Re: Happy Birthday, M$.

On Mon, 7 Apr 2025 03:17:10 -0000 (UTC), Rich wrote:

c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:

On 4/5/25 10:37 PM, rbowman wrote:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/04/remembering-ms-dos-5-0-my-

first-

microsoft-product-on-the-companys-50th-birthday/
 
The article was from yesterday so I missed the celebration on 4/4.
Extra credit for knowing what else started on April 4, 1984.

 
  And this birthday would be their questionable purchase of a stolen
  Digital Research operating system ?  :-)

 
This birthday was, I think, their "incorporation day", so it would
predate that fateful event by a number of years.

April 4, 1984 was the start of the events in the novel of the same name.

"It was a bright day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

"The thing that he was about to do was to open a diary. This was not
illegal (nothing was illegal, since there were no longer any laws), but if
detected it was reasonably certain that it would be punished by death, or
at least by twenty-five years in a forced-labour camp. Winston fitted a
nib into the penholder and sucked it to get the grease off. The pen was an
archaic instrument, seldom used even for signatures, and he had procured
one, furtively and with some difficulty, simply because of a feeling that
the beautiful creamy paper deserved to be written on with a real nib
instead of being scratched with an ink-pencil. Actually he was not used to
writing by hand. Apart from very short notes, it was usual to dictate
everything into the speakwrite which was of course impossible for his
present purpose. He dipped the pen into the ink and then faltered for just
a second. A tremor had gone through his bowels. To mark the paper was the
decisive act. In small clumsy letters he wrote:

April 4th, 1984."

https://www.george-orwell.org/1984/0.html