本帖最后由 carlcai 于 2010-6-2 13:59 编辑
彼得·诺顿（Peter Norton，1943年11月14日－），出生于美国华盛顿州亚伯丁（Aberdeen），是美国知名的程式设计师暨电脑书籍作者。
彼得·诺顿出生于华盛顿州，在奥勒岗州波特兰的里德学院（Reed College）完成学业。在1970年代曾短暂出家为僧[1]。
1980年代，彼得·诺顿写出了DOS下复原被删除档案的工具程式，包含其他的工具程式组成Norton Utilities。之后出品档案管理程式Norton Commander等程式。
1990年，彼得诺顿的公司Peter Norton Computing并入赛门铁克（Symantec），不过有一部份的工具程式仍以Norton为名。而这些程式的包装盒会印有彼得·诺顿两手交叉于胸前的照片，此姿势的照片在美国登记为注册商标[2]。
除了程式设计，彼得·诺顿曾出版《PETER NORTON’S PC程式设计经典》（The Peter Norton Programmer's Guide to the IBM-PC）[3]讲解许多DOS下低阶及组合语言程式设计技巧。
彼得诺顿与他的妻子在事业有成后，成立彼得·诺顿家族基金会（Peter Norton Family Foundation），赞助艺术活动。
Norton was born in Aberdeen, Washington and raised in Seattle. He attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon, graduating in 1965. Before discovering microcomputers, he spent a dozen years working on mainframes and minicomputers for companies including Boeing and Jet Propulsion Laboratories. His earliest low level system utilities were designed to allow mainframe programmers access to some previous RAM that IBM normally reserved for diagnostics. This foreshadowed his personal computer work, where he became known as a savvy author of low level system utilities and reference books.
When the IBM PC made its debut in 1981, Norton was among the first to buy one. After he was laid off during an aerospace industry cutback, he took up microcomputer programming to make ends meet. One day he accidentally erased a file. Rather than re-enter the data, as most would have, he decided to write a program to recover the information from the disk. His friends were delighted with the program and he developed a group of utility programs that he sold—one at a time—to user groups. In 1982, he founded Peter Norton Computing with $30,000 and an IBM computer.[1]
The company was a pioneer in DOS-based utilities software. Its 1982 introduction of the Norton Utilities included Norton's popular UNERASE tool to retrieve erased data from DOS disks. Norton marketed the program (primarily on foot) through his one-man software publishing company, leaving behind little pamphlets with technical notes at users group meetings and computer stores. A publisher saw his pamphlets, and saw that he could write about a technical subject. The publisher called him and asked him if he wanted to write a book. Norton's first computer book, Inside the IBM PC: Access to Advanced Features & Programming Techniques, was published in 1983. Eight editions of this best seller were published, the last in 1999. Norton wrote several other technical manuals and introductory computing books. He began writing well-received monthly columns in 1982 for PC Magazine and PC Week magazines as well, which he wrote until 1987. He soon became recognized as a principal authority on IBM personal computer technology.
In 1984, Norton Computing reached $1 million in revenue, and version 3.0 of the Norton Utilities was released. Norton had three clerical people working for him. He was doing all of the software development, all of the book writing, all of the manual writing and running the business. The only thing he wasn't doing was stuffing the packages. He hired his first programmer in July. In late 1985, Norton hired a business manager to take care of the day-to-day operations.[2]
In 1985, Norton Computing produced the Norton Editor, a programmer's text editor created by Stanley Reifel, and Norton Guides, a TSR program which showed reference information for assembly language and other IBM PC internals, but could also display other reference information compiled into the appropriate file format. Norton Commander, a file managing tool for DOS, was introduced in 1986.
