In 1997, Berkeley Systems was acquired by the Sierra On-Line division of CUC International. Joan Blades and Wes Boyd, the founders of Berkeley Systems, went on to create MoveOn.org.
As well as the included animated screensavers, it allowed the development and use of third-party modules, of which many hundreds were created by the height of After Dark's popularity.
A 3D version of the toasters featuring swarms of toasters with plane wings, rather than bird wings, is available for XScreenSaver.
Sierra released a Flying Toaster video game for cell phones in 2006.
The toasters were the subject of two lawsuits, the first in 1993, Berkeley Systems vs Delrina Corporation, over a module of Delrina's Opus 'N Bill screensaver in which Opus the penguin shoots down the toasters. Delrina later changed the wings of the toasters to propellers in order to avoid infringing the trademark. The second case was brought in 1994 by 1960s rock group Jefferson Airplane who claimed that the toasters were a copy of the winged toasters featured on the cover of their 1973 album Thirty Seconds Over Winterland. The case was dismissed because the cover art had not been registered as a trademark by the group prior to Berkeley Systems' release of the screensaver.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment