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MIDAS (operating System)
Marc B. McDonald is an American who was Microsoft's first salaried employee (not counting Monte Davidoff, who wrote the math package for BASIC for a flat fee). He is credited with designing and implementing the 8-bit File Allocation Table file system for the NCR 8200 data-entry terminal and Microsoft's Standalone Disk BASIC-80 in 1977. McDonald also developed an 8-bit operating system called M-DOS or MIDAS; the system itself was never released by Microsoft, but its file system (a variant of FAT) influenced Tim Paterson's QDOS. A version of "Standalone Disk Basic" was ported to a Seattle Computer Products 8086 by Bob O'Rear, and Tim Paterson was often at Microsoft to aid in the effort. Tim Paterson copied the key aspects of the FAT system (single table, each directory entry containing the head of the file's cluster list, and the last value indicating the number of sectors used in the last cluster) when he implemented the FAT12 file system for his operating system 86-DOS in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The early 1980s and home computers, rise of personal computers through software like Windows, and the company has since expanded to Internet services, cloud computing, video gaming and other fields. Microsoft is the List of the largest software companies, largest software maker, one of the Trillion-dollar company, most valuable public U.S. companies, and one of the List of most valuable brands, most valuable brands globally. Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800. It rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Windows. During the 41 years from 1980 to 2021 Microsoft released 9 versions of MS-DOS with a median frequen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lisp (programming Language)
Lisp (historically LISP, an abbreviation of "list processing") is a family of programming languages with a long history and a distinctive, fully parenthesized prefix notation. Originally specified in the late 1950s, it is the second-oldest high-level programming language still in common use, after Fortran. Lisp has changed since its early days, and many dialects have existed over its history. Today, the best-known general-purpose Lisp dialects are Common Lisp, Scheme, Racket, and Clojure. Lisp was originally created as a practical mathematical notation for computer programs, influenced by (though not originally derived from) the notation of Alonzo Church's lambda calculus. It quickly became a favored programming language for artificial intelligence (AI) research. As one of the earliest programming languages, Lisp pioneered many ideas in computer science, including tree data structures, automatic storage management, dynamic typing, conditionals, higher-order function ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microsoft Employees
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the rise of personal computers through software like Windows, and the company has since expanded to Internet services, cloud computing, video gaming and other fields. Microsoft is the largest software maker, one of the most valuable public U.S. companies, and one of the most valuable brands globally. Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800. It rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Windows. During the 41 years from 1980 to 2021 Microsoft released 9 versions of MS-DOS with a median frequency of 2 years, and 13 versions of Windows with a median frequency of 3 years. The company's 1986 initial public offering (IPO) and subsequent rise in its share price cre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microsoft Press
Microsoft Press is the publishing arm of Microsoft, usually releasing books dealing with various current Microsoft technologies. Microsoft Press' introduced books were ''The Apple Macintosh Book'' by Cary Lu and ''Exploring the IBM PCjr Home Computer'' by Peter Norton in 1984 at the West Coast Computer Faire. The publisher has gone on to release books by other recognizable authors such as Charles Petzold, Steve McConnell, Mark Russinovich and Jeffrey Richter. Following a deal signed in 2009, O'Reilly Media became the official distributor of Microsoft Press books. In 2014, the distributor was changed to Pearson PLC, Pearson. In July 2016, Microsoft Press editorial staff was laid off. References External links * Microsoft divisions Computer book publishing companies Publishing companies established in 1984 {{microsoft-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
History Of Microsoft
Microsoft is a multinational computer technology corporation. Microsoft was founded on April 4, 1975, by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Its current best-selling products are the Microsoft Windows operating system; Microsoft Office, a suite of productivity software; Xbox, a line of entertainment of games, music, and video; Bing (search engine), Bing, a line of search engines; and Microsoft Azure, a cloud services platform. In 1980, Microsoft formed a partnership with IBM to bundle Microsoft's operating system with IBM computers; with that deal, IBM paid Microsoft a royalty for every sale. In 1985, IBM requested Microsoft to develop a new operating system for their computers called OS/2. Microsoft produced that operating system, but also continued to sell their own alternative, which proved to be in direct competition with OS/2. Microsoft Windows eventually overshadowed OS/2 in terms of sales. When Microsoft launched several versions of Microsoft Windows in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Software Patent
