ZIP folders were originally a Microsoft engineer's side hustle until bosses figured out he worked for Microsoft Retired Microsoft engineer Dave Plummer uploaded another Windows war story to his YouTube channel over the weekend, this time concerning the history of the handy zip folder functionality that has been a feature of the Windows shell over recent decades. Plummer said that having made a few dollars selling software of his own ( …
You think your official product is missing something, your employer doesn't agree, but lets you build it on your own.
If it's a failure, well collectively you learnt the market doesn't want it, and it just cost one engineer some spare time.
If it's a success, you get a Corvette and your great idea is maintained whilst you get to grind your next annoyance.
Which also reminded "powertoys!" not thought about them for years - and google tells me they are still a thing.
"powertoys!" ... still a thing
Were stuck into SysInternals, now on GitHub. Mark Russinovich took the opposite path, started by developing MS tools then MS bought that and promoted him.
I haven't thought of that in too long so I checked how up to date it is - SysMon was updated earlier today to identify Process Tampering - literally up to date!
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals/
https://medium.com/falconforce/sysmon-13-process-tampering-detection-820366138a6c
Same. And I've collected all (but the very early ones as Microsoft lost them, I asked) the old Case of the Unexplained videos Mark used to do (sadly stopped). Every time I watch them (very much worth several views) there is something little that I'd missed before.
Even David Solomon's (sadly retired a while ago) talks were good. Watched a really old one the other day and heard him mention when explorer crashes. Mentioning when it does, it almost always crashes with a specific error code and that is what causes it to restart. If it crashes with a different code, that is why it sometimes won't restart.
Sort of happened to me too. Developed a metric 5h17ton of addins using a particular product's API. Then went to work for them, doing API support/development. The joke on the user group was that I'd only gone to work for them so I could get all my API bugs fixed!
Quote: "Which also reminded "powertoys!" not thought about them for years - and google tells me they are still a thing."
It was resurrected, and I guess you missed this and other articles talking about it:
"You think your official product is missing something, your employer doesn't agree, but lets you build it on your own."
Apparently GE manufactured all the components for railroad locomotives - but not the locomotives themselves. A group of their employees set up a "skunk work" and built a locomotive - which then set GE off on that product line.
Occasionally management decides that "innovation" is required and tries to encourage "skunk works" - by formalising a process. Which kills any innovation. They miss the essential fact that at most they need the benign - if not genuine - "ignorance" of what is going on. IIRC a classic being Admiral Nelson's "what signal?" referring to a recall before winning a decisive sea battle.
My career was full of such developments - usually incremental tools to make the job easier and keep customers happy. Formal planning etc would have killed them dead before birth.
If only the Gnome 3 team would have the same benevolent attitude to developers who create add-ons to provide features that the user base decides are necessary, but which conflict with the Gnome team's usability-crushing minimalism/nihilism...
So...a shareware company took exception to the fact he was developing the ZIP folder tool and didn't want the competition, so they complained to Microsoft...
...who then bundled it in with the OS free of charge. Sounds like kind of an own goal there. Whilst you may still get some customers, it's hard to compete with free.
@ Stuart - Wasn't Acorn's RISC OS the first to use a file to be replaced by a 'folder'?
I'm probably misunderstanding your question but the computer folder metaphor dates from 1958.
If you mean which graphical OS was the first to represent a compressed directory as a folder icon then I'll take your memory over mine.
Certainly RISC OS had an equivalent tool (sparkFS) which seamlessly patched ZIP files - at first read only, then read-write - into the filesystem hierarchy. Think this came out in around 1990, and I believe it was the first time this type of thing was possible on any OS.
You can still buy it from the developer, David Pilling: https://www.davidpilling.com/spark.html (the latest version was 1992!)
In around 1990, I wrote a text edit/word processor called EasyEdit. It was really good (I have magazine reviews that said that) and I sold it as shareware after getting permission from DEC that it was OK to do so. I also sold site licenses - and one of them was to DEC. If only they'd realised (he he). It kept me in computer upgrades and climbing equipment.
Alan
...like the virus it is." FTFY. Since MS decided it was an "essential" part of Windows that couldn't be blocked, I've had a script run at logon to automatically uninstall it, just in case an update has yet again re-infected my machine.
When I worked in the UK defence industry back in the early 90’s, I made a system for (let’s call it a ‘Widget’) to allow a simple targeting system to be fitted to a rifle and control its operation. You basically had a self-aiming, self-loading, fully-autonomous anti-insurgent weapon system that worked in ALL weathers. It even had IFF capability. Truly ‘Set and Forget.’
“No. We don’t need anything like that!” Said one department mandarin. “It won’t work anyway.”
I knew it did, because I’d been using it for point-defence in paintball gaming for months without a single misfire or wrong ident.
About a year later, this ‘mandarin’ (read as Asshole) was rewarded for “his” brilliant idea and given charge of a new department that of course got him promotion and a hefty pay rise.
When I pointed it out to his line manager that he’d stolen my idea, I was accused of “Sour grapes,” and “Don’t forget, we are all part of a team here.”
It was my idea that I had been looking to sell outside of my employment - something to bolster my pension. I never gave anything for free back to them after that.
Some managers and employers cannot be trusted to be honourable.
A couple of years later, a well-known U.K. defence company was producing this Widget, and making millions from it.
NOW I have Sour Grapes. Bloody Sour Melons!
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