2015 Event Martin Winterkorn, CEO of Volkswagen, resigns in the midst of a scandal in which the company confessed to installing software in its cars for the last 7 years in order to fool emissions test devices while violating U.S. clean air standards 2015 Event Smartflash, a Texas technology licensing company, has won $532.9 million in a lawsuit against Apple for infringement of data management software patents; Apple claims that the patents are invalid and that it never used the technology in question 2014 Event Microsoft Corp today begins selling a fitness tracking armband called Microsoft Band that links to a free web-based tracking app; the software will work across iOS and Android platforms in addition to Windows 2014 Event Apple and IBM join forces to develop apps for business users; the agreement will give Apple a greater share of the business market, which is increasingly catering to a mobile workforce; IBM will benefit from the software integration on its cloud computing platform 2014 Event The CEO of BlackBerry Ltd. will be refocusing its business on software and services in an effort to turn around the company; once a leader in the smartphone market, the company's products now account for less than 1% of global market share 2014 Event Microsoft identifies a security issue in Internet Explorer that can allow hackers to take control of personal computers using the browser; the flaw affects versions 6 to 11 of the software 2014 Event It is revealed that the National Security Agency, NSA, is using software to spy on nearly 100,000 computers around the world; most of the software is implanted by accessing the Internet, but some technology enables data to be entered or altered through radio wave transmission 2013 Event An experimental privacy feature on Google's Android mobile software is removed, raising objections from the Electronic Frontier Foundation; the feature allowed users to block apps from collecting personal information such as a user's location and address book data 2013 Event NASA loses communication with the International Space Station's for three hours as a result of updating the station's command and control software 2003 Death Adam Osborne, author, computer designer, book and software publisher, founded and wrote memoir about Osborne Computer Corporation 1988 Event 9 hard/software manufacturers announce EISA computer bus in New York 1988 Event IBM introduces software for artificial intelligence 1970 Birthday John Carmack, born in Roeland Park, Kansas, game programmer, co-founder of id Software, lead programmer for computer games, 'Quake', 'Doom', 'Commander Keen' series 1969 Birthday Linus Torvalds, born in Helsinki, Finland, inventor, software engineer, pioneered development of the Linux kernel, a free, open source software operating system 1967 Birthday John Romero, born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, game designer, programmer, co-founder of id Software, games include 'Dangerous Dave', 'Quake', Wolfenstein 3D' 1953 Birthday Richard Stallman, born in New York City, New York, computer programmer, software freedom activist, set up the Free Software Foundation 1945 Birthday Laurie Spiegel, born in Chicago, Illinois, composer, guitar, known for algorithmic composition software Music Mouse, electronic-music compositions 1939 Birthday Adam Osborne, born in Thailand, author, computer designer, book and software publisher, founded and wrote memoir about Osborne Computer Corporation
