2006 Events |
|
Past events are listed below in reverse-chronological order. For the most recent events, see the home page.
2006/12/26: Gerald R. Ford, the 38th President (1974-1977) and 40th Vice President (1973-1974) of the United States, died at his home in Rancho Mirage, California. At the age of 93, Ford was the longest-lived U.S. president. (wiki:Gerald_Ford)
2006/12/25: James Brown, one of the most influential figures in 20th-century popular music, often called The Godfather of Soul, died at age 73 on Christmas Day in Atlanta, Georgia of heart failure while suffering from severe pneumonia. (wiki:James_Brown)
2006/12/24: R.A. Radford's classic 1945 article The Economic Organisation of a P.O.W. Camp has been moved to the collection of articles.
2006/12/21: Revisions to An Introduction to Business and On the Formatting of Dates have been made and posted.
2006/11/05: An Introduction to Printed Circuits and an opinion On Elections and Voting have been added to the collection of articles.
2006/12/12: Computer disk drive pioneer Alan Shugart died at age 76 in San José, California of complications from heart surgery he had undergone six weeks earlier. (wiki:Alan_Shugart)
At I.B.M. early in his career, Shugart managed the group that invented the floppy disk. He later, in 1973, founded Shugart Associates (acquired by Xerox in 1977), which in 1976 introduced the 5.25" minifloppy disk drive (wiki:Shugart_Associates) and in 1979 the Shugart Associates System Interface (abbreviated SASI, pronounced "sassy"), the basis for the Small Computer System Interface (abbreviated SCSI, pronounced "scuzzy"), which was standardized in 1986 (wiki:SCSI) as ANSI standard X3.131-1986, popularly known as SCSI-1 (wiki:Shugart_Associates). (In 1981, many members of the SASI engineering team, including leader Larry Boucher, left to found host-adapter maker Adaptec.)
In 1979, Shugart co-founded Shugart Technology, soonafter renamed Seagate Technology, with Finis Conner – who in 1986 co-founded Conner Peripherals. After Conner Peripherals merged with Seagate in 1996 (wiki:Conner_Peripherals), forming the world's largest independent manufacturer of disk drives, Shugart left Seagate in July 1998 (wiki:Alan_Shugart). In 2006, Seagate acquired its rival Maxtor, which itself had acquired rivals MiniScribe in 1990 and Quantum Corporation in 2000 (wiki:Maxtor). (For Seagate's poor product quality since 1989 and Maxtor's poor trade practices and product quality since 1993, Syncopated had separately disqualified Seagate and Maxtor as potential vendors.)
Shugart is remembered for backing (in 2000) a ballot initiative "to give California voters the option of choosing 'none of the above' on the ballot as a way of voicing their dissatisfaction with the candidates." The initiative ultimately failed. (L.A. Times obituary)
In 2005, Alan Shugart was awarded fellowship by the Computer History Museum, "For his lifelong contributions to the creation of the modern disk drive industry".
2006/11/11 & 2006/11/17: On November 11 and 17, 2006, Sony released its PlayStation 3 game console in Japan and North America, respectively. (The European release has been postponed to March 2007.)
Syncopated contributed to the development of core software technology used in the Sony PlayStation 3.
2006/11/01: Syncopated is pleased to announce its new membership in the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce.
2006/10/12: Syncopated celebrates its second anniversary as a Texas corporation
2006/10/09: C.M.P. United Business Media, whose game group also runs the Game Developers Conference, Game Developer magazine and Gamasutra.com, buys The Game Initiative and the Austin Game Conference. For details, see the story at Gamasutra.com.
Syncopated had disqualified the Austin Game Conference as a potential vendor, in part due to evidence identifying it as a source of poorly-targeted unsolicited commercial email, often referred to as Spam.
2006/09/13: Former Texas Governor Ann Richards died at age 73 of esophageal cancer.
Born September 1, 1933 in Lakeview, Texas (now part of Lacy-Lakeview), Richards was a member of the Democratic Party and the 45th governor of Texas, serving from January 15, 1991 to January 17, 1995. In 1994, Governor Richards narrowly lost her campaign for re-election with 47% of votes to George W. Bush's 52%. (wiki:Anne_Richards)
2006/09/06-08: The fourth annual Austin Game Conference was held September 6-8, 2006, but Syncopated refused to attend, as it did in 2005.
Why? Since its inception, the Conference has been out-of-touch with the local game development community, largely ignoring the console game developers that now dominate the Austin game development landscape. Also, Syncopated has identified the Austin Game Conference as a source of poorly-targeted unsolicited commercial email, often referred to as Spam.
2006/09/06: Sony Computer Entertainment Europe announced it had revised its PlayStation 3 launch date to March, 2007. In response, Sony Computer Entertainment America announced that the North American and Japanese November 17 release date will not be affected, citing the limited mass availability of the blue lasers used in the PlayStation 3's next-generation disc reader as the reason behind the delayed European release.
2006/08/22: In 2006, the computer hard disk drive turned 50 years old.
The first hard disk drive, the one-ton 5-MB I.B.M. RAMAC, was introduced in 1956. (wiki:RAMAC) According to Lee Gomes's Wall Street Journal article (2006/08/22, page B3), the name RAMAC is an acronym derived from "Random Access Method of Accounting and Control".
Volunteers are currently restoring a RAMAC at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. (wiki:RAMAC)
2006/08/17: In August 2006, Syncopated submitted an ICAAN U.D.R.P. complaint to the National Arbitration Forum against a party that registered through Arizona-based Go Daddy Software, Inc. four domain names that each include the name "Syncopated Software", a registered trademark owned by Syncopated.
Using Go Daddy's subsidiary Domains by Proxy, Inc., the registrant remained relatively anonymous until the complaint was filed.
2006/08: In August, the entertainment software industry turned 30 years old.
In August 1976, the Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation released its Channel F Video Entertainment Computer system, introducing home video game players to the replaceable program cartridges that spawned the video game software industry.
2006/05/09: On May 9, 2006, the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted Syncopated registration of its trademark "Syncopated Software", for which Syncopated filed concurrent to beginning regular use of the mark in October 2004.
2006/05/01-05: May 1-5, the 15th biennial World Congress on Information Technology was held in Austin, Texas.
Syncopated provided database programming and support services for W.C.I.T. 2006.
2006/02/08: At the February 8 regular meeting of the City of Austin Telecommunications Commission, Syncopated's John Carlsen voiced his support for adding Internet data telecommunication service over existing city-owned power utility lines. (This is often referred to as "broadband over power lines", or B.P.L.) His address to the council is now available online.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]