1989
In a San Francisco Federal District Court, Judge William Schwarzer rules that Microsoft’s Windows 2.03 is not covered in the 1985 Apple Computer/Microsoft technology licensing agreement. The judge rules that only Windows 1.0 is included in the agreement,and that Windows 2.03 is fundamentally different. The ruling allows the issue to proceed to trial, in Apple Computer v. Microsoft, which was filed in March 1988.
1991
Version 4.000 of the Perl programming language. Visit the official Perl website.
1994
Novell announces that it will acquire WordPerfect Corporation for US$1.4 billion and the Quattro Pro application from Borland International for US$145 million. Visit the official Novell website.
Vice President Al Gore delivers a speech at the International Telecommunications Union in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In the speech, Gore discusses the potential benefits of the Global Information Infrastructure (GII) and possible means of achieving universal access. Gore also mentions the five fundamental principles of implementing GII, and the proposed the creation of a Global Digital Library. Read a transcript of the speech at the Interesting People website.
1995
Atari announces a new reduced price for the 64-bit Jaguar video game system of US$159.99. The new price for the system is without the game CyberMorph, which was previously bundled with the system. The bundle was previously sold at prices between US$189 and US$249.
2000
AOL announces that its internet service has exceeded twenty-two million subscribers.
2001
AMD releases the 1300MHz Athlon 1300B processor, featuring a 256KB Level-2 Cache and a 200MHz Front Side Bus.
AMD releases the 1333MHz Athlon 1333C processor, featuring a 256KB Level-2 Cache and a 266MHz Front Side Bus.
Apple Computer announces that beginning March 24, customers will be able to purchase Mac OS X in retail stores around the world. Apple markets the software as the world’s most advanced operating system, combining the power of Unix with the ease of use of Macintosh systems. Visit the official Mac OS X website.
Intel releases the 900MHz Pentium III Xeon processor, featuring a 2,048KB Level-2 Cache and a 100MHz Front Side Bus.
The TAT-14 transatlantic cable is goes into service. The cable system is a dual, bi-directional ring configuration using dense wavelength-division multiplex (DWDM) multiplexing with sixteen wavelengths of STM-64 per fiber pair for a capacity of 640 Gbps, or approximately 7.7 million telephone circuits, of which roughly eighty percent will be used to accommodate internet traffic. The fifteen thousand kilometer long cable connects Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It is owned by a consortium of fifty members, including: AT&T, British Telecom, Cable & Wireless, Deutsche Telekom, and France Telecom. Visit the official site of the TAT-14 Cable System.
A ten member Brazilian hacker group calling itself Hfury hacks into the Associated Press (AP) website and defaced it with the words Owned by HFURY and a list of the group’s members handles at approximately 2:19am Eastern Time. The defacement will remains until a Wall Street Journal Online reporter notices the words and contacts the AP. The AP takes down their site at 4:35am to correct the malicious alterations and their site is accessible again at 6:10am. The same group goes on to deface the website of the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation with obscenities and a skull-and-crossbones image. Hfury also later claims to have attacked the website of the French energy company Anroc, but company officials will consistently deny being compromised.
2005
Anthony Greco, age 18, of Cheektowaga, California pleads guilty in Los Angeles federal court to a single count of threatening to damage the computer systems of MySpace.com with the intent to extort. Greco admits that he wrote a program that was used to register thousands of fraudulent instant messaging accounts at MySpace in October and November 2004 in order to send more than 1.5 million automated spam messages containing advertising for mortgage refinancing and pornography to registered MySpace users. In response, MySpace.com was forced to spend more than US$20,000 deleting the unopened spam from its servers and putting protective measures against further attacks in place. Days after the attacks began, Greco contacted MySpace.com, took responsibility for writing the program used to send the unsolicited messages, and proposed that he be granted exclusive rights to send commercial email to MySpace users in return for protection against other spam advertisers. When MySpace didn’t respond, Greco sent other messages threatening to release his methods to other spammers if the company didn’t negotiate with him. In his messages, Greco notes that sharing his techniques would open a Pandora’s box of Spam on MySpace which could crash the system. On September 26, Greco will be sentenced under seal.
Jeff Weise, age 17, opens fire in a high school on a Red Lake, Minnesota Indian reservation, killing ten people, including himself, and injuring fourteen other students in the worst school shooting since the Columbine High School massacre on April 20, 1999. The dead include a school security guard, a female teacher, and Weise’s grandfather Daryl Dash Lussier, a veteran police officer of the Chippewa tribe. The event is dubbed the Red Lake High School Massacre by the media. Press coverage in the days to follow will include wide examination of Weise’s internet activity, including his instant messaging, LiveJournal page, his Yahoo!Profile, and his posts on the Above TopSecret, Homepage of the Dead, and Rise of the Dead forums. Weise was a self-described neo-Nazi, and his foreboding internet activity raises concerns for socially-withdrawn youth who spend time on the internet. The incident will yet again have experts drawing links between video game violence, and real life violence.
2006
Work on the project called Twitter started when Jack Dorsey published the first Twitter message at 9:50 PM (PST): just setting up my twttr. [1]
2007
Apple Computer begins shipping the Apple TV, a digital media receiver. The device features a 40GB internal hard drive and the Mac OS X v10.4.7 operating system. Visit the official Apple TV website.
Version 6.6 of the DarkBASIC Professional (DBPro) programming language is released. DBPro is a dialect of BASIC specifically designed for graphically-intense game development. Visit the official DarkBASIC website.
2014
Lenovo acquires patents from Unwired Planet for $100 million dealing with 3G and LTE mobile technology