David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
On November 4th, 1997, MCI and Worldcom merged in a deal worth $37 billion. This was an attempt by two large telecommunications companies to to combine and rival AT&T, but instead it turned into one of the biggest scandals and bankruptcies of its era. On July 21, 2002, the combined company went bankrupt, setting a record at the time as the largest bankruptcy in history.
Intel was founded July 18, 1968, by semiconductor pioneers Gordon Moore (of Moore’s law fame) and Robert Noyce and investor Arthur Rock. Intel’s employee #3 was Andrew Grove. Moore, Noyce, and Grove had all worked together at Fairchild Semiconductor in the mid 1960s.
The name “Intel” means INTegrated ELectronics. Moore and Noyce didn’t want to name the company after themselves, as it would sound like “more noise.” With noise being an undesired property in electronics, they initially chose the name NM Electronics, using their initials, but changed the name to Intel less than two weeks after its founding. Intel was already a trademark of a hotel chain, so the young company bought the rights to the name.
It’s world emoji day, which makes today the perfect day to look back at retro emojis from the 80s and 90s. It might surprise you to hear we had emojis that long ago. We’ve had them since 1982, to be precise. The first known use was on a bulletin board by Scott Fahlman, a Carnegie Mellon computer science professor, on September 19, 1982. They didn’t stop there. Whether we called them emojis, emoticons, smileys, or just faces, they proliferated throughout online life in the 80s and 90s.
On July 15, 1996, German PC manufacturer Escom declared bankruptcy. But Escom wasn’t necessarily just an ordinary PC manufacturer. Escom went bankrupt less than 2 years after acquiring the Commodore and Amiga brand names and starting to use their technology. Were Commodore and Amiga cursed? Or was there something else going on that led to Escom’s bankruptcy?
On July 15, 1983, the Famicom, or Family Computer, launched in Japan. Despite the name, the Family Computer was a game console, and it went on to shatter Atari’s record for the most sales worldwide by a game console. The Famicom remains one of the most successful and popular game consoles of all time, even if you know it better as the Nintendo NES, and even if it wasn’t as popular in Europe as it was in other parts of the world.
Code Red was a computer worm that exploited one of the earliest notorious Microsoft vulnerabilities, a buffer overflow in Microsoft IIS. It is credited as the first large scale mixed threat attack against enterprise networks. Code red was released July 13, 2001 although it was first observed July 15, 2001. Infections peaked July 19, 2001, infecting 359,000 servers worldwide.
Gary Kildall’s death investigation, or the seeming lack thereof, has taken on mythical proportions. Gary Kildall’s story seems to have that effect on people. Just like the story of Kildall allegedly going flying instead of meeting with IBM, the story of Gary Kildall’s death on July 11, 1994 spiraled out of control.
While Gary Kildall died under unclear circumstances, his death was less unusual than early accounts made it seem. That’s why the investigation seemed to fizzle out with less fanfare than it deserved.
In July 1981, at the height of Pac-Man fever, Nintendo released its third stand up arcade game. This game, Donkey Kong, took over as the most popular arcade game in the world, but it had a lasting repercussions. It irreversibly changed the course of the home console market, and whether you know it or not, you are still feeling those effects today. Donkey Kong played a direct role in Nintendo toppling Atari.
Raymond Edward Kassar was born January 2, 1928 and died December 10, 2017, aged 89, in Vero Beach, Florida. Ray Kassar was president, and later CEO, of Atari Inc. from 1978 to 1983. Atari’s parent company, Warner Bros, hired him as president of Atari’s consumer division in February 1978 after he spent 26 years at Burlington Industries, a textile maker.
30 years ago this week, on July 6, 1995, IBM bought Lotus Development for $3.5 billion. Lotus had once been the second largest software publisher in the world and was worth $5.5 billion at its IPO. Lotus wasn’t trending in the right direction, but IBM had plans and thought Lotus fit into them.