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Get a good edit -- any good editor -- and worry about problems that actually matter. This one was solved in about 1927.

Let's see... 1927... had the first working TV. I guess you can't edit something without seeing it first.

What I do know is that Bill Gates was a completely unknown school kid until he was brought to IBM's attention by his mother.

1975

MITS Altair BASIC

Revenues $16,000

1976

Microsoft refines and enhances BASIC to sell to other customers including General Electric, NCR, and Citibank.

1977

Microsoft FORTRAN

1978

Applesoft BASIC, Microsoft COLBOL-80

1979

Microsoft 8080 BASIC is the first microprocessor product to win the ICP Million Dollar Award. Traditionally dominated by software for mainframe computers, this recognition is indicative of the growth and acceptance of the PC industry.

MBASIC for the 8086

1980

Microsoft Z-80 SoftCard. CP/M plug-n card for the Apple II.

Microsoft 16 bit XENIX OS (licensed from AT&T) and a full suite of 16 bit *NIX programming languages.

Microsoft PASCAL

Revenues $7,520,000. ($21,273,620, adjusted for inflation) Microsoft Timeline

CP/M-86 was in development hell.

Gates promised delivery of a marketable 16 bit CP/M clone in time for the scheduled launch of the IBM PC --- at an unprecedented mass market price of $50 retail list in return for a non-exclusive license.

80% off the proposed list price for CP/M-86.

The entire point of the business, btw, was to isolate the IBM development team from the IBM PC hierarchy.

I very much doubt the PC development team ever gave the slightest thought to Gate's mother. They were looking for lean and hungry outsiders, ready and willing to move.

But Billl Gates and Microsoft were not the unknowns that myth made them, even then.

This short history summary shows that Microsoft's roots are in marketing, not programming.

In 1975 there is BASIC for the Altair. In 1976 Microsoft was selling BASIC to Fortune 500 clients. In 1977 it is branching out into FORTRAN, COBOL. and Assembler. In 1978, Microsoft releases Applesoft BASIC.

[In 1979] Microsoft 8080 BASIC is the first microprocessor product to win the ICP Million Dollar Award. Traditionally dominated by software for mainframe computers, this recognition is indicative of the growth and acceptance of the PC industry.
June 18, Microsoft announces Microsoft BASIC for the 8086 16-bit microprocessor. This first release of a resident high-level language for use on 16-bit machines marks the beginning of widespread use of these processors.
[in 1980] Microsoft introduces the Pascal language, develops XENIX (enhanced version of the UNIX operating system), and begins to explore spreadsheet applications. It also releases its first hardware product, the Microsoft SoftCard, which allows Apple II users to run CP/M-80. Microsoft will provide BASIC, FORTRAN, and COBOL languages for the Z-80 SoftCard.

Microsoft Time Line

In 1980 Microsoft had a solid track record in development tools for the microcomputer and was well positioned to become a major player in operating systems and applications software in both the business and consumer markets.

Design patterns are a fine way to communicate what you've done with other people. OOP is a decent way to make your programs modular. That's great, but you can't go around saying every program that doesn't use design patterns or OOP is a lousy program.

There are other ways of looking at it too. If John Backus was right, and John Backus was no intellectual lightweight, then the programming industry has been barking up the wrong tree for the last 30 years. Dijkstra might say that you, since you've used lousy programming languages all your life, now have your mind warped beyond all saving. You wouldn't recognize good code if it hit you on the head.

I just found this post today:

AT&T (yeah, them) is the one that invented a grid of colorful icons, half a decade before Apple.

http://www.statusq.org/archives/2012/08/30/4453/

Add this to the prior art file.

And Apple had the Newton MessagePad a decade before that.

http://www.thocp.net/hardware/pictures/pda/apple_newton_sml.jpg

The TRS-80, the SOL-20, and the PET 2001 were also officially introduced in 1976. (In fact, the SOL-20 dates to '75... as does the freaking Altair 8800.) I'm pretty sure the TRS-80 was more popular than the Apple I and hence had more direct impact. Ars, you sadden me this day for ignoring these other systems.

