PARC Signs On A Partner: Fujitsu

leighklotz writes "PARC, which a few years ago was said be be targeted for a spin-off from Xerox, has signed on its first major partner under its new life as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Xerox. Fujitsu has announced "Joint Research in Ubiquitous Computing," a three-year sponsored-research plan beginning in January 2005. 'Because we're not a product company, we need a partner like Fujitsu who can deliver our products into the marketplace,' said Teresa Lunt, according to InfoWorld."

Comments

Marketing is important

[sjrstory]

This partnership makes perfect sense for PARC. Marking (or lack thereof) can make or break a company regardless of if they have a good product or not. These days there are so many names and buzz words flying about that serious effort (ie money and advertising talent) must be made to boost brand name recognition.

Re:Marketing is important

[tangledweb]

Calling it a partnership is all well and good, but these sorts of things are a very delicate balance.

The goal of creating good ideas is nearly always in conflict with with the goal of creating products that can be commercialised this year or next year.

How much budget and work could you justify devoting to a GUI in the mid 70s if you knew that the technology would be too expensive to sell for 10 years and impossible to patent at that time?

Now, at last

[RealProgrammer]

Fujitsu will make something that works.

Re:Now, at last

[erikharrison]

That's right! Because PARC has such a _great_ history creating lasting tools and products!

Re:Now, at last

[Neo-Rio-101]

Ummm.... what does Fujitsu make that is broken?

(I've worked with their SPARC and Dual XEON servers. They seem to be doing better than Extreme's network equipment...)

Re:Now, at last

[erikharrison]

Historically, PARC is much like any other (good) think tank. Neat ideas, poor implementations, left for others to mature.

The grandparent's claim that PARC will help Fujitsu produce stable products is amusing because of this. The people who made the mouse, GUI, WYSIWYG, and ethernet make money are Apple, Apple, Apple, and 3COM, respectively, not PARC

Re:Now, at last

[WIAKywbfatw]

Uh, you know those original IBM keyboards that everyone raves about? They're made by Fujitsu. I had one that was Fujitsu-labelled back in 1991, and it was only a couple of years ago, when I moved house and had to let go of some unused hardware, that it left my possession in full working order.

On a secondary note, notice how Fujitsu is a Japanese company? If keeping the high-tech industry and high-tech jobs in America is such a big deal then why is it that there wasn't a single US company prepared to fight for a partnership with PARC? Granted, IBM is exiting the PC arena but PARC is about more than just developing for the desktop, and I would have thought that the PR benefits of dealing with the home of the GUI would be to die for for Apple, HP or someone similar.

Re:Now, at last

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm, guess where 3Com came from. Also, a poor implementation was hardly the reason for the failure of many of the Xerox products. You can scoff all you want at Xerox' poor business sense but you can't criticize PARC's technology implementations.

Re:Now, at last

[iocat]

Despite PARCs perceived failures (like not capitalizing commercially on the GUI), its creation of the laser printer more than made the entire endeavor profitable for Xerox. I suggest reading Dealers of Lightning for a great history of Xerox PARC.

Re:Now, at last

[phaze3000]

Actually, I've had nothing but good experiences with Fujitsu stuff. I'm a big fan in particlar of the Fujitsu-Siemens notebooks (and as far as I'm aware they're much more Fujitsu than Siemens). They seem to be one of the few companies targetting what I want in a laptop - something that's as small and light as possible whilst still being useful, as opposed to the portable desktops many other people produce (IMO 17" screens are really not suitable for laptops).

I've used a fair few Fujitsu servers without any problems too..

Re:Now, at last

[euxneks]

I am now typing on a Fujitsu keyboard. It's very nice.. Clicky clicky. =) It's big, and heavy, but I can probably type faster with this keyboard than any other keyboard I've ever used.

Re:Now, at last

[Piquan]

Fujitsu will make something that works.

And PARC will make something.

Re:Now, at last

[anagama]

• Uh, you know those original IBM keyboards that everyone raves about? They're made by Fujitsu. I had one that was Fujitsu-labelled back in 1991

Hmmm, just hefted my IBM badged board upside down (straining my shoulder in the process):

• 
  ...
• Date: 06NOV89
• Plt F2 Model M
• Made in the USA

Cool thing, even being 15 years old, it has ps/2 plug (makes sense I suppose being an IBM) as opposed to the big old plug (DIN?).

Re:Now, at last

[WIAKywbfatw]

The one that I had had a older DIN connection rather than a PS/2 one. If it had had the PS/2 connection then I probably would have kept it around a bit longer, but there was little justification for keeping a keyboard (albeit an excellent keyboard) when buying an adapter so that I could use it again would have cost me almost as much as I paid for the keyboard in the first place (a bargain £11 back in 1991).

