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Through "today in history", we can look at the future from the past and change the future from the present.
Today is November 3, 2022, and on this day in 1957, the former Soviet satellite Sputnik II successfully took to the sky carrying a dog named Laika; As the first creature in space, the puppy Laika died of shock and heat stroke just a few hours after flying into the sky.
Although Laika only survived in space for a few hours, however, its short journey to space proved that mammals can withstand the harsh conditions of a rocket launch, paving the way for future manned flights. Looking back at the history of science and technology, November 3 also saw many key events that had many impacts on our scientific and technological progress.
November 3, 1962: Gabe Newell, the father of Steam, is born
Gabe Newell was born on November 3, 1962, and many Chinese computer gamers know him because he is the founder of the well-known game company Valve and the mainstream game platform Steam, affectionately known as "G Fat". The Steam platform is a game and software platform personally developed and designed by Valve hired BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen, and is one of the world's largest comprehensive digital distribution platforms. Players can buy, download, discuss, upload, and share games and software on the platform.
Source: Wikipedia
Gabe Newell was educated at Davis High School in Davis, California, and attended Harvard University in the early 80s of the 20th century; He dropped out of school to join Microsoft, where he helped develop the first generation of the Windows operating system, and Gabe often says he was the "producer" of the first three versions of Windows.
In 1996, he left Microsoft with Mike Harrington to found the game company Valve. At Valve, he and Harrington used their own funds to develop the well-known video game Half-Life, which pioneered a new norm for FPS games and started the MOD modding craze; You may not know Half-Life, but maybe you've more or less heard of its spin-off game – CS (Counter-Strike).
After the release of Half-Life, Gabe Newell began to conceive Half-Life 2, and during the creative process, he spent several months researching the Steam project, and in 2002, the Steam platform came out with CS1.4 Beta, and countless game publishing companies released and updated games on this platform; The Steam platform controlled most of the PC game download market in 2011 and made Gabe Newell one of the richest people in the United States, with an estimated net worth of $5.5 billion as of 2017.
Since many of Gabe Newell's best-selling games (such as "Half-Life", "Road to Survival", and "Portal") have not released a third-generation sequel, stopping at the second generation, players joke that he "can't count 3"; Gabe Newell himself laughed at the matter in DOTA 2's personal themed voice pack. Interestingly, his birthday is November 3, with the number "3".
Source: Wikipedia
November 3, 1962: Phillip Katz, the creator of the ZIP format, is born
Born on November 3, 1962 in Wisconsin, USA, Phillip Katz is best known for co-creating the Zip file format for data compression, and he also wrote the PKZIP program, a program that creates Zip files under DOS.
In the late '80s, a copyright lawsuit between the System Enhancement Association (SEA) and Phillip Katz's company, PKWARE, was widely publicized in the BBS community. Phil Katz's software business was very successful, but for the last years of his life, he struggled with social isolation and chronic alcoholism.
Phillip Katz graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) with a degree in Computer Science Engineering; After graduating, he was hired as a programmer by Allen-Bradley. He writes code to run programmable logic controllers and operates manufacturing equipment for corporate customers on shop floors around the world.
In 1986, Katz left Allen-Bradley to work for Graysoft, a software company in Milwaukee. At the time, he was working on an alternative to the ARC compression format called PKARC; ARC programs are written in C, and the source code can be found on the BBS of System Enhancement Associates. PKARC, his own alternative to ARC, was open sourced to the community and spread rapidly; Katz founded PKWARE in 1986, but he continued to work at Graysoft until 1987.
Source: Wikipedia
After Katz began his career at PKWARE, he was quickly hit by his peers: System Enhancement Associates (SEA), the maker of the ARC program, sued Katz for infringing on ARC trademarks and copyrights. The strongest evidence at trial came from independent software expert John Navas, who was appointed by the court to compare the two procedures; PKARC is a derivative of ARC, he said, noting that the comments in both programs are often identical, including spelling errors.
On August 2, 1988, the plaintiff and defendant announced a settlement that included a confidential cross-licensing agreement. Leaked agreement documents show that the defendant paid the plaintiff $22,500 in patent fees, as well as $40,000 in expense reimbursement under the terms of the settlement; In addition, after the agreement becomes effective, the defendant will pay the plaintiff a patent royalty of 6.5% of all revenue from the ARC-compliant program.
THE DISPUTE BETWEEN SEA AND PKWARE QUICKLY BECAME A HOT TOPIC ON WEB FORUMS AT THE TIME, AND THE SEA'S LAWSUIT ANGERED MANY SHAREWARE USERS, WHO CONSIDERED IT A "BIG COMPANY WITHOUT GAS" AND KATZ A "LITTLE GUY." The community largely sided with Katz as SEA tried to retroactively declare the ARC file format to be closed and proprietary.
