Another Boring Topic

After many delays and becoming the butt of many industry jokes, Windows 1 had finally staggered onto the market at the end of 1985. It was met by basically complete indifference, as it performed poorly on most people's computers, and lacked any sort of compelling software to kickstart adoption and thereby drive more interest from software developers and users alike. But Microsoft pressed on with the followup, Windows 2. Although most of Microsoft's time and attention was focused on their partnership with IBM to develop a shiny new operating system, OS/2, and in spite of the fact that Steve Ballmer and others inside of Microsoft saw no point in continuing to develop the successor to the original Windows release, Bill Gates refused to call a halt to its development. Windows 2's story is a complex one, and IBM, OS/2, and OS/2's GUI Presentation Manager weave in and out of it at various points, together with Apple, HP, Compaq, and others. It's development was also further complicated by the decision to break it into two pieces, one for 8088/8086 machines and one solely aimed at systems utilizing the powerful new 386 processor. Battling a wide variety of obstacles, Windows 2.0 eventually succeeded in making it to market, and it and its successor Windows 2.1 eventually proved that Windows could be a viable product that could take Microsoft into the 1990s, and allow them to break free of riding the IBM tiger. In many ways, Microsoft's incredible growth in the 1990s was rooted in the success that Windows 2x delivered. This sprawling, messy, confusing, contradictory, poorly documented and incredibly fascinating story is the focus of this video. I hope you enjoy it :)

Excel is practically synonymous with the word "spreadsheet" today, and has attained near ubiquity in the workplace and home. But it wasn't always the reigning champion of the spreadsheet market. In fact, Excel started out as a Macintosh exclusive, with Gates and Microsoft hoping that Excel could build a commanding position on the Macintosh, and then use that as a foothold to attack the dominant spreadsheet champion of the 1980s, Lotus 1-2-3. The Macintosh was in dire need of a killer app that could do for it, what VisiCalc had done for the Apple II years prior. But could Excel be that app? This is the story of how the world's most dominant spreadsheet was developed for the flailing Macintosh, a computer with a fraction of the market share of the then standard MS-DOS PC, from which humble position Excel began its long climb to total dominance. #spreadsheet #excel #documentary

IBM had unknowingly created a juggernaut when they allowed Bill Gates and Microsoft to control the PC operating system standard, first with DOS and then with Windows. Having lost control of the PC hardware standard, IBM was determined to regain control of the operating system standard. Their weapon? The OS/2 operating system, a powerful and feature packed operating system that best case should have had little trouble overcoming Windows, and worst case should have at least been able to carve out a profitable and sustainable market share. This is the story of how IBM's last attempt to keep a measure of control in the PC space...failed. Substack script link https://anotherboringtopic.substack.com/p/the-fall-of-os2 Substack extended thoughts link https://anotherboringtopic.substack.com/p/fall-of-os2-extended-thoughts

The Orzel was a Polish submarine that escaped the 1939 Nazi Germany invasion of Poland at the beginning of World War Two. Her journey began in Poland and took her to Estonia, where she and her screw escaped being interned by the Estonians at the behest of the Nazis. After her escape, she sailed through the Baltic Sea, dodging German air and naval forces, and fled to the United Kingdom. After a refitting, she continued her fight against the Nazis off the coast of Norway, where she almost uncovered the Nazis' invasion of Norway before it even began. Music from Epidemic Sound

The heavy fighters of WW2 were a unique set of aircraft ranging from the unique turret based design of the Defiant to the turbo charged power of the P-38. Made as an unique concept in the interwar period, did the heavy fighters live up to their potential? #ME110 #KI45 #Defiant #P38 #WorldWar2 #fighters #aircraft Photo Credits: Spitfire By Martin Čížek - Martin Čížek, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=55337484 ME-110 By Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-377-2801-013 / Jakobsen [Jacobsen] / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5411296 Bristol Bulldog https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Bristol_Bulldog.1.jpg

