10 Dec
1998
10 Dec
'98
6:37 p.m.
Saw a demo of a neat piece of software yesterday. Two people were about 35
miles apart. One pulled up a document on his computer. Gave access to it
to the other guy who had a mouse and cursor at his end which we could also
see on the screen. He could point to things, as the two people talked.
Control could have been passed to him at any time.
After a bit, the guy on our end decided he wanted to be able to see the
other guy, so he opened a box in the upper left corner of the screen, sized
it, and voila, there was a video image of the other guy. They were able to
talk and see each other, as they worked together on the same document.
Pretty darn cool, if you ask me.
Oh, I kinda lied. I actually only saw a videotape of the demo.
The actual demo had taken place 30 years ago in 1968, and the star of the
demo was Doug Englebart.
Think about your first reaction to what sounds like whiteboarding software
that is starting to become commonplace. Now consider that the demo was
filmed 30 years ago in *black and white*! That's how far ahead Englebart
and his team really were (or, how far we *haven't* come when we should have!)
Go check out http://unrev.stanford.edu/ for yourself.
--------------------------------------------------------------------- O-
Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
roger(a)sinasohn.com that none but madmen know."
Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates
San Francisco, California http://www.sinasohn.com/
10 Dec
10 Dec
7:20 p.m.
On Fri, 11 Dec 1998, Uncle Roger wrote:
The actual demo had taken place 30 years ago in 1968,
and the star of the
demo was Doug Englebart.
<spelling flame>
Engelbart.
</spelling flame>
Think about your first reaction to what sounds like
whiteboarding software
that is starting to become commonplace. Now consider that the demo was
filmed 30 years ago in *black and white*! That's how far ahead Englebart
and his team really were (or, how far we *haven't* come when we should have!)
Blame Microsoft; I do.
BTW, the semi-enlightened folks at HP did try to pull off a little
Engelbart trick in 1993 that few people remember: the HP OmniShare. It
was an "inexpensive" (~$2500) little computer with a LCD/pen-based
digitizer that had networking, fax/modem, and very interesting
collaborative software built-in.
In won a few awards, and then faded away about six months after
introduction.
The moral of the story is that it's relatively easy to give a good demo,
slightly harder to do a real implementation, and then very hard to get
market acceptance and penetration for new ideas.
(The real moral of the story is that I have a pair of OmniShares, and I
just felt like gloating :-)
-- Doug
11 Dec
11 Dec
3 a.m.
> The actual demo had taken place 30 years ago in
1968, and the star of the
> demo was Doug Englebart.
<spelling flame>
Engelbart.
</spelling flame>
Come on - common English problems :)
> Think about your first reaction to what sounds
like whiteboarding software
> that is starting to become commonplace. Now consider that the demo was
> filmed 30 years ago in *black and white*! That's how far ahead Englebart
> and his team really were (or, how far we *haven't* come when we should have!)
Blame Microsoft; I do.
The moral of the story is that it's relatively
easy to give a good demo,
slightly harder to do a real implementation, and then very hard to get
market acceptance and penetration for new ideas.
Thats one thing, the other is how superior design (soft
and hardware) can be dumped in favour of crapy PCs.
Back in the late 70s and early 80s we had at SIEMENS a
network of EMS 5800 systems - OEM versions of the Xerox
Star - all over Germany and most European dependances.
Of course not every Employee had one, since including a
laser priter it was some 100,000 Mark value, but at least
most departments that needed to.
Just imagine, a System with 21" screens, mouse, OO desktop,
document centric workflow, WYSIWYG editing (in place etc.),
LAN/WAN networking, laser printers, xxx megabytes of storage
etc. in 1980 and this system was scraped in favour for DOS
(later Windows) PCs with 12" to 14" Displays and WORD (DOS).
And in my opinion no PC (no Win, no MacOS and no Next)
has catched up with the Star - and it's more than 20
years later !
BTW: Xerox' quality was just junk - from 10 systems
delivered to Witten (the SIEMENS plant where they
where configured and repacked) only 5 worked properly,
and 3 more could be reassembled from the five non
working. Like in the SU - 10 tractors delivered to
a farm coop and the farmers had to change parts
until at least 5 of them worked .... :)
(The real moral of the story is that I have a pair of
OmniShares, and I
just felt like gloating :-)
It might be easyer if you just tell what hand held
device you don't have .... Grrr :)
Gruss
H.
--
Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
HRK
4:59 a.m.
Hans Franke wrote:
Just imagine, a System with 21" screens, mouse,
OO desktop,
document centric workflow, WYSIWYG editing (in place etc.),
LAN/WAN networking, laser printers, xxx megabytes of storage
etc. in 1980 and this system was scraped in favour for DOS
(later Windows) PCs with 12" to 14" Displays and WORD (DOS).
And in my opinion no PC (no Win, no MacOS and no Next)
has catched up with the Star - and it's more than 20
years later !
But you could put a PC together to those specs. As to the OO desktop, that's another
story.
working. Like in the SU - 10 tractors delivered to
a farm coop and the farmers had to change parts
until at least 5 of them worked .... :)
What comes to my mind is that once the crops were harvested, there wasn't always
someone to pick them up and they often rotted in the field. Kind of like powerful
computers that aren't being used properly. Think of what Xerox engineers could have
done if they had access to a DEC Alpha or a PowerPC.
