Earlier quoted context omitted.
SRI was one of the original nodes of the ARPAnet, and was one of the two nodes to first come online (the other was at UCLA). SRI is also where the “Mother of all Demos” came from.
What was their domain/hostname at the time?
Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to join SRI International
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Re: Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to join SRI International
#22As a software engineer since the 1980s, of course I know (Xerox) PARC. But am I the only one for whom SRI does not ring any bells? I'm confident Wikipedia can tell me more, but if they don't tell in their press release I would claim they might overestimate their "brand".
IIRC basically a Pentagon funded think tank in Silicon Valley, though their best days were really the 1970s and 1980s.
Yeah SRI was what emerged when military/intelligence related work needed to be separated from Stanford University proper as a result of campus protests in the 60s over the university's involvement in chemical weapons and counterinsurgency research.
Re: Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to join SRI International
#23For something of its size and influence very few people have heard of SRI, but it comes up frequently in 'noided online discussions about the overlap between Silicon Valley and military/intelligence. A lot of the things that PARC was credited with creating in the first place were really dreamed up at SRI, so it makes a certain sense for them to be merging:
https://squamuglia.wordpress.com/2017/04/16/67/#more-67
https://squamuglia.wordpress.com/2017/04/22/yes-kids-cookie-...
Re: Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to join SRI International
#24As a software engineer since the 1980s, of course I know (Xerox) PARC. But am I the only one for whom SRI does not ring any bells? I'm confident Wikipedia can tell me more, but if they don't tell in their press release I would claim they might overestimate their "brand".
If you don't know the acronym SRI, then you probably aren't likely their target customer :) The S used to stand for Stanford. Just like RAND or Battelle or a half dozen others, it's nominally a non-profit organization that manages huge R&D projects, employs thousands of scientists and engineers, and manages government research facilities.
Not personally, you have a point :)
I have used Ethernet since 1985ish without being PARC's customer either. I have used a mouse since 1987ish. If you had asked me before reading up on the topic minutes ago where the mouse was developed I would have probably answered PARC, too, and not Stanford and absolutely not SRI. Not sure how the former managed to build to build a "brand" for stuff they haven't even accomplished.
Re: Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to join SRI International
#25I think Xerox has been trying to unload PARC for a while, and this just seems like a way for them to do it and get a tax write-off since it's a 'donation'. PARC has already been doing a lot of government contract work, and I've seen teams from PARC and SRI compete for certain programs, so there's definitely synergy there. But I think PARC was historically more commercially oriented than SRI, so there will be some cul…
Xerox went through the process of making PARC a wholly-owned subsidiary in 2002 (which is around the time the parc.com domain was created to replace the parc.xerox.com subdomain). This was presumably as part of trying to sell of PARC, in part or as a whole.
Xerox's revenue has been slowly declining over that time (~$15B from 2002-2009, ~$20B 2010-2013, ~$10B 2014-2019, ~$7B 2020-2023). There's likely a few business-related reasons they are doing this donation now.
Re: Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to join SRI International
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
What was their domain/hostname at the time?
"SRI" [1] [1] https://static.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/63774...
Probably I knew that decades ago, faint memories come up when I read it. Not having heard SRI ever since, I had completey forgotten that.
Re: Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to join SRI International
#27As a software engineer since the 1980s, of course I know (Xerox) PARC. But am I the only one for whom SRI does not ring any bells? I'm confident Wikipedia can tell me more, but if they don't tell in their press release I would claim they might overestimate their "brand".
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Re: Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to join SRI International
#28As a software engineer since the 1980s, of course I know (Xerox) PARC. But am I the only one for whom SRI does not ring any bells? I'm confident Wikipedia can tell me more, but if they don't tell in their press release I would claim they might overestimate their "brand".
Have you heard of Doug Engelbart and his Mother of All Demos? That was at SRI.
Re: Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to join SRI International
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you don't know the acronym SRI, then you probably aren't likely their target customer :) The S used to stand for Stanford. Just like RAND or Battelle or a half dozen others, it's nominally a non-profit organization that manages huge R&D projects, employs thousands of scientists and engineers, and manages government research facilities.
Not personally, you have a point :) I have used Ethernet since 1985ish without being PARC's customer either. I have used a mouse since 1987ish. If you had asked me before reading up on the topic minutes ago where the mouse was developed I would have probably answered PARC, too, and not Stanford and absolutely not SRI. Not sure how the former managed to build to build a "brand" for stuff they haven't even accomplished…
It's a fine distinction that maybe computer historians know best. Doug Engelbart's "Mother of All Demos" showed off the first computer mouse. The computer mouse that shipped with the Xerox Star is credited as being the "first commercially available computer mouse".
Along similar lines, while the original Ethernet was invented at PARC, Ethernet gained more popularity in industry through Silicon Valley companies like 3Com (with founder Bob Metcalfe, recent ACM Turing Award winner and ex-PARC researcher) and SynOptics Communications (with founders Andrew Ludwick and Ronald Schmidt, both ex-PARC employees).