2002 – While in Bankruptcy since the following September, Roxio – along with the Private Media Group – came in and took over the $2.43 million dollar company. They took all logos and names and rebranded it “Napster 2.0”. This time, Napster was a pay site – merging technologies with Roxio Pressplay.The sale completed in 2003Ultimately, the company was purchased by Best Buy in 2008.
2008 – After a long court battle with the Santa Cruz Operations (SCO) group, a judge rules that Novell is the owner of UNIX and UNIXWare copyrights. In 2003 – just after SCO changed their name from Caldera– had made a claim that the SCO IP was incorporated into Linux and that they should get a cut from each copy sold. Novell states that they own the code to UNIX and therefore this claim was not valid. Battles still goon to this day, with SCO group dwindled down to a shell (no pun intended). Part of the rulings on this case have been reversed since. Currently, SCO has lawsuits with IBM and Linux.
1894 – The first Sunday Comics section is printed by the New York World.
1985 – 91 years later, Bill Watterson syndicates a comic about a boy and his stuffed Tiger. Calvin and Hobbes will bring laughter to millions for the next ten years. It reached through 2,400 newspapers (at it’s height) and spun off 18 books. Bill Watterson ended the comic on December 31st, 1995 and has left it retired since.
1977 – Most of the time, we skip over movie releases, unless it has had a definite impact on the Tech and geek community. That is the case with this movie. Close Encounters of the Third Kind – Directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Richard Dreyfuss, and Teri Garr was released to 272 US theaters. It was produced on a budget of US$20 million, amd would gross US $5,379,460 in the opening weekend.It also changed the way I ate mashed potatoes.
1984 – Michael Dell launches his new business of IBM compatible PC’s from his dorm in Austin, TX. The idea was to sell a philosophy over a product. The philosophy was to sell direct to customize to the shopper. Of course, Dell’s award winning service throughout the years has shown this to be a good plan. Happy Anniversary, Dell!
2013: If you grew up in the 80’s, you knew what an IBM PC was. Even in the 90’s and 00’s, the PC was what you had in the corner of the house to do homework on, surf the internet, work out expenses and more.
William C. Lowe was the man that brought that all together. He joined IBM in 1962 and left in 1991. It was in 1981 that the IBM PC debuted.
Did you know IBM was late in the PC game? In order for them to beef up a PC division, they almost bought Atari.
Instead, they decided to go with an open architecture with the PC. It took one year to develop and in the end the IBM PC could be purchased for $1,565.
We remember William C. Lowe with admiration.
1955 – Reynold Johnson brought a new idea to life. Using magnetic cylinder memory, His team put 50 platters – 24 inch disks – into a series. The end result – the first hard drive was born. The device was then produced as the IBM 350 (debuted September 4th, 1956), which was put into the IBM 305 RAMAC (Random Access Method of Accounting and Control), which was debuted in September 13th, 1956 – with the IBM 355 (hard drive) and IBM 650 (RAMAC) on September 14th. It ran at 1,200 rpm and held 5 MB of data.Reynold Johnson’s prototype weighed one ton. The 350 cost $10,000 / MB.
1955 – William Gates Sr. and Mary Maxwell Gates has a son. William Gates III was born in Seattle, WA. Bill Gates, of course, went on to start Microsoft. Bill was CEO of Microsoft until he retired in 2008. In 2000, he started the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Interestingly enough, 30 years later in 1985, Bill Gates put Microsoft up for IPO. That’s a birthday present…
1998 – A Georgia man became the first person that ran a computer controlled by thought. The subject (known as J.R.) was paralyzed due to stroke. Dr Roy Bakay and Dr. Phillip Kennedy implanted a glass cone into J.R’s brain, which would allow him to mentally control the PC.