Hewlett-Packard (HP) releases the HP 360LX handheld computer, featuring a Hitachi 60 MHz SH-3 processor, 8MB RAM, 10MB ROM, a 640×240 pixel grayscale display, and the Windows CE 2.0 operating system. Price: US$699
Hitachi announces the 200MHz SuperH SH-4 processor. The unit will go into production in summer 1998. Price: US$40 in quantities of 10,000
International Business Machines (IBM) announces the world’s highest capacity desktop PC disk drive with new breakthrough technology called Giant Magnetoresistive (GMR) heads. Pioneered by scientists at IBM Research, GMR heads will be used in a new 16.8GB hard drive for the IBM Deskstar 16GP. This new hard drive has more storage capacity than any other computer. No bigger than the head of a pin, the GMR head is a major advancement over the standard magnetoresistive head.
WorldCom and MCI Communications announces a US$37 billion merger, the largest merger in US history. On September 15, 1998 the new company, MCI WorldCom, opened for business.
Yahoo! launches Yahoo! Travel.
Yahoo! surpasses twenty-five million registered US users.
1998
Reuters news service reports that an Intel executive testified that Microsoft Corporation’s Bill Gates threatened to withdraw his company’s US$500 million in computer chip technology unless Intel abandoned a pending software project. It’s some of the most dammning testimony to date in the Microsoft anti-trust trial, which is in its fourth week.
1999
The Compaq Computer Corporation unveils a computer targeted for corporate Internet users called the “iPac“. Price: US$499
The Japanese Fair Trade Commission raids thirty Sega of Japan facilities including the company’s headquarters in Tokyo, Japan. According to later statements made by officials, the raids are focused on reports that Sega may have been involved in illegal price fixing practices.
Silicon Graphics releases version 6.5.6 of its IRIX operating system.
2000
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) lures two Russians, Alexey Vladimirovich Ivanov and Vasiliy Gorshkov, to Seattle, Washington for what is purported to be a job interview with a shady tech firm. Just hours after landing at SeaTac Airport, Ivanov and Gorshkov were arrested and charged with conspiracy, computer fraud, hacking, and extortion. The arrests are the beginning of the agency’s crackdown on the proliferation of hackers that operate outside US jurisdiction in Romania, Russia, and the Ukraine. Read a more in-depth account of the incident at LegalAffairs.org.
Warner Bros. releases the science fiction film Red Planet, directed by Antony Hoffman and starring Val Kilmer, Carrie-Anne Moss, Benjamin Bratt, and Tom Sizemore, to 2,703 US theaters. Astronauts searching for a solution to save a dying Earth from severe pollution and overpopulation on Mars suddenly find themselves struggling to survive. Among the most notable features of the film is the computer generated robot, AMEE. Produced on a budget of US$80 million, it will gross US$8,721,296 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG-13) Running Time: 1 hr 46 mins
2001
Apple Computer releases the first iPod, which features a 5GB “1,000 song” capacity. While the device is far from the first MP3 player on the market, it is notable for its large capacity, quick loading times, and sleek design. Price: US$399
Version 4.79 of the Netscape Communicator web browser is released. Visit the application’s official website.
2002
Apple Computer releases Mac OS X 10.3.1.
2004
By the end of the first day following the initial public release of the Firefox web browser, the application has been downloaded over one million times. Visit the application’s official website.
Google opens up the Google Advertising Professional program.
2005
The first virus to exploit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_rootkits“>Sony-BMG’s rootkit digital rights management (DRM) technology, which controversially masks files with filenames beginning with “$sys$” from detection, is discovered in the wild. The Stinx Trojan, a variant of the Breplibot Trojan, creates a local copy of “$sys$drv.exe” in the Windows system directory, which, upon execution, installs an IRC backdoor on the infected system. The trojan is transmitted across the internet as an attachment in a spam email claiming to have been sent from a legitimate business magazine.
2006
The full genome of the California purple sea urchin (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus) is published and is discovered to contain many novel genes as well as many analogous genes common to vertebrates.
The NASA spacecraft Cassini records a hurricane-like storm on the south pole of Saturn. It’s the first time such an event has been observed on another planet.
The popular bittorrent index website TorrentSpy surpasses two million registered users less than a year after having surpassed a million registered users. Visit the official TorrentSpy website.
Warner Bros. releases the fantasy film The Prestige, directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Scarlett Johansson, and David Bowie, to 2,281 US theaters. It’s based on the 1995 World Fantasy Award-winning novel of the same name by Christopher Priest. In it, two magicians’ rivalry ends in tragedy when the they both turn to Nikola Tesla for a trick to end all tricks. Produced on a budget of US$40 million, it will gross US$14,801,808 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG-13) Running Time: 2 hrs 15 mins
|
|
|
