The Great Geek Manual

1994
Robert and Carleen Thomas, the sysops of the Amateur Action BBS in Milipitas, California, are arrested by federal agents acting on behalf of the U.S. Postal Service on six counts of transporting obscene material and one count of receiving child pornography. The arrests are the beginning of the “Amateur Action Case,” in which the Thomases are prosecuted under the community standards in Tennessee, despite living and operating in California. The Thomases will eventually end up sentenced to several years in prison.

The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Pegasus” first airs. (No. 712) In it, Riker’s former commander joins the crew on a mission to retrieve the USS Pegasus as Picard investigates the circumstances under which the ship was lost. Memory Alpha entry

1996
Texas Instruments (TI) introduces the TI-83 graphing calculator with financial functions at the Mathematical Association of America Conference. The calculator will become one of the most popularly used by students in middle schools and high schools. Price: US$125

1998
Sega of America formally announces that it will release a “super console” in North America in 1999. Sega claims that the new console will position Sega as the new leader in the game console industry, however, the company also confirms that they laid off thirty percent of their work force earlier in the week.

The ValuJet homepage is hacked.

The website of Citizens Bank is hacked by “getwork guerillas”.

The website of Carney Plastics, Incorporated, Computer Tutor Training & Service Inc., East Liverpool High School Alumni Assoc., Easy Software & Systems, Mega-Bytes of Ohio, The Review, and Youngstown Electric Supply are hacked by “OptikLenz”. View an archived version of the defaced websites.

2000
Internet service provider America Online (AOL) announces an agreement to acquire Time Warner, Inc. for US$165 billion in stock. Steve Case, chairman and chief executive of AOL will preside as chairman over the merged companies, while Gerald Levin, chairman and chief executive of Time Warner, will serve as the new company’s chief executive. The resulting company, AOL Time Warner, will have a combined value of US$350 billion. Visit the official AOL Time Warner website.

Microsoft settles the four-year legal anti-trust lawsuit brought against it by Caldera. While the exact terms of the agreement aren’t made public, Microsoft does admit making a substantial payment to Caldera. The suit came about after Caldera acquired DR-DOS, an MS-DOS alternative, from Novell at a cost of US$400,000 in 1996. When users beta testing Microsoft’s Windows operating system attempted to use DR-DOS, an error message would pop up, and it was later discovered by Geof Chappell of England that the error messages were false, the result of a segment of encrypted code designed to discourage the use of alternative DOS systems. Caldera’s efforts to market DR-DOS spurred Microsoft to resume the development of MS-DOS, which it had previously ceased dues to a near-complete lack of competition in the market, and to market the new version of MS-DOS with a campaign specifically designed to convince DR-DOS users to switch to MS-DOS. In addition, Caldera alleges in its action that Microsoft combined MS-DOS 7.0 with Windows for the purpose of deterring users from also purchasing DR-DOS. The case’s settle comes following Microsoft’s failure to have the case dismissed or moved from the U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City. Visit Caldera’s official website.

2001
Vasily Gorshkov is convicted of twenty counts of fraud and computer crimes for stealing credit card numbers and defrauding PayPal.

2002
Royal Consumer Information Products releases the Royal Lin@x handheld computer, featuring a 206MHz Intel StrongARM processor, the Linux operating system, a built-in MP3 player, a color screen, a CompactFlash Type II slot, a serial port, and a USB port. Price: US$299

2006
Apple Computer announces that its iTunes Music Store has sold 850 million songs and eight million videos since its launch on April 28, 2003. Visit the official iTunes Music Store website.

At Macworld Conference & Expo, the first Apple Computer systems to feature Intel processors, the iMac and MacBook Pro, are released. The systems are based on the Intel Core Duo platform. Apple also announces that all of its lines will complete the transition to Intel processors on all hardware by the end of 2006, a year ahead of the company’s previously announced target date. The company claims that the MacBook Pro will perform up to four times faster than the its predecessor, the PowerBook line, while the new iMac will perform anywhere from two to three times faster than earlier iMac systems. Price: US$1,299

2007
Cisco Systems sues Apple, Inc., claiming that the computer manufacturer’s new iPhone violates a trademark it with InfoGear Technology Corp. in 2000. In the spring of last year, Cisco’s Linksys division began shipping an Internet phone called the “iPhone” that uses Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, but the product wasn’t officially launched until three weeks ago. According to the lawsuit, Cisco claims that Apple approached it repeatedly over the past few years in regard to licensing the trademark, but those negotiations have heated up over the past few weeks. However, according to the suit, Cisco claims that communication between the two companies ceased Monday, during the Macworld Conference and Expo, during which Steve Jobs announced it’s iPhone. Cisco’s filing comes just the day after the unveiling of the Apple iPhone in San Francisco.

2008
India’s Tata Motors unveils the world’s cheapest car, which will bring the dream of owning an automobile within the reach of tens of millions of people across the county. The Tata Nano is expected to sell for about US$2,500.

The U.S. Justice Department releases an audit reporting that telephone companies have cut off Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) wiretaps due to the bureau’s repeated failure to pay phone bills on time.

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