In September 1983, Norton started work on The Peter Norton Programmer's Guide to the IBM PC. The book was a popular and comprehensive guide to low-level programming on the original PC platform (covering BIOS and MS-DOS system calls in great detail). The first (1985) edition was nicknamed "the pink shirt book", after the pink shirt that Norton wore for the cover photo, and Norton's crossed-arm pose on that cover is a U.S. registered trademark.[3]
The second (1988) edition, renamed The New Peter Norton Programmer's Guide to the IBM PC & PS/2, again featured the crossed arms, pink shirt cover image. Richard Wilton co-authored the second edition. This was followed by the third (1993) edition of "the Norton book", renamed The Peter Norton PC Programmer's Bible, co-authored with Wilton and Peter Aitken. Later editions of Peter Norton's Inside the PC, a broad-brush introduction to personal computer technology, featured Norton in his crossed-arm pose on the cover, wearing a white shirt.
Norton Computing revenue climbed steadily to $5 million in 1986, $11 million in 1987, and $15 million in 1988. Its products were winning utility awards hand over fist, and it was ranked 136th among Inc.'s list of the 500 fastest-growing private companies in America. Norton himself was named Entrepreneur of the Year by Arthur Young and Venture.
In August 1990, Norton sold his $25 million (yearly sales) Santa Monica, California based company to Symantec for $70 million.[4] Norton was given one third of Symantec's stock, worth about $60 million, and a seat on Symantec's board of directors. The acquired company became a division of Symantec and was renamed Peter Norton Computing Group. Most of Norton Computing's 115 employees were retained. The Norton brand name lives on in such Symantec products as Norton AntiVirus, Norton 360, Norton Internet Security, Norton Personal Firewall, Norton SystemWorks (which now contains a current version of the Norton Utilities), Norton AntiBot, Norton AntiSpam, Norton GoBack (formerly Roxio GoBack), Norton PartitionMagic (formerly PowerQuest PartitionMagic), and Norton Ghost. Norton's visage was used on the packaging of all Norton-branded products until 2001.
In 1990, Norton had a letter published in Cecil Adams's "Straight Dope" column.[5]
In 2002, Acorn Technologies lured Norton out of a 10-year business hibernation. Norton has a "significant investment" in the company and serves as Chairman of Acorn's Board of Directors.[6][7]
In 1983 Norton married Eileen Harris, who grew up in Watts, California. They had two children, and lived in the Los Angeles area. In the summer of 1990 they enjoyed a visit to Martha's Vineyard and returned the following year with their children, purchasing an 1891, eight bedroom Queen Anne house in Oak Bluffs. They bought and lived in a nearby home while initiating re-design of the main house. "My children are half black, and we thought Oak Bluffs would give them an opportunity to summer around other kids like them," Norton said in a 2007 interview with Laura D. Roosevelt for Martha's Vineyard Magazine.
In 2000, the couple divorced. Norton henceforth lived much of the time in New York. In February 2001, a fire caused by faulty wiring destroyed the Martha's Vineyard home. Norton decided to have it rebuilt almost exactly as it was before the fire. Meanwhile, he began a relationship with New York financier Gwen Adams who, being an "Islander" in origin herself, also liked the area. Since then, the couple spend ten weeks of summer in the Corbin-Norton House annually, usually hosting several guests. They were married in a church in nearby Edgartown, performed by their neighbor on the island, author and scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr..
Peter and Eileen founded the Peter Norton Family Foundation in 1989, which gives financial support to visual and contemporary non-profit arts organizations, as well as human social services organizations. Custody of the foundation was heavily litigated over a period of years.[8] Norton also serves on the boards of Creative Capital Foundation,[9] the California Institute of the Arts,[10] Reed College,[11] Crossroads School,[12] and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.[13]
With his first wife, Norton accumulated one of the largest modern contemporary art collections in the United States. Many of the pieces are on loan all over the world at any given time, and many were on view at Symantec Corporation, which purchased Peter Norton Computing in 1990. The foundation and the Norton Family Office are located in Santa Monica. ARTnews magazine regularly lists Norton among the world's top 200 collectors.
In 1999, Norton purchased letters written to Joyce Maynard by reclusive author J.D. Salinger for US$156,500. (Salinger had a year-long affair with Maynard in 1972 when she was 18.) Maynard said she was forced to auction the letters for financial reasons. Norton announced that his intention was to return the letters to Salinger.[14]
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发表于 2010-6-2 11:56:41
发表于 2010-6-2 11:57:40
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