1993 Apple early tablet

2006 Samsung digital photo frame

2010 Apple iPad

2006 Samsung digital photo frame viewed from other angles.

1993 Apple early tablet

2006 Samsung digital photo frame

2010 Apple iPad

Gee, what happened there around early 2000 ?

But you know what, $1B aint what it used to be. Call me when they get to $10B.

that's for sure.

Congrat Redhat! You're beating Microsoft.... in 1989

Microsoft reached a billion in 1990. And that's back when it was a different world, there were no (very few) hard drives, no (very few) "laptops", no smartphones, no (well, almost no) internet, and very few people owned a PC. Reaching a billion considering all those factors against them is amazing.

Now Microsoft is up to 70 billion

A billion is a great first step and something to be proud of, but I'd say it's still waaay too early to be saying "I TOLD U SO!" You've been out since 1994, reaching 1 billion after 18 years is... well, expected.

But you know what, $1B aint what it used to be. Call me when they get to $10B.

that's for sure.

Congrat Redhat! You're beating Microsoft.... in 1989

Microsoft reached a billion in 1990. And that's back when it was a different world, there were no (very few) hard drives, no (very few) "laptops", no smartphones, no (well, almost no) internet, and very few people owned a PC. Reaching a billion considering all those factors against them is amazing.

Now Microsoft is up to 70 billion

A billion is a great first step and something to be proud of, but I'd say it's still waaay too early to be saying "I TOLD U SO!" You've been out since 1994, reaching 1 billion after 18 years is... well, expected.

It's like compilers. Sure we can't imagine computing without them nowadays, but for 10-20 years in the early days of computing, there WERE NO PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES. It wasn't until computers were powerful and "cheap" enough to make the concept of an abstract language cheaper to code than raw machine code that the compiler and programming languages really took hold.

Your estimate is a bit too high. Plankalkül was developed between 1943 and 1945, and published in a paper in 1948. FORTRAN was implemented in around 1955. I ripped these dates from Wikipedia's History of programming languages article.

For that matter, Turing's famous and influential 1936 paper On Computable Numbers paper introduces an abbreviation system ("Inst{...}") for building Turing Machine configurations (on page 260) which might loosely be described as a higher-level language.
 

The UI that PalmOS copied from Apple's Newton?

I think that IBM was 'approached' by MS. Gates' mother had contacts through her role as a high ranking official in the United Way. That got Bill a foot in the door and he made good on the opportunity.

The geek has been peddling this story for so long it has become his gospel truth.

This is the history the IBM PC development team saw when it looked at MIcrosoft:

1975 Microcomputer BASIC for the Altair.
1976 Microcomputer BASIC sales to Fortune 500 companies like GE.
1977 Applesoft BASIC, Microsoft BASIC for the PET, TRS-80 and god alone knows how many others.
1977 Microsoft FORTRAN. Microsoft Assembler.
1978 Microsoft COBOL-80
1979 "Microsoft 8080 BASIC is the first microprocessor product to win the ICP Million Dollar [Sales] Award. Traditionally dominated by software for mainframe computers, this recognition is indicative of the growth and acceptance of the PC industry."
1979 MBASIC for the 8086
1980 Z-80 CP/M Softcard for the Apple II.
1980 16 Bit XENIX OS for the 8086 and other platforms.

Microsoft's Timeline

In 1980 Microsoft had 40 employees, revenues of $7.5 million and was clearly positioning itself to move outward from programming tools to applications and operating systems.

When Digital Research dropped the ball, Microsoft promised to deliver a serviceable 16 CP/M clone in time for the scheduled launch of the IBM PC. In exchange for the non-exclusive license, Microsoft proposed a barn-burning price fot its OS of $50 retail list.

20% of the projected cost of CP/M 86. These were the words IBM wanted to hear.

From History Of Computing Project: "The company established what was then called the Entry Systems Division, located in Boca Raton, Florida, to develop the new system. This small group consisted of 12 engineers and designers under the direction of Don Estridge; the team's chief designer was Lewis Eggebrecht. The division developed IBM's first real PC. (IBM considered the 5100 system, developed in 1975, to be an intelligent programmable terminal rather than a genuine computer, even though it truly was a computer.)"

And $20,000 is hardly "personal", the Lisa was half that 10 years later and still spectacularly bombed.

