{"id":2352,"date":"2004-10-17T23:45:21","date_gmt":"2004-10-18T06:45:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2004\/10\/17\/2352.html"},"modified":"2004-10-17T23:45:21","modified_gmt":"2004-10-18T06:45:21","slug":"items-geeky-anniversaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2004\/10\/17\/items-geeky-anniversaries\/","title":{"rendered":"Items: Geeky anniversaries"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Last Thursday was the tenth anniversary of the announcement of \"Netscape network navigator<\/a>\" from \"Mosaic Communications Corporation.\" It was a public beta version of the software that would later come to be called Netscape Navigator. You could download it for free (via ftp) for personal use; commercial users had to pay $99 per user. In fact, you can still download old versions of Navigator<\/a> if you're so inclined.<\/p>\n

When I heard that Jim Clark had left SGI (where I was then working) to go found a company making web browsers, I briefly thought it would be cool to work there; I'd been documenting SGI's \"Web authoring and serving solution,\" called WebFORCE, and I already thought the Web was pretty darn nifty. But I think it never really occurred to me to go apply there, though I'm not sure why not.<\/p>\n

(Which reminds me, obliquely, that a few months from now will be the tenth anniversary of my putting up my first web page; SGI set aside server space for employees to put up their own pages.)<\/p>\n

The other recent geeky anniversary came yesterday, the 30th anniversary of the first release of Dungeons & Dragons. Apparently someone or other designated the day as Worldwide Dungeons & Dragons day. I may have a copy of the original-edition \"World of Greyhawk\" supplement somewhere around, but I think I gave it away last year, along with the \"blue book\" boxed set from about 1979. I was tempted to put together an impromptu game yesterday for old times' sake, but ended up spending the evening discussing ballot measures instead. Ah, the life of a grownup.<\/p>\n

This one's not so much an anniversary as a milestone: iTunes Music Store sales reached 150 million songs recently. In a thread at MacRumors, someone posted a graph of the known data points<\/a> since the store's launch a year and a half ago. It shows what initially looks like exponential growth, falling off in recent months to something more like linear growth; still, the current rate is about 4 million songs a week. There's also a graph of the daily download rate over time<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Finally, not an anniversary at all, but it sort of fits the old and modern tech and games aspect of this entry's theme: you can download the classic Mac puzzle game The Fool's Errand<\/a> for Mac, Windows, and Amiga for free. Likewise for the same author's game 3 in Three<\/a>, in which you play the part of a number 3 wandering through a computer's memory. And in just over three weeks, you'll be able to obtain (for about $40 US plus S&H) the new sequel The Fool and His Money<\/a>. (Thanks, j7y<\/a>!)<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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