Vint Cerf replies: 'I've been busy, you know'

The chief of staff has a message...

By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco • Get more from this author

Posted in Letters, 9th September 2005 21:24 GMT

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Star Letter Google's newest star hire takes exception to our assertion that he's been in meetings for much of the time since inventing TCP/IP.

Not at all, he writes.

Andrew,
Some facts - it took 10 years to get tcp/ip off the ground and into an operational internet in 1983. I engineered MCI Mail during 1983-1986. I developed a set of digital library technologies with Bob Kahn, including several patents, during 1986-1994.

I led the engineering of internetMCI and two major IP networks at MCI during the period 1994-1998. The interplanetary internet work is already partly on the way with some of the protocols on board the Mars Reconaissance Orbiter lanched a week or two ago.

The CCSDS link level protocol is in use in over 300 spacecraft.

All of these are certainly collaborative efforts, and I make no claim to have worked on these single-handedly but I am at a loss to understand your assertion that I have done nothing technical in 30 years?

Vint Cerf

Several of you have reminded us that Vint's screen cameo came not in Star Trek, but in Earth: Final Conflict - where he played the part of the White House chief of staff Cy Vincent, who announces the selection of the first alien cabinet member.

And now we have interior secretary Gale Norton, of course.

Vint's review of Star Trek: A Time To Be Born can be found here.®

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