1987
According to the Monday, March 2 issue of Computer & Software News, twenty-nine percent of home computer users own a modem. Alternatively, seventy-five percent own a monitor, seventy percent own a printer, and seventy-one percent own a disk drive.
Apple Computer introduces the expandable Macintosh SE, featuring an 8MHz Motorola 68000 processor, and 1MB of RAM. Price: US$2,900 (dual floppy drive system) or US$3,700 (one floppy drive and one 20MB hard drive)
Apple Computer introduces the open architecture Macintosh II, the first for Apple with color graphics. The system features a 16MHz Motorola 68020 processor, and 1MB of RAM. A basic system with one 800Kb 3.5-inch floppy drive and no monitor sells for US$3,898. A system with 1MB RAM, one floppy drive, a 40MB hard drive, and a color monitor is priced at US$7,000. The system features a plug-and-play NuBus architecture for expansion cards.
1990
Steve Jackson tries to get copies of his seized files back from the Secret Service. He is treated poorly and given only a handful of files from one office computer. He is not allowed to touch the computer, which hosted the Illuminati bulletin board system (BBS), or copy any of its files. Jackson’s company, Steve Jackson Games will suffers severely, as its newest publication and all of its business documents are contained on the computers. Eight employees will loose their jobs because of the March first Secret Service raid, and the company will also loose thousands of dollars in sales. To read more about the raid, see March 1.
1995
Delphi, an object oriented derivative of the Pascal programming language developed by Borland, is released. [1]
1997
US Senator Orrin Hatch holds a hearing on Microsoft’s alleged antitrust activities, questioning Bill Gates, Scott NcNealy of Sun Microsystems, and Jim Barksdale of Netscape Communications. Bill Gates admits Microsoft’s contracts bar Internet content providers from promoting Netscape’s browser.
1998
Apple Computer announces price reductions on its Power Macintosh G3 line of home and office computers. The 233MHz Power PC G3 RISC processor model with 32MB of memory and a 4GB hard drive will now sell for US$1,699, reduced US$300. The 266MHz Power PC G3 RISC processor model with 128MB of memory and a 4GB hard drive now sells for US$3,799, after a reduction of US$400. Visit the official website of Apple Computer.
Data sent from the Galileo space probe indicates that Jupiter’s moon Europa has a liquid ocean under a thick crust of ice.
A hacker causes the crash of thousands of university and government computers. The attack affects nine of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) ten major field offices as well as an undetermined number of universities, including the Massachusetts of Technology (MIT) and the University of California, Berkeley. Although the hacker is not traced, experts note that the attacks exploit a programming flaw in Windows ‘95 and Windows NT operating systems.
1999
The Hewlett-Packard Company announces plans to split into two companies following the approval of the plan at a special board meeting. One of the two companies will retain the Hewlett-Packard name and focus on the computing business. The other company will essentially be a entirely new entity, formed to focus on the measurement equipment which comprised approximately US$7.6 billion of Hewlett-Packard’s US$47.1 billion total revenue in 1998.
Nintendo announces plans to determine the plausibility of installing Game Boy consoles on the vertical handrails of the Underground Jubilee line in London.
In Tokyo, Japan, Sony unveils the specifications for the next PlayStation video game system to fifteen invited guests. The new system will feature a 300MHz 128-bit Emotion Engine processor co-developed by Toshiba and Sony CEI, a 150MHz Graphics Synthesizer processor, 32MB main RAM, 3.2GBps memory bus, a floating-point performance of 6.2 GFLOPS, 33.8 or 37.5MHz core PlayStation CPU, CD-ROM or DVD-ROM game media with capacities up to 4.7GB, and IEEE 1394, USB, and PC Card interfaces.
2000
Bahram Saghari is found guilty of computer tampering and trying to extort fifty thousand dollars from TV Interactive, Inc., her previous employer. The verdict is determined after a six week trial. Judge Jean High Wetenkamp orders Saghari into custody until his sentencing on Saturday, April 29. Saghari deliberately deleted software from his employer’s computers, before demanding US$50,000 to restore it.
Reuters news service reports that the personal data of two hundred sixty-six PlayStation 2 customers was leaked on a Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) website when forty-four customers typed in other customer’s order numbers. Sony is quick to offers assurances that the data didn’t include either credit card or telephone numbers.
Version 2.60 gamma 2 of RemoteAccess is released.
2001
Napster pledges to begin blocking access to over one million copyrighted MP3 format music files, pursuant to a new injunction being drafted by Judge Marilyn Hall Patel. The pledge inspires a new frenzy by Napster’s users to download the files before the injunction takes affect. Napster lawyers offer to install software over the weekend to stop the trade of copyrighted songs, but the measure has little effect.
The United States Navy reveals that a computer hacker has obtained unclassified system codes for guiding ships, rockets, and satellites from one of its computers.
Version 2.0 of the iMesh file sharing and online social network. Visit the official iMesh website.
2005
The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) adds the E10+ rating to its range of ratings. The rating was created in order to subdivide the E (Everyone) rating into two separate ratings, one for younger children and one for older children. Visit the official ESRB website.
2008
Intel announces the mini processor will be called ATOM
2009
The CEO of ICANN – Paul Twomey announces he will step down once a successor is found.
AMD appoints Bruce Claflin as CEO
2010
Opera released v. 10.5 of their browser software for windows
Apple sues HTC over a series of 20 patents of the GUI
AMD announced the 890GX chipset, a 6 core processor. $150.
The Whitehouse comes forward with a new plan for cybersecurity. Einstein 3, for example, is a computer that will alert the NSA of detected network intrusion attempts.
German court repeals a law that required data from phone calls and email to be retained by ISPs for 6 months.
2011
Steve Jobs announced the Second generation iPad. The iPad2 uses the new A5 dual-core chip, and the screen resolution was also increased. They added a front-facing camera (like on the iPhone 4), and also came out with a 64 GB model. $499 for the 16 GB WiFi model, and it would be available on March 11, 2011
2014
Ellen DeGeneres took her Samsung Galaxy Note 3 into the crowd, Bradley Cooper snapped the picture and made the most re-tweeted selfie to date with 3.3 million