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IBM, Microsoft, and the Long Strange Trip to Your Pocket

lanceulanoff:

30 years ago IBM introduced the world-altering IBM PC. Back then, I was a high-school senior who had very little experience with computers of any kind. I knew of their existence, having in 11th grade stealed away into the math lab to play a “video” game with no graphics, just coordinates and commands you entered in as the computer described the action to you.

For me, this was a wholly unique and new experience and I was somehow captivated. That said, I could never have imagined the role computers would play in the world and my own life. In fact, it would be almost another decade before I owned my first PC (my parents had Commodore 64 and 128 computers in the early 80’s, but they weren’t  mine), and it wasn’t even an IBM model. Instead, I bought a clone, an Epson Apex 100/20. The “20” in the name, by the way, stood for 20MB. That was the size the hard drive.

This Epson, which I still own today, runs the operating system that helped launch the industry:  Microsoft DOS (it runs version 5, possibly the most popular and well-known edition). It could be argued that without Bill Gates and Microsoft, we might not be celebrating the PC’s anniversary. Think about it, without the software, the IBM PC, and all the subsequent clones built around it, is just a useless, heavy, hulking pile of metal, plastic and glass. DOS was that era’s killer app.

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animalstalkinginallcaps: GOOD AFTERNOON. I JUST SWAM UP FROM THE INKY DEPTHS OF YOUR GREATEST FEARS WITH MY INSANE NEEDLE TEETH, MOUTHFUL OF ALIEN BRAINS AND FACE WITH A BUTTHOLE IN THE MIDDLE OF IT TO ENSURE THAT YOU WON’T SLEEP FOR WEEKS KNOWING THAT I AM NOT A MOVIE PROP BUT RATHER SOMETHING YOU CAN ENCOUNTER SIMPLY BY VENTURING A COUPLE HUNDRED FEET BELOW THE SURFACE OF THE VAST AND ONLY BARELY EXPLORED OCEAN, WHERE EVERYTHING IS COBBLED TOGETHER FROM NIGHTMARES AND JELLY THE FURTHER DOWN YOU GO.
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animalstalkinginallcaps:

GOOD AFTERNOON.

I JUST SWAM UP FROM THE INKY DEPTHS OF YOUR GREATEST FEARS WITH MY INSANE NEEDLE TEETH, MOUTHFUL OF ALIEN BRAINS AND FACE WITH A BUTTHOLE IN THE MIDDLE OF IT TO ENSURE THAT YOU WON’T SLEEP FOR WEEKS KNOWING THAT I AM NOT A MOVIE PROP BUT RATHER SOMETHING YOU CAN ENCOUNTER SIMPLY BY VENTURING A COUPLE HUNDRED FEET BELOW THE SURFACE OF THE VAST AND ONLY BARELY EXPLORED OCEAN, WHERE EVERYTHING IS COBBLED TOGETHER FROM NIGHTMARES AND JELLY THE FURTHER DOWN YOU GO.

fresh as.... A Mynt Public Relations Blog: Devicelock Endpoint DLP enables businesses to control Google+ usage on corporate computers.

myntpr:

DeviceLock, Inc., an international leader in endpoint data leak prevention solutions, today announced that its DeviceLock® Endpoint DLP Suite software can now be used by corporate IT to control the use of the Google+ social network on endpoint computers including content filtering of their…

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kehalim:

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psychotherapy: “When I was young, I used to entertain myself this way before asleep: In my mind’s eye I would see myself lying in bed. I would zoom back like a camera to include my house in my neighborhood in Boulder, in Colorado, in the United States of America, on the continent of North America. Then I would look at the planet like a globe, including India, where I was born; Tibet, where my father and mother were born; and Scotland, where I learned to speak English. Then I would picture Earth as a beautiful blue sphere floating in blackness. I would make the picture bigger, including other planets in our solar system with the sun in the center. The most amazing thing was to see earth disappearing into the darkness of a speck. Then I would imagine the outer planets of the solar system. The sun would disappear as I imagined all the stars in our galaxy, which seemed endless. I would dissolve our galaxy into one star, one light, and make that light very tiny, surrounded by other lights in the darkness, which weren’t stars, but galaxies. Then I would think about how small I was, and how strange and wonderful it is to have been born.” - Sakyong Mipham, Turning the Mind into an Ally
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psychotherapy:

“When I was young, I used to entertain myself this way before asleep: In my mind’s eye I would see myself lying in bed. I would zoom back like a camera to include my house in my neighborhood in Boulder, in Colorado, in the United States of America, on the continent of North America. Then I would look at the planet like a globe, including India, where I was born; Tibet, where my father and mother were born; and Scotland, where I learned to speak English. Then I would picture Earth as a beautiful blue sphere floating in blackness. I would make the picture bigger, including other planets in our solar system with the sun in the center. The most amazing thing was to see earth disappearing into the darkness of a speck. Then I would imagine the outer planets of the solar system. The sun would disappear as I imagined all the stars in our galaxy, which seemed endless. I would dissolve our galaxy into one star, one light, and make that light very tiny, surrounded by other lights in the darkness, which weren’t stars, but galaxies. Then I would think about how small I was, and how strange and wonderful it is to have been born.”


- Sakyong Mipham, Turning the Mind into an Ally

latimes: Cloud computing and Internet use suck energy and emit CO2, says Greenpeace. “Clicking on all those viral videos, chain emails, celebrity tweets and paparazzi photos online sucks up enough energy to rank the Internet — if it were a country — fifth in the world for electricity use, reports Tiffany Hsu. Photo: Facebook displays a new server that is part of the company’s efforts to become more energy efficient. Credit: Kimihiro Hoshino / AFP/Getty Images
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latimes:

Cloud computing and Internet use suck energy and emit CO2, says Greenpeace. “Clicking on all those viral videos, chain emails, celebrity tweets and paparazzi photos online sucks up enough energy to rank the Internet — if it were a country — fifth in the world for electricity use, reports Tiffany Hsu.

Photo: Facebook displays a new server that is part of the company’s efforts to become more energy efficient. Credit: Kimihiro Hoshino / AFP/Getty Images

kateoplis: “[F]or about a good hundred and ten years, movies have invented all sorts of tricks and all sorts of fancy and sometimes very charming means to make us believe that films were concurring space indeed. The camera was put on tracks and on shoulders and on steadicams and on cranes and you can put it into automobiles and planes and god knows you could even throw it out of the window. But it always ended up on a two-dimensional screen, so space was really always fake. It was always a simulation. I only realized that there was something lacking when I tried to imagine how to film Pina’s dance, because the two of us had been trying to make a film together for twenty years. I was just  stalling for time and I found myself at a loss how to film her work, because my tools and my craft didn’t seem to have what it took to really do justice to Pina’s art and to the magic and to the contagious energy of it. I only finally saw myself able to say “now I can do it” when I saw my first 3D film and realized that was the answer and that’s what we had been missing. Space, for the first time, was a tool for filmmakers. I think 3D is the greatest revolution ever since the talkies, only most people didn’t realize it because we thought it was just a gimmick for national blockbusters. Now some movies come out that show the true potential of 3D which is really a whole different way of seeing the world.” — Wim Wenders
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kateoplis:

“[F]or about a good hundred and ten years, movies have invented all sorts of tricks and all sorts of fancy and sometimes very charming means to make us believe that films were concurring space indeed. The camera was put on tracks and on shoulders and on steadicams and on cranes and you can put it into automobiles and planes and god knows you could even throw it out of the window. But it always ended up on a two-dimensional screen, so space was really always fake. It was always a simulation. I only realized that there was something lacking when I tried to imagine how to film Pina’s dance, because the two of us had been trying to make a film together for twenty years. I was just  stalling for time and I found myself at a loss how to film her work, because my tools and my craft didn’t seem to have what it took to really do justice to Pina’s art and to the magic and to the contagious energy of it.

I only finally saw myself able to say “now I can do it” when I saw my first 3D film and realized that was the answer and that’s what we had been missing. Space, for the first time, was a tool for filmmakers. I think 3D is the greatest revolution ever since the talkies, only most people didn’t realize it because we thought it was just a gimmick for national blockbusters. Now some movies come out that show the true potential of 3D which is really a whole different way of seeing the world.”

— Wim Wenders

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