Stephen Gary Wozniak (/ˈwɒzniæk/; born August 11, 1950), also known by his nickname "Woz", is an American technology entrepreneur, electronics engineer, computer scientist, computer programmer, philanthropist, and inventor. In 1976, he co-founded Apple Computer with his late business partner Steve Jobs, which later became the world's largest technology company by revenue and the largest company in the world by market capitalization. Through his work at Apple in the 1970s and 1980s, he is widely recognized as one of the most prominent pioneers of the personal computer revolution.

In 1975, Wozniak started developing the Apple I  into the computer that launched Apple when he and Jobs first began marketing it the following year. He primarily designed the Apple II, introduced in 1977, known as one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputers, while Jobs oversaw the development of its foam-molded plastic case and early Apple employee Rod Holt developed its switching power supply. With human–computer interface expert Jef Raskin, Wozniak had a major influence over the initial development of the original Apple Macintosh concepts from 1979 to 1981, when Jobs took over the project following Wozniak's brief departure from the company due to a traumatic airplane accident. After permanently leaving Apple in 1985, Wozniak founded CL 9 and created the first programmable universal remote, released in 1987. He then pursued several other businesses and philanthropic ventures throughout his career, focusing largely on technology in K–12 schools.

As of February 2020, Wozniak has remained an employee of Apple in a ceremonial capacity since stepping down in 1985.

In recent years, he has helped fund multiple entrepreneurial efforts dealing in areas such as GPS and telecommunications, flash memory, technology and pop culture conventions, technical education, ecology, satellites and more.

The year is early 1998, at the height of dot-com era, and a small team of Netscape code writers frantically works to reconstruct the company's Internet browser. In doing so they will rewrite the rules of software development by giving away the recipe for its browser in exchange for integrating improvements created by outside unpaid developers. The fate of the entire company may well rest on their shoulders. Broadcast on PBS, the film capture the human and technological dramas that unfold in the collision between science, engineering, code, and commerce.

On August 9, 1995, Silicon Valley startup Netscape Communications made its stunning market debut and effectively illuminated the emergent World Wide Web for millions of people who, until then, were only vaguely familiar with its potential and promise.

Netscape’s initial public offering of shares stimulated the dot.com boom of the late 1990s and enabled what has been called “the technological, social, and financial tone of the Internet age.”

Dave takes you on a forty-year journey as a software engineer including working on every Microsoft operating system from MS-DOS through Windows XP and Server 2003. He discusses Microsoft Windows features he worked on, such as Task Manager, Zip Folders, Product Activation, the Start Menu, Desktop, Pinball, and MS-DOS.

For info on the book, Secrets of the Autistic Millionaire, check out: https://amzn.to/3DNfQao

This presentation was prepared for VCFWest on Aug 4, 2023. Many thanks to Bil Herd for the invitation! For lots of great Commodore insights, check out his channel at: @bilherd

Today is a significant day in the history of the Internet. On 6 August 1991, exactly 32 years ago, the World Wide Web became publicly available. Its creator, the now internationally known Tim Berners-Lee, posted a short summary of the project on the alt.hypertext newsgroup and gave birth to a new technology which would fundamentally change the world as we knew it.

On 5 August 1857, the expedition got under way. The first portion of cable to be laid was known as the shore cable: heavily reinforced line to guard against strains of waves, currents, rocks, and anchors. But less than 5 miles out, the shore cable got caught in the machinery and broke. The fleet returned to port...

Once, many years ago, I stayed on the 62nd floor of the Westin Peachtree Plaza in Atlanta, Georgia. This was in the age when the price of a hotel room was directly correlated with the price of the WiFi service, and as a high school student I was not prepared to pay in excess of $15 a day for the internet. As I remember, a Motel 6 that was not blocks away but within line of sight ended up filling the role. But even up there, 62 floors from the ground, there was false promise: Free Public WiFi.

I am not the first person to write on this phenomenon, I think I originally came to understand it as a result of a 2010 segment of All Things Considered. For a period of a few years, almost everywhere you went, there was a WiFi network called "Free Public WiFi." While it was both free and public in the most literal sense, it did not offer internet access. It was totally useless, and fell somewhere between a joke, a scam, and an accident of history. Since I'm not the first to write about it, I have to be the most thorough, and so let's start out with a discussion of WiFi itself.

Microsoft Windows has attained near ubiquity in the computing world today, running on an estimated 3 out of every 4 computers. It decisively won the operating systems battle that raged across the 1980s and early 1990s, and has no significant competitors today, with its greatest rival on the desktop, Apple, having only a 16% market share.

Yet Windows did not win the operating system battle overnight, and its victory was far from assured. It struggled just to get its first release, and spent years facing formidable competition. Few people would have bet on Windows to eventually win, but that is just what eventually happened.

