Geek

January 15, 1990: AT&T Reboots

Jeffrey Powers @geekazine 4ESS switch, aggregator, AT&T, Coveritlive, day in tech history, game age, game system, intel, inventor, iTunes, mozy, national medal of technology, patent, patents, pioneer, Podcast, ralph baer, Ralph H. Baer, Reboot, RSS, steve jobs, Switch, switches, technology history, tv game, twitter, video game, wikipedia 0 Comments January 14, 2019

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1990 – AT&T suffers the oddest outage nationwide. A switch in New York crashed, then rebooted. This caused the other switches linked to the New York switch to also reboot. The cascade continued on until all 114 switches were rebooting on 6 second intervals.

The continued failure lasted for 9 hours, leaving 60,000 customers without long distance calling. The problem was resolved when engineers found a bug in the latest update dealing with 4ESS long distance switches. They applied a patch which stopped the crash-reboot cycle.

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Intel acquires Xircom
Wikipedia is launched
Coveritlive and Twitter goes down for Steve Jobs Keynote

Day in Tech History/ Geek

January 11, 2001: Enclosure Tag in RSS – Podcasting Technically Born

Jeffrey Powers @geekazine Adam Curry, AMD, apple, Ben Hammersley, bionic woman, CES, clone, clones, Dave Weiner, day, day in tech history, Digital audio, electronic publication, g3 mac, gizmodo, Google, intel, iTunes, macintosh, penetration, Podcast, Podcasting, popular mechanics, proprietary company, RSS, Scripting News, stitcher, technology history, Tristan Louis, twitter, Web syndication 0 Comments January 10, 2019

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2001– Dave Weiner added a new functionality to the RSS feed called “Enclosure“. It was defined as passing any audio file (mp3, wav, ogg, etc), video file (mpg, mp4, avi, mov, etc), PDF, or ePub (electronic publication) into the syndicated feed. Weiner demonstrated by enclosing a Grateful Dead song in his website at Scripting News. This was an idea that was proposed by Tristan Louis.

It wasn’t until Adam Curry and crew started iPodderX and in February 2004 the name “Podcasting” was coined by Ben Hammersley. But its roots all come back to this day when RSS 0.92 was demonstrated.

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Popular Mechanics publishes first issue
The Bionic Woman debuts
AMD and Intel settle legal issues
The Gizmodo CES prank bans one reporter

Day in Tech History/ Geek

January 7, 1943: Nikola Tesla Passed Away

Jeffrey Powers @geekazine aggregator, alternating current, amazon, apple, commodore 64, commodore international, day in tech history, electrical engineering, Electromagnetism, historical events, ivan sutherland, jan 7, kb rom, Microsoft, microsoft basic, Nikola Tesla, Podcast, Rhapsody, technology history, Tesla coil, Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing, Topsy, War of Currents 0 Comments January 6, 2019

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Born in 1856, Nikola Tesla was the inventor of alternating current. Tesla even worked for Edison from 1882 to 1886. He then started the Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing company in where he worked more on AC electricity.

This started the “War of Currents”, which we talked about on January 3rd when Edison electrocuted Topsy, the Elephant.

Tesla was also known for many patents and inventions, including the Tesla coil, Electro-magnetic motor, incandescent electric light, electric railway system and many more. He was known for X-Rays, radio, the remote control and wireless communications.

Learn more about Nikola through Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age book at Amazon

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Ivan Sutherland introduces the Sketchpad
Apple announces Rhapsody
Amazon.com goes down for 8 hours

Apple/ Day in Tech History/ Geek

January 5, 1984: GNU Project Founded

Jeffrey Powers @geekazine aggregator, apple, Atari, atari 520st, Atari ST, atari xe, ceo, ceo position, CES, consumer electronics, Consumer Electronics Show, day in tech history, GNU software, historical events, hormonal imbalance, iTunes, macworld, perl, Podcast, recursive acronym, Richard Stallman, steve jobs, technology history, Unix software 0 Comments January 4, 2019

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1984 – Richard Stallman quit his job at MIT to begin the writing of GNU software. GNU – a recursive acronym for “Not Unix” and reference to the song “the Gnu” – is an operating system that is compatible with Unix software. Stallman wanted to bring a free software operating system for the masses to use as they needed. The open source community would then be able to grow the OS with their own code additions.

Even though no real stable version of GNU yet exists, Linux is based on the GNU kernel.

