David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
When researching the 1600 VICmodem, I found an assertion that the 1600 was the first modem to sell a million units. And I’ve repeated that claim myself at least once. But I never felt quite right about that. I am a classically trained journalist, and if you have the ability to double check a claim, you are supposed to do that. In this blog post, I try to get a good estimate of how many VICmodems Commodore sold.
On October 17, 1985, Intel released its 386 CPU, also known as the 80386, and later, as the 386DX. The 386 changed the direction of the computer industry like no chip before it, and maybe since. The phrase “disruptive product” didn’t come into our lexicon until the mid 1990s, but when Harvard professor Clayton Christensen published his theory of disruptive innovation in 1995, the 386 powered one of his key examples.
On October 16, 1995, Roland Vossen accidentally invented spyware in a Usenet post. Well, not exactly. He didn’t invent spyware so much as he invented the term. His Usenet post contained the first recorded use of the word “spyware.”
What was a Token Ring network? Token Ring is an obsolete networking technology that competed with Ethernet in the 1980s and 1990s. IBM first announced it October 15, 1985. It is more of a curiosity today, as the networking standard that lost. But when Token Ring equipment turns up, it can look enough like Ethernet to confuse people. And why it lost can be interesting to study.
On October 14, 2009, SCO fired its CEO, Darl McBride. Very nearly 15 years later, McBride died at the age of 64 of complications from ALS.
His termination from SCO ended his time as the most hated man in technology. McBride architected SCO’s Business strategy of suing companies for contributing code to Linux, or even for using Linux. He spent the rest of his life trying to fight his way back from relative obscurity to reach a similar height.
Microsoft Access didn’t exist in the MS-DOS era. For that matter, Microsoft wasn’t even a player in databases until relatively late in the MS-DOS era. The dominant database during most of the DOS era was a company called Ashton-Tate. They had a product called dBase II that ran on CP/M machines and dominated that ecosystem. It ported over to the IBM PC and dominated there as well. Ashton-Tate’s dBase II and its successor, dBase III, became the de facto standard for databases on microcomputers. On October 12, 1991, Borland acquired Ashton-Tate for $439 million. It was a colossal mistake.
Telecommunications pioneer Ward Christensen was born October 23, 1945 in West Bend, Wis. He died aged 78 October 11, 2024 in Rolling Meadows, Ill., a suburb of Chicago. Christensen invented the Xmodem file transfer protocol and co-invented the bulletin board system, two innovations that greatly increased the utility of modems when used with small computers.
On October 9, 2008, Infogrames completed its purchase of Atari Inc. The deal, which the two companies agreed to in May, led to speculation that the acquisition would be the end of Atari. Instead, it had the opposite effect, though it took a roundabout way to get there.
When Commodore released its VIC-20 computer in 1981, it also released was a matching joystick and paddles. Cast in white plastic like the VIC-20, the Commodore VIC-1311 looked like a two-tone Atari joystick from the same time period. And the VIC-1312 paddles looked like a two-tone Atari paddle set. The resemblance was uncanny, and Atari took notice. On October 11, 1982, Atari sued.