Tag Archive for: 25th

This Week In Techdirt History: May 19th – 25th

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Five Years Ago

This week in 2014, we watched as the proposed NSA reform bill — the USA Freedom Act — got watered down by the House to the point that every civil liberties organization pulled its support for the law, and it started to look like Reps. Rogers and Ruppersberger had pulled a fast one on us all. The House inevitably passed the now-useless bill (even without the votes of half of its original co-sponsors), so attention had to turn to the Senate and other ways of fighting back against the NSA, like a small victory in freeing the NIST from collaborating with the agency on encryption standards.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2009, various Attorneys General were still on the warpath against Craigslist (even those who had successfully busted criminals on the site) after it gave in to pressure the previous week. While some tried to draw odd conclusions from Craigslist’s cooperation, the company was also fighting back and suing for declaratory relief against one AG. And we had to wonder as they did: why Craigslist, not newspapers or other websites?

Meanwhile, Perfect 10 was shot down yet again in an attempt to hold search engines liable for image thumbnails, while Joel Tenenbaum’s lawyer was gearing up for a likely defeat with plans to defend downloading as fair use. And we read one pro-copyright book that surprised us by relying heavily on… Techdirt comments to make its case about how bad the pirates are.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2004, Jack Valenti was feuding with Quentin Tarantino over the latter’s failure to condemn movie piracy, Italy was getting ready to put people in jail for file sharing, and California was considering doing the same. Google was making waves on two fronts: then-brand-new Gmail’s unprecedented offering of 1GB of storage was spurring the competition to at least pretend to do the same (while a typo on Gmail itself led some people to think they might be getting a terabyte), and the Google IPO was leading absolutely everyone to try to find a way to benefit from the hype (not least the list of underwriters, which was basically all of Wall Street). But, the guy who had been selling fake “pre-IPO shares” to Wall Street insiders was one of two scammers facing jailtime, too.

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This Week In Techdirt History: February 25th – March 3rd

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Five Years Ago

This week in 2013, we saw plenty of copyright fails, like NASCAR trying to get rid of videos of a crash at Daytona, and a company trying to hide a recording of its exec cursing an analyst, and sheet metal and air conditioning contractors trying to prevent the publication of federal standards, and even one of the companies in charge of administering the new six-strikes program misidentifying content. Speaking of the six strikes program, it was starting to look weird and ugly — although anyone looking at other countries saw that coming.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2008, while one court was dismissing racketeering charges against the RIAA, another was rejecting the RIAA’s own claims about “making available” being infringement, and some musicians were wondering if they should take the RIAA to court to find out where all that settlement money was going. Meanwhile, a Canadian politician pushing for a Canadian DMCA was caught violating copyright himself, and Pakistan joined the list of countries to attempt to censor YouTube with disastrous results leading it to quickly reverse course.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2003, while Roxio was trying to resurrect Napster by hiring Shawn Fanning, it was becoming more common to see predictions of the death of the CD. People were starting to notice the feds seizing domain names, while congress decided it was time to target P2P sharing on college campuses. Netflix signed up its millionth customer, and lots of people were starting to see the profit potential of eBay — from businesses realizing it could be their sole distribution channel to a California airport using it to sell confiscated goods.

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2017’s 25 geekiest 25th anniversaries

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Early 90s notables
2017s 25 geekiest 25th anniversaries 1

Image by Nintendo, Pan Books, Michael Hughes, Paramount Pictures

A big year for technology – and technology-related events – 1992 saw the release of Linux under GNU, the sending of the first SMS message, IBM trotting out the ThinkPad and Simon, which was the first mobile phone to include PDA features (smartphone). The year also saw the launch of iconic videogame franchises Mario Kart and Mortal Kombat. And, perhaps worst of all, Microsoft unleashed upon the world the scourge that is PowerPoint. For previous versions of this series, please see: 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007.

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Network World Paul McNamara

This year’s 25 geekiest 25th anniversaries

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This is the eleventh year I’ve compiled this particular collection of trivia, which will come in handy someday if I’m ever on Jeopardy and the category is 1980s/1990s technology and related stuff.  

A big year for such stuff, 1992 saw the release of Linux under GNU, the sending of the first SMS message, IBM trotting out the ThinkPad and Simon, which was the first mobile phone to include PDA features (smartphone). The year also saw the launch of iconic videogame franchises Mario Kart and Mortal Kombat. And, perhaps worst of all, Microsoft unleashed upon the world the scourge that is PowerPoint. Here’s the full list:

IBM debuts ThinkPad

2017s 25 geekiest 25th anniversaries 2 Raymangold

Known for its minimalist design, the ThinkPad laptop was launched by IBM in 1992 and became a  workplace staple for Big Blue before it sold the line to Lenovo in 2005. For years the ThinkPad was the only laptop allowed aboard the International Space Station and there are reportedly some still in use up there. I am typing on a practically new Earth-bound model right now.

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Network World Paul McNamara