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CompuServe
CompuServe (CompuServe Information Service, also known by its initialism CIS) was an American online service provider, the first major commercial one in the world – described in 1994 as "the oldest of the Big Three information services (the others are Prodigy and America Online)." It dominated the field during the 1980s and remained a major influence through the mid-1990s. At its peak in the early 1990s, CIS was known for its online chat system, message forums covering a variety of topics, extensive software libraries for most computer platforms, and a series of popular online games, notably ''MegaWars III'' and ''Island of Kesmai''. It also was known for its introduction of the GIF format for pictures and as a GIF exchange mechanism. In 1997, 17 years after H&R Block had acquired CIS, the parent announced its desire to sell the company. A complex deal was worked out with WorldCom acting as a broker, resulting in CIS being sold to AOL. In 2015, Verizon acquired AOL, including ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
CB Simulator
CompuServe CB Simulator was the first dedicated online chat service that was widely available to the public. It was developed by a CompuServe executive, Alexander "Sandy" Trevor, and released by CompuServe on February 21, 1980, as the first public, commercial multi-user chat program. At that time, most people were familiar with citizens band radio, often abbreviated as CB radio, but multi-user chat and instant messaging were largely unknown. CompuServe CB used the CB radio paradigm to help users understand the new concept. Like CB radio it had 40 "channels" and commands like "tune", "squelch", and "monitor". CompuServe CB quickly became the largest single product on CompuServe despite virtually no marketing. When 40 channels was not enough, additional "bands" were added, such as the "Adult" band. The first online wedding occurred on CompuServe CB, and worldwide fans organized events to meet in the "real world" people they had met in CB. Compuserve's CBIG (CB Interest Group) Sy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
PDP-10
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)'s PDP-10, later marketed as the DECsystem-10, is a mainframe computer family manufactured beginning in 1966 and discontinued in 1983. 1970s models and beyond were marketed under the DECsystem-10 name, especially as the TOPS-10 operating system became widely used. The PDP-10's architecture is almost identical to that of DEC's earlier PDP-6, sharing the same 36-bit word length and slightly extending the instruction set (but with improved hardware implementation). Some aspects of the instruction set are unusual, most notably the ''byte'' instructions, which operate on bit fields of any size from 1 to 36 bits inclusive, according to the general definition of a byte as ''a contiguous sequence of a fixed number of bits''. The PDP-10 was found in many university computing facilities and research labs during the 1970s, the most notable being Harvard University's Aiken Computation Laboratory, MIT's AI Lab and Project MAC, Stanford's SAIL, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MegaWars III
''MegaWars III'' was a massively multiplayer empire building game written by Kesmai and run continuously on CompuServe between 1984 and 1999. It was one of CompuServe's most popular games throughout its lifetime with thousands of players joining the month-long game cycles. It was only shut down after CIS was purchased by AOL and moved to the web-based "CompuServe 2000" interface that would not cleanly support it. A modified version, ''Stellar Emperor'' ran for much of the same time period on GEnie, also ending in 1999 when that service was shut down by General Electric. A new version of ''Stellar Emperor'', sporting a new client-server GUI, was run for a short period on Kesmai's GameStorm. History S In 1979 University of Virginia 4th year students Kelton Flinn and John Taylor started work on a game for the Hewlett-Packard HP 2000F time sharing minicomputer. Known simply as ''S'', the game supported up to eight players on directly connected 2400 baud terminals. Much of what would be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Online Service Provider
An online service provider (OSP) can, for example, be an Internet service provider, an email provider, a news provider (press), an entertainment provider (music, movies), a search engine, an e-commerce site, an online banking site, a health site, an official government site, social media, a wiki, or a Usenet newsgroup. In its original more limited definition, it referred only to a commercial computer communication service in which paid members could dial via a computer modem the service's private computer network and access various services and information resources such as bulletin board systems, downloadable files and programs, news articles, chat rooms, and electronic mail services. The term "online service" was also used in references to these dial-up services. The traditional dial-up online service differed from the modern Internet service provider in that they provided a large degree of content that was only accessible by those who subscribed to the online service, whil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Island Of Kesmai
''Island of Kesmai'' was an early commercial online game in the multi-user dungeon (MUD) genre, innovative in its use of roguelike pseudo-graphics. It is considered a major forerunner of modern massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). Launch date In the summer of 1980 University of Virginia classmates John Taylor and Kelton Flinn wrote ''Dungeons of Kesmai'', a six player game inspired by ''Dungeons & Dragons'' which used Roguelike ASCII graphics. They founded the Kesmai company in 1982 and in 1985 an enhanced version of ''Dungeons of Kesmai'', ''Island of Kesmai'', was launched on CompuServe. Later, its 2-D graphical descendant ''Legends of Kesmai'' was launched on AOL in 1996. The games were retired commercially in 2000. Price to play The game was available on CompuServe for no additional charge. However, CompuServe charged $6 per hour for 300 baud or $12 per hour for 1200 baud access rates. The game processed one command every 10 seconds, which equates ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prodigy (online Service)