A year later, in January 1989, Katz created the Zip file format by publishing the APPNOTE.TXT specification, declaring that the Zip file format would always be open source; The ARC format has since disappeared, and the Zip format has gradually been adopted as the main standard. This was a revenge for Phillip Katz, and SEA lost its voice in the market and collapsed.
However, Katz was staunchly opposed to Microsoft's Windows in the early 90s. This led to a missed opportunity for PKWARE, and WinZip became the standard today; Perhaps, it was these ups and downs that made Phillip Katz withdrawn and began to drink heavily, and from 1994 to September 1999, Katz was arrested five times for operating after having his driver's license suspended or revoked.
On April 14, 2000, Phillip Katz was found collapsed in a hotel room at the age of 37; This great and young developer, this sensitive and lonely programmer, died young.
Source: Wikipedia
November 3, 1971: The first version of Unix is released
Unix is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that preceded Multics, which was launched in 1964. Due to the slow project, Bell Labs withdrew in 1969, and Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and others who participated in the project began to develop Unix themselves. Unix directly affects all operating systems that are popular today.
The father of Unix was Ken Thompson, who led the development of the Unix operating system with Dennis Ritchie and Douglas McIlroy at Bell Labs, and was the winner of the 1983 Turing Award. Thompson is also a founding member and developer of Plan 9, inventor of the B language, co-inventor of UTF-8, and co-inventor of Go.
Unix family
Source: Wikipedia
After the Thompson three developed Unix, Unix quickly gained widespread use in academic institutions and large enterprises, and AT&T, the owner of UNIX at the time, licensed Unix source code to academic institutions for research or teaching purposes under cheap or even free licenses, and many institutions expanded and improved on the basis of this source code, forming the so-called "Unix variants", which in turn promoted the development of Unix. One of the most famous variants is the Berkeley Software Suite (BSD) product developed by the University of California, Berkeley.
In the decades since, Unix has continued to change, its copyright owners have changed, and the number of licensors has increased. The copyright to Unix was owned by AT&T, which Novell owned and acquired, and then Novell sold the copyright to Santa Cruz, excluding intellectual property and patents. There are many large companies that have licensed Unix and developed their own Unix products, such as IBM's AIX, HP-Ux, sco's Openserver, SUN's Solaris (acquired by Oracle), and SGI's IRIX.
Unix has been widely used in the server field because of its safe, reliable, efficient and powerful features. Until the beginning of the GNU/Linux epidemic, Unix was also the mainstream of operating systems used in scientific computing, mainframes, supercomputers, etc. It is still used in some data centers with high stability requirements.
Source: Wikipedia
November 3, 2010: The "3Q War" comes to a climax
In the September 27 column "Today in History," we introduced the beginning of the "3Q Wars," an industry-known Internet war between Qihoo 360 and Tencent around "monopoly and privacy protection."
Until 6 p.m. on November 3, 2010, Tencent announced in an open letter that it would stop running QQ software on computers with 360 software, advocating that 360 software must be uninstalled to log in to QQ, which is the most fierce action of Tencent so far in a series of disputes between 360 and Tencent, and it is this move that has led the "3Q war" to a new situation and attracted the attention of the country.
Source: Wikipedia
After Tencent's tough action, it was still this day in 2010, 360 issued a response at about 9 p.m. to "ensure that 360 and QQ run at the same time", and then 360's "buckle bodyguard" software was quietly offline on its official website; On November 4, 360 issued an open letter saying: "We are willing to put aside the controversy and restore calm to the network, and the 360 buckle bodyguard is officially offline. With the strong intervention of the relevant state departments, QQ has begun to restore compatibility with 360; On the same day, 360 issued a pop-up announcement announcing the recall of the "buckle bodyguard" and asking users to uninstall it, and this move seems to have signs of reconciliation.
It wasn't until November 5 that the Communications Security Bureau of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Public Security formally intervened in the matter, and had previously approached the two companies separately for inquiries. On the morning of November 5, 2010, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Internet Society and other departments met to discuss the response plan; The government has stepped in to demand an end to the dispute by means of an executive order. 360 also announced a recall of the "buckle bodyguard" software under this situation, and the two companies are no longer allowed to publish news and information inciting the incident.
Subsequently, Qihoo 360 announced on November 10 that QQ and 360 have restored compatibility, and published a title on the official website titled "QQ and 360 have restored compatibility Thank you! ", thank the majority of users for their support of 360 software, publish the contact information of relevant departments, and remind users to report to relevant departments if they find a conflict between the two software. The war stalled for several months until Tencent went to court again in 2011 and Qihoo 360's counterclaim in 2012.
The "3Q War" has profoundly affected the development of China's Internet history and the perfection of the law, and the record about it should not be summarized in just a few columns; The "either/or" announced by Tencent on November 3 represents the culmination of this incident: even now in 2022, it is difficult to make a trade-off between the mandatory "either-or" of online products.
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