1980s Archives

Home » 1980s » Page 12

Where Microsoft lost its way

Dave Farquhar Windows June 7, 2013July 9, 20171980s, 1990s, 6502, amiga, android, apple, apple ii, AT&T, atari, atari st, commodore, Digital Research, excel, IBM, IOS, Microsoft Basic, MOS, motorola, motorola 68k, nintendo, sony, unix, windows 8, windows me, xbox, XT

John C. Dvorak wrote an analysis of how Microsoft lost its way with Windows 8 this week.

All in all it sounds reasonable to me. His recollection of DOS and some DOS version 8 confused me at first, but that was what the DOS buried in Windows ME was called. But mentioning it is appropriate, because it shows how DOS faded from center stage to being barely visible in the end, to the point where it was difficult to dig it out, and that it took 15 years for it to happen. He’s completely right, that if Microsoft had pulled the plug on DOS in 1985, Windows would have failed. Read more

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

dfarq.homeip.net

Are video games a good investment?

Dave Farquhar Retro Gaming June 3, 2013January 20, 20251950s, 1980s, 1990s, american flyer, atari, Baby Boomers, baseball cards, collectibles, lionel, nintendo, old trains, pi, playstation, raspberry, Raspberry Pi, real estate, video game, vintage trains

An article on Slashdot asked this weekend whether video games were a good investment. So are video games a good investment? Will they appreciate over time?

The answer is generally no. Collectibles in general are not–they follow a boom and bust cycle. I’ve seen it happen in my own lifetime.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

No, this doesn’t mean Ubuntu and Linux are giving up

Dave Farquhar Hardware, Software June 1, 2013January 6, 20251980s, amd, amiga, android, apple, atari, commodore, compaq, IBM, intel, ipad, Libre Office, macintosh, Microsoft Office, motorola, Packard Bell, red hat, ubuntu, unix, windows 8, XT

This week, Mark Shuttleworth closed the longstanding Ubuntu bug #1, which simply read, “Microsoft has majority market share.” Because Microsoft didn’t lose its market share lead to Ubuntu, or Red Hat, or some other conventional Linux distribution, some people, including John C. Dvorak, are interpreting this as some kind of surrender.

I don’t see it as surrender at all. Microsoft’s dominant position, which seemed invincible in 2004 when Shuttleworth opened that bug, is slipping away. They still dominate PCs, but PCs as we know it are a shrinking part of the overall computing landscape, and the growth is all happening elsewhere.

I have (or at least had) a reputation as a Microsoft hater. That’s a vast oversimplification. I’m not anti-Microsoft. I’m pro-competition. I’m also pro-Amiga, and I’ll go to my grave maintaining that the death of Amiga set the industry back 20 years. I have Windows and Linux boxes at home, my wife has (believe it or not) an Ipad, and at work I’m more comfortable administering Linux than Windows right now, which seems a bit strange, especially considering it’s a Red Hat derivative and I haven’t touched Red Hat in what seems like 400 years.

What Shuttleworth is acknowledging is that we have something other than a duopoly again, for the first time in more than 20 years, and the industry is innovating and interesting again. Read more

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

Farewell to a St. Louis Christmas tradition

Dave Farquhar Toy trains May 24, 2013February 22, 20221960s, 1980s, american flyer, christmas, lionel, New Year, shrewsbury, toy train, train layout, video game

I saw something sad in the papers this week: Macy’s is closing its downtown St. Louis store, the former flagship Famous-Barr (or Famous and Barr, if you’re old enough) store.

And that means this past Christmas was the last Christmas for the American Flyer storefront Christmas layout. Read more

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

How the IBM PC became the de facto standard for desktop computers

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing May 4, 2013May 1, 20251980s, 1990s, Ad Lib, amiga, apple, atari, atari st, compaq, Creative Labs, Digital Research, excel, IBM, intel, motorola, radio shack, Steve Jobs, Tandy, tandy 1000, Texas Instruments, TI, VGA

I saw a question on a vintage computing forum this week: How did the IBM PC become the de facto standard for PCs, and the only desktop computer architecture from the 1980s to survive until today?