Besides, I'm so used to using a split-key keyboard nowadays that using a traditional keyboard layout is a step backwards in terms of both speed and comfort, so it's doubtful that I would have used it anyhow.

Re:Now, at last

[scottp1296]

Those 'failures' have more to do with the morons that led, and are leading Xerox, than failures on the part of PARC's scientists.

Re:Now, at last

[RealProgrammer]

>hat does Fujitsu make that is broken?

Hard drives that grind and blow smoke, mostly. I guess I've just always thought of them as a second-quality manufacturer.

Plus, I'm sorry, their name is just funny to say.

Re:Now, at last

[PalmKiller]

Same here, their hard drives might be lack luster though I have some and they seem to last about as well as any, but their business products I use rock. Fujitsu document scanners (not the home toys but the 5K-20K 20-90 ppm real documet scanners) rock. I have some that were made in 1995 - 2004 all good scanners that require little maintenance (remove paper shards when they get in the way of optical switches which is rare, change the rubber paper guide and clean the rollers every 6 months ... replace pinch rollers if needed). I have never had any electronics on these die nor scan heads and we scan several hundreds to a few thousand documents a day on each one. I have 4990C, 4097D, 3096EX, 3096E+ and 3093GX (aka scanpartner 93GX) scanners all are solid, all are in prefect working condition. Fujitsu as far as I am concerned make great products that last and perform day in, day out.

Re:Now, at last

[frank_adrian314159]

If keeping the high-tech industry and high-tech jobs in America is such a big deal then why is it that there wasn't a single US company prepared to fight for a partnership with PARC?

Because we don't do R here anymore. And we oursource D to Maylaysia and India. And we got rid of manufacturing years ago. What do we do these days? Sue, market, and surf, baby... sue, market, and surf...

May I speak for all of Slashdot when...

[Anonymous Coward]

...I ask what in the hell you're talking about?

Re:May I speak for all of Slashdot when...

[sjrstory]

"Because we're not a product company, we need a partner like Fujitsu who can deliver our products into the marketplace"

Fujitsu *IS* a product company, and have a sizable marketing department.

And this time...

[Nonillion]

Don't let Steve Jobs and Bill Gates rip off your hard work.....

Pc load letter... WTF does that mean?

[deepcameo]

Xerox shouldn't start spinning things off untill they can make a user friendly copier that doesn't leave one wondering... PC load letter?

Re:Pc load letter... WTF does that mean?

[QuaZar666]

you must have never used one one of their Xerox Docutech stations which has lights to tell you when a tray is out of paper. Now it still will use paper as long as one of the other trays contain the same type of paper, which can be set within the system.

- Qua

Re:Pc load letter... WTF does that mean?

[deepcameo]

Nice

Re:Pc load letter... WTF does that mean?

[iocat]

PC Load Letter = an HP invention. Duh.

Re:Pc load letter... WTF does that mean?

[g0hare]

try one of those Gesteners. You'll beg for your Xerox.

Re:Pc load letter... WTF does that mean?

[Macgrrl]

It means the person who configured your copier/MFD forgot to configure the paper size override control.

Someone is printing to the copier with US Letter selected as the paper size (the default configuration on pretty much all printer setups). You apparently don't have US Letter loaded in your copier, I would presume you probably have ISO A4 loaded.

It is possible on all the current models to configure the copier to automatically default to A4 for any US Letter requests - I had to get our office MFD configured that way because I couldn't teach the users to configure their default printer setting to A4 and IT persist on setting up print queues which default to US Letter.

To check this, print a "Printer Configuration report" from your MFD, find the setting flag, and place a service call (assuiming you are under contract), the engineer can reconfigure it for you.

Excellent news, but what's next?

[jarich]

So, when will PARC be able to copy this again? They'll need all their game pieces in place if they want to be able to have a monopoly.

;)

Seriously though, if they can spin off another group, it can be parallel PARC-ing while the other group drives on.

(Ducking and running now)

Before you ask

[Anonymous Coward]

Teresa Lunt is not cute

-dk

Re:Before you ask

[eclectro]

Teresa Lunt is not cute

Yes, but her teeth are straight, which is enough for any nerd.

Re:Before you ask

[IvyKing]

She is where she is because of her brains not looks.

She comes across as being unpretentious - more of the kind of woman that I'd like to get to know rather than a woman that I would be showing off to the guys.

Re:Before you ask

[tomhudson]

Thanks for letting us know - found your comment while meta-modding, wanted to see the context - and the picture you refer to is no more ...

It's doubtful that, 3 days later, xerox is still slashdotted ...

Guess Ms. Lunt reads slashdot.

joke

[Lord_Dweomer]

I KNOW there's a joke in there somewhere about blowing the payoff of anything big that Xerox comes up with, but I'm too tired to think of one.

