1998
JT Storage files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection and, later, Chapter 7, ten months after selling its Atari division to Hasbro Interactive for just US$5 million.
The Market for Home Computing and Videogames magazine (MCV) publishes its first issue in North America. The forty-six page issue features two cover stories related to the PlayStation.
The Mars Climate Orbiter is successfully launched on a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral. On September 23, 1999, the probe will fail due to a notorious software malfunction that fails to convert imperial units measures to metric values. The orbiter’s instruments had been intended to monitor the Martian atmosphere and image the planet’s surface on a daily basis for one Martian year (1.8 Earth years).
Paramount Pictures released the science fiction film Star Trek: Insurrection, directed by Jonathan Frakes and starring Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, and Gates McFadden, to 2,620 US theaters. It is the ninth Star Trek film and the third to feature the cast of the Star Trek: The Next Generation series. Produced on a budget of US$58 million, it will gross US$22,052,836 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG) Running Time: 1 hr 43 mins
Scientists announce in the journal Science that they have deciphered the entire genome of a tiny nematode worm, Caenorhabditis elegans. This marks the first time the genetic code of a multicellular organism has ever been sequenced. The genome sequence is approximately ninety-seven million base pairs long and contains approximately 20,100 genes.
1999
The MkLinux R1 operating system is released. Visit the official MkLinux R1.
2000
Creditcards.com is hacked and fifty-five thousand credit card numbers are left exposed on the Internet after an extortion scheme perpetrated by an anonymous hacker fails. Creditcards.com is a privately-held business-to-business service based in Los Angeles that enables e-commerce merchants to accept credit card payments. Laurent Jean, a spokesman for the company later characterizes the attack as “an act of retribution.” “He was angry with us and this was the way he took out his anger… After (he asked) us for money, we did everything we could to prevent him from entering our system.” The numbers won’t be removed until early the following day.
Gabon issues a postage stamp depicting a sledgehammer about to strike a personal computer to eradicate the Y2K bug.
Version 2.2.18 of the Linux operating system is released. Visit the official Linux website.
2001
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) launches several related undercover operations to combat software piracy, which will result in raids in twenty-seven US cities, as well as several foreign countries. Called, in various forms, “Operation Bandwidth,” “Operation Buccaneer,” and “Operation Digital Piratez,” the operations result is the seizure of over one hundred thirty computers containing several terabytes of data but no immediate arrests. The primary target of the operations is the “leadership” of the pirating group “Drink or Die”.
Yahoo! Enterprise Solutions launches Strategy Services.
2002
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) teams up with Terra-Lycos to disseminate virtual wanted posters in the form of flash banner ads for fugitive crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger across the Internet portal’s properties, including the Lycos network, Quote.com, and Wired News, in hopes of generating tips on Bulger’s whereabouts. The ad features three photos of the man and an offer of a one million dollar reward. The collaborative effort is the first of its kind. Bulger is wanted in connection with twenty-one murders in Massachusetts, and Terra-Lycos properties feature websites in nineteen languages with a presence in forty-two countries.
2004
The ten millionth copy of the Firefox web browser is downloaded, just a little over a month after its November 9th release. Visit the application’s official website.
2006
The Netherlands deactivates the last of its analogue terrestrial television transmitters which have served an increasingly small proportion of the nation’s population. Projections estimate that approximately ninety-two per cent of households are already connected to cable television service.
Virginia Attorney General Robert McDonnell announces his support for proposed legislation expected to be introduced in the state’s General Assembly by Senator Ryan McDougle that would require convicted sex offenders to register their e-mail addresses with state authorities in an attempt to assist social networks, such as Facebook and MySpace, in blocking offenders’ access. In response to the announcement, MySpace releases a statement commenting that, “This legislation is an important recognition that the Internet has become a community as real as any other neighborhood and is in need of similar
safeguards.”
2007
Physicists at the University of Queensland lead by Professor Andrew White execute the first quantum calculation in history when they manipulate quantum mechanically entangled photons to determine the prime factors of fifteen. The landmark accomplishment serves as a proof of concept that a more complex quantum computer could render cryptography methods based on large primes vulnerable.
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