You really need to learn some history. Actually, they did envision a global packet switching network because they're goal was to provide a network that could survive a nuclear disaster for the US military.

Also, in association with ARPA, the did build the first networks to universities. "ALOHAnet, the first packet radio network, developed by Norman Abramson, Univ of Hawaii, becomes operational (July) connected to the ARPANET in 1972"

Collaboration of thousands of independent organizations? They're called UNIVERSITIES that received FEDERAL FUNDING for their projects. Get your facts straight.

And Edison? Edison pretty much got out of the communications game after his stock reader. He spend most of his life on microphones, media, and electricity. He's a horrible example to make your point for inventions he's not even widely known for related to telephones. The only telephone invention he made was for a microphone used IN phones.

Wikipedia claims that ASCII grew the backslash [\] specifically to support ALGOL's /\ and \/ Boolean operators. No source is provided for the claim. ftfa

Here's one of the two sources that Wikipedia cites, straight from the inventor of the backslash: HOW ASCII GOT ITS BACKSLASH citing his book [ R.W.Bemer, "A view of the history of the ISO character code", Honeywell Computer J. 6, No. 4, 274-286, 1972 ]

"I had called a joint meeting of IBM, SHARE, and GUIDE, to regularize the IBM 6-bit set to become the standard BCD Interchange Code [76]. Frequency studies of symbol occurrence had been prepared, particularly from ALGOL programs. The meeting of 1961 July 6 produced general agreement on a basic 60-64-character set, which included the two square brackets and the reverse slant, which was chosen in conjunction with "/" to yield 2-character representations for the AND and OR of early ALGOL. This is reflected in the set I proposed to ANSI X3.2 on 1961 September 18."

          (Note: I had put the backslash in position 5/15. It enabled the ALGOL "and" to be "/\" and the "or" to be "\/".)

Apparently he also invented ten other ASCII codepoints (called himself the father of ASCII), timesharing, escape sequences, the Y2K bug, word processors... and COBOL.

Seems Steve Jobs, upon the success of the first Macs, was getting ready for the next step and he went to Cray Computer to buy one (probably to help design the PowerPC?).
Anyway, Cray Computers were not just sitting on the shelf waiting to be sold, so it seems Jobs created an altercation and demanded to see the manager about getting one, so they called Seymour down to the lobby. Steve introduced himself and said words to the effect of "I'd like to use a Cray to design the next Apple Computer". Seymour replied "Thats great. I used an Apple Computer to design my Cray".

Not sure about your quote, but Apple did have a Cray. That's why they're address is "1 Infinite Loop" - the joke was the Cray was so fast, it ran an infinite loop in seconds.

Then again, a quick Google came up with these links
http://www.clock.org/~fair/computers/sgi-cray.html (it was used for a supercomputing project, and it was Sculley)
http://www.thocp.net/biographies/cray_seymour.htm claims the quote is "When told that Steve Jobs bought a CRAY to help design the next Apple, Seymour Cray said, "Funny, I am using an Apple to simulate the CRAY-3." http://www.spikynorman.dsl.pipex.com/CrayWWWStuff/Cfaqp3.html#TOC23 seems to have a more detailed version of the Apple-Cray connection.

I guess the next question is - why didn't Microsoft have one?

Responding to myself? Ehhh - whatever.

http://www.thocp.net/hardware/ti_calculators.htm

Wierd - TI's history doesn't jive with my memory. I had SOMETHING that resembled that SR-50 - but I certainly didn't pay the price listed on that page!! No way could I afford ~$150 for a calc!

Higher-res pictures are available here: http://www.thocp.net/software/games/pictures/asteroids_large.png

I guess people smiling at this article will have to think again ;)

http://www.thocp.net/biographies/papers/goto_considered_harmful.htm

HP has a _very_ long history of creating tablets --- datingway back to, e.g., the HP OmniGo 100 which ran GEOS and had Graffiti:

http://www.thocp.net/hardware/hp_omnigo100.htm

And they purchased Compaq whose TC1000 hybrid Slate design has yet to be equalled:

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/11429_na/11429_na.HTML

Someone has to take over tablet leadership now that Fujitsu has dropped slates....

William

Case in point, Microsoft started losing its juice when it got serious about enterprise

Microsoft has always been serious about the enterprise market.

