your Mac Desktop.

ffmpegX is a Mac OS X graphic user interface designed to easily operate more than 20 powerful Unix open-source video and audio processing tools including ffmpeg the "hyper fast video and audio encoder" (http://ffmpeg.sf.net/), mpeg2enc the open-source mpeg-2 encoder and multiplexer (http://mjpeg.sf.net/MacOS/) and mencoder the mpeg-4 encoder with subtitles support (http://sf.net/projects/mplayerosx).

it's your one-stop for all your Mac software needs.

One of the better panorama stitchers for Mac but is it worth $25, I don't know.

Synergy lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware. It's intended for users with multiple computers on their desk since each system uses its own monitor(s).

Socialite is a beautiful Mac OS X application, designed to make it easy to stay in touch with the social networks and services that matter to you. From news on Digg, photos on Flickr, statuses and photos on Facebook and Twitter updates, to full Google Reader RSS syncing, Socialite keeps all your social networks in one convenient place.

Delibar focuses on giving Mac OS X users an easy and quick tool for searching, managing and sharing their Delicious bookmarks.

At least software dev. clients don't think they can do it themselves and not pay you in the end.

n fact, the process will be so painful that, for many XP users, the easiest solution may be to buy a new PC preloaded with Windows 7, if they can afford such a purchase in these dire economic times. In fact, that’s the option Microsoft recommends for XP users.

Delete associated files when you uninstall an application from your Mac

Matt Mullenweg, founder of Word Press and Automattic, manages a successful Internet business where everyone is working from home.

"These days you can find all sorts of things online, from audio books to flash files, from sound effects to CSS templates. Below we compiled a list with over 100 download sites that serve that purpose."

Microsoft has over 150 FREE Windows XP, Windows Vista & Office Programs available for download -- finding them all is extremely difficult . . . until now

This project contains a number of converters to and from different Blog services. The code is written in Python with scripts to execute the conversions either on the command-line, through a Windows batch script, or hosted on Google App Engine.

Renowned cellist and 15-time Grammy winner Yo-Yo Ma is hosting an online competition, inviting listeners to add their own accompaniment to his performance of the traditional hymn "Dona Nobis Pacem," from his latest album, Songs of Joy & Peace.

"I decided to write out some advice on how to program, with a bit of special reference to R. This is not advice on how to become a brilliant programmer, because I can't give such advice"

creating a virtual computer on your physical computer. Let’s say you’re running OS X Leopard on your Mac, but you’d like to use Windows XP or Vista or some flavour of Linux as well. Without virtualization, you’d need to either dual boot or install your second OS on a second machine. Using virtualization you can have your guest OS running as a window on your host OS, or better yet, have them run side-by-side, almost as equals.

GNU Octave provides a convenient command line interface for solving linear and nonlinear problems numerically, and for performing other numerical experiments using a language that is mostly compatible with Matlab.

Simply drag a copy-protected PDF onto PDF Unlocker's icon, and a new, non-protected copy will be created.

What's Snackr? It's an RSS ticker that pulls random items from your feeds and scrolls them across your desktop. When you see a title that looks interesting, you can click on it to pop up the item in a window.

TapeDeck is a powerful and fun new audio recorder for Mac OS X Leopard. It’s just like your old analog tape recorder, only better. A lot better.