1992
Bobby Fischer wins his re-match with Boris Spassky in Sveti Stefan, Yugoslavia. The match was organized by banker Jedzimir Vasiljevic. Fischer has ten wins, five losses, and fifteen draws. He receives US$3.65 million for winnings and Spassky receives US$1.5 million.
1994
Jim Clark announces to his Mosaic Communications employees that the company will now be named Netscape Communications Corporation.
1996
Adobe Systems releases version 4.0 of its Photoshop graphic editor for Macintosh, Power Macintosh, and Windows systems. This version includes the addition of adjustment layers, an Actions palette, and enhanced Web support. It also refines existing features by updating the user interface with a Navigator palette, guides and grids, and a standardized toolbox. This version also features a notably increased set of system requirements, including a minimum of 16MB of application RAM (32MB recommended) and 25MB of hard disk space. Visit the application’s official website. Price: US$895
1998
International Business Machines (IBM) unveils the largest hard drive ever designed for personal computers. The one billion byte (25GB) drive called the Deskstar 25GP is intended for home computers while the notably faster 22GB model, the Deskstar 22GXP, is intended for commercial applications.
Yahoo! launches Yahoo! Spain.
2000
Sony unveils the Sony Dream Robot (SDR-3X) humanoid robots, at the Robodex 2000 trade show, the world’s first exhibition of human partner-type robots, in Yokohama, Japan. The SDR-3X can perform a variety of relatively high-speed, autonomous tasks, including: walking backward, forward, or sideways even over uneven terrain at a speed of up to fifteen meters per minute; turning to the left or right while walking (up to ninety degrees with each step); standing up from a prone position; kicking a ball; and dancing to a beat. The robot is equipped with speech and image recognition software and operates on the Aperios real-time operating system. The robot is 50cm tall and weighs 50kg.
2002
Microsoft and Samsung announce that they will develop a a low-cost handheld computer, which will feature a Samsung 200MHz ARM9-based S3C2410 processor, the Microsoft Pocket PC operating system, 32MB memory, a 3.5-inch display, and Secure Digital card support.
2005
Fox airs an episode of the television program Killer Instinct with a story centered around a popular online video game with explicit violence, in which teenagers playing the game are depicted with the ability to unlock sexually explicit scenes and mini-games. The episode is a reference to the real world Hot Coffee minigame controversy, in which a normally inaccessible minigame in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas can be accessed using a mod.
France issues twenty postage stamps depicting “Heroes of Video Games.” The stamps feature Ad boy, Donkey Kong, Lara Croft, Link, Mario, Pac-Man, Prince of Persia, Rayman, The Sims, and Spyro.
Sony BMG Music Entertainment announces that it has suspended production of music CDs with the rootkit-like XCP copy protection technology that was designed to prevent users from duplicating music after the discovery of viruses in the wild that exploited XCP as a “backdoor.” The announcement comes following ten days of controversy arising from the discovery Sony’s secretive use of the technology.
2006
Sony releases the PlayStation 3 video game system in Japan. The seventh generation console features a 3.2GHz PowerPC-base Core Cell Processor, a 550MHz RSX GPU, 256MB XDR Main RAM, and 256MB GDDR3 VRAM. On the day of its launch, 81,639 consoles are sold. Hardware units outsell games on the day of the system’s launch because of the large number of consoles bought by Chinese businessmen to be resold on eBay.
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