1996
Adobe Systems releases version 6.5 of the PageMaker desktop publishing application for Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0. Visit the application’s official website. Price: US$895 (New) or US$99 (Upgrade)
Intel announces the development of a supercomputer that can attain computing speeds of up to one trillion operations per second with 9,624 integrated Pentium processors operating in parallel. Commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy at a cost of US$50 million, the supercomputer will be used at the Sandia National Laboratories to simulate nuclear weapons’ performance and to predict weather patterns and other natural phenomena. Department officials compare one trillion operations to the entire population of the United States working with hand held calculators non-stop for one hundred twenty five years.
International Business Machines (IBM) and Motorola announce that they will cease the development and sales of Windows NT-based PowerPC systems.
1997
Microsoft files an appeal of the preliminary injunction issued by Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson on Thursday, December 11. The injunction requires the company to unbundle its Internet Explorer web browser from its Windows operating systems.
U.S. President Bill Clinton signs the “No Electronic Theft Act” into law (Public Law 105-147), making it a criminal act to trade a copyrighted work with a friend or to reproduce or distribute copyrighted works with a total retail value of more than US$1,000 inside any 180-day period. The statue of limitations for prosecuting copyright violations is extended to five years. Senator Orrin Hatch publicly declares that “this bill plugs the ‘LaMacchia Loophole‘ in criminal copyright enforcement.” The “LaMacchia Loophole” refers to the failed prosecution of MIT student David LaMacchia due to LaMacchia’s lack of commercial motive.
The website of the Huntington National Bank is hacked and defaced by “so1o”, “helix”, “xFli “, and “modeX”, who call themselves “Team CodeZero”. The same site had been hacked the day prior by “k3rm1t”. View an archived version of the defaced website.
1998
Iomega begins shipping Clik removable storage drives.
The United States missile defense system, North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), completes the first phase of extensive computer upgrades at the Cheyenne Mountain underground bunker. The improvements cost nearly two billion dollars, about twice the original cost of the system.
1999
The stock of operating system developer Be, Inc reaches an all-time high of US$39 a share (a US$1.4 billion market cap), however, the stock’s value will soon after plummet following the bursting of the dot-com bubble. Visit an archive of the official Be website.
2003
Pepper Computer, Inc. releases the Pepper Pad, a mobile computer with Internet capability that doubles as a handheld game console, in the U.S. It features a 533MHz AMD Geode LX800 CPU, 256MB RAM, a 20GB or 30GB hard disk, a SD/MMC Flash memory slot, a WVGA 7-inch LCD touchscreen, and both Bluetooth 2.0, and Wi-Fi connectivity. Visit the company’s official website.
The space tourist company Space Adventures announces that two American customers have paid to journey aboard a Soyuz spacecraft on its ten day mission to the International Space Station (ISS).
U.S. President George W. Bush“>George W. Bush signs the CAN-SPAM Act into law. The Act makes the sender of unsolicited commercial e-mails (“spam”) liable for penalties of up to US$250 per individual e-mail. Penalties can also be incurred under the Act by falsifying e-mail header data or failing to provide opt-out instructions in legitimate commercial e-mails.
Version 0.5 of Desktop Light Linux (DeLi Linux) operating system is released. DeLi is particularly optimized to run on older personal computers. DeLi Linux requires only a 386 processor with 8MB RAM. However, it works best with a 486 processor and 16MB RAM. A full installation with the full package installed requires nearly 400MB of hard disk space. Visit the system’s official website.
2004
Apple sells its two hundred millionth song through the iTunes Music Store to Ryan Alekman of Belchertown, Massachusetts. The download is a part of The Complete U2 album.
Microsoft acquires GIANT Company Software, developer of GIANT AntiSpyware.
Symantec and Veritas Software announce plans for a merger. The US$13.5 billion purchase of Veritas will be the largest acquisition in software industry history.
2005
Eric Lichtblau and James Risen publish an article in the The New York Times entitled “Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts.” The article alleges that, in response to 9/11, “President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the boarders of the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying” as part of the War on Terrorism. The article alleges that, “Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible ‘dirty numbers’ linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.” The revelation evokes an immediate and widespread debate over the legality of such actions. Many legal experts and politicians conclude that the actions violate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), while others contend that the FISA only applies to calls made and received domestically.
Google announces that it will pay US$1 billion for a 5% stake in AOL. The announcement puts an end to rumors that the company would merge with one of the big three search engines, Yahoo!, Microsoft, or Google. The deal will be finalized on December 20th.
Google releases a version of Gmail for mobile devices. Gmail Mobile offers most of the features of Gmail developed specifically for smaller, mobile screens. Visit the official Gmail Mobile website.
Sony unveils an upgrade of its humanoid robot QRIO which allows the robot to recognize boxes and interact with them as if they were building blocks.
2006
A rocket carrying two experimental satellites becomes the the first launch from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport. The Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority – a state agency – built the commercial launch pad in 1998 on land leased from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in an effort to bring jobs to the economically depressed Eastern Shore region.
Time magazine names “You,” the general public who contribute to such user-generated content websites as MySpace, Wikipedia, and YouTube as its choice for Person of the Year.
2008
In Canberra, Australia, the Australian Capital Territory Supreme Court approves a lawyer’s application to use Facebook to serve the legally binding documents notifying a couple that they lost their home after defaulting on a loan. The application comes after several failed attempts to contact the couple at the house and by e-mail.
2009
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) votes to file suit against Intel Corp. for engaging in anti-competitive business practices. Intel controls over eighty percent of the CPU market.
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