In the late 1960s, the Soviet Union and a number of allied countries embarked on a bold attempt to significantly increase their computer technology and catch up to the west, via an ambitious effort to produce a clone of the popular IBM S/360 line of mainframes. The result of this program was the RYAD line of Soviet mainframes, a whole family of computers that were a significant leap forward for Soviet computing, and a program whose story is a fascinating one both for the ways in which it succeeded as well as the ways in which it fell short. The script can also be read over on our Substack account https://substack.com/inbox/post/84415126

The post World War 2 era saw a large geopolitical realignment as the Iron Curtain descended and the first phase of the Cold War began. The United States and the Soviet Union raced to replace the increasingly obsolete planes that had fought in WW2 with new fighters and bombers that leveraged the best technologies of the day. In the skies over Korea, these new fighters and bombers would be pitted against each other in the first major military action since the end of WW2. In this video we take a quick look at the major fighters and bombers deployed in Korea on both sides.

Microsoft Windows has attained near ubiquity in the computing world today, running on an estimated 3 out of every 4 computers. It decisively won the operating systems battle that raged across the 1980s and early 1990s, and has no significant competitors today, with its greatest rival on the desktop, Apple, having only a 16% market share. Yet Windows did not win the operating system battle overnight, and its victory was far from assured. It struggled just to get its first release, and spent years facing formidable competition. Few people would have bet on Windows to eventually win, but that is just what eventually happened. This series will explore Windows rise to dominance, starting from its origins all the way to its last big gamble, Windows 8.

20 years ago the options for affordable, professional quality 3D modeling/animation software were very limited. Blender was still early in its career (and wouldn't go open source until October of 2002) and was fiendishly difficult to use and lacked a number of professional features. Learning professional 3D was and is difficult, but in 2001 the barriers to entry were considerably higher than today, with professional 3D software packages retailing for thousands of dollars and good, systematic training being far harder to come by. There was definitely a need in the indie and fanfilm market for a powerful 3D modeling/animation piece of software that was affordable, had top quality training taught by an industry veteran, and used the same software that the professionals used. The 3D Toolkit from dvgarage attempted to fill this need, giving its users acess to an an almost full version of a slightly older version of the veteran 3D software Electric Image Universe for anywhere from 80-90% off full price, paired with hours of training taught by a veteran of ILM's "Rebel Mac" unit, Alex Lindsay. In this video we look at the origins of the 3D Toolkit (basically Electric Image Universe 2.9), how it was received, its features, how an English Star Wars fanfilm made use of it to create stunning CGI that still holds up well today, and what eventually happened to it. #eias #ElectricImage #documentary Storm Ahead website: https://www.stormahead.com/

