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Play classic MS-DOS games without even leaving Twitter
Although they went live at the very start of the year, it was like all of our Christmases had come at once when Archive.org added 2,400 playable MS-DOS games to its website. Retro titles like Maniac Mansion, Oregon Trail and Doom are all available, with the only downside being that you have to visit each specific game's page to play them. However, the eagle-eyed folk at Wired noticed these have recently started working on Twitter, meaning you can get all of your social networking done while simultaneously saving Sandy Pantz from the evil Dr Fred. Thanks to Twitter's Cards platform, all you have to do is tweet the URL of the game you want to play and it'll take care of the rest. You can even embed the tweet (and thus the game) inside a webpage, exactly like we've done below.
You can play 2,400 classic DOS games in your web browser
If you're a PC gamer of a certain age (cough), you've probably lamented that many of the titles you played as a kid are hard to use on modern systems without downloading emulators or waiting for special re-releases. Well, it just got a lot easier to relive your gaming glory days. The Internet Archive's growing collection of web-based retro games now includes roughly 2,400 MS-DOS classics -- you can now play cult hits like Gods or Tongue of the Fatman in your browser. This won't quite recreate the experience of sitting at the family computer, of course. The project's Jason Scott warns that you can't save your progress on the web, and that some games could still "fall over and die" despite attempts to include only those programs that are likely to work properly. But look at it this way: even half-functional web emulation could prevent a much-loved game from fading into obscurity.
Microsoft makes MS-DOS and Word for Windows source code public
Microsoft believes the children are our future, and to prove it, it's teamed up with the Computer History Museum to make source code available for two groundbreaking programs: MS-DOS and Word for Windows. In a blog post that outlined the deal, Roy Levin, managing director of Microsoft Research, said the company granted the museum permission to make the code public for MS DOS 1.1 and 2.0 and Microsoft Word for Windows 1.1a, "... to help future generations of technologists better understand the roots of personal computing." MS DOS, originally code named "Chess," took root in 1980 when IBM asked Microsoft to produce an OS to run on its computers. Word for Windows was released in 1989, and with in four years had captured half of the revenue of the word-processing market, according to Levin. Both programs marked the beginnings not only of great successes for Microsoft, but also the PC industry as we know it today. The museum's Chairman, Len Shustek, had this to say about the effort: "We think preserving historic source code like these two programs is key to understanding how software has evolved from primitive roots to become a crucial part of our civilization." The move marks an ongoing effort to make landmark software code available to the public; the museum released the source for the 1989 version of Photoshop early last year.
The IBM PC turns 30, we hurt our hands giving it birthday punches
Thirty years ago today IBM officially ushered in what many consider to be the modern computing era with the 5150. What ultimately became known simply as the IBM PC was the first machine to run a Microsoft operating system (the recently acquired PC-DOS) on an Intel processor (the 4.77MHz 8088) and inspired countless clones. The bare-bones model, which cost $1,565, was cheap enough to become a serious commercial success, and spawned an entire cottage industry of machines that touted their IBM-PC compatibility. We won't spend too much time recounting the story of how IBM's decision to build a computer with off the shelf components and commercially available software forged a standard whose descent survives to this day in the form of Wintel. But, if you're feeling a little nostalgic, you can read the original PR from August 12, 1981 just after the break.
Ancient DOS bug gets squashed
What can we say about you, DOS? You've rocked the personal computer world and changed the way we all feel about white on black console screens. Your retirement is a well deserved one and... wait, you're getting a patch? Amazingly, Microsoft is fixing a bug that has existed in the Windows Virtual DOS Machine (VDM) subsystem since it was added to Windows NT way back in the simple days of 1993, when flannels were everywhere and 32 bits were more than we knew what to do with. Google engineer Tavis Ormandy found the exploit a few weeks ago, which grants an attacker the ability to run code in kernel mode, and a critical update has been issued to fix this most aged of vulnerabilities. Perhaps now, DOS, your work is finally done.
Microsoft to push cool factor with retro-inspired clothing line
It's actually kind of amazing how much dough Microsoft has spent over the past little while in an attempt to polish its image in the minds of the general populace, and as if those "I'm proud to be a PC" and completely incomprehensible Gates / Seinfeld spots weren't enough, the Redmond-based outfit is about to roll out its own clothing line (dubbed "Softwear") this month. And no, we're not kidding. Not even a little. Microsoft has purchased the assistance of Crispin Porter & Bogusky in order to ensure the results are actually desirable, and it has also hired rapper Common as a spokesman. We can't definitively say the shirt you see above is as fly as Pharrell's Gizmondo Enzo tee, but we'd rock it. We'd rock it hard.[Via Boy Genius Report]
Parallels Workstation beta 4 raises the bar, offers improvements
Parallels has released a 4th Beta of their much-hyped Workstation software for Intel-based Macs that allows OS virtualization (not just Windows) within Mac OS X. Improvements and fixes in this new beta include: Introduced full screen mode Introduced dual-monitor support Improved real CD/DVD support Improved, easier to use interface Better sound support, including a fix for Windows 2000 guest OS Networking kernel panics resolved Bridged networking issues fixed WiFi networking issues fixed Fixed some of the issues encountered when entering "Sleep" mode when a VM is running Many other minor bug fixes Don't forget: in addition to running Windows XP within Mac OS X, one of the largest appeals of Parallels Workstation is that you can run a whole slew of other OSs from Windows 3.1 - 2003, any Linux distro, FreeBSD, Solaris, OS/2 and MS-DOS - all running inside a full-featured, secure environment within Mac OS X.
