Tech Time Warp: Garry Kasparov’s Rage Against the Machine
The precarious relationship between man and machine has always preoccupied the technologically minded. Computer genius Alan Turing was asking “Can machines think?” as early as 1950. Few of us, though, have devoted as much time to the question—or been as...
Tech Time Warp: First published reference to vaporware
In Texas, they call it “all hat, no cattle.” In Silicon Valley, they call it vaporware, and the first use of the term was in a Feb. 3, 1986, Time Magazine article by Philip Elmer-DeWitt about the delayed release of...
Tech Time Warp: Happy birthday to Douglas Engelbart, inventor of the mouse
Born Jan. 30, 1925, Douglas Engelbart isn’t a household name for most people, but we all know—and many of us can’t live without—his most famous invention: the computer mouse. The Portland, Oregon, native served as a Navy radar technician in...
Tech Time Warp: The Not-So Happy99 Worm
The email users of January 1999 were an innocent bunch. Fresh from seeing “You’ve Got Mail” at the box office, they received emails with the attachment Happy99.exe and thought nothing about double-clicking. One rather lame “fireworks” display later, most of...
Tech Time Warp: Happy birthday, HAL—however old you are
Depending on your vantage point, HAL—the supercomputer at the heart of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey—is turning 21, 26, or 50 this year. In the screenplay, a malfunctioning HAL says, “I became operational at the H.A.L. Plant in Urbana,...
Tech Time Warp: The Origin of the Name “Microsoft”
Quick: Name some of the mostly widely used portmanteaus of the past 40 years. You might think of “Bennifer,” “Brangelina,” and other failed celebrity couples, but did you think of Microsoft? On Jan. 2, 1975, Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates and...
Tech Time Warp: Happy Birthday to Charles Babbage, Father of Computing
Amid the time warp that is the week between Christmas and New Year’s, don’t forget to raise a glass of eggnog in honor of Charles Babbage, the “Father of Computing,” born on Dec. 26, 1791. The English mathematician’s prescient plans—some...
Tech Time Warp: The Not-So-Merry Christmas Tree Exec
As an MSP, you might want to remind clients not to let holiday cheer get in the way of smart Internet use and security best practices. Thirty years ago, users of the European Academic Research Network (EARN) and its U.S....
Tech Time Warp: The CAN-SPAM Act Turns 14
The “Nigerian princes” of the world were dealt a semi-blow on Dec. 16, 2003, when Congress passed the awkwardly named “Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act,” or CAN-SPAM Act. Legitimate email marketers were required to include a...
Tech Time Warp: A quick look back at QuickTime’s beginnings
For today’s Mac user, QuickTime is nothing special—just part of the base package, lost among other bells and whistles. But travel back to this week in December 1991, when consumers got their first taste of QuickTime 1.0, and you’ll understand...