1990
Internet porn
A quick search for the first Internet porn site reveals dozens claiming to be the original XXX site, so to put a date on the medium is tricky. Suffice to s
1990
Internet porn
A quick search for the first Internet porn site reveals dozens claiming to be the original XXX site, so to put a date on the medium is tricky. Suffice to say that pornography is perhaps the oldest profession on the Net.
While the chief execs of the Internet blue chips would deny it, porn sold the Web in a way that no marketing campaign possibly could have. All the moral outrage did little more than publicise the fact that anyone with a computer and a modem could see pictures of naked women or men on the Net. The Web propagated a sub-generation of computer users that are cross-eyed as well as square-eyed.
Porn sites also boosted the uptake and acceptability of e-commerce. By extension, the porn movement also boosted sales of peripherals, particularly the Webcam.
1991
Linux
The Penguin-crested open source operating system is important today because it marks the re-emergence of the Open Source movement that had previously looked crushed by proprietary software.
Developer Linus Torvalds was a student at the University of Helsinki when he discovered a passion for Unix - one that he wanted to follow on his home PC. However, the software cost $US5,000 at the time and only ran on $US10,000 workstations. Frustrated and broke, he worked on a Unix clone. By early 1991, Torvalds had created a kernel and Linux was born. Originally Torvalds called it Freax, short for free Unix or hacker freaks, but an FTP site manager didnt like the implication and called the site Linux, the working title for the project.
Following the ideology of early developers, Torvalds made the source code available and many programmers and anti-Microsoft advocates believe it is the truth and the light to banish the darkness of proprietary software.
1992
3D gaming
At a time when 286s ruled and a 33MHz 386 was considered powerful, the PCs gaming potential was sorely unexplored and under-utilised. Worse still, the humble PC was viewed with utter contempt by the console-loving youth of the time, who laughed in its face from behind their cutesy 8-bit Nintendos. In 1992 something happened that was to alter the balance of power - Wolfenstein 3D was born, and slowly it all began to change . . .
id Softwares Nazi-blasting hero William BJ Blazkowicz started a revolution in PC gaming that was ultimately responsible for one of the most popular gaming genres of today - the first person shooter. And if Wolfenstein wasnt enough to convince the cool kids to down their joypads and migrate to the PC, then the next game to come from id Software a year later certainly would.
Doom was a sheer revelation; similar to Wolfenstein in concept, but this time set in a terrifying, futuristic 3D world replete with fire-throwing beasts and chaotic demons. It spawned a huge following, elevating the programmers to almost godlike status and even helping ignite the first sparks of networked multiplayer gaming.
Forget Sonic or Mario and take a moment to salute true greatness.
1994
Netware Directory
Services (NDS)
The number of passwords required to access network services has increased exponentially, especially now that the Internet has become ubiquitous. Fortunately, for business users at least, NDS has shown the way towards a solution to the problem.
Within any medium- to large-sized business, there are many servers, printers and other network devices, access to which must be controlled. Prior to NDS, most of these devices had to be set up individually for security. Once NDS arrived, a server or servers could be used to control NDS.
The concept provides a global, distributed, replicated database that maintains information about, and provides access to, every resource on the network, to quote Novells own documentation. A single login and password gives a user access to a certain set of resources. The NDS database unifies security and access, yet its replicated on multiple servers, so no single system crash will bring it down. This is a far better system than having a plethora of unsynchronised logins and passwords to contend with.
NDS is the inspiration behind Microsofts Active Directory.
1995
Microsoft DirectX
In the early days of Windows, and particularly with DOS, peripheral devices such as sound cards or video cards needed software to be written specifically for the features they contained. As the number of manufacturers and different variations of peripheral devices grew, this became increasingly unfeasible. The main problem for developers was the inconstancy factor. Put simply, they couldnt be sure that the software they had written would work consistently across any Windows-based platform due to the wide diversity of hardware.
Microsoft developed DirectX to counter this problem. DirectX is essentially a single complete set of application program interfaces (APIs) that not only offers a standardised set of features but also improves access to more advanced features, such as 3D acceleration via Direct3D. Even if a hardware device lacked certain features it was still possible for DirectX to make use of it, courtesy of its Hardware Emulation Layer (HEL), which emulates hardware features in software.
1997
3dfx Voodoo
Despite groundbreaking titles such as Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, the PC was still lagging behind gaming consoles like the Sony PlayStation and needed a shake-up to claim the games industry. 3Dfx (later changed to 3dfx) provided just that with the original Voodoo 3D Accelerator.
Launched in 1997, the Voodoo chipset was sold by OEM vendors like Creative Labs, Diamond and Guillemot. It sported two large 3dfx chips and 4MB of RAM on a board that, unless you had a Voodoo Rush board, could only be used in addition to a standard 2D graphics card. There was competition from PowerVR and ViRGE, but the Voodoo had several things in its favour. You only needed a Pentium 90MHz for reasonable performance, it was blindingly fast and it supported 3dfxs proprietary API - Glide.
Several games required Glide before Direct3D became the standard it is now, and this made the Voodoo card the true gamers choice at the time. 3dfx continued to dominate with the Voodoo2, before it took onboard manufacturing with its Voodoo3 series. Unfortunately for the company, NVIDIA managed to produce the TNT2, GeForce and GeForce2 GTS chipsets before the next Voodoo card appeared, by which time 3dfx was long out of date.