MC 2: MC2 Post 1235 IBM’s Failed Operating System OS/2 Is 25 Years Old

Tuesday, April 03, 2012

MC2 Post 1235 IBM’s Failed Operating System OS/2 Is 25 Years Old

—But It Still Powers ATMs and Checkouts

On April 2 1987, IBM launched its plan to revolutionize the PC industry: a next-generation operating system called OS/2. Co-developed by IBM and Microsoft, it was designed to replace DOS and change the way we used computers. Sadly, it didn't. But it still crops up in some of the weirdest places.

Link: http://gizmodo.com/5898623/ibms-failed-os2-is-25-years-oldbut-it-still-powers-atms-and-checkouts

TinyURL: http://tinyurl.com/ccqtms9

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From: http://www.nydailynews.com

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1940 Census website bombarded with visitors,

gets 22 million hits in 4 hours

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Interest in the newly released 1940 U.S. census is so great that the government website with the information was nearly paralyzed shortly after the records became available to the public for the first time.

Miriam Kleiman, spokeswoman for the U.S. National Archives, told The Associated Press that the site registered more than 22 million hits in just four hours on Monday, from almost 2 million users. In a tweet posted after 5 p.m. on its official Twitter account, the archives said the website had received 37 million hits since the information was released at 9 a.m.

Monday’s release includes digitized records for details on 132 million people. Access to the records is free and open to anyone online, but they are not yet searchable by name.

For now, researchers will need an address to determine a census enumeration district — a way to carve up the map for surveying — to identify where someone lived and then browse the records.

Every decade since 1942, the National Archives has made available records from past censuses. The records, which include names, addresses and income and employment information, are rich with long-veiled personal details.