Tech Time Warp: The scourge of SQL Slammer
It must have been frustrating to write the Jan. 25, 2003, Microsoft press release responding to the SQL Slammer worm, also known as Sapphire. Read between the lines, and it’s easy to decipher the statement’s real message: “We tried to...
Tech Time Warp: The public learns about the SAGE air defense system
Do you know those massive computers in old movies? The ones with rows of blinking lights and lots of buttons, as featured in Dr. Strangelove and so many other films? Those weren’t the product of a Hollywood imagination—they were based...
Pioneers in Tech: Peter de Jager, the oracle of Y2K
On page 115 of the Sept. 6, 1993, issue of Computerworld, a Canadian computer consultant named Peter de Jager launched an industry: responding to Y2K. Learn more about De Jager in this edition of Pioneers in Tech. De Jager warned:...
Tech Time Warp: 50 Years of the Microsoft brand
On Jan. 2, 1975, Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote a letter to MITS, the manufacturer of the Altair computer. Inspired by a Popular Electronics article about the Altair 8800, Gates and Allen—who were geeking out on microprocessors...
Tech Time Warp: The 20th anniversary of Facebook’s one millionth user
Nearly 40 percent of the world’s total population—more than 3 billion people—uses Facebook each month, and of those, 2.11 billion log into Facebook every day. As ubiquitous as Facebook is in contemporary society, it’s incredible to think that just 20...
Tech Time Warp: Santy comes to town
Twenty years ago, network administrators found themselves dealing with an unwelcome holiday visitor: not Santa, but Santy. Learn all about it in this edition of Tech Time Warp. The Santy worm was malware written in the Perl language. It didn’t...
Tech Time Warp: Happy Birthday to pioneer in tech, Grace Hopper
Admiral Grace Hopper, one of the most legendary early females in the computer industry, would have celebrated her 118th birthday on December 9. Born in New York City in 1906, Hopper built a career in the U.S. Navy and computer...
Tech Time Warp: Recording industry takes on file-sharing pioneer Napster
Twenty-five years ago, a generation of college students hit the jackpot when it came to music. They moved to college dormitories with ethernet connections just as Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker launched Napster, the first mainstream peer-to-peer file-sharing service. Or,...
Tech Time Warp: A game “so simple that any drunk in any bar could play”
Sometimes the best ideas really are the simplest, and compared with the complexity of today’s video games or even some of its early pioneering contemporaries, that was the basis of Pong. Released on Nov. 29, 1972, Pong was—in the words...
Tech Time Warp: Conficker’s persistent ability to outsmart defenses
For the past 16 years, Conficker has been a virulent piece of malware. First identified in November 2008, it continues to persist in legacy operating systems (looking at you, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003). Take a look back in...
