InformationWeek's Geekend: Microsoft Patches Like It's 1995

NEW YORK, Nov. 14, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Remember the 1990s? Flannel, grunge, the Clinton Administration?

This week, InformationWeek's Geekend author David Wagner started thinking about the 1990s after Microsoft announced it had patched a flaw in its Windows operating system that dates back to 1995.

That's right, Microsoft patched a bug that has been in every version of its operating system since Windows 95. That's almost 20 years and stems from a time when Bill Gates still ran the Redmond company himself, and his rival, Steve Jobs, still hadn't returned to Apple.

The fact that this flaw hid in plain sight for nearly two decades and three US presidential administrations, has got Wagner thinking about what the mid-1990s meant to all of us, especially the geeks:

"1995 was a great year in gaming. Star Wars: Dark Forces was the first game I played on Windows 95, and I always think of it as the first modern first-person shooter. Mortal Kombat 3 was out in the arcades. Remember arcades? They were just about to die because of the home video game consoles coming out from Nintendo and Sony."

Each week, Wagner and his Geekend column look at how the worlds of science and technology are colliding, and what the latest research tells us about business, and how people seek answers to their unique problems.

This week, Wagner dusts off his Nirvana CDs and tries to see if there's any time left on those AOL floppy disks sitting at the bottom of his desk. Please join Wagner and the conversation on InformationWeek, and get involved with the lively IT community.

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