Today is the birthday of the Apple Lisa computer, forerunner of today's Macs. The Lisa was notable for being the first publicly available PC to include a GUI and a mouse -- the end of the command line interface had begun! The "Lisa" was probably named after co-founder Steve Job's daughter.
The origins of the mouse go back to the 1960's -- the first public "mouse" demo was give by inventor Doug Englebert in 1968.
Since the invention of the mouse, many different input devices such as trackballs, 3D mice, and others have come and gone. There is even an mouse for people who cannot use their hands.
Also, today will be the death (and re-birthday), in 2038, of the timestamp used for file times in Unix and Windows. This timestamp is a 32-bit number that represents the number of seconds since January 1st, 1970. The start date is known as the Unix Epoch. The timestamp will rollover to zero on Jan 19th, 2038.
So, you can expect 2037 to be a busy year for programmer's who will be fixing Y2K-like problems on all the ancient software from the late 20th and early 21st century that depends on this number. Even if we are all running 64-bit hardware.
This site has an list of other "computer failure" dates related to timekeeping that you may want to put on your calendar.
(c) 2007, Jorge Monasterio
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