The Great Geek Manual

2001
Comcast agrees to acquire AT&T Broadband in a deal valued at US$72 billion.

In the journal Nature, a team of scientists at International Business Machines (IBM) and Stanford University graduate students report the first demonstration of “Shor’s Algorithm,” a quantum algorithm developed in 1994 by AT&T scientist Peter Shor for using quantum computers to calculate a number’s factors. Factoring large numbers is so difficult for conventional computers and yet so simple to verify, that it is commonly used in cryptographic methods to protect data. The IBM scientists controlled a vial of a billion-billion molecules custom designed by IBM chemists for the purpose, each with the nuclei of five fluorine and two carbon atoms. The molecules in the test tube became a seven-qubit quantum computer that solved a simple version of the mathematical problem at the heart of many of today’s data-security cryptographic systems. They executed Shor’s algorithm and correctly identified three and five as the factors of fifteen. “Although the answer may appear to be trivial, the unprecedented control required over the seven spins during the calculation made this the most complex quantum computation performed to date,” said Nabil Amer, manager and strategist of IBM Research’s physics of information group. “This result reinforces the growing realization that quantum computers may someday be able to solve problems that are so complex that even the most powerful supercomputers working for millions of years can’t calculate the answers.” Read more at IBM.

The Maldal.D worm, otherwise known as ZaCker (for its subject line), is first discovered. The worm deletes data from Windows computers, including files integral to antivirus software. It was written in Visual Basic for Applications, and it spreads through Microsoft Outlook as an attachment named Christmas.exe.

New Line Cinema releases the fantasy film The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, directed by Peter Jackson and starring Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Viggo Mortensen, Ian McKellen, Dominic Monaghan, Billy Boyd, Orlando Bloom, John Rhys-Davies, Liv Tyler, Cate Blanchett, John Rhys-Davies, Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving, Sean Bean, Ian Holm, Andy Serkis, Lawrence Makoare, to 3,359 U.S. theaters. It based on the epic 1954 fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. Produced on a budget of US$93 million, it will gross US$47,211,490 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG-13) Running Time: 2 hrs 58 mins

The warez group Echelon releases Final Fantasy X. It is the first of what will become hundreds of PlayStation 2 games the group will release. The group will become among the most infamous of the warez groups. In 2004, it will be one of six groups targeted by Operation Fastlink.

2002
Microsoft releases DirectX 9. DirectX is a collection of programming interfaces for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming, and video on Microsoft platforms. Visit the system’s official website.

2003
Version 2.3.3 of the Python programming language is released. Visit the official Python website.

2004
A message is posted to the front page of the Suprnova.org torrent site announcing that the site has officially been shut down. Visit an archive of the Supernova website.

Version 1.0 of the RSSOwl news aggregator is released. Visit the application’s official website.

2005
American biologist J. Craig Venter announces that he is spearheading a project to create the first synthetic lifeform, an artificial microbe made from scratch by fusing existing DNA together with a microbe membrane. The team hopes to construct a simpler version of the bacteria Mycoplasma genitalium, a single-cell bacterium with just one chromosome and 517 genes common to the human reproductive tract in order to determine the minimum number of genes required to breathe life into a microorganism. Read more at Globe Life.

Hewlett-Packard (HP) completes the acquisition of Peregrine, Inc, based in San Diego, California. The acquisition adds asset management and enhanced IT service management capabilities to the HP OpenView range of system management products.

Microsoft announces that it will no longer support Internet Explorer for the Macintosh and recommends using other Macintosh browsers such as Safari.

2006
Mozilla Corporation released version 2.0.0.1 of the Firefox web browser. Visit the official Firefox website.

Scott McCausland, administrator of the EliteTorrents BitTorrent tracker site, is sentenced to five months of prison, five months of home arrest, and a US$3,000 fine at the conclusion of Operation D-Elite. Operation D-Elite was a joint operation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement against leading members of EliteTorrents precipitated by the tracker’s release of the Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith workprint approximately six hours prior to the movie’s theatrical release.

2009
NASA releases the first photograph taken of liquid outside of Earth’s atmosphere, in the form of sunlight reflecting on a lake on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. The photo was taken by the Cassini space probe. The light appears to be reflected by the southern edge of lake Kraken Mare, a body of liquid methane that covers about 150,000 square miles of the moon’s surface.

In the journal Nature, an astronomer with the University of California announces the discovery of GJ 1214 b, an ocean planet roughly 2.7 times larger than Earth orbiting a star in the Ophiuchus constellation.

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