In July of 76 Microsoft was selling its microcomputer BASIC to corporate clients like General Electric.

In April of 79: Microsoft 8080 BASIC was the first microprocessor product to win the ICP Million Dollar Award, "traditionally dominated by software for mainframe computers."

The single most important decision Microsoft ever made was to negotiate a non-exclusive license for MS-DOS. That would permanently alter the landscape. Apple is the lone survivor of the era when hardware and software was tightly bundled.

In 1983 Microsoft Multiplan spreadsheet the company's first application product, was ported across many platforms. "While Lotus 1-2-3 surpassed Multiplan in domestic markets, Multiplan was the winner in almost every other country in which it appeared."

In September of 83 Microsoft introduced Word for MS-DOs 1.0. Microsoft Timeline

"Uncle Bill" was actually a very good coder. From http://www.thocp.net/companies/microsoft/microsoft_company.htm

Using the Altair's published specifications, Gates and Allen created a simulator on a DEC PDP-10 computer that allowed it to emulate the MITS machine. Working day and night, they created the first version of MICROSOFT BASIC for the Altair

Jan 2, Bill Gates and Paul Allen complete BASIC

Allen is going to deliver it to MITS president Ed Roberts in Albuquerque. Realizing he didn't have a way to load it into the computer, Paul Allen hand assembled a loader program for BASIC at 30,000 feet in the air, on the flight to New Mexico. Even though it had never been tested on an actual machine, it ran perfectly on the very first try.

If only the rest of Microsoft's Software Engineers were as good as Bill Gates and Paul Allen.

Microsoft was selling BASIC to corporate clients as early as 1976. Microsoft was a first-tier vendor of development tools for the micro from Day 1:

April 4, 1979 Microsoft 8080 BASIC is the first microprocessor product to win the ICP Million Dollar Award. Traditionally dominated by software for mainframe computers, this recognition is indicative of the growth and acceptance of the PC industry. Microsoft History The Multiplan [1983] spreadsheet did quite well abroad. MS Word 1.0 for DOS also launches in '83.

1985 marks the launch of Excel for the Mac.

It's already kind of lame when someone spells it M$ or Micro$oft in a comment but...

Yeah. I'm one of the ones that had to learn to not be childish with that use on /.

Do you go back as far to CP/M? The history of CP/M, CP/M-86, QDOS and the *original* PC-DOS? If you had - and I suspect you don't - you might cut some people some slack for that usage.

There exists a pre-PC-DOS link to a statement that Bill Gates put out regarding piracy of BASIC and denigrating everyone for how much money he was losing, how much he and his guys had invested in time and dollars and so forth. It was a little whiney, but he was pretty much spot on regarding the whole piracy thing. http://www.digibarn.com/collections/newsletters/homebrew/V2_01/gatesletter.html

And in those days - just like today - we all paid close attention to Intel. The 8086 was out there, we were all waiting for CP/M-86 stability to get a better computing environment. And CP/M-86 was taking time because it was work and because it was going to be (and eventually was) a quality product.

Seattle Computer Products, a hardware mfgr, created the Quick and Dirty Operating System (QDOS) and despite revisionist history, to ostensibly debug their hardware in anticipation of CP/M-86.

The follow-on history is very nicely summarized right here: http://74.125.45.132/search?q=cache:tIEkLM0yDDkJ:maben.homeip.net/static/S100/software/microsoft/DOS/The%2520origins%2520of%2520MS-DOS.ppt+qdos+S-100+quick+and+dirty+operating+system&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5&gl=us - that's the html/cached version, if you want the PPT file, it's here: http://maben.homeip.net/static/S100/software/microsoft/DOS/The%20origins%20of%20MS-DOS.ppt

Part of the backstory on his money loss was that the Osborne had come out, but then the KayPro did too, was doing better, and was getting a lot of attention for the superior (to MS) S-BASIC. So, sales of MS BASIC were not what the company expected. In fact, here's the backstory on Microsoft's creation and the importance of MS-BASIC. I putting the cached link and the orig - I couldn't get the orig server to respond as I write this: http://74.125.45.132/search?q=cache:kKA51ycXpCAJ:www.thocp.net/companies/microsoft/microsoft_company.htm+history+of+altair+basic&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us and http://www.thocp.net/companies/microsoft/microsoft_company.htm

But add up the history: BASIC w/ license disputes, QDOS w/ license disputes, OS/2 w/ license disputes, Windows w/ license disputes.