This series will (eventually) explore Windows rise to dominance, starting from its origins all the way to its last big gamble, Windows 8.

Update 2/28/2023 - the script for part 2 is largely complete (70%) and it is the next major video I will be working on once the current video I am editing (Fall of OS/2) is complete

Mainframe computers are often seen as ancient machines—practically dinosaurs. But mainframes, which are purpose-built to process enormous amounts of data, are still extremely relevant today. If they’re dinosaurs, they’re T-Rexes, and desktops and server computers are puny mammals to be trodden underfoot.

It’s estimated that there are 10,000 mainframes in use today. They’re used almost exclusively by the largest companies in the world, including two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, 45 of the world’s top 50 banks, eight of the top 10 insurers, seven of the top 10 global retailers, and eight of the top 10 telecommunications companies. And most of those mainframes come from IBM.

In this explainer, we’ll look at the IBM mainframe computer—what it is, how it works, and why it’s still going strong after over 50 years.

Michelangelo Madness

The Michelangelo virus was first found in early 1991 in New Zealand. It is a typical infector of diskette boot records and the master boot record of hard disks, with one exception. If an infected system is booted on March 6 of any year, the Michelangelo virus will overwrite parts of the hard disk with random data. This renders the hard disk of the system, and all of its information, inaccessible.

The virus is named Michelangelo not because of any messages in the virus itself, but because one of the first people to analyze it noticed that March 6 is the birthday of the famous artist. The name stuck.

Finding a new virus is not unusual in itself; several dozen new viruses are found each week. Michelangelo was unusual in that it was found in an actual incident, rather than as one of the thousands of viruses gathered by anti-virus workers but as yet unseen in an incident. It was also unusual because it could cause such substantial damage to the information on peoples' PCs, and because that damage would all happen on a single day.

In the weeks that preceded March 6, 1992, something even more unusual happened. In a fascinating interplay between the media and some parts of the anti-virus industry, the Michelangelo virus became a major news event. News stories warning about Michelangelo's destructive potential were broadcast on major television networks. Articles about it appeared prominently in major newspapers.

As March 6 drew nearer, the stories grew ever more hysterical. The predictions of the number of systems that would be wiped out grew to hundreds of thousands, then millions [12, 13].

When the fateful date came, the predictions of doom turned out to have been a bit inflated. The Michelangelo virus was found on some systems, and probably did destroy data on a few of them. But the worldwide disaster did not occur. Indeed, it was difficult to find any verified incident of destruction of data by Michelangelo in most places [14].

This should not have come as a surprise. Our own research at the time showed that the Michelangelo virus was not very prevalent, and certainly not one of the most common viruses. We estimated that about the same number of systems would have their hard disks crash due to random hardware failures on March 6 as would have their data destroyed by the Michelangelo virus. It is important to keep the risks in perspective.

Michelangelo Madness, as we came to call it, did have a dramatic effect, though not the anticipated one. Concerned about the predictions of widespread damage, people bought and installed anti-virus software in droves. In some locations, lines of people waiting to buy anti-virus software stretched around the block. In other places, stores sold out of their entire supply of anti-virus software during the week leading up to March 6. Around the world, a very large number of people checked their systems for viruses in those few days.

Figure 9 illustrates the effect of this activity. In the two weeks before March 6, 1992, reports of virus incidents shot up to unprecedented levels. Naturally, this was not because viruses were spreading out of control during those two weeks. Rather, infections that had been latent for days or weeks were found, simply because people were looking for them. In environments like that of our sample population, where anti-virus software is widely installed and used, it is likely that these same infections would have been caught anyway in subsequent weeks. But, since so many people checked their systems prior to March 6, the infections were discovered then rather than later.

!Image

Figure 9: Michelangelo Madness resulted in many people finding viruses of all kinds.

People did find the Michelangelo virus, but they found far more viruses of other kinds. The Stoned virus, for instance, the most prevalent virus at the time, was found about three times more frequently than was the Michelangelo virus.

In the first few months after Michelangelo Madness, fewer virus incidents were reported than in the few month before it. This is easy to understand. First, virus incidents were caught earlier than they might have been because everyone was looking. Viruses found in the beginning of March might have been found in the beginning in April instead. So one would expect fewer virus incidents to be reported shortly after March 6 that year. Second, viruses were probably found and eliminated even in systems that might not have found them for a very long time. In just a few days, the worldwide population of viruses was decreased. We would expect that the virus population, and hence virus incident reports, would increase again in subsequent months.

Virus incidents did increase after that, but in a way that is rather complicated. We will examine this in more detail in a subsequent section.

