[usr1106]

As a software engineer since the 1980s, of course I know (Xerox) PARC. But am I the only one for whom SRI does not ring any bells? I'm confident Wikipedia can tell me more, but if they don't tell in their press release I would claim they might overestimate their "brand".

[gumby]

SRI is where Doug Engelbart worked developed the mouse and windowing interface (among other things) and put together the "Mother of all Demos".

SRI where the original ARPANET NIC was, and had various important roles in the development of the net.

I really don't think they overestimated their brand, they just talk to their likely customers.

(I worked at PARC, never at SRI, but I had many friends from SRI, and there was a flow of personnel in both directions).

[1letterunixname]

- Mouse, of course

- Magnetic check ink

- ERMA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Recording_Machine,_...

More importantly: Stanford, SRI, and the high signal of connected people in Palo Alto created lots of inventions and companies. Sports metaphor: when they're on the team, the team scores more indirectly by their presence. Palo Alto-Stanford has been a modern "Venice" in terms of center of business-meets-academic since about 1940. Boston owns it in academia in sheer numbers of campuses and of reputation, but not when it comes to tightening the iteration loops of making money.

[xhkkffbf]

Boston used to have a viable computer industry but it's all largely faded away with the minicomputers. Oh well. They've got the drug business now.

[jhbadger]

And in the 1980s and 1990s Boston used to have a great computer museum, but that closed in 1999.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Computer_Museum,_Boston

[DonHopkins]

SRI-NIC was the center of the universe. All ARPANET TIPs/TACs had a special purpose command "@N" that would connect directly to the NIC's Tops-20 PDP-10 at SRI, where you could get news about the network status, communicate with the people running the net, and stuff like that.

[iancmceachern]

Also Surgical Robotics and Intuitive's Da Vinci:

https://www.sri.com/hoi/telerobotic-surgery/

[jldugger]

SRI is like, the secret bit of stanford where the faculty only do research and no teaching. It's where Siri and Nuance came from, and two staffers who worked there in the 50s quit to found FairIssac. Most notably for the HN crowd, its where Englebart worked on his Mother of All Demos, and where LaTeX was written.

[musicale]

SRI (formerly the Stanford Research Institute) split from Stanford University in 1970.

Students (et al.) had protested SRI's participation in secret (and military) research projects, and Stanford ultimately determined that secret research was incompatible with the university's mission.

Of course, like many universities, Stanford has aligned its actual priorities to focus primarily on endowment expansion and administrative employment.

[sundarurfriend]

> FairIssac

TIL that FICO stands for Fair Isaac Corporation (or Fair, Isaac and Company, originally).

[iancmceachern]

And Intuitive's Da Vinci:

https://www.sri.com/hoi/telerobotic-surgery/

[CaliforniaKarl]

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.

[usr1106]

What was their domain/hostname at the time?

[ricktdotorg]

"SRI" [1]

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

[eichin]

The one people will remember, though, is SRI-NIC because that's where you FTP'ed the offical HOSTS.TXT file from (mid-to-late 1980s before DNS.)

[ricktdotorg]

oh man your comment just made me remember that i registered a domain by also FTPing a txt file to some NIC FTP site, i'm guessing it was 1991?.

IIRC that's when i registered rmt.org (my initials) using that method (for free!). used it for a couple of years but then moved to USA and at some point in the mid 90s i guess i had to start paying for it, i forgot -- and lost the domain to the UK union for Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers. a worthy successor!

well i guess they sold it because now the domain is owned by a trust that helps autistic children in the UK. another worthy successor!

anyway, thanks for the memory!!!

[kjs3]

I dunno where you were at, but as a student admin at another major ARPAnet/NSFnet site we were using DNS on everything worth the admin time to configure it by 85/86 and noone was regularly FTP'ing HOSTS.TXT unless they had to (e.g. our BITNET connected machines had an IP gateway, but no DNS software for IBM VM/CMS and for a while).

[eichin]

I was vague about the years to avoid having to do too much research for mere nostalgia, but there was a transition in there from "just MIT-MULTICS and MIT-ATHENA" to "MIT-MULTICS.ARPA" and then eventually having .EDU names as well. (The same sort of nostalgia that leads me to use 10/8 for home and office nets just so I can put some interesting machine on 10.0.0.6.) (And it turns out searching for "10.0.0.6 imp 6" (multics was imp 6 port 0) turns up https://www.google.com/books/edition/ARPANET_Directory/M6opA... in the "in 1982 information was in books" department...)

[DonHopkins]

Note: if you sold each IPV4 address of a /8 block for the cut-rate bulk price of $1 each today, it would be worth $2^24 = $16,777,216.00.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30379919

DonHopkins on Feb 17, 2022 | parent | context | favorite | on: Who is squatting IPv4 addresses?