Steve Jobs was an enormously influential figure in the history of personal computing, not only as a founder of Apple computer, but also as the man who significantly changed the way we experience computing, music, communications, and media. But in between introducing the Macintosh in 1984 and the iMac in 1998, Jobs went through an interesting but rarely covered period in life where he was essentially fired from Apple and started a new computer company called NeXT. His goal was to repeat his success with the Macintosh and bring to market an entirely new platform that would go as far beyond the Macintosh as the Macintosh had gone beyond the IBM PCs. Credits NeXTCube CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=436453 NeXTStep OS By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34598118 Macintosh 128k By w:User:Grm wnr - Modifications of Image:Macintosh 128k.jpg and w:Image:Macintosh 128k No Text.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=519781 iMac CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=521646 iBook CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=496249 iPod By The original uploader was Rjcflyer@aol.com at English Wikipedia. - Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Addihockey10 using CommonsHelper., CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12976762 iPhone By Rafael Fernandez - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63395591 iPad By Justin14 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25720064 G4 Cube CC BY 2.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9026142 Tim Berners-Lee By Creator:Levi Clarke - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53878695 NeXT Web Server By Coolcaesar at the English language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=395096 ID Logo By Source (WP:NFCC#4), Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51434380 MS-DOS logo By Microsoft - MS-DOS v1.25 and v2.0 Source Code. GitHub, Inc. Retrieved on 2018-11-19., MIT, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=73370911 OS 211 Startup http://toastytech.com/guis/os211startup.png Aardwolf By by Dkaeuferle = Dominik Käuferle - Originally from de.wikipedia; description page is (was) herefirst upload in de wikipedia on 21:56, 10. Apr. 2007 by Dkaeuferle (600 x 400 (71.528 Bytes) (Beschreibung = Erdwolf, Namib-Nord, Namibia, 2005, Quelle = selbst erstellt, Urheber = Dominik Käuferle, Datum = 08.06.2005, Genehmigung = GNU), CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1929313 NeXTSTEP OS Screenshots https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/openstep42 Amiga 500 By Bill Bertram - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=350965 Amiga 1000 By Original photo by Kaiiv (de.wikipedia), Editing by Pixel8 - http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Amiga_1000_PAL.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6642500 Amiga 4000 By Kaiiv - Self-photographed, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6642613 TextEdit By The original uploader was JollyRogerBay at English Wikipedia. - Screenshot taken by w:en:User:JollyRogerBay, BSD, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36430224 Chess By Apple Inc., The GNOME Project - Screen-capture, ASCL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20224305 Apple II Photos http://www.oldcomputers.net/appleii.html Apple III CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=205447 IBM PC 5150 By Ruben de Rijcke - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9561543 Andrea Cunningham By Hhwong - Taken at a book signing party at Northwestern University facilities in San FranciscoPreviously published: not previously published, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65072778 Many photos of Jobs and NeXT are taken from the great website, https://allaboutstevejobs.com/ Many photos of NeXT systems are taken from another interesting website https://oldcomputers.net/next-cube.html NextStation “Pizza box” By Rama & Musée Bolo - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.0 fr, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36770097 By Marcin Wichary - Flickr: NeXTstation, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18296286 Mac IIfx https://www.oldcomputr.com/posts-about/apple/macintosh-iifx/ Deluxe Paint By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3237399 Atair ST CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=500910 Many NeXTSTEPOS screenshots https://simson.net/ref/NeXT/screenshots.htm

2018 saw yet another big budget take on the legendary English outlaw, Robin Hood. This particular version is mostly noteworthy for painfully crashing and burning at the box office for reasons both many and varied. The film is indeed rife with problems, including in its historical details. In today's video we are going to look at the top ten painful anachronisms that we noticed in it. Were the historical inaccuracies the reason why Robin Hood failed? Undoubtedly not, but since this channel is run by nitpicking history nerds... ;) Credits: By Thomas Wolf, www.foto-tw.de, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43944546 CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=365569 By Cyril Thomas, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1493711 By Ken - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3695923 CC BY-SA 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3660157 https://www.lostkingdom.net/medieval-gambling-games-dice/ By Ronshelley (talk) - self-madeI, the copyright holder of this work, hereby grant the permission to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.This licensing tag was added to this file as part of the GFDL licensing update., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16187448 https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/blog/till-death-us-part-divorce-medieval-england/

In 1983 the US home game console market collapsed, contracting around 93 percent and putting dozens of major companies out of business. The conventional wisdom was that the home game console market was finished, and would never rise again. But a century old Japanese company that was originally founded to manufacture and sell playing cards thought otherwise. Their name was Nintendo and their successful reinvigorating of the US game console market with the 1985 American release of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is a fascinating tale of shrewd business practices, a willingness to defy expectations, and a company that wasn't afraid to try new things. We had some mic trouble with this that we didn't catch initially, but we hope this doesn't detract from your enjoyment of this video, it's a fascinating topic and one that we have been looking forward to bringing to you.

In this second installment of the Rise and Fall of the IBM PC series, we will be taking a look at the rise of the IBM Compatible clone market and how it seized control of the IBM PC standard away from IBM itself, relegating IBM to just another PC manufacturer.

The Star Wars prequel trilogy introduced us to the Old Republic, the political system of the galaxy before the rise of the Empire. Unfortunately, there is no getting around the fact that the Old Republic was a political system with many problems, some of them so glaring as to be deeply troubling to live under. From electing barely teenage Queens to term limited office, to no concept of legal double jeopardy, here are 9 reasons why the Old Republic kind of...sucked to live in.