Despite the beneficial effects of eliminating some viruses temporarily, the hysteria caused by this event was clearly out of proportion to the risk. Individuals and businesses spent vast sums of money and time warding off a threat that was much smaller than they were led to believe. We hope that those involved learned from the experience -- that our friends in the anti-virus industry will be more careful in saying that they understand viral prevalence when they do not, and that the media will examine predictions of impending doom with a somewhat more critical eye.

source: Computer Viruses: A Global Perspective

The spring of my freshman year of college, my mom sold my drum set. I used the money to buy an MP3 player. Sorry. A multi-codec jukebox.

There is a certain type of person who, when faced with a sleek, friendly, easy-to-use Apple product, will rail on about all the features it doesn’t have, all the things you can’t do with it, all the ways the walled garden is a trap.

This person has existed since the dawn of time. I used to be that guy. I still am, sometimes, but I used to be, too. And so, in the spring of 2004, when the iPod had been out for two and a half years, I spent $330 on ...

Ever wonder how a dial-up ISP from the 90s actually worked?

We did, so to find out, we decided to start our very own dial-up ISP... like it's 1993! Come along as we hear from Pete Ashdown, the founder of XMission, one of the earliest commercial ISPs in the United States that's still going strong today. We also find out what hardware we'll need, but will our journey end before it even gets started?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/1194302

> I'm on a kick lately, searching out media covering the early 90s hacker scene and mainstream response. Not sure if there's much interest in this stuff, but I thought I'd continue to surface some of it.

IBM had unknowingly created a juggernaut when they allowed Bill Gates and Microsoft to control the PC operating system standard, first with DOS and then with Windows. Having lost control of the PC hardware standard, IBM was determined to regain control of the operating system standard.

Their weapon?

The OS/2 operating system, a powerful and feature packed operating system that best case should have had little trouble overcoming Windows, and worst case should have at least been able to carve out a profitable and sustainable market share. This is the story of how IBM's last attempt to keep a measure of control in the PC space...failed.

We talk alot about the history of computers, about particular CPUs and platforms, and how these things developed. What we don't talk much about is the history of display technology. Well time to fix that one (or at least in my content).

Production Notes: Edited: 28th May 2022 - 1 July 2022

Jack Tamiel is an interesting story. On one level, he was a jovial business man, who liked to entertain with his stories, and this is how most people will like to remember him. This is the public persona; the legend; and so I made this short film to tell a biography of Jack, in his own words. There is a section about CD-ROM drives, and I included this because it was from a June 1985 show; which was 10 years before CD-Roms became mass market items in the mid 1990's. If all you want to see is Jacks busniess side, then this is the show for you, and you might want to skip part 2.

"When checking the system this morning, I noticed your account logged in for over 20 hours," begins a December 1998 email from the president of my dial-up Internet service provider (ISP) at the time. "Our service is unlimited, but we ask that you actually be using the connection while logged in."

"Recently I've been learning about the history of computers. I find it to be incredibly interesting. I'd like to write a post about it to summarize and comment on what I've learned."

Back before YouTube and Twitch and always online DRM, developers needed more effective ways of marketing than just relying on word of mouth. This resulted in shareware, demos and demo discs, free slices of playable content that spawned one of the most interesting phases in the gaming.

Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (ISBN 0-385-19195-2) is a book by Steven Levy about hacker culture. It was published in 1984 in Garden City, New York by Doubleday. Levy describes the people, the machines, and the events that defined the Hacker Culture and the Hacker Ethic, from the early mainframe hackers at MIT, to the self-made hardware hackers and game hackers.

Digital Folklore Podcast | Full Episodes

Mason finds a mysterious VHS copy of Candle Cove. Not having a VCR, he heads to Perry's Airbnb mansion only to discover that Perry is also VCR-less.

After a short debate, they hop into the FolksWagen and head to Todd's pawn shop. And that's where things get a bit strange...

In this episode:

• A dramatization of the Candle Cove creepypasta.
• A discussion about Analog Horror and how it intersects with folklore.
• The Carterhaugh School breaks down Gothic.
• The term "hauntology" as explained by Diane Rodgers.
• Imaginary Worlds host Eric Molinsky makes an appearance.

Guests:

• Diane A. Rodgers PhD, Senior Lecturer in Media at Sheffield Hallam University
• Dr. Sara Cleto and Dr. Brittany Warman from the Carterhaugh School of Folklore & the Fantastic
• Eric Molinsky, creator and host of the Imaginary Worlds podcast.
• Alex Hera, filmmaker. Creator of the documentary, "The History of Analog Horror", and a 100 Episode webseries called "Walker Creek", which was later re-edited into a feature-length video, and was the basis of a feature-length documentary titled "Making an ARG: Walker Creek".

