Geek

May the 4th be With You, 2008: Yahoo Loses Microsoft

Jeffrey Powers @geekazine 0504, apple macs, Arts, college roomies from hell, glitch, Microsoft, penny arcade, player, Player versus player, Player vs Player, pvp, self publishing, virus hits, web comics, Website, Yahoo 0 Comments May 4, 2025

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2008 – After months of bid negotiations and Yahoo’s Jerry Yang saying “No”, Microsoft decided to take their $50 billion dollar offer off the table. Although Microsoft pulled the offer, it was not the last time we would hear about it. Carl Icahn would lead a charge to try and re-instate selling or have Yang off the Yahoo board.

On February 1st, 2008, Microsoft offered $45 billion ($31 / share) to purchase Yahoo! Ultimately, in 2009 Carol Bartz sold Yahoo search technology to Microsoft in a 10-year agreement, which (in an updated agreement on April 2015) may be terminated on October 1st, 2015.

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“I Love You” virus hits computers
AOL repairs glitch so Apple Macs can use the service

Day in Tech History/ Geek

2000: The GeoCaching Craze

Jeffrey Powers @geekazine 0503, arpanet, caption, Carl Gartley, computer architecture, DECSYSTEM-20, E-mail spam, Gary Thuerk, GeoCaching, global positioning system, gotomeeting, GPS, Hobbies, iTunes, Lars Ulrich, mail message, mail spammer, product presentations, Recreation, RSS, Secret Stash, SPAM, spam mail, spammer, stitcher, system, Technology, twitter, usenet 0 Comments May 3, 2025

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2000 – Up until May 1, all GPS signals were scrambled for protection. President Bill Clinton announced they would be turning off the Selective Availability (SA) because it didn’t propose a greater threat. But it also gave geeks something new to play with. But what to do?

Dave Ulmer ultimately started the GeoCaching phenomenon. He hid a bunch of trinkets out in the woods of Portland, Oregon. He then went to the USENET group sci.geo.satellite-nav and stated “If you take something, leave something”.

The Usenet message:
From: Dave ([email protected])
Subject: The Great American GPS Stash Hunt!
Newsgroups: sci.geo.satellite-nav
Date: 2000/05/03

—
The Great American GPS Stash Hunt !!
—

Now that SA is off we can start a worldwide Stash Game!! With
Non-SA accuracy it should be easy to find a stash from waypoint
information. Waypoints of secret stashes could be shared on the
Internet, people could navigate to the stashes and get some
stuff. The only rule for stashes is: Get some Stuff, Leave some
Stuff!! The more valuable the stuff the more stashes will be
started.

I’m thinking of half burying a five gallon plastic bucket with
lid at the stash point. Putting in some stuff. Adding a logbook
and pencil so visitors can record their find. The log should
contain: Date, Time, What you got, and What you put in. Scanning
the log book should give you a quick inventory of the stash.

I’ll look for a place near a road where few people would
normally go… Put in some cash, an old digital camera, and some
antique silverware!! I will come up with a cool name for my
stash and post coordinates soon!!!

Make your own stash in a unique location, put in some stuff and
a log book. Post the location on the Internet. Soon we will have
thousands of stashes all over the world to go searching for.
Have Fun!!

Dave…

He also made a video, which has the container and contents.

Dell Computer is founded
Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich produce a list of 335,000 Internet users who shared the band’s songs on Napster.
First Spam message

Day in Tech History/ Geek

1965 – The First Transatlantic Television Signal from “Early Bird” Intelsat I

Jeffrey Powers @geekazine 0502, button mouse, Communications satellite, Geosynchronous orbit, geosynchronous satellite, Google, gotomeeting, Intelsat, iTunes, Microsoft, microsoft mouse, mobile solution, moon, Personal computer, Podcast, radio, RSS, stitcher, tech, Television, twitter, United Kingdom 0 Comments May 2, 2025

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1965 – Intelsat I, a.k.a. Early Bird, went into service. This geosynchronous satellite sent the first signal between nine different countries. A “One Hour TV Spectacular” was broadcast to Europe from the US, Canada, and Mexico.

Intelsat I went up in space on April 6, 1965 and had only 240 voice circuits, so it could only transmit one TV channel at a time. Early Bird was one of three satellites that broadcast the first landing on the moon in 1969.

