The 1986 article "Xerox proves it moves ideas into the market" discussed the inability of Xerox to turn innovations into products. It also explained why the company was better positioned than other vendors for delivering low-cost AI solutions and how it was improving at bringing its innovations to the market:

Brian Boyle, president of Novon Research in San Francisco, says that Xerox used to practically give their technology away by putting it into the public domain, but he now contends that the company appears to be redirecting its thinking, citing the company's OEM strategy with the 1185 and 1186 as an example.

https://bitsavers.org/magazines/Mini-Micro_Systems/198603.pdf#page=35

#interlisp #ai #xerox #retrocomputing

Thank you #Xerox for breaking a perfectly functional printer with a firmware upgrade, just in order to maximize your profits. My constructive feedback on your action: It won't work!

Kind regards,
Your former customer

Does anybody have any old firmware version for an Xerox C310 printer? Boost appreciated.

Thank you #Xerox for breaking a perfectly functional printer with a firmware upgrade, just in order to maximize your profits. My constructive feedback on your action: It won't work!

Kind regards,
Your former customer

Does anybody have any old firmware version for an Xerox C310 printer? Boost appreciated.

The Interlisp documentation has a distinctive style that conforms to "Xerox Publishing Standards: A Manual of Style and Design" published in 1988 in this edition. It was the Xerox house style, i.e. the style guide for company publications and documents. The manual covered everything from the publishing process to visual design.

https://www.janvwhite.org/xerox-publishing-standards

#xerox #interlisp #publishing #retrocomputing

Laurel, which ran on the Xerox Alto at PARC, was the first email GUI client and had most of the features we still use today. And yes, the successor of Laurel was called Hardy.

This is the Laurel manual:

https://bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/parc/techReports/CSL-81-6_Laurel_Manual_198105.pdf

#email #retrocomputing #xerox

The 1974 manual of Pico, a graphics library for the Alto workstation developed at Xerox PARC. Callable from BCPL, it allowed to generate graphic output and handle input from a mouse or graphics tablet.

https://bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/parc/memos/Newman_and_Sproull_-_PICO_Manual_197407.pdf

The manual mentions a planned Interlisp callable version but I found no trace of it. Maybe Pico evolved into or influenced DLISP.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/965103.807428

#retrocomputing #xerox #alto #interlisp

“Black Weirdos” from the first issue of #ShotgunSeamstress zine (2006) featuring #FlorynceKennedy and #SunRa.

20 years ago it felt necessary to assert our right as Black people to express ourselves freely without our racial identity being called into question. (In other words, other Black people might say you were “acting white” if you exhibited any behaviors outside of what was considered the norm for Black people, including listening to rock music.)

While so many social issues remain the same or have even worsened since then, I’m glad to say that I’ve seen improvement in this area over the last couple of decades. If you dare to call a Black punk rock, book smart, awkward, nerdy anime loving gamer “white” you just look like an ignorant dumbass at this point.

#zines#BlackPunk #BlackLiberation #BlackFedi#DontCallMeWhite#Xerox #photocopy#CutAndPaste

“Black Weirdos” from the first issue of #ShotgunSeamstress zine (2006) featuring #FlorynceKennedy and #SunRa.

20 years ago it felt necessary to assert our right as Black people to express ourselves freely without our racial identity being called into question. (In other words, other Black people might say you were “acting white” if you exhibited any behaviors outside of what was considered the norm for Black people, including listening to rock music.)

While so many social issues remain the same or have even worsened since then, I’m glad to say that I’ve seen improvement in this area over the last couple of decades. If you dare to call a Black punk rock, book smart, awkward, nerdy anime loving gamer “white” you just look like an ignorant dumbass at this point.

#zines#BlackPunk #BlackLiberation #BlackFedi#DontCallMeWhite#Xerox #photocopy#CutAndPaste

Italian designed bean bag chairs were a staple of Xerox PARC:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ot5iLcJ_clk

In the 1970s the popular Italian actor and comedian Paolo Villaggio poked fun at bean bag chairs, like in this clip (no need to understand Italian). In the movie he played Giandomenico Fracchia, a low-rank, subservient employee of a large corporation always eager to please and not annoy his bosses:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvL8FpvTMLw

#xerox #retro #design

I'm putting together a reading list on Xerox Network Systems (XNS), the network architecture developed at PARC and Xerox which influenced TCP/IP.

I'd like to learn more to play with the network functionality of Medley Interlisp based on XNS. Medley's TCP/IP stack is currently incomplete and not working.

https://ftpmirror.your.org/pub/misc/bitsavers/pdf/xerox/xns/XNSG058504_XNS_Introduction.pdf

https://bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/xns/XNSG_068504_Xerox_System_Network_Architecture_General_Information_Manual_Apr85.pdf

#interlisp #xerox #retrocomputing