The Great Geek Manual

1988
Atari Games enters into an agreement with Nintendo to become a licensed producer of game cartridges for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).

1991
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Wounded” first airs. (No. 412) In it, the Enterprise is dispatched on a mission to intercept a rouge Federation ship that has gone rogue, jeopardizing a peace treaty with the Cardassians. Memory Alpha entry

1997
Ian Goldberg, a Berkeley graduate student, takes part in the RSA Data Security challenge and cracks the 40-bit code by linking together 250 idle workstations to test one hundred billion possible “keys” an hour. In just three and a half hours, Goldberg decoded the message, which read, “This is why you should use a longer key.”

The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) concludes an eight-month undercover investigation which resulted in a series of raids on homes and businesses across the country. “Operation Cyber Strike” focused on individuals and groups who had passed illegal copies of computer and video game software by any one of a number of means, primarily bulletin board systems (BBS).

1998
Internet traffic is re-routed through University of Southern California (USC) computers as a test Jon Postel. Visit the official website of Jon Postel.

Radio Shack executives announce their intention to sell Compaq computers rather than IBM brand computer in their chain of seven thousand stores in the U.S. Visit the official Radio Shack website.

The website of Datapark is hacked by “GiftGas”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

1999
PeopleSoft, the second ranking provider of business management software, announces plans to cut 430 employees, or about six percent of its work force. The firm will also take a charge against earnings in the first quarter of almost US$175 million for the formation of a new business group called “Momentum.”

In Russia, scientists with Dubna (Joint Institute for Nuclear Research) publish an article announcing the creation of Element 114 in Physical Review Letters. The element was created by bombarding Plutonium-244 with Calcium-48 ions to create a single atom with about 184 neutrons in its nucleus.

Yahoo! acquires the GeoCities webhosting service for $3.57 billion in stock. Yahoo! will take control of the service on May 28th. The acquisition will prove very unpopular among Geocities users, and members will leave the service in droves to protest Yahoo’s new terms of service. Visit the official Geocities website.

Yahoo! launches Yahoo! Taiwan, Yahoo! Singapore, and Yahoo! Hong Kong.

2000
Amazon.com announces that it has cut 150 of its 7,500 work force. Visit the official Amazon.com website.

2001
During the Super Bowl, Tampa, Florida city officials deploy state-of-the-art surveillance equipment at the Raymond James Stadium. The system, positioned at stadium entrance turnstiles, acquires facial scans of attendees and compares them against a database of seventeen hundred “known felons, terrorists and con artists provided by multiple local, state and federal agencies” using cutting-edge biometric facial recognition software. The fact that attendees aren’t notified of the scans will raise serious concerns over the ethics of privacy when the security enhancements are publicly disclosed.

2002
Apple Computer announces that it has received a record-breaking 150,000 pre-orders for the new iMac since its introduction exactly three weeks ago. The company also announces that it has begun shipping the first of the three iMac models.

Apple Computer begins shipping a Power Mac, featuring an 800 MHz PowerPC processor, a 256MB RAM, a 40GB hard drive, a CD-RW drive, and an ATI Radeon 7500 graphics card. Price: US$1,599

Apple Computer begins shipping a Power Mac featuring a 933MHz processor, 256MB RAM, a 60GB hard drive, a DVD recording drive, Nvidia GeForce 4 MX graphics card. Price: US$2,299

Apple Computer begins shipping a Power Mac, featuring two 1GHz processors, 512MB RAM, an 80GB hard drive. Price: US$2,999

Palm, Inc. introduces the i705 handheld computer featuring the 33MHz Motorola Dragonball VZ processor, the Palm OS 4.1 operating system, and wireless e-mail and message service. It is notable for being the first Palm device to feature a flip-out antenna Price: US$449

2003
Apple Computer announces a new low-end Power Mac, featuring a 1GHz PowerPC G4 processor, 256MB RAM, a 60GB hard drive, CD-RW/DVD drive, 64MB Nvidia GeForce 4MX graphics card, 56kbps modem, USB 1.1, Ethernet, Mac OS 10.2.3, FireWire 800, and iLife digital media suite. Price: US$1,499

Apple Computer announces a new midrange http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Mac, featuring a dual 1.25GHz PowerPC G4 processors, 256MB RAM, an 80GB hard drive, CD-RW/DVD drive, ATI Radeon 9000 Pro graphics card, 56kbps modem, USB 1.1, Ethernet, Mac OS 10.2.3, FireWire 800, and iLife digital media suite. Price: US$1,999

Apple Computer announces a new high-end http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Mac, featuring a dual 1.42 GHz PowerPC G4 processors, 512MB RAM, 120GB hard drive, 4X DVD SuperDrive, ATI Radeon 9000 Pro graphics card, 56kbps modem, USB 1.1, Ethernet, Mac OS 10.2.3, FireWire 800, and iLife digital media suite. Price: US$2,699

2004
At roughly 14:00UTC, a new strain of the MyDoom virus, the fastest-spreading worm in history, is discovered two days after the original virus’ initial attack on January 26th. The variant, Mydoom.B, carries the original worm’s payload (a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDOS) against the SCO Group), but it is also programmed to launch an identical attack against Microsoft’s website beginning on February 3rd and to block access to the websites of over sixty antivirus firms, presumably to prevent infect systems from being repaired. Because this second strain is less prevalent than the original, Microsoft’s servers will not be effected as drastically as other victims of the virus. However, with the news of this second strain of the virus comes news that MyDoom is responsible for roughly one in five e-mail messages. This will be the peak of MyDoom’s spread.

2005
The horror film Alone in the Dark, directed by Uwe Boll and starring Christian Slater, Tara Reid, and Stephen Dorff, is released to 2,124 U.S. theaters. The movie is based on the popular survival horror game Alone in the Dark. Produced on a budget of US$20 million, the film will gross US$$2,834,421 in its opening weekend. (MPAA Rating: R) Running Time: 1 hr 36 mins

Jeffrey Lee Parson, age 19, of Hopkins, Minnesota, is sentenced to eighteen months in prison, three years of supervised release, and 225 hours of community service for creating and unleashing the B variant of the MS Blaster computer worm. He is also ordered to pay US$497,546.55 in restitution, to be divided between Microsoft and specific individuals whose computers had been effected. Parson is a Parson pled guilty on August 11, 2004. During the sentencing hearing Judge Marsha J. Pechman admonished Parson, “What you’ve done is a terrible thing. Aside from injuring people and their computers you shook the foundation of technology.” Parson faced a penalty of up to ten years in prison and a quarter million dollar fine, but Pechman lightened the sentence, citing parental neglect and psychological problems. He was indicted in September 2003, after admitting that he had created his worm by modifying the original MS Blaster worm and adding a mechanism that allowed him to have complete access to certain infected computers. Attorneys for the government calculate that more than forty-eight thousand computers were infected by Parson’s worm. Read the judgment in the case of U.S. v. Jeffrey Lee Parson.

The Star Trek: Enterprise episode “Babel One” first airs. (No. 412) In it, the Andorians threaten to go to war against the Tellarites after their envoy is allegedly ambushed en route to trade negotiations. Memory Alpha entry

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