Microsoft was once a darling company to many of us. They freed us from the clutches of IBM mini-computers and mainframes at work. It was a pain in the ass, but we could do desktop programming in BASIC rather than getting time to do our FORTRAN calculations on an IBM.

IBM was under attack by the US Justice Dept. in the early 80s - we couldn't have been happier. Then, Microsoft - as a company - was becoming the new IBM, with all of its evil.

I - and many others - were quite accustomed to calling them Micro$oft and M$ by the mid-to-late 80s for their stunts.

I lived through that history. I watched a company that I supported putting the screws to people in the industry.

I was pissed the first time a pretty good post of mine was labeled troll and attacked with

Microsoft was never a side show.

The PC without high level programming languages is the side show.

Microsoft was selling BASIC to clients like GE and Citibank in 1976. Applesoft BASIC, and BASIC for the Commodore PET and TRS-80 ship in 1977. MBASIC defines the eight-bit micro.

April 4, 1979, Microsoft 8080 BASIC is the first microprocessor product to win the ICP Million Dollar Award. Traditionally dominated by software for mainframe computers, this recognition is indicative of the growth and acceptance of the PC industry. Microsoft Timeline From 1975-1990

.

There can't have been anyone in the tech industry who wasn't aware of Microsoft before 1980.

Microsoft was selling BASIC to customers like General Electric as early as 1976. The MBASIC interpreter became the de-facto standard for the eight-bit micro.

It had compilers for MBASIC, FORTRAN and COBOL on the market no later than '77-'78.

In 1979 Microsoft 8080 BASIC is the first microprocessor product to win the ICP Million Dollar Award. Traditionally dominated by software for mainframe computers, this recognition is indicative of the growth and acceptance of the PC industry. Microsoft Timeline

DR in those days was still Intergalatic Digital Research. and ambling along like a one-man band.

Not the best image to project when negotiating with IBM.

Let's all stop for the moment and consider the utility and sales potential of a mass market PC that ships without an operating system or high level languages.

In an era when the enthusiast's "access to source" meant reading the BASIC program listings in "Creative Computing."

1975 BASIC for the Altair.
Microsoft has three employees and revenues of $16,000.

1976 Microsoft sells an enhanced basic to GE, NCR and Citibank.
Seven employees and revenues of $22,00

1977 Microsoft FORTRAN. MBASIC for the Commodore PET and TRS-80. Applesoft BASIC.
Nine employees and revenues of $382,000.

1978 COBOL-80. Microsoft enters the world market with ASCII Microsoft - Japan.
Thirteen employees and revenues of $1,400,000.

1979 Microsoft 8080 BASIC is the first product for the micro to win the ICP Million Dollar Award.
MBASIC for the 8086. The first high level language for the new 16-bit micro.
Twenty-eight employees and revenues of $2,400,000.

1980 The Z-80 SoftCard. Microsoft XENIX OS for 16 bit CPUs.
Forty employees and revenues of $7,500,000.

1981 MS-DOS for the IBM PC and anyone else who wants it. There is an MS-DOS universe before the birth of the clones. There is also MBASIC, FORTRAN, COBOL and Pascal.
128 employees and revenues of $16,000,000.

Microsoft's Timeline from 1975

Your own bullshit wikipedia article has "citation needed" for your claim of a hoax presentation.

Yet you believe it wholeheartedly.

Sony, Blu-Ray, FMD?

Try Constellation 3D

http://www.secinfo.com/$/SignIn.asp?ReturnTo=%2F%24%2FSEC%2FRegistrant.asp%3FCIK%3D1080290
SEC info about the company.

http://www.digit-life.com/articles/digeststorage2k1jan/index.html
Read down below about Lite-On and C3D. Oh, and who's Lite-On's bestest buddy at the time? (SONY)

http://www.thocp.net/hardware/fmd_rom.htm
1999 first published in september
2001 first license given to Sony
2002 august C3D disappeared
2003 D Data Inc aquired the patents of C3D en will develop HD DMD

They licensed to Sony and folded.
Then some other no name company was sold the patents.