I know a naughty person who decades ago hijacked a /8 IPV4 network block when the company that owned it went out of business, by registering their expired domain name and sending in an email from that domain, transferring ownership of the block to himself.

It was "hot" so he couldn't just squat on it or sell it in the open, but he laundered it by trading it to some shady company in exchange for free network services for life.

If I were him, I would have printed out all the addresses on little slips of paper and taken an "IPV4 Address Bath" like Huell's scene in Breaking Bad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HrmD_vIMIk

>(sexy lip bite) ... "I gotta do it, man!" ... "Mexico, all's I'm sayin'!"

icedchai on Feb 17, 2022 [–]

Was it really an /8? I could believe a smaller block...

DonHopkins on Feb 17, 2022 | parent | context | favorite | on: Who is squatting IPv4 addresses?

Yep, it was a long time ago, and he was one of those "old net boys" who worked on the early ARPANET, but I won't say anything else that might identify him.

I have another naughty friend (not the same person) who worked at SRI-NIC implementing and maintaining the ARPANET TACACS database, and as a personal favor, he created our mutual friend Devon his own ARPANET TAC card.

So Devon's free vanity TACACS account was named "DEVON", while most other accounts like mine were something ugly like "DH32", using initials and numbers. One day his boss summoned him to his office and showed him a print-out of the TACACS accounts, with "DEVON" right at the top, and asked him who the hell that was. He sheepishly prevaricated that "DEVON" was actually a control code to turn the printer DEVice ON, which accidentally got printed at the beginning of the list because of a bug in his program missing an escape code, and he would fix it right away. And that's how Devon lost his TAC card. We still tease him about his name as a printer control code, and call him "DEVOFF" when he talks too much. I'm pretty sure his boss knew what was up, but just let it slide.

Network security was a lot different in those days. TAC cards only happened later when they finally put passwords on the dialup TACs/TIPs -- you originally could dial up and connect to any host on the ARPANET without a password, then you could ask nicely for a free tourist account at places like the MIT-AI Lab. It didn't even require any social engineering, just being polite and curious, reading documentation, and following instructions.

I asked BBN nicely about the TIP manual, and they helpfully mailed me a free hardcopy of the "Users Guide for the Terminal IMP", which documented how to take control of other people's sessions and even divert their output by prefixing @ commands by their terminal number! See "Section 5: Unusual uses of the TIP" page 5-7, "Setting Another Terminal's Parameters" and "The DIVERT OUTPUT Command":

https://usermanual.wiki/Document/ADA014398UsersGuidetotheTer...

The guy who originally wrote that TIP manual in 1971 was none other than Will Crowther, who also developed Colossal Cave Adventure with Don Woods! You're in a twisty little maze of IMPs, all different.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Crowther_(programmer)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure

ARPANET Psiber SPACE (circa 1986): This is the network of IMPs (Interface Message Processors) that comprised the ARPANET in 1986. The ARPANET is history now, but thanks to the magic of Pseudo-Scientific Visualization and the ScriptX language and class library from Kaleida Labs, you can now experience what it was like to be free ranging packet hopping around the ARPANET in 1986!

https://www.donhopkins.com/home/catalog/arpanet/index-large....

MIT AI Lab Tourist Policy

https://medium.com/@donhopkins/mit-ai-lab-tourist-policy-f73...

“The MIT machines were a nerd magnet for kids who had access to the ARPANET,”

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15080221

Keith F. Lynch wrote up a fascinatingly detailed and accurate history of the ARPANET from his perspective:

http://keithlynch.net/history.net.html

Keith mentions that ARPANET TACACS passwords were installed in 1986, and even mentions how Jerry Pournelle got himself kicked off the ARPANET for being obnoxious in 1985, which I can conform with the email messages he mentioned. The first message is about TACACS, and explains how MILNET TACACS was implemented in 1984, before ARPANET TACACS (in 1986). It was addressed to the same DEVON, and HN's own GUMBY chimed in with some salty remarks:

https://www.donhopkins.com/home/catalog/text/pourne-smut.htm...

jacquesm on Feb 17, 2022 | root | parent [–]

Your text is garbled:

"then you could even anity TACACS account "

DonHopkins on Feb 18, 2022 | root | parent [–]

Thanks, fixed! The "Arpanet" episode of The Americans featured a classic scene with an academic computer science professor dude bullshitting about the ARPANET -- I'm sure we both know somebody exactly like that from that period, who made eloquent hand-waving metaphors about Virtual Spaces and Post Offices and God and Disembodied Brains, trying to explain to skeptical people how vast and important the ARPANET was (with its 8 enormous bits of address space). But he kinda had a point, calling the PDP-10 "The Beast".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVth6T3gMa0

But the thing The Americans "Arpanet" episode got wrong is that you didn't actually have to slap on a Frank Zappa Soul Patch and a Beatnik Wig, dress up like a janitor, and brutally murder an unlucky grad student to get on the ARPANET, you just had to ask the right people nicely! (But it's still one of the best episodes, with the scene about passing a lie detector test by clenching your anus.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arpanet_(The_Americans)

[usr1106]

Probably I knew that decades ago, faint memories come up when I read it. Not having heard SRI ever since, I had completey forgotten that.

