David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
Lotus 1-2-3 was the killer app that made the IBM PC the standard for computers. It wasn’t the first spreadsheet, making its debut January 26, 1983, but it ran on a computer that could easily address more than 64K of memory, it was fast, and relatively bug free. So it was super successful. Today we know it as the thing people used before Excel. So what were the advantages and disadvantages of Lotus 1-2-3?
The title dates itself. On January 23, 1993, more people would have caught the reference. January 23, 1993 was the day the first cross-platform Web browser emerged from the NCSA, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, a computing research partnership at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, in the middle of the cornfields of Illinois.
On January 19, 1993, IBM announced a stunning $5 billion loss for fiscal year 1992, earning the unfortunate nickname of “Big Black and Blue” until its turnaround later in the decade.
It was 41 years ago this month, in January 1984, that RUN magazine made its debut. With RUN, Wayne Green applied the formula he used for 80 Micro to the hot-selling Commodore 8-bit home computers. While it was no longer an original idea, RUN arguably was even more successful than 80 Micro had been.
The VIA Cyrix III was a short-lived Socket 370 CPU produced by VIA using technology it acquired from Cyrix and Centaur, two makers of Socket 7 CPUs. VIA first introduced the Cyrix III on January 5, 2001.
Hang around enough people like me who’ve been in IT for decades and eventually the Y2K problem comes up. But what was the Y2K problem? What was the solution? And was the problem overblown? As Y2K’s 25th anniversary approaches, this is a great time to look back on the problem.
I was in an odd position. I argued in 1999 and 2000 that any problems we had would be relatively minor. But I don’t think the efforts to fix Y2K were overblown. I may be in the minority opinion on that but I’ll explain.
In Saturday Night Live’s second, third, and fourth seasons, Dan Aykroyd played a recurring character named Irvin Mainway who sold dangerous toys to kids, like a space helmet that was just a clear plastic bag and a rubber band to affix it, and a bag of broken glass. Hey, it was the 70s. Lawn darts were still legal and seatbelts weren’t mandatory. Seeing this 1984 ad from Langley-St. Clair made me immediately think of Irvin Mainway.
Charles Babbage was born in London December 26, 1791, 233 years ago. Among other things, he invented the first mechanical computer, the Difference Engine. He then went on to invent the Analytical Engine, a mechanical computer that contained all of the essential ideas of a modern computer.
On December 24, 1994, Compuserve and Unisys tried to give themselves a Christmas gift and make the Internet pay for it. They announced their plans to charge royalties on the GIF file format, which, at the time, was a staple of early web development.
Recently, a Nintendo Game Boy clone called the Modretro Chromatic hit the market. Its designer’s name is Palmer Luckey, a retro enthusiast whose day job is making weapons of war. This raised questions on Bluesky about why a conservative would long for nostalgia, and why a conservative’s longing for nostalgia is the story. It’s not something you can just write off as an eccentric self contradiction. There are good reasons why conservatives like retro too. Separate from the reasons everyone else likes retro.