13 Dec
13 Dec
11:07 p.m.
> And in my opinion no PC (no Win, no MacOS and no
Next)
> has catched up with the Star - and it's more than 20
> years later !
But you could put a PC together to those specs. As to
the OO desktop, that's another
story.
_NOW_ c'mon boy, 20 years ago a 12" tube with 256 by
256 pixles b&w was considered as high resolution.
And beside that - if I use a display with some
3 to 4 megapix on a modern PC, drawing isn't realy
faster than on the Star 20 years ago.
> working. Like in the SU - 10 tractors delivered
to
> a farm coop and the farmers had to change parts
> until at least 5 of them worked .... :)
What comes to my mind is that once the crops were
harvested, there wasn't always
someone to pick them up and they often rotted in the field. Kind of like powerful
computers that aren't being used properly. Think of what Xerox engineers could have
done if they had access to a DEC Alpha or a PowerPC.
When in the SU the polit buerocracy and planing institute
was to be blamed, in the US marketing is the orgin of pain.
The Xerox projects have been wonderfull as long as they are
not influenced by management and marketing - for example,
later on, they ported the desktop to 386 PCs (or better,
they just miniaturised the star on a slotcard :). Calling
this a flop would tell it to nicely :)
Gruss
Hans
--
Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
HRK
11 Dec
11 Dec
8:08 a.m.
The moral of
the story is that it's relatively easy to give a good demo,
slightly harder to do a real implementation, and then very hard to get
market acceptance and penetration for new ideas.
Thats one thing, the other is how superior design (soft
and hardware) can be dumped in favour of crapy PCs.
Back in the late 70s and early 80s we had at SIEMENS a
network of EMS 5800 systems - OEM versions of the Xerox
Star - all over Germany and most European dependances.
Of course not every Employee had one, since including a
laser priter it was some 100,000 Mark value, but at least
most departments that needed to. And in my opinion no PC (no Win, no MacOS and no
Next)
has catched up with the Star - and it's more than 20
years later !
Yup. I did get to see them and Ventura Publisher and there
seemed to be some similarity. Did Ventura start with ex-Star
folks?
BTW: Xerox' quality was just junk - from 10 systems
delivered to Witten (the SIEMENS plant where they
where configured and repacked) only 5 worked properly,
and 3 more could be reassembled from the five non
working. Like in the SU - 10 tractors delivered to
a farm coop and the farmers had to change parts
until at least 5 of them worked .... :)
They got real slipshod for a while, even on the copiers.
They lost a lot of that business to Kodak (who took over -- I think--
the IBM copilers).
Both DEC and Bell Labs ran those Kodak beasts and you could copy a whole
library on 'em without problems. Ask me about my CP/M doc set 8-).
Gruss
H.
Bill
13 Dec
13 Dec
11:07 p.m.
> > The moral of the story is that it's
relatively easy to give a good demo,
> > slightly harder to do a real implementation, and then very hard to get
> > market acceptance and penetration for new ideas.
> Thats one thing, the other is how superior design
(soft
> and hardware) can be dumped in favour of crapy PCs.
> Back in the late 70s and early 80s we had at SIEMENS a
> network of EMS 5800 systems - OEM versions of the Xerox
> Star - all over Germany and most European dependances.
> Of course not every Employee had one, since including a
> laser priter it was some 100,000 Mark value, but at least
> most departments that needed to.
There were a bunch of 'em (Xerox Star) at Siemens
Princeton in
1985 when I was maintaining the DEC stuff there.
Nice stuff, great WSYWIC, lousy maintenance problems with the
hardware and software though.
So they have send them back to the US ? Or did they
use 'original' Stars ?
> And in my opinion no PC (no Win, no MacOS and no
Next)
> has catched up with the Star - and it's more than 20
> years later !
Yup. I did get to see them and Ventura Publisher and
there
seemed to be some similarity. Did Ventura start with ex-Star
folks?
I think they have been insirated by the Star like anyone
else, but the Ventura design is more to the direction
of a single programm and of course made to fit GEM (or
did DR made GEM to fit the Publisher ?). GEM itself
was like the Mac a downsized (and crushed) version of
the Star (I still belive all 'modern' GUI systems are
just the mouse interface but noone took the desktop :( ).
Maybe with an exception of the OS/2 desktop (Althrough
still a GUI, it includes a lot more OO than most other).
> BTW: Xerox' quality was just junk - from 10
systems
> delivered to Witten (the SIEMENS plant where they
> where configured and repacked) only 5 worked properly,
> and 3 more could be reassembled from the five non
> working. Like in the SU - 10 tractors delivered to
> a farm coop and the farmers had to change parts
> until at least 5 of them worked .... :)
They got real slipshod for a while, even on the
copiers.
They lost a lot of that business to Kodak (who took over -- I think--
the IBM copilers).
Both DEC and Bell Labs ran those Kodak beasts and you
could copy a whole
library on 'em without problems. Ask me about my CP/M doc set 8-).
