Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to join SRI International • Hacker News Board

Re: Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to join SRI International

#61

Post by retrocryptid » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 12:47 AM UTC

fatneckbeard wrote: post #46

rchiang wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's important to note that much (all?) of PARCs research has been oriented around the "office of the future". In the broadest sense of that vision, they had a huge hand in originating a lot of computing technologies. And while SRI has had their impact in the computing industry, they also have other research labs that have very little to do with computing such as biomedical, education, and policy.

sri was never gonna allow a bunch of hippies and bearded longhairs tour their facility in the spirit of academic comradeship. (IE no microsoft, no apple being allowed to walk around and talk to people in the 80s to get the ideas for Macintosh and Windows) Ironically, Apple and Microsoft would never allow some stranger company to walk into their offices and see everything they were developing either. lol

By the time apple was founded, many (most) of the people doing research that would be of interest to Jobs had already moved over to PARC. Larry Tesler springs immediately to mind, but Thierry Bardini's book on Engelbart has a more complete list. After the ARC fell apart in 1970, PARC was launching and was a natural place for them to land.

Re: Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to join SRI International

#62

Post by retrocryptid » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 12:49 AM UTC

smilespray wrote: post #57

AlbertCory wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xerox had two meetings with Apple, in December 1979. Neither they nor Microsoft was ever able to "walk into their offices and see everything they were developing ."

Come on. Xerox gave away the crown jewels in those meetings.

Xerox was paid for the crown jewels and according to Larry Tesler, it didn't take any arm-twisting to get him to move to Apple as Xerox was dragging their feet commercializing PARC's innovations.

Re: Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to join SRI International

#63

Post by retrocryptid » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 1:11 AM UTC

eichin wrote: post #34

PARC and SRI in the news? what is this, 1993? am I going to see a DECWRL announcement next?

HP could probably make some cash by reconstitution WRL and spinning it off.

Re: Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to join SRI International

#64

Post by retrocryptid » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 1:12 AM UTC

musicale wrote: post #38

The whole is lesser than the sum of its parts.

Oof. Unkind. Hopefully not accurate.

Re: Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to join SRI International

#65

Post by retrocryptid » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 1:14 AM UTC

kepler1 wrote: post #56

Somehow, I see 2 empty campuses merging to sell off their real estate value that is currently worth more than any new intellectual property being produced.

Yes. Because employees are clamoring to return to the office.

Re: Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to join SRI International

#66

Post by retrocryptid » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 1:23 AM UTC

usr1106 wrote: post #15

CaliforniaKarl wrote: post #5

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?

TMoAD was before DNS (and IP, for that matter.)

Re: Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to join SRI International

#67

Post by retrocryptid » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 1:24 AM UTC

ricktdotorg wrote: post #21

usr1106 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was their domain/hostname at the time?

"SRI" [1] [1] https://static.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/63774...

It looks like SRI's network address was "2".

Re: Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to join SRI International

#68

Post by AlbertCory » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 1:28 AM UTC

smilespray wrote: post #57

AlbertCory wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xerox had two meetings with Apple, in December 1979. Neither they nor Microsoft was ever able to "walk into their offices and see everything they were developing ."

Come on. Xerox gave away the crown jewels in those meetings.

https://www.albertcory.io/lets-do-have-hindsight

"It's a good story. Unfortunately, it's also wrong in almost every way a story can be wrong."

Full details at https://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUL/sites/mac/parc.html

and there are many other references on the Web about that visit.

Re: Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to join SRI International

#69

Post by 1letterunixname » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 1:34 AM UTC

SRI was Stanford University affiliates' dodge around the school's charter to work to work on MIC projects such as work for DARPA. Not quite RAND but still not saints.

Re: Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to join SRI International

#70

Post by retrocryptid » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 1:37 AM UTC

usr1106 wrote: post #30

ricktdotorg wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"SRI" [1] [1] https://static.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/63774...

Hmm, an SDS 940. Never heard :( I have used a CDC 6600 and various 370s. PDP only from reading, I started with VAXen.

Yeah. SDS (later XDS) was bought up by Xerox just before Xerox launched PARC. In the "Fumbling the Future" book, there's several pages describing how PARC has to constantly push back against corporate who were trying to fold it (PARC) into SDS.

I wrote my first Lisp program on a 940 back in the 70s. IIRC, the Sigma series were the machines XDS built after the 940. I don't know they were super popular, but maybe you might have heard of them.