What were the original system requirements for Windows 1.0?

Windows 1.0, the first version, released in 1985 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Microsoft's Windows operating system turned 25 last Saturday -- 27 years after the OS was supposed to be released. Windows 1.0 was two years late when it finally debuted on Nov. 20, 1985, and it took only two weeks in the wild before Microsoft had to release a 1.01 bug-fix update. Despite serious limitations and performance issues, Windows nonetheless outlasted its PC graphic user interface competitors, VisiCorp's VisiOn and the GEM interface, the latter of which was adopted by Atari.

What made Windows successful? A number of factors, but primary among them was the availability of third-party apps for the OS and immediate support for color monitors. Of course, it wouldn't be a Windows operating system if these advantages didn't come with a hefty hardware requirement.

What were the original system requirements for Windows 1.0?

Truly Trivial: What secret F-U to the Beatles is hidden in the Mac OS?

It's part of the accepted wisdom of the technology community that Apple Computer cofounder Steve Jobs is a paranoid, narcissistic jerk who has channeled his character flaws into both a cult of personality and a world-changing consumer-tech empire. I mean, you've got to be something of a high-profile jackass for The Simpsons to devote and entire episode B-plot to punking you out, and since company culture often reflects the personality of its executive leadership, it's little wonder that Apple has a long and glorious history of getting sued by unlikely people. (Carl Sagan? Seriously?)

Still, it takes a special man and a special company to wage a three-decades-long trademark war with The Beatles. The core of this dispute (pun intended) is that the holding company for most of The Beatles' intellectual property is Apple Corps, which felt that Jobs' and Steve Wozniak's fledgling little tech concern was treading on their trademark turf. This dispute was settled in 1981 when Apple Computer paid Apple Corps $80,000 and promised not to enter the music business. So long as there was a clear separation between which company made tech and which company made (or, rather, licensed) music, everything was cool.

Then, in 1986, Apple started integrating MIDI synthesizer chips into their computers, a trend that culminated in the Apple IIGS line of desktops. To Apple Corps thinking, this was a breach of the settlement, so the Beatles IP-holder sued Apple Computer again. And won. And killed the IIGS line, along with any direct hardware integration of synthesizer or music-mixing tech into Apple computers.

Now, as they say, it was on.

Apple resented the Beatles for nixing its foray into sound tech, and Apple Corps was watching Apple Computer like a hawk for any sign that Steve Jobs' company was treading anywhere near music industry territory. It got so bad inside Apple Computer that the company's legal department had to sign off on any system sounds that may or may not be interpreted as "excessively musical."

Thus it came to be that in 1991 former Apple sound designer Jim Reekes created a little file that has been in every Mac OS since System 7 -- one intended in part as a subtle, secret kiss-off to Apple Corps and their legal representatives for all the inconvenience their litigious oversight caused Apple Computer developers.

So, what secret F-U to the Beatles (or, at least, their lawyers) has been hidden in the Mac OS for almost 20 years?

Nerd Word of the Week: Noosphere

Noosphere (n.) - Intellectual term for the sphere of human thought, and/or a medium of exchange for all human ideas and knowledge. Sometimes used as a metaphorical synonym for cyberspace, the Internet. The related terms Noocene and noocracy refer to the era when humans became self-aware and began improving themselves though idea sharing, and a system of government that directly acknowledges and harnesses this awareness, respectively.

The noosphere is a recurring plot device in science fiction, perhaps most notably in The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway, which saw noospheric weapons ravaging human civilization by permantly erasing ideas, and in the anime/manga series Neon Genesis Evangelion, in which several characters sought to make the noosphere a tangible reality.

I bring it up because: Eighteen years ago today, the first version of Linux kernel was released to the Internet. This led to a revolution in software development and the publication of two seminal essays by Eric S. Raymond: "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" and "Homesteading the Noosphere." The former deals with top-down versus grassroots software engineering and commerce. The latter discusses the possibility and preconcpetions of actually owning and profiting from ideas in an era when said ideas can be massively, instantly, and freely exchanged via the Internet. The noosphere is thus an overlap concept between science and science fiction, wherein this collective intelligence of humanity is simultaneously a philosophical construct, a sociological phenomenon, and economic force, and a buzzword-compliant synonym for the Web. Plus, if you know how to spell and pronounce noosphere, you've got instant nerd-cred.

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