I've Been Thunderstruck » Computing http://www.thunderstruck.com Words on Weather Thu, 13 Oct 2011 21:25:10 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.2 What Was The First Successful Video-Arcade Game? http://www.thunderstruck.com/what-was-the-first-successful-video-arcade-game http://www.thunderstruck.com/what-was-the-first-successful-video-arcade-game#comments Wed, 01 Oct 2008 14:00:19 +0000 GoNorthWest http://www.thunderstruck.com/?p=82 Pong, a simple electronic version of a tennis game, was the first successful video-arcade game. First marketed in 1972, Pong was actually invented 14 years earlier in 1958 by William Higinbotham, who headed instrumentation design at Brookhaven National Laboratory at the time. Invented to amuse visitors touring the laboratory, the game was so popular that visitors would stand in line for hours to play it. Higinbotham dismantled the system two years later, and, considering it a trifle, did not patent it. In 1972, Atari released Pong, an arcade version of Higinbotham’s game, and Magnavox released Odyssey, a version that could be played on home televisions.

]]> http://www.thunderstruck.com/what-was-the-first-successful-video-arcade-game/feed 0 Your Password Must Contain 18770 Characters! http://www.thunderstruck.com/your-password-must-contain-18770-characters http://www.thunderstruck.com/your-password-must-contain-18770-characters#comments Fri, 23 May 2008 21:20:55 +0000 GoNorthWest http://www.thunderstruck.com/your-password-must-contain-18770-characters Check out KB276304 from Microsoft. There’s apparently a bug that appears when Windows 2000 is configured to authenticate against an MIT Kerberos domain that throws the following error message:

Your password must be at least 18770 characters and cannot repeat any of your previous 30689 passwords. Please type a different password. Type a password that meets these requirements in both text boxes.

Holy smokes!

]]> http://www.thunderstruck.com/your-password-must-contain-18770-characters/feed 0 Strange Microsoft Products http://www.thunderstruck.com/strange-microsoft-products http://www.thunderstruck.com/strange-microsoft-products#comments Thu, 28 Feb 2008 07:11:12 +0000 GoNorthWest http://www.thunderstruck.com/strange-microsoft-products I was walking around the Microsoft campus in Redmond, WA, today, and came across a plaza they have created where they place tiles to commemorate all the products the company has shipped over the years. Below are pictures of some of the more strange products…a few of which I’ve never heard of before.

This is the tile at the entrance to the plaza…sums up their vision from quite a few years ago:

I’m pretty sure most of you have heard of this very popular product from Microsoft:

I bet the investors love this product:

And now the beginning of an animal theme:

I’ve never heard of this one, but as a lover of music, it might have been interesting:

I may head back someday and see what I missed. I wonder if any other software companies have similar commemorative tiles?

]]> http://www.thunderstruck.com/strange-microsoft-products/feed 1 Compiler Complaint http://www.thunderstruck.com/compiler-complaint http://www.thunderstruck.com/compiler-complaint#comments Fri, 18 Jan 2008 08:15:05 +0000 GoNorthWest http://www.thunderstruck.com/?p=12

]]> http://www.thunderstruck.com/compiler-complaint/feed 0