In this closing episode we take a look at IBM's two pronged assault on the clone market with the launch of the the OS/2 operating system and PS/2 line of computers. Success with OS/2 would ensure that Microsoft no longer controlled the dominant operating system while success with the PS/2 line of computers would ensure that those pesky cloners would no longer be a thorn in IBM's side. But could IBM successfully develop a new operating system that would supersede MS-DOS while also creating a successful new hardware standard that was totally incompatible with existing IBM computers AND uncloneable?

This episode is the first in a series on the decline and/or fall of the majority of the home computer companies of the 70s and 80s.That was an era of major rivalries amongst a wide array of personal computer companies, fighting for control of the market.There are few of those companies left standing today, and only Apple still plays a significant role in personal computing. Even the leader that initially emerged from the fray as the undisputed winner was only able to enjoy its victory for a handful of years before going into irreversible decline and today, although still in existence, is no longer in the business of making personal computers. That company was IBM and its rise and fall in the PC market is the subject of today’s video. Few companies have entered a market with such expectations, and even fewer initially met or exceeded them so much. But IBM’s triumph was to be short lived...

The Soviet Union, Russia, The Warsaw Pact. For 40 years these terms were synonymous with the Cold War and Communism. Although only Russia is still in existence, the legacy of the Cold War still casts a shadow on today’s political scene. But what exactly was the difference between the Soviet Union, Russia, and the Warsaw Pact? All three were intertwined throughout the Cold War, and remained so until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. To a greater or lesser extent, all three terms tend to be used interchangeably, but while all three were the key parts of what is sometimes referred to as the Eastern bloc of Communist countries, the terms are not interchangeable.

Have you ever heard of a Yak 3, a Ilyushin Il-2, or a Polikarpov I-16? The air war on the eastern front in World War 2 doesn't get nearly the press that other sectors of the conflict receive. Yet the Soviets had a large air force and made major advances in airplane design throughout the war, eventually reaching parity with the Luftwaffe. This video is a brief overview of the major Soviet planes from the start of the war through the end, together with some comparisons with their German counterparts.

The story of how North Korea forced a kidnapped director to make what was essentially a Godzilla film, even including basically kidnapping the team that made Godzilla's special effects to work on the film, starts back in 1978. In 1978, Kim Jong-Il, the designated successor to the dictator of North Korea, Kim Il-Sung, was overseeing North Korea's film production. Wishing to improve the quality of the films his directors and actors were producing, he decided to kidnap one of the South Korea's most famous directors, Shin Sang-ok, along with one of South Korea's most famous actresses, Choi Eun-hee (Shin's ex-wife), and force them to make movies in North Korea. They were trapped in North Korea for seven years before managing to escape by fleeing to the American embassy in Vienna, narrowly escaping their North Korean guards. But before they were able to escape, they created one of the most famous pieces of cinema ever to come from North Korea.

In 1979 a small company released VisiCalc, the world's first "killer app" for the the burgeoning personal computer market. VisiCalc was like nothing that had been seen before, the very first spreadsheet for personal computers. People bought a computer just to get VisiCalc and its sales skyrocketed, even after multiple price increases. Exclusively available on the Apple II for the first year on the market, its powerful sales made Apple Computer a front runner in the personal computer wars of the 1980s. And then, after over a million copies had been sold across multiple computer platforms...VisiCalc faded from the computer scene and was ignominiously discontinued in 1985, after being bought out by the very company whose flagship product had killed it.

The War of 1812 (June 1812-February 1815) saw a deeply divided United States fight with Great Britain just 29 years after the end of the Revolutionary War. Fought in the shadow of the Napoleonic Wars that were raging across Europe, the war of 1812 is frequently overlooked in studies of American military history. However the War of 1812 was deeply impactful for the United States, which was still a very young nation, and was the first indicator to the world that the former 13 colonies were growing into a powerful new nation.

Over the 69 years of the Soviet Union's existence, eight men officially stood at the apex of its political system. Arising from the brutal and sometimes murderous intrigues of Soviet politics, they led the Communist superpower as dictators until death or a coup removed them from their position. But who were these men, whose terms in power ranged from decades to only a few weeks? What was their official position called?