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Fujifilm to take over Xerox in $6.1B Deal

reuters.com

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Re: Fujifilm to take over Xerox in $6.1B Deal

#41

Post by thspimpolds »

julianz wrote: post #15
ysleepy wrote: post #10

Maybe the horrendous bug in the Xerox copiers that replaces letters and numbers with perfect looking different ones gave that brand the rest.

That was very bad, yep. Also the trouble they've run into in Asia Pacific which caused huge losses - they were counting revenue before it was earned and also signing government/school clients up on long term high cost leases. They're now banned from NZ government contracts https://www.crn.com.au/news/false-accounting-and-fictitious-...

NZ was the Fuji Xerox partnership. Fuji ran that from all accounts. I worked in the Developing Markets Org at Xerox (proper), Asia Pacific was its own silo and they did their own thing. It’s one of the areas I didn’t work with, others were Western Europe, Russia, and Canada. Pretty much everything else, I knew all the marketing people for the countries.

Re: Fujifilm to take over Xerox in $6.1B Deal

#42

Post by dredmorbius »

pjc50 wrote: post #39
atarian wrote: post #13

It's interesting how big companies like Xerox and Bell invested a lot into the future (PARC, Bell Labs) and even created new inventions that we use every day. How do such forward-thinking companies grow irrelevant?

I'm going to make the controversial claim that such research centres could only be so groundbreaking because they were, by conventional standards, extremely badly managed. Only by getting the right group of people together and letting them play with whatever they want, with a loose budget, do you get results like that. This lassitude is of course completely incompatible with hitting quarterly targets, or the painstak…

Not so controversial as you might think.

Re: Fujifilm to take over Xerox in $6.1B Deal

#43

Post by TomMarius »

jacquesm wrote: post #38
Bokanovsky wrote: post #11

I used to work at Xerox as a software developer, about 15 or so years ago, as a fresh young graduate. It was interesting, but also at the same time kind of weird. You noticed that there were lots of young graduates, but also lots of old staff. With very few people in-between that age range. You'd then realise they'd get graduates and utilised them until they left. While the older staff generally got to a certain sala…

Olivetti had a nice research center too, they had badges that would cause your screen to follow you to whatever computer you were in front of in the building.

Are there any details on how this worked? Sounds awesome.

Re: Fujifilm to take over Xerox in $6.1B Deal

#44

Post by Angostura »

TomMarius wrote: post #43
jacquesm wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Olivetti had a nice research center too, they had badges that would cause your screen to follow you to whatever computer you were in front of in the building.

Are there any details on how this worked? Sounds awesome.

Here you go. http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/dtg/attarchive/ab.html

As a tech journalist, I visited a chap called Andy Hopper up there in the late 80s and it was as cool as it sounded.

They also had it hooked up to their Unix box's finger command.

You could Telnet in and type Finger $username and it would return something like "Bob Smith was last seen 20 minutes ago at the ground floor lift"

Re: Fujifilm to take over Xerox in $6.1B Deal

#45

Post by dracodoc »

pjc50 wrote: post #39
atarian wrote: post #13

It's interesting how big companies like Xerox and Bell invested a lot into the future (PARC, Bell Labs) and even created new inventions that we use every day. How do such forward-thinking companies grow irrelevant?

I'm going to make the controversial claim that such research centres could only be so groundbreaking because they were, by conventional standards, extremely badly managed. Only by getting the right group of people together and letting them play with whatever they want, with a loose budget, do you get results like that. This lassitude is of course completely incompatible with hitting quarterly targets, or the painstak…

Interestingly this pattern doesn't work with pure research: the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton hosted Einstein, Hermann Weyl, John von Neumann and Kurt Gödel, but there is little important work done in there.

Re: Fujifilm to take over Xerox in $6.1B Deal

#46

Post by JustSomeNobody »

atarian wrote: post #13

It's interesting how big companies like Xerox and Bell invested a lot into the future (PARC, Bell Labs) and even created new inventions that we use every day. How do such forward-thinking companies grow irrelevant?

They start chasing the Quarterly Earnings Report. It takes a strong leader to not get caught up in the rat race to beat last quarter and actually invest in projects long term.

Re: Fujifilm to take over Xerox in $6.1B Deal

#47

Post by JustSomeNobody »

lobf wrote: post #21
atarian wrote: post #13

It's interesting how big companies like Xerox and Bell invested a lot into the future (PARC, Bell Labs) and even created new inventions that we use every day. How do such forward-thinking companies grow irrelevant?

"The computer will never be as important to society as the copier," -Xerox executive, quoted from The Innovators.

There's a lot of truth to that. Think of just how much paperwork healthcare, government, banking, etc. all generate.

Re: Fujifilm to take over Xerox in $6.1B Deal

#48

Post by Angostura »

pjc50 wrote: post #39
atarian wrote: post #13

It's interesting how big companies like Xerox and Bell invested a lot into the future (PARC, Bell Labs) and even created new inventions that we use every day. How do such forward-thinking companies grow irrelevant?

I'm going to make the controversial claim that such research centres could only be so groundbreaking because they were, by conventional standards, extremely badly managed. Only by getting the right group of people together and letting them play with whatever they want, with a loose budget, do you get results like that. This lassitude is of course completely incompatible with hitting quarterly targets, or the painstak…

Carl Icahn is Xero's biggest shareholder with nearly 10%. Can't really imagine him putting up with such nonsense.

Re: Fujifilm to take over Xerox in $6.1B Deal

#49

Post by drderidder »

Animats wrote: post #32
drderidder wrote: post #18

It's disappointing that the company with the Xerox PARC legacy, that spawned many of the innovations people take for granted in modern computers, couldn't figure out a way to carry on. One day I'd love to read a rise-and-fall story about that place.

Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age - Hiltzik

Thanks for the recommendation!
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