Prodigy Communications Corporation (Prodigy Services Corp., Prodigy Services Co., Trintex) was an online service from 1984 to 2001 that offered its subscribers access to a broad range of networked services, including news, weather, shopping, bulletin boards, games, polls, expert columns, banking, stocks, travel, and a variety of other features. Prodigy was described by the ''New York Times'' as "family-oriented" and one of "the Big Three information services" in 1994. Initially, subscribers using personal computers accessed the Prodigy service by means of copper wire telephone " POTS" service or X.25 dialup. For its initial roll-out, Prodigy used 1,200 bit/s modem connections. To provide faster service and to stabilize the diverse modem market, Prodigy offered low-cost 2,400 bit/s internal modems to subscribers at a discount. The host systems used were regionally distributed IBM Series/1 minicomputers managed by central IBM mainframes located in Yorktown Heights, New York. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Time-sharing
In computing, time-sharing is the sharing of a computing resource among many users at the same time by means of multiprogramming and multi-tasking.DEC Timesharing (1965), by Peter Clark, The DEC Professional, Volume 1, Number 1 Its emergence as the prominent model of computing in the 1970s represented a major technological shift in the history of computing. By allowing many users to interact concurrently with a single computer, time-sharing dramatically lowered the cost of providing computing capability, made it possible for individuals and organizations to use a computer without owning one, and promoted the interactive use of computers and the development of new interactive applications. History Batch processing The earliest computers were extremely expensive devices, and very slow in comparison to later models. Machines were typically dedicated to a particular set of tasks and operated by control panels, the operator manually entering small programs via switches in order ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MCI Inc
MCI, Inc. (subsequently Worldcom and MCI WorldCom) was a telecommunications company. For a time, it was the second largest long-distance telephone company in the United States, after AT&T. Worldcom grew largely by acquiring other telecommunications companies, including MCI Communications in 1998, and filed bankruptcy in 2002 after an accounting scandal, in which several executives, including CEO Bernard Ebbers, were convicted of a scheme to inflate the company's assets. In January 2006, the company, by then renamed MCI, was acquired by Verizon Communications and was later integrated into Verizon Business. Worldcom was originally headquartered in Clinton, Mississippi before relocating to Ashburn, Virginia when it changed its name to MCI. History Foundation In 1983, in a coffee shop in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Bernard Ebbers and three other investors formed Long Distance Discount Services, Inc. based in Jackson, Mississippi and in 1985, Ebbers was named chief executive of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Internet Service Provider
An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise privately owned. Internet services typically provided by ISPs can include Internet access, Internet transit, domain name registration, web hosting, Usenet service, and colocation. An ISP typically serves as the access point or the gateway that provides a user access to everything available on the Internet. Such a network can also be called as an eyeball network. History The Internet (originally ARPAnet) was developed as a network between government research laboratories and participating departments of universities. Other companies and organizations joined by direct connection to the backbone, or by arrangements through other connected companies, sometimes using dialup tools such as UUCP. By the late 1980s, a process was set in pla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Midrange Computer
Midrange computers, or midrange systems, were a class of computer systems that fell in between mainframe computers and microcomputers. This class of machine emerged in the 1960s, with models from Digital Equipment Corporation ( PDP line), Data General (NOVA), Hewlett-Packard (HP3000) widely used in science and research as well as for business - and referred to as minicomputers. IBM favored the term "midrange computer" for their comparable, but more business-oriented systems. IBM Midrange Systems * System/3 was the first IBM midrange system (1969) * System/32 (introduced in 1975) was a 16-bit single-user system also known as the IBM 5320. * System/34 (1977) was intended to be a successor to both the 3 and the 32. * System/38 (1979) was the first midrange system to have an integrated relational database management system (DBMS). The S/38 had 48-bit addressing, and ran the CPF operating system. * System/36 (1983) had two 16-bit processors with an operating system that supp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Business Hours
Business hours are the hours during the day in which business is commonly conducted. Typical business hours vary widely by country. By observing common informal standards for business hours, workers may communicate with each other more easily and find a convenient divide between work life and home life. In Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, the hours between 9 am and 5 pm (the traditional "9 to 5") are typically considered to be standard business hours. However, U.S. governmental agencies typically operate between the hours of 7:00am and 3:00pm. As one employee put it: “There’s nothing more standard than the government.” The topic of standard hours is hotly debated in modern times. In Finland, government agencies and other institutions follow the hours 8:00am to 4:15pm. Banks are usually open to 4:30pm. Common business is done from Monday to Friday, but major shops are usually open on Saturdays 9:00am – 6:00pm and on Sundays 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NASDAQ
The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second on the list of stock exchanges by market capitalization of shares traded, behind the New York Stock Exchange. The exchange platform is owned by Nasdaq, Inc., which also owns the Nasdaq Nordic stock market network and several U.S.-based stock and options exchanges. History 1971–2000 "Nasdaq" was initially an acronym for the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations. It was founded in 1971 by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), now known as the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). On February 8, 1971, the Nasdaq stock market began operations as the world's first electronic stock market. At first, it was merely a "quotation system" and did not provide a way to perform electronic tr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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