RC, ARC, PARC, SPARC

[morcheeba]

Ok, I should have seen this coming. Fujitsu sells RC extraction tools, has licensed an ARC core and they make SPARC processors. Obviously PARC was the missing link!

Re:RC, ARC, PARC, SPARC

[lachlan76]

Let's see what happens when they try to take C

Re:RC, ARC, PARC, SPARC

[FrYGuY101]

Well, they have a C-Series of notebooks... that count?

Hey, look right next door!

[awtbfb]

This announcement is not a huge surprise. FX Palo Alto Laboratory (FXPAL) is on the same block as PARC. FX as in Fuji Xerox.

Re:Hey, look right next door!

[commodoresloat]

What the hell does Fuji have to do with Fujitsu?

Four letters.

Re:Hey, look right next door!

[PalmKiller]

Well the family is named Fuji, Fujitsu is a spinoff of Fuji Electric in the beginnings. I think Fujitsu (aka Fuji Electric, or Fuji for short for us old timers) and FujiFilm naming their merger with xerox as Fuji Xerox does warrant some confusion since indeed Fujitsu was once part of Fuji Electric.

Who needs others...

[Infonaut]

to stereotype geeks, when we do it so nicely to ourselves.

Buy!

[mrshoe]

Quick, buy some Fujitsu stock... they're bound to steal some revolutionary ideas the guys at PARC have been sitting on unknowingly.

Uh, no [was:Hey, look right next door!]

[GoBears]

Fuji Xerox is a joint venture between Fuji Film and Xerox. Whereas Fujitsu is a computer company, analogous in a number of ways to IBM.

And this time...Alternate copycat.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Don't let Steve Jobs and Bill Gates rip off your hard work....."

Yeah! Let the OSS community do it.

Re:Marking is important

[fireboy1919]

I agree. Just the other day, I heard about a company went under when they fired their star programmer for leaving a disk labeled "main project-2004" on his desk (which was used in a presentation to the venture capitalists), instead of marking it "Sesame street - hardcore pr0n." He just didn't have a marker.

To make a long story short, the company didn't get the investment they needed due to a bad presentation, and they went under.

I don't think Fujitsu is really known for it's marking...shouldn't they have merged with another company?

From the blurb...

[Infinityis]

"PARC, which a few years ago was said be be targeted for a spin-off from Xerox"

Hmm, looks like the Xerox copying feature got got out of hand...

Oh Really now?

[infonography]

I worked with them back in 96, Hal Computers. First Ultrasparc to market. Even beat Sun Micro, but they never took it anywhere. They sucked the tech out of the company and then tried to corner the Asian UNIX market. They may make it work but they won't bother to do so here.

Now don't get me wrong, I liked them. But their focus isn't the West. They are strong on their base and may be angling to just snap it up. Time will tell.

Apple?

[koi88]

Because we're not a product company, we need a partner like Fujitsu who can deliver our products into the marketplace,'

I thought this is Apple's job...

Re:Marking is important

[anagama]

my goodness, I hope (but doubt) that the "interesting" mod is a continuation of the joke posed by the parent post. Somehow though, I think that "insightful" would have been funnier. Someone with mod points willing to correct? hint: mark it "funny".

Wait a minute!

[AbraCadaver]

Did you just say "let go of some unused hardware"?? That's it, hand in your slashdot number! No self respecting geek actually gets rid of old hardware, it's suppose to just get burried underneath all the other junk -
Like, For example, the Timex Sinclair 1000 I found recently while moving a small stack of books and papers :P

Re:Wait a minute!

[WIAKywbfatw]

When you're moving home and your junk outweighs here junk by an order of manitude plus then it's something you have to do.

Re:Wait a minute!

[afd8856]

The wife / girlfriend / fiance will usually be the cause. That is my case at least... I guess they have more common sense than us.

Steve "the mouse" Jobs

[Easy2RememberNick]

Yeah PARC makes great things. I like the story of when Steve Jobs visited PARC and "stealing" the idea for the mouse.

btw both of my Fujitsu hard drives failed. Needless to say I never bought a third one. Fool me twice, shame on me!

Re:Marking is important

[PalmKiller]

Um, guys I think this was meant to be funny, it was a pun on his use of marking, as apposed to marketing in the parent post

Fuji* [was:Hey, look right next door!]

[GoBears]

Interesting! Certainly Fujitsu acknowledges its roots in Fuji Electric, so I see your point. However, the relationship still appears to be one of accidental name resemblance - the company that currently operates as Fuji Electric denies being related to Fuji (Photo) Film...

Japanese partnerships

[Macgrrl]

On a secondary note, notice how Fujitsu is a Japanese company?

I work for Xerox in Australia - where it is called Fuji-Xerox. 75% owned by Fuji Film (Japan) and 25% owned by Xerox (USA).

But I thought,,,

[CodeWanker]

Fujitsu was a martial art practiced during sex.