[retrocryptid]

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

[DonHopkins]

At that time, NCP network addresses were just 8 bits, and homosocketuality was illegal.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14178993

DonHopkins on April 23, 2017 | parent | context | favorite | on: How SSH got port number 22

Back in the "bad old days" of the simplex NCP protocol [1], before the full duplex TCP/IP protocol legalized same-sex network connections, connect and listen sockets had gender defined by their parity, and all connections were required to use sockets with different parity gender (one even and the other odd -- I can't remember which was which, or if it even mattered -- they just had to be different).

The act of trying to connect an even socket to another even socket, or an odd socket to another odd socket, was considered a "peculiar error" called "homosocketuality", which was strictly forbidden by internet protocols, and mandatory "heterosocketuality" was called the "Anita Bryant feature" [2].

http://www.saildart.org/IMPSER.DOC[SS,SYS]

When the error code is zero, the next 8 bit byte is the Stanford peculiar error code, followed by 72 bits of the ailing command returned. Here are the Stanford error codes. [...]

IGN 3 Illegal Gender (Anita Bryant feature--sockets must be heterosocketual, ie. odd to even and even to odd) [...]

Illegal gender in RFC, host hhh/iii, link 0

The host is trying to engage us in homosocketuality. Since this is against the laws of God and ARPA, we naturally refuse to consent to it.

http://www.saildart.org/FTP.NCP[S,NET]

    ; Try to initiate connection

    loginj:
            init log,17
            sixbit /IMP/
            0
            jrst noinit
            setzm conecb
            setom conecb+lsloc
            move ac3,hostno
            movem ac3,conecb+hloc
            setom conecb+wfloc
            movei ac3,40
            movem ac3,conecb+bsloc
            move ac3,consck
            trnn ac3,1
                jrst gayskt  ; only heterosocketuals can win!
             movem ac3,conecb+fsloc
             mtape log,[
                     =15
                     byte (6) 2,24,0,7,7
                     ]       ; Time out CLS, RFNM, RFC, and INPut

    [...]

    gayskt:    outstr [asciz/Homosocketuality is prohibited (the Anita Bryant feature)

    /]

        ife rsexec,<jrst rstart;>exit       1,

(The PDP-10 code above adds the connect and listen socket numbers together, which results in bit 0 being 0 if they are the same gender, then TRNN is "test bits right, no change, skip if non zero", which skips the next instruction (jrst gayskt) if they different sex.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Control_Program

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-A2Ql81WTY

[usr1106]

Hmm, an SDS 940. Never heard :(

I have used a CDC 6600 and various 370s. PDP only from reading, I started with VAXen.

[retrocryptid]

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.

[AlbertCory]

There is actually a book which you can get for free (or could, at one time):

https://www.amazon.com/Computers-Nobody-Wanted-Years-Xerox/d...

we can call it "the book nobody wanted." /s

Strassman tells how he offered the PARC people a very good deal on an SDS machine, and they turned up their noses at it. They wanted a PDP-10, but they weren't allowed to buy from DEC, so they built their own lookalike (Maxc).

[retrocryptid]

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

[fmajid]

Have you heard of Doug Engelbart and his Mother of All Demos? That was at SRI.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos

[retrocryptid]

Yes. Yes I have.

[robbiet480]

SRI was instrumental in the creation of Disneyland https://www.sri.com/hoi/disneyland/

[jeron]

SRI is Stanford Research Institute, which was established by the trustees of Stanford University in 1946 [0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRI_International

[drfuchs]

But, just as with IBM and NCR, “SRI” is now just a 3-letter non-acronym, that officially doesn’t stand for anything.

[drewda]

Another example: What used to be called the Stanford Linear Accelerator is now officially just "SLAC" (as the university holds trademark for "Stanford" and didn't want to share with the US Department of Energy)

[retrocryptid]

In the old days we used to call community colleges "Junior Colleges." The first time I came out to the valley I noticed a university there called "Leland Stanford Junior University" and assumed it must be a Junior College associated with Stanford University.

So yes, they need all the help they can get with naming things.

[retrocryptid]

I once worked for Digital Switch Corporation, which was well known as DSC. Sometime in the 80s or early 90s they changed their name to DSC Communication Corporation, or DSCCC. If you expanded it all out, you got "Digital Switch Corporation Communication Corporation," the corporation so corporate, they named it twice.

[kjs3]

Shame...National Cash Register had so much character. Like the similarly depreciated American Telephone & Telegraph.

[retrocryptid]

I'm reminded how anyone with industrial capacity during war2 was pressed into service making weapons. If you look hard enough, you can find M1 Carbines with IBM and NPR (National Post Register) head-stamps.

[kjs3]

They made quite a few of them; the interwebs say something like 365K. I know a guy with 2 IBM manufactured M1s. Even cooler, the Rock-Ola juke box company made M1s.

[usr1106]

anymore, you mean. Knowing history is good and so are mnemonics.

[drfuchs]

My “is now” indeed means “was, but no longer is.” So, no SNAFU; it’s OK.

[usr1106]

As predicted I found the information myself in Wikipedia. Of course everbody knows Stanford, although I couldn't tell the difference between the university and the research institute. As an IT person (Xerox) PARC remains the iconic one, even if it was a business failure for Xerox.

[gnicholas]

Does SRI still stand for "Stanford Research Institute"? I thought it was just an acronym since it separated from the university, as described in your wikipedia link:

> SRI formally separated from Stanford University in 1970 and became known as SRI International in 1977

[drewda]

If you don't know the acronym SRI, then you probably aren't likely their target customer :)

The S used to stand for Stanford.

Just like RAND or Battelle or a half dozen others, it's nominally a non-profit organization that manages huge R&D projects, employs thousands of scientists and engineers, and manages government research facilities.

[usr1106]

Not personally, you have a point :)

I have used Ethernet since 1985ish without being PARC's customer either. I have used a mouse since 1987ish. If you had asked me before reading up on the topic minutes ago where the mouse was developed I would have probably answered PARC, too, and not Stanford and absolutely not SRI. Not sure how the former managed to build to build a "brand" for stuff they haven't even accomplished.

[rchiang]

It's a fine distinction that maybe computer historians know best. Doug Engelbart's "Mother of All Demos" showed off the first computer mouse. The computer mouse that shipped with the Xerox Star is credited as being the "first commercially available computer mouse".

Along similar lines, while the original Ethernet was invented at PARC, Ethernet gained more popularity in industry through Silicon Valley companies like 3Com (with founder Bob Metcalfe, recent ACM Turing Award winner and ex-PARC researcher) and SynOptics Communications (with founders Andrew Ludwick and Ronald Schmidt, both ex-PARC employees).

[kjs3]

Because SRI focused on gov/mil/intel projects, and Xerox shipped commercial products? There are lots of places like SRI you've never heard of unless you come from their world (e.g. RAND, General Atomics, etc.).

[retrocryptid]

Technically it was at the ARC (Augmentation Research Center), but the ARC was at SRI.

[ZanyProgrammer]

IIRC basically a Pentagon funded think tank in Silicon Valley, though their best days were really the 1970s and 1980s.

[VagueMag]

Yeah SRI was what emerged when military/intelligence related work needed to be separated from Stanford University proper as a result of campus protests in the 60s over the university's involvement in chemical weapons and counterinsurgency research.

[usr1106]

If that is true it gives me the kind of background I was looking for.

[Animats]

Yes. I dealt with them a lot in my aerospace days.

Boyer and Moore used to work there. I used their theorem prover for early proof of correctness work.

[tverbeure]

Ever heard of Siri?

It was an SRI spinout, acquired by Apple in 2010. https://www.sri.com/hoi/siri/

[usr1106]

That's what Wikipedia tells. I had no clue where it came from. Of course it's not unheard of the big companies like Apple buy their best ideas from elsewhere.

[jldugger]

> I had no clue where it came from.

Siri started life running on Android and iOS. They took it down when Apple bought the company two months after launching. So if you blinked you might have missed it =)

[retrocryptid]

I think the android bits and some of the staff formed Kuato after Apple bought Siri. I interviewed for a gig there back in the day, but I landed at Linden Lab instead.

[rchiang]

This article gives a bit of context about Siri's history with SRI International: https://hbr.org/2015/09/the-president-of-sri-ventures-on-bri...

[carom]

I've teamed with SRI before. They're well known in the defense research space.

[dekhn]

Douglas Englebart (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos) worked there in the 60s. They were one of the very first sites on the Internet. Lots of highly technical research has been done there over the decades.

[MaysonL]

Back in the ‘700s I was blown away reading some of Doug Engelbart’s research reports hot off the CopyFlo®. See “The Mother of All Demos” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos