Things that make you go "Hmmmm…"

[kladner]

Netscape: the web browser that came back to haunt Microsoft bite Microsoft in the Ass

So let’s spool back a bit – to 1993. By then, the internet was roughly 10 years old, but for its first decade had been largely unknown to anyone other than geeks and computer science researchers. Two years earlier, Tim Berners-Lee had created and released the world wide web onto the internet, but initially no one noticed. Then in the spring of 1993, Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina released Mosaic – the first graphical browser – and suddenly the “real world” realised what the internet was for, and clamoured to get aboard.


But here’s the strange thing: Microsoft – by then the overwhelmingly dominant force in the computing world – failed to notice the internet. One of Bill Gates’s biographers, James Wallace, claimed that Microsoft didn’t even have an internet server until early in 1993, and that the only reason the company set one up was because Steve Ballmer, Gates’s second-in-command, had discovered on a sales trip that most of his big corporate customers were complaining that Windows didn’t have a “TCP/IP stack” – ie, a way of connecting to the internet. Ballmer had never heard of TCP/IP. “I don’t know what it is,” he shouted at subordinates on his return to Seattle. “I don’t want to know what it is. But my customers are screaming about it. Make the pain go away.”


But even when Microsoft engineers built a TCP/IP stack into Windows, the pain continued. Andreessen and his colleagues left university to found Netscape, wrote a new browser from scratch and released it as Netscape Navigator. This spread like wildfire and led Netscape’s founders to speculate (hubristically) that the browser would eventually become the only piece of software that computer users really needed – thereby relegating the operating system to a mere life-support system for the browser.

Now that got Microsoft’s attention.

[Dubslow]

ChromeOS, anyone...?

The future isn't so bright in a number of ways that very few people seem to recognize...

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by Dubslow

ChromeOS, anyone...?

The future isn't so bright in a number of ways that very few people seem to recognize...

Tried both Chrome OS and "cros linux" (the "reloaded" version of the former), ended up totally disappointed. The experience reinforced my pro-Firefox paranoia even more...

[Dubslow]

Originally Posted by LaurV

Tried both Chrome OS and "cros linux" (the "reloaded" version of the former), ended up totally disappointed. The experience reinforced my pro-Firefox paranoia even more...

Oh god, you even bothered to try it? I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. (That said, there are many other things I wouldn't touch with a 39 1/2 foot pole.)

[kladner]

I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.

How about with an eight foot Swede?

[Jayder]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factorial_number_system

Not sure if this fits here. I was working on a problem and I stumbled into using a factorial number system. I was pleasantly surprised to see a long wiki article and not just a stub. I don't think I had ever heard of it before.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by Jayder

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factorial_number_system

Not sure if this fits here. I was working on a problem and I stumbled into using a factorial number system. I was pleasantly surprised to see a long wiki article and not just a stub. I don't think I had ever heard of it before.

This system is also used by Hendrik Lenstra in his article on profinite Fibonacci numbers, which is fun to read:
https://math.berkeley.edu/~hwl/papers/fibo.pdf

[retina]

Originally Posted by BudgieJane

You were referring to stage left there, I assume.

Does that mean they are all just actors and not actual employees? They should be sued them for false advertising. Getting my hopes up like that for no good reason.

[retina]

Originally Posted by Uncwilly

LaurV already is married. If you want to be a 'sister wife', you all will have to move to Utah.

People can be divorced. Anyhow, there are more places than Utah where such things are allowed. But it seems to all be mute moot since they are only actors. I feel cheated; bait and switch in action.

[LaurV]

Haha, I missed initial post. No, I am not in the photo, but if you want I give you my mobile number anyhow. It is an old Gigabyte Gsmart Windows Phone (older than the pictures), its number is 356557000199108.

[retina]

Originally Posted by LaurV

No, I am not in the photo, ...

Story of my life.

Originally Posted by LaurV

... but if you want I give you my mobile number anyhow. It is an old Gigabyte Gsmart Windows Phone (older than the pictures), its number is 356557000199108.

Okay, so now all I need is the resources of the NSA and then I can track you.