harrymcc - Slashdot User

Atari's oddest products-> 0

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harrymcc

on Monday February 13, @10:47AM

harrymcc writes "For a company synonymous with early video games, Atari spent a lot of its early history trying to break into other businesses. It made jukeboxes, pinball machines, a primitive digital jukebox, a very early videophone, a music-visualization box and more. Over at Technologizer, Benj Edwards looked at these oddities, plus some of the more obscure and interesting early Atari video games."
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Bill Gates' masterpiece, DONKEY.BAS, is back-> 0

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harrymcc

on Saturday January 28, @12:42PM

harrymcc writes "When the IBM PC shipped in 1981, it came with a BASIC game called DONKEY. Your objective: drive down road, avoid hitting donkeys. It was the first game for the new PC, and shipped with every copy of MS-DOS for a decade. Oh, and its co-author was none other than the co-founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates.

DONKEY.BAS is now back in a new version for the iPhone and iPad. It seems quite faithful to the original. (Please, Microsoft, don't issue a takedown notice.)"
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7 things I learned from building my first desktop -> 0

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harrymcc

on Tuesday January 24, @02:28PM

harrymcc writes "It's never too late to start building PCs--and you don't need to be a hardcore hardware geek to do it. Over at Technologizer, Jared Newman shares some of the lessons he learned when he put together his first machine, from misconceptions (it's easier than people think) to tips (you can avoid static issues by doing the job in your underwear)."
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Why history needs software piracy-> 0

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harrymcc

on Monday January 23, @04:19AM

harrymcc writes "For all the ongoing controversy over software piracy--and the passionate arguments on both sides--one point is rarely discussed. That's the fact that only piracy has ensured that software from the past has survived for historians to experience it. And with app stores and aggressive DRM becoming the default state of affairs, programs will disappear from memory even more quickly unless pirates preserve them for future generations. Over at Technologizer, historian Benj Edwards makes the case for piracy as a protector of our cultural legacy."
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Digital watches of the 1970s: The pre-PC business-> 0

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harrymcc

on Wednesday January 04, @06:51AM

harrymcc writes "I just bought a real geek conversation piece: a new-old-stock Commodore LED watch, which the famed computer maker sold circa 1976, before the PET 2001, VIC-20, and Commodore 64 came along. Commodore was one of a bunch of PC-industry companies that dove into watches at the time; others included Intel, HP, TI, and Sinclair. And although they all exited the industry by the early 1980s--and probably regretted getting into it in the first place--their forays into timepiece manufacturing were an interesting preview of the PC business that exploded just a few years later."
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The 52 lamest moments in tech 2011-> 0

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harrymcc

on Friday December 30, @09:28AM

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A brief history of Microsoft Vegas keynotes-> 0

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harrymcc

on Wednesday December 21, @03:45PM

harrymcc writes "Microsoft has announced that Steve Ballmer's keynote at next month's Consumer Electronics Show will end the tradition--which actually goes back to keynotes Bill Gates gave at COMDEX at least as early as 1983. The news made me nostalgic, so I dug up clips of past Microsoft keynotes on YouTube, from a famous Windows 98 crash to the ill-fated Tablet PC and Vista launches."
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Bill Gates isn't returning to Microsoft. Good!-> 0

Submitted by harrymcc on Thursday December 15, @02:30PM

harrymcc writes "Ending a flurry of far-fetched speculation, Bill Gates is officially denying that he'll return to a full-time role at Microsoft. I'm relieved. For one thing, he's one of the greatest philanthropists who ever lived. For another, I'm convinced that today's Microsoft wouldn't be in better shape if its CEO were Bill Gates rather than Steve Ballmer. Over at Technologizer, I explain why."
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Computer Space: the dawn of the arcade video game-> 0

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harrymcc

on Monday December 12, @01:47AM

harrymcc writes "Forty years ago this year, a forgotten company called Nutting Associates introduced a coin-operated arcade game called Computer Space. It was based on the seminal 1962 game Spacewar, was the brainchild of a young engineer named Nolan Bushnell, and spawned an industry. At Technologizer, Benj Edwards has taken an in-depth look at the origins and lasting importance of this game, which was on the market only briefly (no more than 1,000 units were sold)."
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Steve Jobs' unpublished 2003 iTunes Music intervie-> 0

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harrymcc

on Wednesday December 07, @04:34AM

harrymcc writes "When Apple unveiled the iTunes Music Store in 2003, it had only 200,000 tracks and (like the iPod at the time) worked only on Macs--and many people doubted that the Kazaa-loving world was ready to pay for its digital music, period. But the Music Store was a hit that made the iPod an even greater hit, and it paved the way for Apple's later stores for movies and apps. On launch day, TIME's Laura Locke interviewed Steve Jobs about the new offering; at Technologizer, we're publishing the interview in its entirety for the first time."
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