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posted by
Fnord666
on Thursday February 01 2018, @05:43AM
from the oh-how-the-mighty-have-fallen dept.
from the oh-how-the-mighty-have-fallen dept.
The once mighty Xerox corporation, inventor of the photocopier, the graphical user interface, ethernet and the workstation is no more. Today it has been announced that Xerox is to be acquired by Fujifilm, with whom it had the joint venture FujiXerox, for $6.1 bilion.
In recent years, much of Xerox's previous, and quite recent, acquisitions have been sold off including Tektronix in Willsonville, Oregon (acquired for its solid ink technology) and Affiliated Computer Services.
Back in 2011, Xerox entered into a partnership with Indian outsourcing firm HCL, transferring thousands of engineering staff, including most in the UK and mainland Europe.
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Life is to you a dashing and bold adventure.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Corelli's A on Thursday February 01 2018, @06:26AM (4 children)
The first computer I owned was a surplus Xerox 820 board obtained from their outlet in the early 1980's. Bob Clements disassembled the ROM and provided a set of commented z80 assembler source files, which many of us learned from and modified (Xerox did not include a copyright notice in the ROMs). I installed my x820 into a modified Commodore Pet enclosure with a Cherry keyboard and some open-frame video monitor I got who-knows-where. I credit this system with my early understanding of assembly language which I later put to professional use in writing embedded operating systems for MIPS-based networking equipment.
Oh, the fun we had. Morse-code keyboards, modem controllers, terminal emulators. You kids have no idea the satisfaction bit-banging with timing loops and, whoah! z80 block moves! can bring.
Thank you, Xerox, and the people who brought out the 820. I hope you understand how its second life enriched the knowledge and careers many young experimenters.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @07:09AM (2 children)
Personally I am not against copyright as I am against patents, whose current implementation is a crime bordering on a joke, but I acknowledge that the absence of copyright helped your situation a lot.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @07:30AM (1 child)
These laws *will* come back and bite us in the ass for fomenting the next generation of technological ignoramuses.
Not because they are stupid, or unmotivated... no, the ability to see for themselves how their stuff works has been deemed "illegal" by those fearful they may learn and compete, and the guys who handshake with our lawmakers like it just like it is.
As Americans, we can always depend on other nations, outside our legal jurisdictions, to build our stuff. We can always pay for it with loans.
And when the shit hits the fan, the hand of the "rightsholders" will again extend to the hand of the "law-maker" to pull him from the disaster, in reciprocation for passing the law that put them where they are, and kept their competition at bay.
This reciprocal behaviour between the elite and kings has gone on like this for a long time. The elite get someone else to pass law so as to make it "legal", so the peasants can be compelled to obey, while the kings count from the support from the elite to keep them in authority.
The peasants just try to keep out of the way... until things get too bad... then they all pick up pitchforks. And its a really bad day for kings and elite alike.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday February 01 2018, @09:55AM
Mmm... Not quite that clear a cut.
Look inside today's devices and tell me if you physically could hit those component terminals with an oscilloscope probe.
Or... even if the schematics of a modern CPU would be available, I really doubt any human alone or in a small team could get to understand how it works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheGratefulNet on Thursday February 01 2018, @01:21PM
I used a xerox 3000 and 3200 back in the early 80's. programming language was called DACL (diablo app compiler language, iirc).
the hard drives were 5 or 20 meg 'winches'. I have no idea how much they costed, only business would be buying those. the computer was the size of a desk, back then, and the 'winch' was like a filing cabinet that sat next to you.
a pdp11 was also current at the time and higher end customers would buy that, instead.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."