The Great Geek Manual

1997
The website of the British Field Sports Society is hacked by “Atrocity”.

1998
Apple Computer releases Mac OS 8.5.1, a minor update to Mac OS 8.5 that fixes a number of bugs cause crashes and data corruption.

Microsoft admits to having found a Year 2000 (Y2K) bug in its most recent release of the Windows ’98 operating system and announces a fix to remedy it.

South Carolina reveals that it has dropped out of the antitrust suit pending against the Microsoft Corporation. The state claims that, after analyzing the recent merger between America Online (AOL) and Netscape, there is evidence of ample competition within the market. South Carolina had been one of twenty states to join the federal government in the original suit.

A spokesperson for the family of Bill Gates, age 43, announces that he and his wife, Melinda, are expecting a second child in June 1999.

1999
Intel conducts the first public demonstration of its Bluetooth wireless technology, a set of specifications for personal area networks (PANs). The technology will be released in mid-2000. To demonstrate the technology, the data on two notebooks are synchronized wirelessly using Intel’s Bluetooth radio module and software suite. Visit the official Bluetooth website.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sues Napster in San Francisco federal court, alleging copyright infringement. The ensuing publicity generated by the trial will draw millions of new users to Napster’s filesharing service.

2000
Priceline.com announces that it has postponed the launch of its business-to-business, cellular, and life insurance services.

2001
Four Israeli teenagers are arrested for writing and disseminating the Goner worm, which did an estimated eighty million dollars of damage. A fifth will later be arrested after the first four are questioned. One of the five is a middle school student, the other four are tenth and eleventh graders. The teens were found after web handles found within the virus code were matched to IP addresses with which the handles had been registered on DALnet (the IRC network.)

2004
The Astrophysical Journal reports that the Hubble Space Telescope has photographed a galaxy that may be just five hundred million years old, which would make it the youngest galaxy yet discovered in the Universe.

Nvidia announces that it will manufacture the graphics processor for Sony’s next PlayStation video game system. The two companies have been working for two years to develop a graphics processor based on Sony technology and Nvidia’s GeForce architecture.

Researchers from the New York State Department of Health and the State University of New York in Albany demonstrate a device which allows users to interface with a computer using thought alone. “The results show that people can learn to use scalp-recorded electroencephalogram rhythms to control rapid and accurate movement of a cursor in two directions,” say Jonathan Wolpaw and Dennis McFarlane. Before the technology, many researchers had previously assumed that only invasive brain-computer interfaces, in which electrodes are surgically implanted into the brain, could control complex movements. However the success of such demonstrations proves that it may not be necessary to implant electrodes to gain multi-dimensional control.

Version 1.0 of Mozilla Thunderbird is released. The application will be downloaded over half a million times within three days of its release and over one million time within ten days. Visit the application’s official website.

Version 8.4.9 of the Tcl/Tk programming language is released.

2005
The journal Nature publishes the DNA sequence of a domestic dog, specifically a Boxer.

Microsoft is fined 33 billion won (US$32 million) following an antitrust ruling by South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission and ordered unbundle its messaging service from its Windows operating system in a version that will enables other software companies to embed their own services.

2006
BitTorrent, Inc. CEO Bram Cohen announces that BitTorrent, Inc. has acquired uTorrent, a freeware Bittorrent client written in C++ for Windows. uTorrent will continue to be maintained separately, with its own community, and the µTorrent code base will remain closed source. Ludvig Strigeus, the original creator of uTorrent, will serve as a technical consultant, but BitTorrent, Inc. will continue the project’s development. Visit the application’s official website.

Hewlett-Packard (HP) pays US$14.5 million to settle civil charges brought by the California Attorney General without admitting liability. The complaint alleges that HP violated several sections of California’s penal code, including one that prohibits “willfully and knowingly” accessing computerized telephone account information without permission. It also cites an identity theft statutes that prohibit obtaining someone’s personal identity information and then using that information for an unlawful purpose. Among the other stipulations, HP agrees that for five years, it will: maintain employment of a chief ethics and compliance officer, expand the role of the company’s chief privacy officer to review HP’s investigation practices, expand the company’s employee and vendor codes to ensure that they address ethical standards regarding investigations, and retain an expert in the field of investigations to assist the company’s chief ethics officer with regard to investigations. Of the settlement money, US$13.5 million will go into a new law enforcement fund to fight violations of privacy and intellectual-property rights, while US$650,000 will cover statutory damages, and US$350,000 will reimburse the Attorney General’s Office for the costs of its investigation.

Nintendo releases the Wii video game system in Australia, Italy, New Zealand, and Switzerland. It includes a wireless Wii remote controller, a Nunchuk controller attachment, and video game Wii Sports. Unlike the other game systems of this generation, the Wii doesn’t have an internal hard drive, but it uses 512MB of internal Flash memory instead and features support for removable SD card storage. It also comes bundled with Wii Sports. Visit the game’s official website. Price: AUD$399.95 (Australia), €259 (Italy), NZD$499.90 (New Zealand), SFr399 (Switzerland)

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