Yes, to the latter. No to the former because it is in US notation, putting the month before the day before the year. Although in the UK, I would possible say "June the fourth", I am more likely to day "The fourth of June" [see note below], I find it particularly illogical when in numeric notation to have an inconsistent order of the magnitudes - your month/day/year.

Note : For example, another famous sea battle in 1794, the first in the Napoleonic Wars, is known by the British (but surely not by the French) as "The Glorious First of June".

Looks like that Oatmeal guy was looking for gay pr0n.

Compuserve was another, and MSN I believe. That was the business model back then. I started with Compuserve, but, with many others, broke out after a while and Compuserve folded. Seems we are going full circle.

No-one here on / but plenty in the wider world. Just one example from a quick Google "We all know that Bill Gates created the personal computer"

More bollocks. In the UK I bought my first personal computer, an Amstrad (with CP/M and a printer) for 400 GBP ($600) when an IBM PC with DOS (and no printer) cost around 1200 GBP ($1800). I, and other young techies at the time, regarded the IBM PC as a corporate machine that was unaffordable (and undesirable) for home. Even at work very few people were issued with one. The subsequent spectacular reduction in IBM compatible PC prices was due to falling hardware costs and owed nothing to Microsoft. It owed more to Alan Sugar and the manufacturers of hard drives and memory.

Today the price label on a desktop or laptop is typically a quarter of the 1980 price label, while Microsoft's operating system price label has trebled, having gone through a period in the 90's - the very period when PCs became "affordable" - when it was five times the 1980 price. The percentage of the cost of a PC that goes to MS for their pre-loaded operating system was 3% in 1980 but is typically 20% today.

I suggest you watch this interview with Sugar to hear what a dominant and frustrating part Microsoft's OS price was in setting the price of the PCs he made and sold.

Two reasons spring to my mind straight off :-

(1)There are many people around who think that Gates and Microsoft invented the computer, or at least the personal computer, or at least invented the GUI, or at least made PCs affordable etc etc, when in fact Gates and Microsoft were copying others. As a result these people, some of whom have a lot of power over policy, mistakenly believe that Gates is a genius and that we should listen to everything he says on any subject and do what he says. I won't bother to link to examples, they are everywhere. It is therefore important to debunk Gates and to keep debunking him, and his company.

(2) Microsoft continue to cheat and to attempt to control the IT world right up to the present day. This is not just about history.

Microsoft stole VMS code to help make Windows NT. Perhaps more precisely, a VMS team headed by Dave Cutler stole the code from their employer, DEC, and took it with them to work for Microsoft where they developed NT.

DEC did not seem to mind very much though. By that time it seemed that their business model was to allow their staff to walk away with code and then settle for an out-of-court payment from the company it had gone to. That is what they did with Microsoft.

A DEC guy's account

Why do you assume that the unified interface will be nice? I have accounts at several [UK] banks; the Nationwide interface is good but the FirstDirect interface is bad. For example, to view up-coming payments with FirstDirect is a job of work - I think they want you to over-draw so they can charge you for it. As another example the Nationwide show your statement in what I would call correct chronological order - oldest at the top. Most banks however have latest at the top; and some (only some) of those allow you to reverse it but do not remember your preference for next time.

Factors like these determine my choice of which bank I use routinely; the others I only use for spreading the risk and being able to use more ATMs around. I bet though that a unified interface would not be the one that I would choose.

How TF can a bank know that you are going to make a "hypothetical purchase"?

No, I think he's being funny. Mod GP funny, someone, please.

Microsoft bought DOS from Seattle Computer Products [SCP} and hired its author, Tim Paterson, to port it to the PC. No doubt they copied many ideas from CP/M but not code directly. SCP had written it for their own personal computer and called it QDOS as a joke - "Quick and Dirty Operating System". Microsoft dropped the "Q" and said the "D" stood for "Disk". Gates may have contributed some code. See here

Later MS did a similar trick with Windows NT (the basis XP and every Windows since). They hired a team from DEC who brought the source code of VMS with them and combined it with some bits of OS/2 to make NT. See here

Both SCP and DEC sucessfully got damages out of Microsoft later, although just drops in the ocean for Microsoft.

It is believed that Gates' parents also pulled strings in IBM that got him the DOS contract.

"when IBM CEO John Opel heard Microsoft would get the contract, he said "Oh is that Mary Gates' boy's company?" since Opel and Bill Gates' mother served together on the national board of the United Way. Ref

Great advice. I thought that was part of the problem. I know a guy from China and he says that girls are in very short supply in some parts. Judging by the escort adverts in the UK, a lot of them have come here.

Indeed. As my wife doesn't know what an xor gate is, it's good enough for me.

Defining hackers as people who take control of your computer (in whatever form) for their own ends, then this scenario of a "secure walled garden" is a win for the hackers, not a win for security. My idea of security is to prevent exactly this crap happening.

Never mind that the hacker is a corporate entity listed on the stock exchange, they are still hackers. Never mind that they will claim that you agreed to this scenario by buying their kit (as if it will be possible to buy anything else, except similar rivals' kit) - that sounds just like an old style hacker claiming you agreed to their adware/botnet/malware by clicking on their email attachment.

I recently bought an Android tablet. I keep getting a full screen advert for some game pushed in my face without even a clear way to dismiss it. It is a game in the Android app store they want me to buy. It severely pisses me off; but it is not (by their definition) malware, it is "official". This takes place within what would be the "secure walled garden". I would rather take my chances in the shark pool - at least I am in control.

I don't know where to begin with what's wrong with this idea.

What is it they say about computer security? I remember - no system can be defended if the hacker has physical access. Real data centres have high security : guards, locked doors, and even inside the building the servers are within their own locked cages. Let me know me what hosting companies are proposing to house their servers in Joe Sixpack's basement, and I'll avoid.

I had heard of it, not sure how. This is Wikipedia (under Gulf of Mexico):-

I did not say I supported the theory, only that it was suggested. I am not a geologist. Clearly it is now out of favour.