Latest news with #techhistory
Geek Wire
2 days ago
- Business
- Geek Wire
Bill Gates business card up for auction, with significant date from Microsoft's early days
Geek Life: Fun stories, memes, humor and other random items at the intersection of tech, science, business and culture. SEE MORE A Bill Gates business card obtained on Nov. 6, 1980, during a visit to the Microsoft co-founder's Bellevue, Wash., office. (Lelands Photo) Long before the days of tapping your smartphone against someone else's to share contact information, small paper business cards did the trick — even for someone as tech-savvy as Bill Gates. In a nod to simpler times, one such card is up for auction, featuring Gates' office address and telephone number from Microsoft's early days in Bellevue, Wash. The beige card features Microsoft's first logo, and Gates' name appears as 'William H. Gates,' a name more often associated with his father. The 45-year-old card is being offered by Lelands, a New Jersey auction house specializing in sports memorabilia and trading cards, as part of a 'Summer Classic Auction' that runs through Aug. 16 and features such items as L.A. Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani's 300th career home run ball and a rare Shoeless Joe Jackson 1914 signed baseball. There is a currently a single $500 bid on the Gates card. According to Lelands, the card was obtained directly by the consignor during a business meeting on Nov. 6, 1980, and was hand-dated by that person in black ink. The date is significant in tech and computer history because it's when Microsoft signed a deal with IBM to create an operating system for a new IBM personal computer. Gates and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen developed the Microsoft Disk Operating System, commonly known as MS-DOS, and according to a post on 'This Day in Tech History,' they 'shrewdly included a clause in the agreement [with IBM] that allowed them [Microsoft] to sell the operating system to other companies under the name MS-DOS.' 'That clause made Microsoft a giant, and it changed history,' Lelands says in its auction item description. Founded in 1975 in Albuquerque, N.M., Microsoft moved to Bellevue in January 1979. The company's office on Northeast 8th Street in the heart of the city's business district was on the eighth floor of the Old Bank Building. The location is now referred to as the Plaza Buildings. The phone number on the card includes a 206 area code for Seattle, before a split in 1997 created 425 for the growing Eastside and cities such as Bellevue and Redmond. Special coverage: Microsoft @ 50
Irish Times
24-07-2025
- Irish Times
Goodbye, blue screen of death. I won't miss you
Wave goodbye to the Windows 'blue screen of death'. Much like Clippy and Windows Phone before it, the much-hated error screen is about to be consigned to tech history, with Microsoft announcing the decision last month, in a catchily titled blog post 'The Windows Resiliency Initiative: Building resilience for a future-ready enterprise'. It is the end of an era. Everyone has a horror story about Microsoft's error screen appearing at the worst possibly moment, taking hours of work with it. I don't remember the first time I saw Microsoft's blue screen of death on my computer. But I do remember the worst time. Back in college, when I was working on my thesis, I lost a good chunk of a critical chapter when the machine had a critical error and crashed, taking my work with it. I'd like to say it was my best work, but we will never know. With a deadline looming, I had to spend several more hours piecing it back together. Yes, I should have been saving as I went. I realised that as soon as the screen flashed up, but hindsight is 20/20. It served as one of those important lessons we learn after the fact, alongside daily backups for your phone and why you should turn on 'Find My' for your important devices, after you lose them. After that, auto save was set to the shortest possible interval. We live and learn. READ MORE But Microsoft's error screen is a well-known spectre in the tech world, and has been for more than 30 years. Caused by hardware errors, driver conflicts, overheating components – anything your system didn't like – the error screen was an ever present threat. The blue error messages have been around since the early days of Windows in the 1980s, when they more 'mild annoyance' than 'death'. But the screens we have become so familiar with were introduced to Windows in the early 1990s, as part of Windows NT 3.1. At some point, it picked up the 'blue Screen of death' nickname. And since then it has been annoying the hell out of people just trying to get on with their day. The blue screen of death evolved over the years from a list of code and errors to include a brief explanation of the problem and eventually a QR code and a frowny face, which felt suspiciously like it was mocking me. 'Lost your work? What did you do? Sad for you.' It has been a while since it has reared its ugly head, on my machine at least. Maybe it was the advent of the always-on internet connection and auto updates for software. Maybe it was that companies got a bit more of a handle of more critical bugs and flaws in their software. Either way, critical errors are more of an exception than I remember. [ We are gradually becoming inured to technological messes Opens in new window ] For most of us, the blue screen of death is a small annoyance that can be fixed with a reboot or a software update. But when the CrowdStrike bug caused an outage on Microsoft's virtual machines a year ago, it wasn't just a minor inconvenience. The chaos was widespread. The cause? A faulty update from security company CrowdStrike that forced virtual machines to shut down and get stuck in a loop. It affected an estimated 8.5 million Windows computers around the world, less than 1 per cent of Microsoft's install base. But it wasn't about the quantity, but rather the industries that it hit. Healthcare, transport, government agencies; all were impacted by the bug. Flights were delayed as check-in systems went down, then grounded as operations halted. The blue screen of death was seen at baggage carousels in airports, on departures boards. Doctors in the UK were left unable to access medical records in GP surgeries. In some cases, it took weeks to fix the problem, leaving a lot of people in limbo in the meantime. It was a wake-up call for all of us about our dependence on technology. If less than 1 per cent of Microsoft's machines were affected, and the fallout was this chaotic, imagine if the problem has been more widespread? And what if the issue had been a malicious move rather than a simple error? After all that chaos, you imagine that even a hint of a blue screen would trigger a visceral reaction in some people, not least among Microsoft executives. [ CrowdStrike tech outage: How can we stop the next catastrophe? Opens in new window ] So perhaps it is sensible for Microsoft to retire it. But never fear: much like Clippy has been replaced by CoPilot, the crash screen isn't really going away. While the blue screen is being retired, it is being replaced by a black restart screen that echoes the days of Windows 3.1. This time it has a simplified message: Your device ran into a problem and needs to restart. Along with a code for the technically minded who need it, and a progress indicator for the rest of us who just want to get on with our work. So goodbye, blue screen of death. I can't say I'll miss you.
