1995
CompuServe and Unisys announce that they expect companies developing software that creates or displays images in the Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) to license the technology for a modest fee. Software developers will react to the announcement with something on the order of hysteria. Many developers threaten to stop using the format altogether. The League for Programming Freedom will be particularly vehement in their protest, launching a “Burn All GIFs” campaign. The announcement leads to the later development of the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) format, which will be released on October 1, 1996.
1997
The first commercial spy satellite, built by Earthwatch of Colorado, is launched from Russia. The company believes that will be able to sell images for nearly any location for prices ranging from US$300 to US$725.
Shareholders of Hayes Microcomputer Products approve the merger with Access Beyond, a manufacturer of rack-mount modems and terminal servers for internet service providers (ISPs). The resulting company will be called Hayes Communications. The merger is the company’s method of taking the company public. However, the new company’s stock value will plummet from US$12 to just pennies in October of the following year, and by 1999, the company’s assets will be liquidated.
1998
The website of the MP3 Site is hacked by “HcV”. View an archived version of the defaced website.
2000
Exigent International, a US government contractor, acknowledges that hackers have breached a restricted federal computer system at the United States Naval Research Laboratory and stolen the source code for OS/COMET, the company’s proprietary satellite command and control software, which allows ground-control personnel to communicate with satellites and rockets. The US Air Force has plans to use the OS/COMET software to control the NAVSTAR Global Positioning System from its Colorado Springs Monitor Station, which is part of the Air Force Space Command. Visit the official website of OS/COMET.
2002
Version 1.6.8 of the Ruby programming language is released. Visit the language’s official website.
2003
The Sven Co-op Team releases version 3.0 of the multiplayer mod Sven Co-op for the first-person shooter (FPS) Half-Life for Windows. The mod is a cooperative game in which players must work together to kill enemies and solve puzzles as a team. Visit the game’s official website.
2004
The Huygens probe begins a twenty-two day descent towards Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, where it will land on January 14, 2005. It was launched as part of the Cassini spacecraft in 1997, and together, the two space probes entered Saturn’s orbit in June 2004. Visit the probe’s official website.
2005
The first stable version of the FoX Linux operating system, version 1.0, is released in Lite and PRO editions. FoX Linux is a free Italian Linux distribution based on the Fedora Core optimized for the i686 architecture. Visit the Official Fox Linux Website.
2008
Market research firm iSuppli releases a report that reveals that global shipments of notebook computers have exceeded shipments of desktop computers in the third quarter of 2008 for the first time in history. Notebooks shipments, estimated at approximately 38.5 million units, were 40 percent higher that in the previous year, while desktop shipments were estimated at only 38.5 million units – down 1.3 percent from the previous year. Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst for computer platforms at iSuppli, remarks that “this marks a major event in the PC market because it marks the start of the age of the notebook.” Read more at the iSuppli website.
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