Unfortunately whoever invented these timestamps chose to make them use signed numbers, with negative numbers being allowed on some systems (representing dates before 1970) and being errors on other systems (e.g. Windows)...

Fortunately 64-bit numbers can now be handled by pcs

Don't rewrite history. Microsoft in 1980 was a known quantity, dominant in programming languages for the eight-bit micro, and had the licensed XENIX OS ready for the sixteen-bit micro. Microsoft Timeline

http://www.thocp.net/timeline/uk.htmWhiteChapel MG-1 Although I used one in 1987 but they were not new then.

Intel patented the 4004, which they tried to use to enforce a patent on the "microprocessor" generally - though Gilbert Hyatt eventually won it, 20 years later.

Does Intel still have a working patent protecting the 4004? And doesn't that patent include the schematics? What's the point of patenting an invention if other inventors can't tell whether they're reinventing what you've protected from "infringement"?

There was also the Atanosoff Berry Computer at around the same time as the Z3. Work first began on it in 1935.

Or, do you have a memory of making day to day use of the Internets prior to 1988?

Yes, in fact, I do. As do many others. We aren't all noobs or highschool kids.

See:

http://www.thocp.net/reference/internet/internet2. htm

NSFnet was a big deal. The Internet expanded to many, many sites that previously been excluded. Speeds went way up. But the creation of the Internet, it was not.

'No, he's writing an opinion piece against a company with a bias for it.'
'he makes it pretty clear that what he's saying is conjecture.'

A seriously biassed opinion piece based purely on conjecture. Yeah I see now how much worth this has to the world at large thanks for opening my eyes... This isnt just someones little blog hes putting this crap online for a company. So sue me if I think that perhaps it should have some worth.

'I think what you just wrote could be the most intelligent piece of slashdot journ... ok I can't stop laughing.'
'there's a reason he's published on PBS and you're not'

Um yeah its his career not mine. Nor did I ever claim I should be published or even ask to be published. That has no baring on the quality of this article whatsover. So thanks for insulting me but stick to the subject.

'He's interesting and actually cites his sources.'

Thats funny because he didnt cite any of them, he didnt cite any sources in the previous work ive read and beyond 'my good friend said' we have no idea where the information came from. Oh accept for Forbes who if you read it didnt actually back him up at all. They just point out hes got less interest in MS not that he despises them. Even you say it was based on conjecture.

'You on the other hand simply say things, pretend we all believe you, and then make guesses based on what other people do.'

Would it make it more valid to you if I said 'Oh but I know like 100 people in MS and there all good friends with Bill Gates and Paul Allen' would that suddenly give it a lot more meaning?

My points were made from evidence. I said at the end of my post anyone could find it. Perhaps I credited you with too much intelligence. I do apologise.

Facts I said -
Gates has less than 10% shares - http://evan.snew.com/ecgi/gates.cgi?02213462739033 42993865292117190603
Diagnosed in 1983 - http://www.bizography.org/biographies/paul-allen.h tml
DOS 2.0 released in March - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS
Still an advisor at MS - http://www.thocp.net/biographies/allen_paul.htm (Also puts his a quarter of his total fortune still in MS hands. Yeah hes sure backing out.)

Then you go in to some explanation of why MS is blah blah blah. Its obvious MS are being attacked at the moment I never disputed it. In fact I agree with just about all of the hits the company is taking, but they arnt going down and once again you appear to agree with me.

'And no one sells the vast majority of their shares in a company to invest elsewhere because they have confidence in the long term value of that stock. He sold his stock for a reason: He knows Microsoft is peaking.'

What, about Bill Gates selling most his stock and Paul Allen still being connected to the company, are you not understanding? According to the article Paul Allen still has over 100 million shares thats more than a tenth of what Bill Gates has. A fair chunk when his total contribution is advisor while Gates runs the company. Oh and hes been selling his stock for a long time throughout peaks and troughs in MS's history. He didnt just suddenly sell them all when MS reached a high point.

If you want to dispute my comments you go and find some actual evidence to support this nonsense instead of defending someone who writes articles worse, and more poorly backed up, than half the MS haters on slashdot. (Hell your post was a better review of Microsofts position.)