Other Events in the Day in Technology History

Excel launches for Macintosh
Intel releases 3600MHz Pentium D processor
First Microsoft mouse

Day in Tech History/ Geek

April 26, 1983: TRS-80 Model 4

Jeffrey Powers @geekazine 0426, caption, cassette interface, flea flicker, Google, gotomeeting, Hardware, Hertz, Historical, IBM, mobile solution, model, ram, stitcher, Tandy, TRS-80, TRS-80 Model 100 0 Comments April 26, 2025

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1983– The Trash-80, as it was so admirably called in the day, a.k.a. the TRS-80 Model 4 is introduced. It contains a 4 MHz processor, 16 KB of RAM, a cassette interface, Keyboard and Monochrome monitor. $1000 for the base model, or $2000 if you upgraded the RAM to 64 KB and 5.25 disk drives. The first TRS-80 was released in 1977.

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IBM 7030 – the Stretch Supercomputer
Last release of the Nemesis
AOL purchases Flea-Flicker

Day in Tech History/ Geek

April 23, 1964: Standards Eastern Automatic Computer (SEAC) Decommissioned

Jeffrey Powers @geekazine 0423, automatic computer, Browsers, carnegie mellon, CIH, cih virus, Clients, clock rate, computer, Eastern, edvac, fifteen years, Google, internet explorer, internet explorer 2, List of Ubuntu releases, logic, Podcast, seac, stitcher, ubuntu, vacuum tubes, www 0 Comments April 23, 2025

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1964– The Standards Eastern Automatic Computer (SEAC) is retired after fifteen years. SEAC was the first to use all-diode logic. SEAC was bason on EDVAC. It had 747 vacuum tubes, and the clock rate was under 1 mHz.

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Internet Explorer 2.0 is released for Mac 7.0.1
Carnegie Mellon warns users of the CIH virus
Ubuntu 9.04 is released

Day in Tech History/ Geek

April 19, 2000: iPAQ, Cassiopeia, Jornada Released

Jeffrey Powers @geekazine 0419, cassiopeia, compaq, Handspring, handspring visor, ipaq, ipaq hp, Microsoft, microsoft pocket pc, palm iii, personal digital assistant, Pocket, stitcher, Tracey Ullman, Windows CE 3.0, windows music 0 Comments April 19, 2025

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2000– Before smartphones, Personal Digital Assistants were the device to have. You could store contacts, write memos, set up, read and send email and even play a nice game of Solitaire, or the game where you eliminated color marbles. I – in my IT career – not only had a Palm III, but also ran with an iPAQ 3650, Handspring Visor and Jornada. Well, while this was not the first handheld, we would see a day where many vendors would release the new versions of their devices. It all hovered around Microsoft and their release – the Pocket PC specification: Windows CE 3.0 with mobile IE, Windows Music Player and Mobile Word. Compaq then releases the iPAQ, HP releases the Jornada 545 and Casio introduced the Cassiopeia E-115.

Simpsons debut on Tracey Ullman show
Assassin’s Guild BBS is seized
Mandrakesoft releases MandrakeLinux v. 8.0

Day in Tech History/ Geek

April 18, 2006: HD DVD Format

Jeffrey Powers @geekazine 0418, Aneesh Chopra, chief technology officer, DVD, format, HD DVD, hd dvd players, HD-A, hdv, mobile solution, Osborne Executive, phantom of the opera, rca, Released, stitcher, Toshiba, WordPerfect 0 Comments April 18, 2025

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2006 – Toshiba launches the HD DVD format in the US. The first HD DVD players were the HD-A1 and HD-XA1. RCA would rebrand the A1 to the HDV-5000. The first HD DVD with TrueHD soundtrack was the Phantom of the Opera.

Osborne Computer introduces the Osborne Executive and Executive II portable computers
The final version of WordPerfect is released
Aneesh Chopra is appointed the U.S. Chief Technology Officer

Day in Tech History/ Geek

April 17, 2000: Terraserver Releases Photos of Area 51

Jeffrey Powers @geekazine 0417, area, Area 51, caption, Google, gotomeeting, Logo, logo programming language, pirate bay, programming, russian satellite, satellite, stitcher, Sweden, terraserver, Toshiba, Unidentified flying object, United States 0 Comments April 17, 2025

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Terraserver

2000 – Five arial images of Area 51 are leaked onto Terraserver from a Russian satellite called “Sovinformsputnik. The amount of traffic that went to the site brought the server down, so they had to take the photos off until they could handle the traffic.

Qualified schools got copies of the new LOGO programming language
Toshiba releases the Libretto sub-notebook
Sweden finds the four defendants in the Pirate Bay case guilty of hosting illegal downloads

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