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.capebreton.social/post/59176

> Yale Law professor Scott Shapiro takes us on an exhilarating journey through the world of cybercrime and hacking, unraveling the captivating stories behind five extraordinary hacks that have left an indelible mark on our information society. > > From the audacious exploits of Fancy Bear, the elite hacking unit within Russian military intelligence, to lesser-known yet equally astonishing incidents, Scott Shapiro sheds light on the origins, motivations, and consequences of these remarkable cyber intrusions. > > Our host for this episode is Carl Miller - Research Director at Demos and author of The Death of The Gods: The New Global Power Grab. > >

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.capebreton.social/post/59094

> For those of you with a HAM radio (receiver) setup and an interest in crypto, the MRHS (Maritime Radio Historical Society) and the Cipher History Museum have an Enigma challenge this Saturday (July 22, 2023) > > They'll be sending a coded message in 5 letter groups, which you can capture and then decode with the Enigma you have collecting dust on your shelf. Or if you don't own the actual gear, you can use an Enigma emulator on your phone or an online simulator - those of course will do the job very nicely as well. > > If you don't have a full HAM radio setup, you can do receive-only very nicely wiith an RTL SDR (software defined radio) if you have the right geography + antenna combination, so the barrier to entry on this is very low, as long as you are close enough to "hear" the signal. > > Full details are here: https://www.radiomarine.org/mrhs-events

As a follow-up to yesterday's discussion post, what's the oldest piece of tech actively in use at your home?

I'm sure there's a broad range of intepretation of "tech" but keep it related to electronics or computing.

Myself, it's probably the xbox original (not counting my old ass alarm clock/radio). I still regularly use that for emulation purposes just because it still works.

Microserfs, published by HarperCollins in 1995, is an epistolary novel by Douglas Coupland. It first appeared in short story form[1] as the cover article for the January 1994 issue of Wired magazine and was subsequently expanded to full novel length.[2] Set in the early 1990s, it captures the state of the technology industry before Windows 95, and anticipates the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s.

The novel is presented in the form of diary entries maintained on a PowerBook by the narrator, Daniel. Because of this, as well as its formatting and usage of emoticons, this novel is similar to what emerged a decade later as the blog format.

An oldie but a goodie ... I know this doc (and cringely) have had criticism but I still have fond memories of it.

I'll start ...

An AS400 back in the early 2000s , used as a legacy system for a leasing company. Some old dude used to come to support it for reporting and other functions. IIRC, there was a nice orange monochrome terminal that was connected to it.

I rarely had to touch it and I left the company before they migrated to a new platform.

I'm sure I've ran into more old tech, not sure why this stuck out in my memories.

The year was 1973, and the computer operating system UNIX, invented at Bell Labs by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, had just morphed into its third iteration or improvement. The first version been released within the company 2 years before, and at this point there were machines running UNIX at 16 computer centers within the Bell System. These were primarily at Bell Labs locations — Whippany, NJ; Columbus, OH; Indian Hill, IL; and of course Murray Hill, NJ and Holmdel, NJ — among others. This film, made as a new employee's orientation to the Holmdel location's center, is a rare glimpse into the operations and procedures of an early 1970s research-oriented computing center.

UNIX evolved out of necessity at Bell Labs. The system's creators were looking for better ways to integrate a shared computer environment. (Read Ritchie's time-sharing system reminiscences) At this point, computers in the Bell System weren't just relegated to computer science or the development of computer language. They were employed for all kinds of complex engineering calculations, and, sometimes, after hours, for making art and music.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.capebreton.social/post/48937

> Yet another community revolving around cybersecurity news. Human and bot curated news and interesting tidbits within the cybersecurity domain. > > !cybersecuriy@lemmy.capebreton.social

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1697845

> In 1990, John Romero, John Carmack, and Tom Hall were working at Louisiana software maker Softdisk. > There, they had an idea that would change PC games forever.

Once a unique marvel of technology, computers can be found just about everywhere these days. From massive server computers to tiny smartwatches, we live in a world ruled by them.

But this wasn’t always the case.

Micro Men is a 2009 one-off BBC drama television programme set in the late 1970s and the early-mid 1980s, about the rise of the British home computer market. It focuses on the rivalry between Sir Clive Sinclair (played by Alexander Armstrong), who developed the ZX Spectrum, and Chris Curry (played by Martin Freeman), the man behind the BBC Micro.[2]

Not historical by any means but it has a good vibe to it and is an interesting fictional account of the development of a product(s)

Season 1 Trailer

My history of blackberry devices: 850, 6710, 7290, and finally the curve.

In between, I had different devices and blackberry usage was really driven by whatever job I held at the time.