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Windows 95 Turns 10
ColdGrits writes "It's hard to believe it, but 10 short years ago today saw the launch of Windows '95.
Here is an archive of the Washington Post's story on the day. As part of the launch, Microsoft paid $12,000,000 for the rights to use the Rolling Stones' song "Start Me Up" (containing the prophetic line 'You make a grown man cry'). "
From TFA:This passage is especially amusing, since I gained most of my knowledge of Windows 95 through needing to reinstall it repeatedly on various systems.
Another gem from TFA: Yes...I vaguely recall IBM's OS/2...but Apple? No....I'm drawing a blank. ^_^
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
How true... If those poor saps had only know what lie ahead.
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
"10 sort years ago "
Maybe i am new here, but what other kind of year is there other than sort years
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
"You make a grown man cry."
Well, if it could make a "dead man come", that would be really special.
...and in further news, windows 2000 is now 5 years old.
Can't believe it's been 10 years since I attempted to do a seamless upgrade on my p90... Ah yes. I must truly thank M$ for releasing it though, because without w95 I would have never sought out linux.
Later,
Phil
Our top story: 1995 was ten years ago! Also, 2+2=4. Details at 11.
you weren't tough enough to handle Slackware's 50-floppy installation.
Back when that dinosaur OS was the current thing, I used to see want ads in the information systems section of newspapers demanding ten years of experience in Windows 95. Back then, they had not dont their math, but now, there are a few people who can actually answer that ad!
How ya like dat?
...lost productivity from Solitaire and Minesweeper. Yeah, it was in earlier versions, but Windows 95 made it even easier...
Government's view of the economy: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving,regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it.
The IE dev teams blogs (nay, boasts!) about tabbed browsing in IE7 -- saying nothing of the fact that tabs are years old.
MS brags and boasts about Monad, which is still vaporware, but it sure will be the best shell ever -- saying nothing of the fact that this has been available forever in *nix.
I'm sure we can come up with more. In the end, MS is very good at marketing. People just love their koolaid.
Rumour has it they've been tapped again for the Windows Vista launch. The new theme song?
"Under My Thumb".
*ba-dump-bump-ting!*
Wanted: One witty yet thought provoking
I remember there were stories about people buying Win 95 who didn't even have a computer. Unbelievable. How can people not have a computer?
-- Cheers!
2008: 10 year anniversary of Windows 98
....
2010: 10 year anniversary of Windows Me
2011: 10 year anniversary of Windows XP
1015: 20 year anniversary of Windows 95
2020: 20 year anniversary of Windows Me
Didn't the lead singer for Coldplay die once he realized he was just an even wussier version of Radiohead's Thom Yorke?
Here's every Coldplay song, ever:
I HOPE SOME GIRL WILL LOVE ME, BECAUSE I'M A HUGE PANSY
If you start me up
If you start me up I'll never stop
If you start me up
If you start me up I'll never stop
I've been running hot
You got me ticking gonna blow my top
If you start me up
If you start me up I'll never stop
You make a grown man cry
Spread out the oil, the gasoline
I walk smooth, ride in a mean, mean machine
Start it up
If you start it up
Kick on the starter give it all you got, you got,
you got I can't compete with the riders in the other heats If you rough it up
If you like it you can slide it up, slide it up
Don't make a grown man cry
My eyes dilate, my lips go green
My hands are greasy
She's a mean, mean machine
Start it up
If start me up
Give it all you got
You got to never, never, never stop
Never, never
Slide it up
You make a grown man cry
Ride like the wind at double speed
I'll take you places that you've never, never seen
Start it up
Love the day when we will never stop, never stop
Never stop, never stop
Tough me up
Never stop, never stop, never stop
You, you, you make a grown man cry
You, you make a dead man come
You, you make a dead man come
Can anyone figure out what the hell Microsoft Marketing was thinking when they selected this song?
"But Microsoft is unlikely to suffer a similar fate because it took precautions, such as delaying its launch date and sending out a few hundred thousand copies to testers across the country."
These are called precautions? I'm going to tell my client that next time we're delayed on a release. And as far as testing, was that something that was new in software at the time?
MS is still trying to match the functionality of having a system that is composed of small scriptable programs that interoperate using human readable text interfaces, connected by pipes and redirected IO.
Their solution is to have the shell make a huge tree of objects that call each other. The objects aren't text, you can't load them in notepad, and you can't pipe them like you can with UNIX. Instead you've got a pile of goddamn API's. Plus, these fucking things are objects, so you can call them and they execute code. The good guys will use them to dig out information that they want. The bad guys will examine them for buffer overflows.
What do Microsoft developers drive? Easy - a Pontiac Aztek. They love ugly cars just as much as they love ugly operating systems. "But you can go camping in it!" is their reply when you criticise their ride. I agree. All the bugs make you feel like you're stuck in the fucking woods without any toilet paper.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
I'm not sure how you would classify the "3.1 to Bob" feature change though.....
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
Well I bought it up
...
...
.... (ring it up)
.... you got me, you got me
...
... I 'm making software buys. ... It's making Bill Gates come... ... your making a rich man come....
Brought Windows home and tried to boot it up
But when I load it up
It says my memory is not enough
I've been running out
I need Some Extra RAM to fix me up
I have to cough it up
Open my wallet up, it never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops
Its Windows 95
It's sucking up my drive
It makes a Pentium fly
But my PC is obsolete
I'll have to buy myself a brand new machine
Just stick me up
You suck me in then you got me hooked
There's so much stuff to buy
I need a new hard drive
I'ts gonna suck me dry
My 386, Don't have the speed
It takes an hour just to bring up the screen
Oh no
Woow
Yo Yo
Technoli
I was the same... when games started to be written for win95, I was like "WTF?! Games *IN* Windows? Why not stick them in DOS for more speed. My 4MB can't handle this shiz!" I also upgraded to 8MB shortly afterwards.
You create your own reality - Leave mine to me.
HEAR HEAR! You're absolutely right...
There IS no second "w" in Windoze!
What's your problem, Taco?
Billy's Windowzberg Address:
;)
1/2 Score and 10 billion crashes ago, our programmers brought forth on this server a "new" program, conceived in PARC and dedidcated to the proposition that all software can be ripped off.
I'm too lazy to complete the joke and I think you get it by now anyway.
... I can't believe this name wasn't already taken!!!
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
(with apologies to Apple)
WOW SUCH A NEW AND INVENTIVE ORIGINAL JOKE! I've never heard that one before! Certainly not about 30,000 times a goddamned year between 1995 and 2005. And yet Slashdot moderators, obviously on crack, moderate it up regardless... maybe Slashdot does something to people to just suck their sense of humor out and replace it with hatred of RFID tags.
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