Delayed Gratification

January is the most beautiful month in calendar for it marks the start of another year. It symbolizes another opportunity to make life even better. The same goes for the year 1990 which marked the beginning of a wonderful decade of Metallica, boy bands, Spice girls, Leonardo de Caprio and etc. Combining January and 1990 together, the month and year I was born, should be one of the greatest moment in time. Or so I thought?

As I was google-ing for amazing events, cool inventions and personalities born on January 1990, I was expecting to see A-list celebrities to have the same birthday as me, mind blowing inventions of man and unforgettable events in history but Google failed to meet my expectations. I found insignificant results leaving my ego crushed and disappointed. I’ve always thought that the day I entered this earth was something so special that the world celebrated with my parents by having grandeur events and stupefying inventions commemorating my existence. Was that too much imagination? I guess the world postponed everything the day I was born because my mere nativity was way too special to handle. Kidding!

In all actually, I was just trying to comfort myself with the fact that almost all great digital and internet inventions were released in 1991. However, Tim-Lee Berners was still on the process of perfecting the HTML on January 1990. Even though, the internet and digital world were on hiatus on my birth month something remarkable did happen too.

In January 1990, a man named Andrew Cushman rejoined Microsoft Corporation. His contributions to Microsoft allowed us to enjoy the internet to what it is today. He acquired his bachelor’s degree in international studies at the University of Washington and a master’s degree in international business in Seattle University. Andrew Cushman held positions in various Microsoft teams such as Microsoft Money Team, Microsoft International Product Group and most importantly, the Internet Information Services (IIS) team. He spearheaded the development of the IIS 6.0 in the Windows Server 2003. The IIS is a web server application that enables a computer to host and manage a website and other internet contents. It also provides WWW publishing services, File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP) and Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) services. It also has a feature called Modules which allow the server to process requests. This IIS of Microsoft is one of the top web server applications used by many internet websites. At present, an IIS version 7.5 is already available. Features such as Client Certificate Mapping, IP Security, Request Filtering, URL Authorization are added in the IIS 7.5. Cushman is also the Senior Director of Strategy in the Trustworthy Computing Group of Microsoft where he strives for a safer and more trusted Internet. He is also part of the Industry Consortium for the Advancement of Security on the Internet (ICASI), a non-profit forum of collaborating IT vendors that battles internet security threats for a better and protected IT infrastructures. Andrew Cushman represents Microsoft and he shares his knowledge of IT in ICASI for the improvement of security response programs and in minimizing security threats in the internet.

Andrew Cushman’s contributions to the internet are truly remarkable and significant. We must be thankful that on January 1990, he decided to rejoin Microsoft Corporation because he has done so much in improving internet features. We can say that if it was not for him, the security of the internet would not have been this rigorous. We would not be able to enjoy the websites that we religiously visit. Nothing great may have been released on that day but that job opening led to something unexpectedly good.

Sources :

http://www.icasi.org/?q=node/11

http://www.icasi.org/aboutus

http://www.iis.net/team