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November 16, 1977: Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind Debuts

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Close Encounters of the Third Kind

1977 – Most of the time, we skip over movie releases, unless it has had a definite impact on the Tech and geek community. That is the case with this movie. Close Encounters of the Third Kind – Directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Richard Dreyfuss, and Teri Garr was released to 272 US theaters. It was produced on a budget of US$20 million, amd would gross US $5,379,460 in the opening weekend.It also changed the way I ate mashed potatoes.

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  • 3Dfx Interactive unveils the Voodoo
  • ICANN selects 7 top level domains (TLD)
  • Intel launches the i7
  • Google Music debuts
Gary_McKinnon

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November 12, 2002: Gary McKinnon Indicted

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Gary_McKinnon
Gary_McKinnon

2002 – Gary McKinnon has been in the news ever since his arrest. Back in 2002, he hacked into networks run by NASA, the Pentagon, along with other military bases around the US. He claims he was on a hunt to find evidence that the US has been covering up alien contact.What makes this a tough case is that McKinnon lives in the UK. Since the arrest, he has been waging a war against being extradited to the United States. He has been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome – a form of Autism.

BTW – this is the largest military hack known to have been perpetrated by one individual.

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  • 2012 – John McAfee goes into hiding because his neighbor (Gregory Faull) was found dead from a gunshot the day before. Belize police wanted McAfee to come in for questioning, but McAfee stated the police were “out to get him”. He fled to Guatemala where he was arrested for illegal entry. He was deported to the US on December 12th.
  • The World Wide Web proposal is published by Tim Berners-Lee
  • Intel introduces the 45nm Penryn chips
  • On Computable Numbers with an Application to the Entscheidungs-problem – is published by Alan Turing
Sony

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November 11, 2005: Sony suspended CD copy protection

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Sony
Sony

2005 – In an effort to curb piracy, record companies began putting copy protection on the CD’s themselves.  The electronic marking would cause CD’s to error out if they tried to copy. Unfortunately this idea was riddled with problems. Some players couldn’t read the disks, other people would find ways around the copy protection, such as different brand drives. However, it was found that the XCP copy protection standard became a backdoor for hackers as viruses could be introduced through the software.

The announcement came ten days after Sony had secretly put this system on the shelves.

2008 – A bill for $73 million dollars was sent to Microsoft, Google and Carl Icahn. This was for the operation costs (including incremental costs) for outside advertisers to acquire Yahoo!

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  • Remembrance of Veterans on Vetrans Day / WWI Memorial Day
  • IBM 2980 Financial terminal
  • The first OLPC order is placed
  • Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Icahn debauchery cost $73 million.
bitcoin

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October 31st, 2008: Bitcoin Paper Authored

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The paper was called “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” by Satoshi Nakamoto. It was posted to a cryptography mailing list. This was a roadmap to the creation of the crypto-currency, which officially launched on January 3, 2009.

The Abstract:

  • A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. Digital signatures provide part of the solution, but the main benefits are lost if a trusted third party is still required to prevent double-spending. We propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer network. The network timestamps transactions by hashing them into an ongoing chain of hash-based proof-of-work, forming a record that cannot be changed without redoing the proof-of-work. The longest chain not only serves as proof of the sequence of events witnessed, but proof that it came from the largest pool of CPU power. As long as a majority of CPU power is controlled by nodes that are not cooperating to attack the network, they’ll generate the longest chain and outpace attackers. The network itself requires minimal structure. Messages are broadcast on a best effort basis, and nodes can leave and rejoin the network at will, accepting the longest proof-of-work chain as proof of what happened while they were gone.

The domain name “Bitcoin.org” was registered on August 18th. Since then, this premiere currency has seen some volitile transactions, jumping up to as high as $15,000.

Currently, Bitcoin is at around $8,000 USD.

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  • IBM OS/2 1.1 released
  • First public version of Sketch
  • Google privatizes Jotspot
War of the Worlds

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October 30, 1938: War of the Worlds – the Fake One

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War of the Worlds
War of the Worlds

1938 – Orson Welles shocks the nation with radio broadcast of “The War of the Worlds” by H. G. Wells. A large number of listeners who tune into the program ten minutes late (because the singer on the Edgar Bergan show was not that great). Because of this, they didn’t know this was a fictional story and start to panic. The story was brought through a series of “Newscasts” that Welles portrayed the reporter on the street and how these giant machines landed and began to attack the population.This event would launch Orson Welles career. Of course, he would go on to create Citizen Kane, Othello, Don Quixote and other classic cinema pieces.

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  • 1986 – First Fibre-optic cable
  • 1995 – Oracle announces Websystem
  • 2007 – Nine Inch Nails Trent Reznor says “Take my music”
Blockbuster

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October 19, 1985: First Blockbuster Opens

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Blockbuster
Blockbuster

1985 – The first Blockbuster opens it’s doors in Dallas, TX by David Cook. The 29 year old store owner eventually sold it to Scott Beck, John Melk and Wayne Huizenga. Eventually it becomes a nation-wide franchise and online movie and game rental store. Dish Network ultimately purchased Blockbuster for $228 million

The Last Blockbuster

On April 1st, 2019 (not an April Fools Joke), Bend, OR Blockbuster became the last brick-and-mortar store in the world. This was after the last Australian store closed. They are known on Twitter as @LoneBlockbuster

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  • Netscape 4.5 is released
  • Flickr adds Geotagging
  • Korean war stops all color TV broadcasts
Walt Disney Company

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October 16, 1923: Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio

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Walt Disney Company
Walt Disney Company – Founded Oct 16, 1923

1923– 90 years ago, Walt and Roy Disney start what is known as the Walt Disney Company. It started as the Disney Brothers Cartoon studio. Walt Disney created a short film entitled Alice’s Wonderland.

In 1986, the name was officially changed to the Walt Disney Company. Steve Jobs was a shareholder and board member. Walt Disney Studios is one of the largest in Hollywood with networks ESPN, ABC, A&E and more.


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  • FORTRAN is released
  • Wal-Mart Sues Amazon
  • iTunes for Windows
  • President Bill Clinton signs the web copyright law
Pac Man

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October 10, 1980: Pac Man North American Release

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Pac Man Released in US

1980– The video game that changed it all debut in North America. The infamous yellow pie chart gobbling up little dots and avoiding ghosts for top scores was released to the Japanese arcades in May, but finally made it to North America in 1980.

Toru Iwatani developed the game with a nine-person team. The game was first called “Pakkuman”, inspired by the paku-paku phrase (which is what Pac-Man says whilst chomping Blinky (Oikake), Pinky (Machibuse), Inky (Kimagure), and Clyde (Otoboke). 

The game had a major glitch at level 256, since it was never expected someone would get that far. 

The 80’s era officially was in full swing. Pac Man fever was on the loose.

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  • XP SP1 and SP1a support ends
  • The Metric system is born
  • Happy Tom Cruise Day.
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