2001– Jan de Wit – a.k.a. “OnTheFly” sends out an email stating that it is a picture of the famous tennis player. Of course it turned out to be a a Worm that takes down tens of thousands of computers. Most companies will shut off their email to the world just to prevent from getting it. De Wit would then be arrested two days later and sentenced to 150 hours community service.
February 11 – AT&T asks for an injunction against Samsung
2012 – Apple began the lawsuits in the US of Samsung made Galaxy Nexus citing patent violations back in April 15, 2011. This would span across the Nexus S, Epic 4G, Galaxy S 4G and Galaxy Tab. A lawsuit that has gone back and forth between the two companies. The patents in question were for data tapping, a Siri search method, a slide-to-unlock patent and a word completion patent. On this day, Apple officially asks for a preliminary injunction for Samsung sales in the US .
1966 – The Johnniac Open Shop System (JOSS) was taken down by the RAND Corporation. JOSS was set up to relive bottlenecks in programming batches, but more and newer work pretty much took the JOSS to the limit and ultimately became a bottleneck. Therefore, JOSS was taken offline indefinitely.JOSS began operation in 1953.
1996 – It was the single largest online event at the time. 24 Hours in cyberspace was coordinated by Rick Smolan to capture photos representing a day in the life of the internet user. Photos would be handed in from around the world and put out on Cyber24 dot com. The website is no longer in service and there is no good Internet Archive to the site.
February 7, 2000: Michael Demon Calce – aka Mafiaboy – runs DDos
2000 – 10:15 AM, Mafiaboy – Michael Demon Calce, a 16 year old hacker from Canada – targets 7 sites with a Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS). Amazon, Buy.com, CNN, eBay, E*E*Trade, MSN and ZDNet are all affected. Mafiaboy would be sentenced to eight months in a youth detention center for this DDoS.
The project was called Rivolta (riot in Itallian). Yahoo! was his first target.
Calce later said he downloaded the application but didn’t realize he ran it so he went to school. When he came back his computer was crashed and he had no idea what happened.
February 5, 1999: Victoria’s Secret Webcast drew 1.5 million
1999 – Victoria’s Secret holds their annual fashion show after dealing with the networks for the last 10 years. The event attracts attention – 1.5 million visitors to be exact in 90 countries. The company uses the same idea the next year to rousing success. This was considered the first Major Successful webcast.
Ads were run on Wall Street Journal, New York Times and other print publications. However, it was the ad spot on the Superbowl that would cause the uproar. Within minutes of the commercial airing, 1 million people logged onto the site – causing it to crash. This is pre- iPad or even pre-laptop for most so they had to move to where their computers were. The ad said:
The Broncos won’t be there. The Falcons won’t be there. You won’t care. Victoria’s Secret fashion show LIVE in 72 hours
Because of the number of viewers, many were denied access simply because there wasn’t server space. Something Victoria’s Secret addressed the next year. They went with Akamai for the event.
This also showed that not only that webcasts can be successful, but we are also ushering in a new age of viewing.
Victoria’s Secret went back to Network television in 2001 (ABC). Even though the numbers were good, they didn’t match the 12 million viewers ABC brought to the table.
2009 – Judge Ronald M. Whyte of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued an order indefinitely postponing the coordinated patent-infringement cases filed by RAMBUS against rival memory chip makers. Hynix Semiconductor, Micron Technology, Nanya Technology and Samsung Electronics were plaintiffs on RAMBUS lawsuits.
Gateway computer makes a bold move and purchases rival eMachines for 50 million shares of Gateway common stock and $30 million in cash.
eMachines was a company founded by Lap Shun Hui along with South Korean companies Korea Data Systems, and TriGem. Their strategy was to put a PC in every house starting at $399.
These computers housed lower-end processors, and Windows OS – enough for the average person to get on and get online.
eMachines had previously purchased Free-PC; the company that offered free computers in exchange for pop-up ads while browsing.
Gateway finalized the acquisition in March. Wayne Inouye was placed as CEO, and eMachines stayed a separate company.
Ultimately, Gateway computers was purchased by Acer computers. The eMachines brand was ultimately discontinued on Jan 17, 2013.
1984 – One billion points on one quarter. That was the reason for Tim McVey Day. At the Twin Galaxies arcade back on January 17th, Tim scored 1,000,042,270 points on one quarter to the game “Nibbler” – a hybrid Pac-Man and Centipede game.
McVey got his name in Computer Games Magazine for it, and so he became the first video gamer to get a civic day in his honor.
His record was broken eight months later by Enrico Zanetti.
Of course, this event gets overshadowed by the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing by Timothy McVeigh.