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Bill Paxton received his PhD from Stanford in 1977. -- He worked with Doug Engelbart at the Stanford Research Institute where the group built the Online System (NLS) and he participated in
"The Mother of All Demos".
After leaving Stanford, Paxton joined the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)
where they developed emerging technologies, including Ethernet, networked personal computers, bitmap displays, graphical user-interfaces, and laser printers
Paxton j…

@mxp@mastodon.acm.org
2025-12-23 22:05:21

I rarely make electronic shopping lists, so I only discovered today that the Notes app has a handy feature that converts kilograms into tons. Even when using the comma as decimal separator! It doesn’t recognize “dl” (customary in Switzerland), though, and come to think of it, it has none of the features demoed by Doug Engelbart in 1968.

Screenshot of Doug Engelbart demonstrating the capabilities of NLS with a shopping list during the “Mother of all Demos” in December 1968.
Screenshot of the iPadOS Notes app showing a shopping list and a popup menu for “1,5 kg” listing the equivalent weight in grams, kilograms, and metric tons.
@mxp@mastodon.acm.org‬
2025-12-23 22:05:21

I rarely make electronic shopping lists, so I only discovered today that the Notes app has a handy feature that converts kilograms into tons. Even when using the comma as decimal separator! It doesn’t recognize “dl” (customary in Switzerland), though, and come to think of it, it has none of the features demoed by Doug Engelbart in 1968.

‪@mxp@mastodon.acm.org‬
2025-12-23 22:05:21

I rarely make electronic shopping lists, so I only discovered today that the Notes app has a handy feature that converts kilograms into tons. Even when using the comma as decimal separator! It doesn’t recognize “dl” (customary in Switzerland), though, and come to think of it, it has none of the features demoed by Doug Engelbart in 1968.