David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
On October 22, 2009, Windows 7 was released. It went on to become one of the most popular Windows versions of all time, providing a much needed bounce back after Windows Vista. Two of the most beloved Windows versions ever, Windows 7 and Windows XP, were both released in the same week, 8 years apart.
When you convert a cassette tape or vinyl record into MP3, you usually get one long file per side. That’s fine for singles, but what if you have albums? You’ll probably want to split the recording into individual tracks to get the full convenience of digitizing it. Here’s the method I use to convert a record or tape into individual MP3 tracks.
I saw a post recently on social media where someone was offering a free tool for optimizing Windows’ behavior with SSDs. It turns out it’s just a graphical front-end for a tool Windows already comes with called fsutil. But it’s a good reminder of how to optimize Windows for SSD use, the caveat being it works well on conventional hard drives too.
There are two ways to look at the question of who bought Gateway computers. Who bought the company, and who bought the computers. Gateway’s computers didn’t have the best reputation, but people loved the company until they didn’t. Gateway fell hard and fast, and various turnaround efforts failed. What happened to Gateway 2000 was Acer bought them on October 17, 2007.
Gateway was originally known as Gateway 2000, but changed its name as the millennium approached so as not to sound dated.
30 years ago today, 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.”
It was 16 years ago today on October 14, 2009, that SCO fired its CEO, Darl McBride. And it was about 13 months ago, on September 16, 2024, that 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.
Microsoft Access didn’t exist in the MS-DOS era. 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 era. 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.
When Commodore released its VIC-20 computer in 1981, one of the peripherals it also released was a matching joystick. Cast in white plastic like the VIC-20, the Commodore VIC-1311 looked like an albino Atari joystick from the same time period. The resemblance was uncanny, and Atari took notice. On October 11, 1982, Atari sued.
On October 9, 1991, Apple Records settled one of its many lawsuits with Apple Computer. It wasn’t the first time the two companies tangled. Nor would it be the last. Apple Records was the Beatles’ record label. Apple Computer was, of course, a maker of computers. It was the nature of one of those computers that got Apple Computer into trouble.
As someone who lived through the dotcom bubble, experiencing the breakthrough of the Internet in the early 1990s and worked in technology during the boom later in the decade, I’ve been asked what I think of the AI phenomenon going on in the mid 2020s. Yes, I chose that wording for a reason. Time will tell if it’s best called an AI boom, an AI bubble, or something worse like an AI scam.