A software patent is a patent on a piece of software, such as a computer program, library, user interface, or algorithm. The validity of these patents can be difficult to evaluate, as software is often at once a product of engineering, something typically eligible for patents, and an abstract concept, which is typically not. This gray area, along with the difficulty of patent evaluation for intangible, technical works such as libraries and algorithms, makes software patents a frequent subject of controversy and litigation. Different jurisdictions have radically different policies concerning software patents, including a blanket ban, no restrictions, or attempts to distinguish between purely mathematical constructs and "embodiments" of these constructs. For example, an algorithm itself may be judged unpatentable, but its use in software judged patentable. Background A patent is a set of exclusionary rights granted by a state to a patent holder for a limited period of time, usual ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sectors of the computing industry – Windows (unqualified) for a consumer or corporate workstation, Windows Server for a Server (computing), server and Windows IoT for an embedded system. Windows is sold as either a consumer retail product or licensed to Original equipment manufacturer, third-party hardware manufacturers who sell products Software bundles, bundled with Windows. The first version of Windows, Windows 1.0, was released on November 20, 1985, as a graphical operating system shell for MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces (GUIs). The name "Windows" is a reference to the windowing system in GUIs. The 1990 release of Windows 3.0 catapulted its market success and led to various other product families ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quality Assurance
Quality assurance (QA) is the term used in both manufacturing and service industries to describe the systematic efforts taken to assure that the product(s) delivered to customer(s) meet with the contractual and other agreed upon performance, design, reliability, and maintainability expectations of that customer. The core purpose of Quality Assurance is to prevent mistakes and defects in the development and production of both manufactured products, such as automobiles and shoes, and delivered services, such as automotive repair and athletic shoe design. Assuring quality and therefore avoiding problems and delays when delivering products or services to customers is what ISO 9000 defines as that "part of quality management focused on providing confidence that quality requirements will be fulfilled". This defect prevention aspect of quality assurance differs from the defect detection aspect of quality control and has been referred to as a ''shift left'' since it focuses on quality effor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Steve Ballmer
Steven Anthony Ballmer (; March 24, 1956) is an American businessman and investor who served as chief executive officer of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014. He is the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He is a co-founder of Ballmer Group, a philanthropic investment company. As of May 2025, Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimated his personal wealth at around $151 billion, making him the eighth-richest person in the world, and the Forbes ''Real-Time Billionaires List'' ranked him as the ninth-richest person with a net worth of $118 billion. Ballmer was hired by Bill Gates at Microsoft in 1980, and subsequently left the MBA program at Stanford University. He eventually became president in 1998, and replaced Gates as CEO on January 13, 2000. On February 4, 2014, Ballmer retired as CEO and was replaced by Satya Nadella; Ballmer remained on Microsoft's board of directors until August 19, 2014. Under Ballmer's leadership, a 14-year period, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bill Gates
William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American businessman and philanthropist. A pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, he co-founded the software company Microsoft in 1975 with his childhood friend Paul Allen. Following the company's 1986 initial public offering (IPO), Gates became a billionaire in 1987—then the youngest ever, at age 31. ''Forbes'' magazine The World's Billionaires, ranked him as the world's wealthiest person for 18 out of 24 years between 1995 and 2017, including 13 years consecutively from 1995 to 2007. He became the first centibillionaire in 1999, when his net worth briefly surpassed $100 billion. According to ''Forbes'', as of May 2025, his net worth stood at US$115.1 billion, making him the thirteenth-richest individual in the world. Born and raised in Seattle, Washington, Gates was privately educated at Lakeside School (Seattle), Lakeside School, where he befriended Allen and developed his computing interests ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ToolBook
ToolBook was a Microsoft Windows based e-learning content authoring application, initially released in 1990 by Asymetrix Corporation, now SumTotal Systems. ToolBook uses a book metaphor — a project file is thought of as a ''book'' containing ''pages'' of content. This is very similar to Microsoft PowerPoint’s use of the metaphor where ''presentations'' contain various ''slides''. ToolBook was often compared to HyperCard and Visual Basic. The first version of ToolBook was demonstrated in 1990 episode of '' The Computer Chronicles'', in an episode about Windows 3.0. The final version of ToolBook, 11.5, was released in December 2012. SumTotal Systems ended all sales and support of Toolbook on December 31, 2021. Runtime environments ToolBook allows for the creation of applications and training materials for Windows and/or the web. To support these two distribution models, ToolBook contains two different programming environments: *OpenScript: ToolBook includes a very capable ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Asymetrix
SumTotal Systems, Inc. is a software company based in Gainesville, Florida, that provides human resource management software and services to private and public sector organizations. The company uses multiple cloud-based channels, including software as a service (SaaS), hosted subscription, and premises-based licensure. In September 2014, it was acquired by SkillSoft, a provider of online learning to corporate training organizations. In June 2022, SkillSoft announced its intention to sell the company for approximately $200 million. On August 25, 2022, Cornerstone OnDemand, Inc. announced that it had completed the acquisition of SumTotal. History 1984-1997: Asymetrix Asymetrix Learning Systems, based in Bellevue, Washington, was founded in 1984 by Paul Allen and funded through his Vulcan Ventures. Asymetrix then spent around ten years developing software for online education. Among the first products from this development period were ToolBook, ''Asymetrix Librarian,'' and t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
