1981 – Microsoft goes through a restructure to incorporate in Washington. Bill Gates would become president, Paul Allen was Executive Vice President. Steve Ballmer would come on full-time with a $50,000 year salary.
The reason why they incorporated? On this same day, Paul Allen sends a proposal to Rod Black of Seattle Computer Products for Microsoft to purchase all rights to 86-DOS for $30,000. At that point, they had only a non-exclusive license (since September 22, 1980). This was a strategic move because Microsoft had a relationship with IBM, and wanted to re-license for the IBM PC.
After a month of negotiations, Seattle Computer agreed to the purchase for $50,000. However, that was not the end of it, as they found out of the IBM deal. They finally settled years later for $1 million.
1983 – Paul Mockapetris and Jon Postel run the first successful test of the distributed Domain Name System (DNS). This automated process was to take over failing Arpanet and CSnet protocols because those relied on address books.
DNS uses a hierarchical distributed naming system for the Internet or any private network. It associates the domain names with numerical IP addresses.
Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM)
1948 – What was first expected to be a practical use computer, the SSEM, or Small-Scale Experimental Machine became the first stored-program computer. Basically, it stores program instructions into it’s electronic memory. This 32-bit word length, cathode-ray tube computer was designed to only run subtraction and negation through hardware. Other functions could be run, but only through software.
The first program was run on this day. It was written by Professor Tom Kilbum. The seventeen-instruction stored-program took 52 minutes to run. The program was tasked to find the highest proper factor of 218 (262,144).
2007 – Terry Semel was under pressure by the board because of dissatisfaction of his compensation. Terry was brought in to create a partnership with Hollywood, which really didn’t happen. He handed the reigns over to Jerry Yang, who started promising revitalized talks with Microsoft. There are a few that even speculate that was when the buyout of Yahoo began. Jerry Yang stepped down in 200
1997 – Several computer companies banded together to help create the NetPC. A disk-less computer that got all information, including install – from a corporate server or the Internet.
Basically, these would be similar to thin clients or “Dumb terminals” for work computers. No CD drive, no floppy disc and limited disk space. Cases were sealed so nobody could get inside to reconfigure the computer. Installs would be handled via the Internet, therefore, no personal software could be installed.
Microsoft and Intel unveiled the system at the PC Expo trade show. NetPC would work with Compaq, Dell, IBM, HP, Acer, Gateway 2000, Mitac, Misubishi, NEC, Pionex, and Groupe Bull computer companies to make the first group of NetPC computers.
The sub-$1,000 computer was a great idea that would work better today than in 1997. IBM dropped out of the project before the first NetPCs came out. They decided to make something their customers would use.
Microsoft finally pulled the plug at the Windows Engineering Conference in 1998 when John Frederiksen, lead project manager for thin clients acknowledged the phase-out process.
June 13, 1993: Microsoft and Time-Warner Create Interactive TV
1993 – Microsoft teamed up with Tele-communications and Time Warner to start the revolution known as “Interactive TV”. The ability to buy product right through the set during a show. iTV would give users a Digital Set Top Box in which they would use to browse, go back and watch video. It even connected to a telephone to let you know who is calling and possibly get SMS messages.
2011 – Hackers took down the Sony Playstation network on April 20th, 2011. Around 77 million accounts were comprimised and gamers couldn’t play online for over a month. On May 14, Sony started bringing the services back online on a country-by-country basis. North America was the first, and people could sign-in, play PS3 and PSP games, access rented content, play music already purchased, and use approved 3rd party apps such as Hulu and Netflix. A firmware update 3.61 was also available to update security for the users.
When it was all said and done, Sony had lost $171 million on this outage.