It’s a very good question, and I think there were several reasons for it. I also think without all of the reasons, the IBM PC wouldn’t have necessarily won. In some regards, of course, it was a hollow victory. IBM has been out of the PC business for a decade now. Its partners Intel and Microsoft, however, reaped the benefits time and again.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

The Card wasn’t real!

Dave Farquhar Baseball April 27, 2013April 26, 20131980s, 1990s, baseball cards, collectibles, estate sales, pittsburgh pirates, Ty Cobb

Somehow I missed this a couple of weeks ago, but the former owner of the most valuable baseball card ever, a 1909 tobacco card picturing Pittsburgh Pirates Hall of Fame shortstop Honus Wagner, admitted to altering it sometime before he sold it. This card, sometimes called The Card, was owned by hockey great Wayne Gretzky for a time in the 1990s, so The Card is sometimes also called the Gretzky Wagner.

The story of the T206–T206 being the designation that the founder of baseball card collecting, Jefferson Burdick, assigned to that particular set–Wagner is shrouded in mystery anyway, and the Gretzky Wagner, even more so. The Gretzky Wagner was even the subject of a book published in 2008, appropriately titled The Card. Read more

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

Don’t read too much into the PC sales drop just yet

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing, Windows April 17, 2013November 3, 20251980s, 1990s, amd, amiga, apple, asus, IBM, kingston, lenovo, vista, windows 2000, windows 7, windows 8, windows 98, windows me, windows nt, Windows Vista, Windows XP

If you’ve been paying any attention at all, you probably know that new PC sales are in the toilet–out of the five biggest vendors, the only one whose sales managed to hold steady in Q1 2013 was Lenovo, while the other four saw a sales decline. So now Slashdot linked to a ZDNet piece stating that Windows is over, and said it must be true because ZDNet always sides with Microsoft.

Let’s not read too much into that. The author of the piece is a longtime open-source advocate. The points he raises are completely valid, but if there’s one person who’s going to take Microsoft to task, it’s Steven Vaughan-Nichols.

Microsoft has a long road ahead, but there is precedent for salvaging the boondoggle known as Windows 8. And I don’t think Windows 8 is the only factor here. Read more

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

Rob O’Hara on phreaking, Tesla coils and modems

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing, security April 14, 2013July 4, 20181980s, ASCII, bbs, classmate, commodore, demonstration, podcast, Spark plug, UFO

Rob O’Hara posted a podcast about phreaking today. He explains in layperson’s terms how the phone system was controlled by tones, cites it as an example of security through obscurity, and he talks about his own first-person experience subverting the phone system. He was far from the only one who did that.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

The re-segregation of baseball

Dave Farquhar Baseball April 13, 2013April 15, 20171980s, andre dawson, Billy Butler, cardinals, chicago cubs, Daylight Savings Time, Jarrod Dyson, Kansas City, Kansas City Star, willie wilson

The Kansas City Star had a piece today about the sharp decline in the number of African-Americans playing baseball. Of course, when I grew up, the Royals relied heavily on African-Americans. George Brett was the star, but without Willie Wilson and Frank White hitting ahead of him and Hal McRae and Willie Aikens or John Mayberry hitting behind him, opposing pitchers would have never thrown Brett a hittable pitch.

Today, the Royals’ starting position players, their five starting pitchers and all of their key relief pitchers are all either white or Hispanic. The only African-American on their roster right now is speedy outfielder Jarrod Dyson.

I think I know why.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

Welcome, Tony’s Kansas City readers

Dave Farquhar Copyright March 24, 2013February 10, 20251980s, 1990s, apple, journalism, Kansas City, treadmill

Thanks to Tony’s Kansas City for the link this morning. Tony noted that “Security dude reminds us that Google Fiber could kill the software industry.”

That’s an interesting spin. I do think it will affect the software industry–but so long as Kansas City stays at the forefront and the rest of the country is content with being a technological backwater, the effect will be minimal. But “kill” is an awfully strong word, even if every major city in the country were to get affordable Gigabit Internet in the very near future.

I say that because of what I saw in college. Read more

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net