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v 2.0 of Perl is released
Steve Jobs accepts CEO position at Apple
Steve Jobs announces he has a “Hormonal Imbalance”

Topsy the Elephant on Forepaugh & Sells Brothers Circus

Day in Tech History/ Geek

January 4, 1904: Edison Electrocutes an Elephant

Jeffrey Powers @geekazine aggregator, amnesty, business software alliance, calculator, dancing baby, day in tech history, electrocution, Forepaugh & Sells Brothers Circus, FTC, HewlettPackard, hp, iTunes, january 4, mozy, oz, pirates, Podcast, RSS, scientific calculator, slide rule, spam king, stanford, stitcher, technology history, thomas alva edison, Topsy the Elephant, twitter, William Whitey Alt 0 Comments January 3, 2019

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1904– To show the effects of how dangerous Nikolai Tesla’s Alternating current was, Thomas Alva Edison filmed the electrocution of the elephant, Topsy. This was falsely advertised as the first Elephant to be born in America by the Forepaugh Circus. Topsy was named after a slave girl in the book “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”.

Topsy was sold to Cony Island’s Sea Lion park. Her handler, William Whitey Alt, used Topsy to try and go after police. He also was involved in an incident where he used the elephant as an intimidation factor to the local police. Alt was fired and the owners of Luna Park were ready to get rid of her but no one wanted Topsy.

The owners planned to euthanize her by hanging, but the American Society of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals stepped in and said hanging was a needlessly cruel means to killing. After debate, it was finally arranged that the Edison Electric Illuminating company of Brooklyn would perform the electrocution.

The electrocution was witnessed by 1,500 who payed for their seats at Coney Island, along with 100 media personnel.

Wikazine – Full show notes for January 4

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The Dancing Baby Debuts
Business Software Alliance offers amnesty to pirates
Spam King Stanford Wallace and FTC agreement

Day in Tech History/ Geek/ Microsoft

December 31: Technology Roundup

Jeffrey Powers @geekazine aggregator, amp, calvin and hobbes, cromemco, crunch numbers, day in tech history, december 31, floppy disk drives, Google, hobbes strip, iTunes, Microsoft Windows, mozy, Podcast, roundup, RSS, statistics, stitcher, technology history, twitter, Windows 0 Comments December 30, 2018

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On this day, we basically crunch numbers. This is where you will see companies let you know how much of their products are out there. How many copies of Windows have been sold, how many PC‘s were bought – how much shareware has been downloaded. These stats will drive how the next year is to be written. Then, they blank the numbers and start the crazy cycle all over again.The majority of the podcast will go over these statistics. But don’t worry – there is still a lot of other history to go through. But it’s still cool to know that in 1981, 250 million floppy disk drives were shipped to date…

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CROMEMCO is incorporated
AT&T Bell is broken up
The Last Calvin and Hobbes strip

Day in Tech History/ Geek

December 29, 2004: Commodore Acquired

Jeffrey Powers @geekazine aggregator, commodore, commodore computers, day in tech history, december 29, dutch manufacturer, Google, historical events, history, hydlide, iTunes, jamie thomas, media ventures, mozy, patents, Podcast, radio day, recording industry association of america, RIAA, RSS, stitcher, technology history, thomas edison, thomas thomas, tulip, twitter, wireless radio 0 Comments December 28, 2018

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2004 – Once Commodore dropped from the market in the 80’s, it pretty much started bouncing around the world from company to company. Ultimately it landed in the lap of KMOS – a Deleware company. However, on this day, Dutch Manufacturer Tulip sells the company to Yeahronimo Media Ventures for about US$32.7 million.

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Virtual Hydlide
RIAA loses on Jamie Thomas
Thomas Edison patents wireless radio

Day in Tech History/ Geek

December 25, 1998: Official Y2K Compliance

Jeffrey Powers @geekazine 20th century, aggregator, aol browser, birth date, bottom line, clock, compliance, compliant, compuserve, computer, computer systems, day in tech history, dec 25, explicit sites, financial institutions, Indefinite detention, merry christmas, millennium bug, netscape, nintendo wii, oversight, Podcast, president bill, Social Security, social security payment, technology history, Tikkun (magazine), turmoil, United States, wii, y2k, Year 2000 problem 0 Comments December 24, 2018

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1998 – during the last couple years of the 20th century, the race was on to fix an oversight in multiple computer systems. The problem was dubbed “Y2K” or the Millennium bug. Bottom line was that all computers worked on a 2 digit year system instead of 4. Because of this, once the clock rolled, computers would think it’s 1900 instead of 2000 and bigger issues would happen.For instance, if you were born in 1968, then you would be -68 years old in a computer calculating your birth date. If you had a bill due of $1,000 since 1998, then you might find yourself with a reverse interest, in turn causing financial institutions to go into turmoil.

In 1998, President Bill Clinton made a statement that the Social Security payment system was officially Y2K compliant.

By the way: Most people resolved the problem by not programming in a 4 digit year, but by shifting the thinking of the 2 digit year. Therefore, in 2012 (which some shifted to), they will have these issues all over again.

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Merry Christmas
Nintendo Wii with Linux installed
Compuserve blocks 200 sexually explicit sites
Netscape announces the AOL browser will be discontinued

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