Z1 through Z4 were developed by Konrad Zuse in the 1930's and 40's.
I wonder if this Z5 is also largely mechanical...

Logarithms, invented by John Napier born 1550. Henry Briggs, another British mathematician published a table of logarithms to 14 places of numbers from 1 to 20,000 and from 90,000 to 100,000 in 1624.

http://www.thocp.net/reference/sciences/mathematic s/logarithm_hist.htm

So enlighten me, what sort of computer was he using?

The patent expired before the Dreamcast came out. If Sony wanted to they could make a non-broken up controller now.

... rather than the technology leaders they once were.

They were never technology leaders, that's just the revised history their marketing department likes to push. The current generation has been taken in unfortunately.

At every stage of their development there were technologically equivalent (not necessarily superior) competitors. Even at the start, with PCDOS and M$Windows 3 (the first usable version) there were competing products every bit as functional and technologically advanced as their products. Read this to get the flavour of how things really developed.

M$ was good polish and marketing. They should be commended for the polish, that's not easy, but it's not technology.

---

It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.

I'm pretty sure this has to do with Microsoft's long history dealing with Japanese customers (since the late '70s), MS's large revenues from Japan (over 10%), and (maybe) the relatively low piracy rates in Japan compared to other non-English speaking countries.

With the help of Kay Nishi, Microsoft established its first international sales office in Japan in late 1978. This was before DOS when MS was primarily a language company and early Japanese PCs needed languages.

Even if we disregard MS's "head start" in Japan, Japan probably has been the largest non-English speaking market. Despite Japan's relatively low population, Japan has a highly developed economy, relatively low piracy rates, and a long history with computers (NEC). At the end of 2002 (one year after Windows XP), MS got 20% of its revenue from the Asia-Pacific region, but half of it was from Japan alone.

I'm sure MS is working damn hard on the Portuguese versions of their software.

I think the amount of battery required to power the transmitter long enough to make a connection and transmit data from your phone would be far greater than running the phone CPU to compute that move.

Sure, you could make a chess game that only looked forward one move and this could probably run on a cell phone just fine, and be pretty fast. But if you want a game that can beat almost anybody, you'll need a lot more computing power and memory. Deep Blue did one trillion operations per second -- and this was needed, as it only had a few minutes per move to calculate it's next move -- 40 moves/2 hours in the first two hours.

In any event, chess fits the `low bandwidth used, but extreme amounts of cpu needed to compute each move' paradigm perfectly. At least for world class chess :)

Intergraph said in a release that it expects to pay $11 million in legal expenses. [...] Intergraph said that, since then, its IP protection and enforcement efforts have generated about $860 million in pre-tax income.

Translation:
1. Patent some IP rehashing an idea that's been around since 1965
2. Get a legal dept. and sue anyone who uses cache memory
3. ????
4. PROFIT!!!

Then, I broke down and got a Leading Edge IBM clone in the mid-80s or so, and life got a lot more interesting.

It's too bad Duke Nukem Forever is coming out before either, or it could fit on just one of these discs.

Personally, I object to honoring Bill Gates for anything. As far as I am concerned, he is an unethical shmuck who bears principal responsibility for the suicide of Gary Kildall. Search on "Gary Kildall" if you do not know who he is.

Sigh. He was killed in a barfight, not a suicide, and frankly a suicide over a signle (if huge) missed business opportunity wouldn't make Gates the badguy anyway.

Research before slander, asshat. Are you sure you should be telling other people to search?

As far as I am concerned, he is an unethical shmuck who bears principal responsibility for the suicide of Gary Kildall. Search on "Gary Kildall" if you do not know who he is.

Maybe if you tried a different search engine you would know that the popular legend that he killed himself is not true. He was killed in a fight at a bar, and by all accounts it wasn't the least bit deliberate.

From what I could Google, only Apple's Lisa (introduced in 1983) and Macintosh had those features on the market in 1984. In 1985 however, things changed dramatically...

http://www.thocp.net/timeline/1984.htm

Like APL? This language, created at IBM in the 1960s, uses a mathematical notation and is very concise. APL programs therefore have a great tendency to be short but unreadable.