Jep, and I still praise our Agfa copier - once I spend a
whole weekend beside it to copy Apple manuals - one page
at a time - no autofeeder - it was 1979 :)
Gruss
Hans
--
Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
HRK
14 Dec
14 Dec
6:07 a.m.
There were a
bunch of 'em (Xerox Star) at Siemens Princeton in
1985 when I was maintaining the DEC stuff there.
Nice stuff, great WSYWIC, lousy maintenance problems with the
hardware and software though.
So they have send them back to the US ? Or did they
use 'original' Stars ?
8:34 a.m.
> They used the original Xerox Stars...
Semi-obscure factoid: there was no machine named the
Xerox Star. "Star"
referred to the software suite which ran on the Xerox 8010.
Gues what, there has never been a unit called EMS 5800,
but if I would use the real numbers, nobody in Germany
would know them. Shure, Xerox had a bunch of Software
and Hardware 'code'names and even more numbers and sales
names, and Viewpoint might be the correct sales name, but
using the term 'Star' and everybody knows (At least everybody
with a minimum brain^H^H^H^H^Hhistoric knowledge).
http://www.best.com/~curbow/xerox/retrospect/images/figure8.jpg
is a real nice picture about that :)
Gruss
H.
--
Traue keinem Menschen der 5 Tage blutet und immer noch nicht tod ist.
7:53 a.m.
On Mon, 14 Dec 1998, Hans Franke wrote:
would know them. Shure, Xerox had a bunch of Software
and Hardware 'code'names and even more numbers and sales
names, and Viewpoint might be the correct sales name, but
using the term 'Star' and everybody knows (At least everybody
with a minimum brain^H^H^H^H^Hhistoric knowledge).
http://www.best.com/~curbow/xerox/retrospect/images/figure8.jpg
is a real nice picture about that :)
The figure shows a mix of software and hardware, and maybe there's no real
reason to separate the two, but I think of it as:
Star ran on the 8010 (codenamed Dandelion)
Viewpoint ran on the 6085 (codenamed Daybreak)
AFAIK, the Siemens box was an OEM version of the 6085, and the only
difference was the color.
-- Doug
9:13 a.m.
>
http://www.best.com/~curbow/xerox/retrospect/images/figure8.jpg
> is a real nice picture about that :)
The figure shows a mix of software and hardware, and
maybe there's no real
reason to separate the two, but I think of it as:
Star ran on the 8010 (codenamed Dandelion)
Viewpoint ran on the 6085 (codenamed Daybreak)
True.
AFAIK, the Siemens box was an OEM version of the 6085,
and the only
difference was the color.
Agreed. Different colour, changed keboard layout (keycaps),
added logo and label, changed power supply and translated
and changed software. Also some apps have been developed
over here. I once had the oportunity, but at this time
Smalltalk was like a bohemian vilage to me (German phrase
for unknown). The laser printers where changed to feed
properly A4 paper (the original feeder had some problems),
also the PS have been changed (Of course includeing VDE
aproval). The printer OS has not been changed.
I have no idea about the later developments at Xerox.
Here I know only the Siemens products (like the 5815
and 5840). I don't know on which designs they have
been based.
Servus
H.
--
Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
HRK
9:19 a.m.
On Mon, 14 Dec 1998, Doug Yowza wrote:
AFAIK, the Siemens box was an OEM version of the 6085,
and the only
difference was the color.
Correct.
Sellam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Always being hassled by the man.
Coming in 1999: Vintage Computer Festival 3.0
See http://www.vintage.org/vcf for details!
[Last web site update: 12/07/98]
9:13 a.m.
On Mon, 14 Dec 1998, Hans Franke wrote:
http://www.best.com/~curbow/xerox/retrospect/images/figure8.jpg
is a real nice picture about that :)
David Curbow is the guy we got our 6085s from. This is his memorial page
to the work he did at Xerox. He's now working at Apple.
Sellam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Always being hassled by the man.
Coming in 1999: Vintage Computer Festival 3.0
See http://www.vintage.org/vcf for details!
[Last web site update: 12/07/98]
11 Dec
11 Dec
12:38 p.m.
The actual demo had taken place 30 years ago in 1968,
and the star of the
demo was Doug Englebart.
Think about your first reaction to what sounds like whiteboarding software
that is starting to become commonplace. Now consider that the demo was
filmed 30 years ago in *black and white*! That's how far ahead Englebart
and his team really were (or, how far we *haven't* come when we should have!)
You know my reaction to this is a really sad commentary on the computer
industry today. My first thought was, "Hmm, someone should be able to use
this as an example of 'prior art' in defeating a software patent or two".
Zane
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Adminstrator |
| healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | Linux Enthusiast |
| healyzh(a)holonet.net (alternate) | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.dragonfire.net/~healyzh/ |
9509
days inactive
9512
days old
14 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
-
dastar＠ncal.verio.com -
Hans.Franke＠mch20.sbs.de -
healyzh＠aracnet.com -
kurtkilg＠geocities.com -
pechter＠monmouth.com -
sinasohn＠ricochet.net -
yowza＠yowza.com