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Projects, Linux, networks, systems, finds and internet standards from 1996.
In 1996 Logitech replaced infrared technology with radio in its wireless mice. Infrared failed in everyday use because of a missing line of sight, for example piles of paper on the desk. The MouseMan Cordless transmitted about two metres on four channels, the TrackMan Live trackball for presentations up to ten metres.
Read the full postIn 1996 Bertelsmann Online tested AOL access in which requests went out by modem and web data came back via satellite. The receiver was the Mediabox TV decoder; transmission was initially via Astra 1F at 2 Mbit/s, and the TV cable network was to follow later. Philips, Incosys and Olivetti-Hughes with DirecPC planned similar asymmetric access.
Read the full postOn 26 August 1996, world chess champion Anatoly Karpov played publicly against the internet community and won after 32 moves. The online players had ten minutes each, after which a computer played the most frequently proposed move. Around a quarter of a million people visited the website, but most of them only watched the four-hour game.
Read the full postIn 1996 the TV magazine TV Today announced that it would transmit pictures from 20 German TV stations to the internet around the clock. At launch there was only a still image every five seconds and no sound, plus teletext offerings. Later that year the pictures were to learn to move and speak, which heise classified as the next bandwidth hog after internet telephony.
Read the full postIn 1996 Microsoft announced that it would also offer Internet Explorer for Unix by the end of the year, free of charge and with the features of the Windows 95 version 3.0. The company named Sun’s Solaris 2 as the first target system. ActiveX development environments for Unix were to follow, an expression of Bill Gates’ realignment towards the internet.
Read the full postIn 1996 Intel postponed the Pentium P55C with the MMX multimedia extension to spring 1997. The processor was to offer caches twice the size of the Pentium of the time and come at 166 and 200 MHz. Intel said customers mainly wanted the 200 MHz version, which would not have been available in sufficient quantities before Christmas.
Read the full postRFC 1945 documents HTTP/1.0 with methods, status codes, headers and message-based resource access. A small, text-based interface enabled rapid web innovation. Statelessness simplifies servers and moves sessions to higher layers.
Read the full postRFC 1918 reserves three IPv4 ranges for internal networks that are not routed globally. Private addresses extended the life of IPv4 but created lasting NAT and merger problems. Non-global addressing is no substitute for access control.
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