1994
The U.S. Deep Space Probe Science Experiment (DSPSE), also known as the Clementine Lunar Orbiter, begins to map the surface of the Moon from lunar orbit, using a laser to generate the first topographic lunar map.
1997
The NEC Corporation announces the development of the world’s first four-gigabit Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) computer chip. Visit the official NEC website.
1998
The International Standards Organization (ITU) announces that they have reached an agreement in Geneva, Switzrland to adopt the V.90 protocol as the new international standard for 56Kbps modems, unifying the market which has been divided between the the Rockwell/Lucent K56Flex and U.S. Robotics X2 protocols.
Version 4.2 of the Eiffel programming language is released.
The website of Boimag is hacked by “CoF”. View an archived version of the defaced website.
The website of Computer Beratung Direkt is hacked by “th3 4m1sh n1nj4s”. View an archived version of the defaced website.
The website of Presage Internet is hacked by “CoF”. View an archived version of the defaced website.
2002
Marc Thorpe, creator of Robot Wars, announces that he is finally free of the litigation that has dogged this venture for years. Read more about Robot Wars at the Robot Marketplace.
Nvidia releases the GeForce4 Ti, GeForce4 MX, and GeForce4 440 Go graphics chips and the GeForce4 Titanium card. Visit the official Nvidia website.
The Star Trek: Enterprise episode “Shadows of P’Jem” first airs. (No. 115) In it, T’Pol is recalled to Vulcan, but she and Archer are kidnapped by Andorians before she can leave. Memory Alpha entry
2003
Microsoft and Nvidia resolve their dispute over the pricing of the Xbox’s graphics chips.
2004
Australian recording industry investigators raid twelve premises, including the Sydney offices of the peer-to-peer network Kazaa, seeking evidence to support allegations of on-going copyright infringement. The raid is conducted with a Anton Piller order, which allows civil litigants the right to gather incriminating evidence in the course of a lawsuit. The premises raided include the offices of Kazaa owner Sharman Networks, the homes of two of the company’s executives, three universities, and several internet service providers. Visit the official Sharman Networks website.
2006
Dell announces that it will discontinue manufacturing music players with hard drives. Visit the official Dell website.
Google removes the website of the German car company BMW from its index. The company’s homepage, BMW.de, has a pagerank of 0, and the website doesn’t appear in search results for any terms. The ban is evidently precipitated by BMW’s use of a deceptive search engine optimization (SEO) tool known as “doorway pages,” though the reason is never officially announced by Google. Doorway pages are webpages that hold nothing but linked keywords and are visible only to search engine bots. They are designed to boost a site’s search engine ranking. BMW is one of the largest corporate entities to be penalized by the search engine for so-called blackhat seo techniques to date. Visit the official BMW website.
Internet peer-to-peer lending institution Prosper.com goes live. The company lends money to borrowers using a Dutch auction system to determine the terms of the loan, which are funded by others consumers. Visit the official Prosper.com website.
2007
Apple“>Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steven Jobs calls upon the four major record labels (Bertelsmann EMI Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Vivendi Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group) to abandon digital rights management (DRM) systems and begin selling music online without copy protections in an open letter entitled “Thoughts on Music,” posted to the company’s website. Jobs writes that there appears to be no benefit whatsoever to selling ninety percent of music on compact discs with no DRM system while selling such a small portion of their music online with a DRM system. “If such requirements were removed, the music industry might experience an influx of new companies willing to invest in innovative new stores and players. This can only be seen as a positive by the music companies.” The letter is posted without fanfare, but overnight, it will make headlines across the globe.
2009
Summit Entertainment releases the science fiction action film Push, directed by Paul McGuigan and starring Chris Evans, Dakota Fanning, Djimon Hounsou, and Camilla Belle, to 2,313 U.S. theaters. In it, a group of people born with super powers are forced to join together to resist a shadowy government agency hoping to harness their abilities to produce super soldiers. Produced on a budget of US$38 million, the film will gross US$10,079,109 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG-13) Running Time: 1 hr 51 mins
2010
China’s state media announces that a man has been sentenced to thirteen years in prison and fines of 100,000 yuan (15,000 dollars) for operating a porn website as part of an ongoing campaign to crack down on online sexual content.
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