August 19, 2003: The Sobig.F virus was first discovered on this day. 24 hours later, it took down many a network by sending out emails with subjects like – “Re: Approved,” “Re: Details,” “Re: Re: My details,” “Re: Thank you!,” “Re: That movie,” “Re: Wicked screensaver,” “Re: Your application,” “Thank you!,” or “Your details.”The first version was found in January of 2003. The Sobig.F was the most destructive.
August 17, 2006: Dell announced in 2006 they will begin putting AMD processors into Dimension desktops and later in the year Dell AMD servers will be available. On that same day, they announced that after an internal investigation into its accounting practices Dell would restate and reduce earnings from 2003 through Q1 2007. A total amount of between $50 million and $150 million was deducted – 2 cents to 7 cents per share.
August 14, 2008: Netflix distribution centers go offline for 3 days
August 14, 2008 Fifty-Five Netflix distribution centers go offline due to an “undisclosed error”. While they didn’t let us know what happened, they did say that it only affected the core of mail-based delivery operations. The problem took 3 days to fully resolve, although they were slowly shipping movies by that Wednesday.
AMD introduces a new brand name to compete with Intel in 1999. The Athlon processor replaces the K7 and adds 3DNow! Technology. The processor was introduced with speeds of 500 MHz to 650 MHz. The prices went from $249 to $849. The Palm VIIx was $449 and the Vx was $399.
2013: Google put on a “Secret Town Hall” meeting. Nobody knew what was going on, although some speculated it had to do with the TV. In their major announcement, Google introduced Chromecast – the HDMI-based set top box that was small enough to plug into the TV and not see it. The 2.83 inch dongle could stream YouTube or Netflix (at the time), along with a feature that turned your Android or iOS device into the remote.
The video would push to the TV while the mobile device could continue on searching, playing games, and more.
Chromecast debuted at $35 with 3 free months of Netflix.
Credit Cards
It’s whats known as “Data Pass”. You went up to Orbitz, Buy.com, Fandango, Shutterfly, Priceline or Continental Airlines and purchase something. You are then asked if you want to be a part of the loyalty program. If you say yes, the credit card would be passed to a 3rd party affiliate, like WebLoyalty, Vertue and Affinion. They would then continue to bill your card. This issue broke lose in 2009 and the US Senate commerce Committee started looking into the issue.On Aug 10, 2010, Affinion (parent company to Data Pass) agreed to pay 8 million in damages. An additional $2 million would be paid between 5 – 3rd party companies that included Classmates.com and FTD. A small amount to the millions they swindled for years…
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.
2001– Dave Weiner added a new functionality to the RSS feed called “Enclosure“. It was defined as passing any audio file (mp3, wav, ogg, etc), video file (mpg, mp4, avi, mov, etc), PDF, or ePub (electronic publication) into the syndicated feed. Weiner demonstrated by enclosing a Grateful Dead song in his website at Scripting News. This was an idea that was proposed by Tristan Louis.
It wasn’t until Adam Curry and crew started iPodderX and in February 2004 the name “Podcasting” was coined by Ben Hammersley. But its roots all come back to this day when RSS 0.92 was demonstrated.
2001 – One problem with technology is that you hit limitations, mostly due to materials used or how small machines can make parts like transistors. For instance, today’s multi-core x86 processors will eventually be replaced because we won’t be able to put anymore transistors on the die – It’s called “Moores Law“. Intel and AMD work hard to get around this law – which is why x86 technology has been around since the 90’s.One thing scientists do to circumvent is to change the restructure the transistor. In 2001, Intel did just that. They launched the TeraHertz – a new transistor, using several new materials – including Zirconium Dioxide (which is used to reduce leakage issues). The new THz transistors brought processing to a new level; High process tasks like facial recognition could be achieved. The TeraHertz also worked on 0.6 Volts, so it vastly reduced power needs.
Intel expected this technology to be implemented by 2005. However, as to this date, the TeraHertz transistor has not been, nor seems to be planned for implementation in processors.
This Day in Tech History podcast show notes for November 26
0819, aggregator, AMD, amd sempron 3300, august 19, day in technology history, Podcast, saturday morning tv, sobig f virus, technology history, virusscan
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