1992
The Fall COMDEX trade show is held in Las Vegas, Nevada. The event features two thousand company booths and is attended by 145,000 people. At the event, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) demonstrates its 50MHz 80486 processors. International Business Machines (IBM) demonstrates its 100MHz “Blue Lightning” 486 processor. Trident announces the Storm graphics accelerator chips for ISA, MCA, or VL-Bus graphics cards. The chips support up to 2 MB of video memory, allowing resolutions up to 1280×1024.
Microsoft releases version 1.0 of the Microsoft Access database application for Windows. Price: US$99
1996
Version 2.1.6 of the FreeBSD operating system is released. Visit the official FreeBSD website.
1998
3Dfx Interactive unveils the Voodoo 3 chipset for gaming video cards at the COMDEX trade show in Las Vegas, California.
At the COMDEX trade show, Iomega announces the Zip 250 drive, which features an external SCSI or parallel port connection and can read and write both 100MB and 250MB cartridges. The transfer rate of the drive is up to 1.7MBps. Price: US$199 and US$17 for 250MB cartridges
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) releases the AMD K6-2 processor at speeds of 366, 380, and 400MHz, featuring bus speeds of 66, 95, and 100MHz respectively. Price: US$187, US$213, and US$283 respectively in 1,000-unit quantities
1999
Infogrames announces that it will acquire a seventy percent share of American video game publisher GT Interactive for US$135 million. Infogrames will assume the new subsidiary’s US$75 million bank debt and invest an additional US$30 million by June 2000.
2000
BattleBots holds yet another tournament, November 16-19. Four weight classes and over 130 robots compete in Las Vegas for the taping of the second series of BattleBots series on Comedy Central.
ICANN selects seven new top level domain (TLD) names: .aero, .biz, .coop, .info, .museum, .name, .pro. Visit the organization’s official website.
Yahoo! launches Yahoo! Canada in French.
2001
In Los Angeles, California, US Customs Agents seize US$100 million in pirated computer software, the largest such seizure in US history, as a part of Operation White Horse.
Warner Bros. releases the fantasy film Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, directed by Chris Columbus and starring Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Richard Harris, Robbie Coltrane, Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Ian Hart, and Richard Griffiths, to 3,672 US theaters. It is based on the novel of the same name by J.K. Rowling. Produced on a budget of US$125 million, it will gross US$90,294,621 domestically in its opening weekend. It will go on to gross US$975.8 million to become the second highest grossing film of all time, behind Titanic. Visit the film’s official website. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG) Running Time: 2 hrs 33 mins
2002
Bandai releases the SwanCrystal handheld game console, featuring a 3,072MHz 16-bit NEC V30MZ Clone, 64KB VRAM, and a 2.8 inch diagonal TFT reflective LCD screen. The SwanCrystal is available in four colors: Blue Violet, Skeleton Black, Skeleton Blue, and Red Wine. It is the third version of Bandai’s WonderSwan system.
2004
The NASA supersonic-combustion ramjet (scramjet) X-43A achieves an air speed of 6,800mph (11,000km/h) per hour or about Mach 10 (Mach 9.6), setting a new record for an “air-breathing” engine. The previous record was a flight that achieve Mach 7 in March. Scramjets use oxygen from the air to fuel combustion rather than carrying liquid oxygen in a tank like an ordinary rocket. The flight is the result of an eight-year $US230 million program that was launched in June 2001. Scientist ultimately hope to use scramjets as an alternative to rockets. Read more at ABC News or BBC.
2005
Aurora SPARC releases Build 2.0 Beta 2 of the Aurora SPARC Linux operating system. Visit the system’s official website.
The European Space Agency (ESA) launches two commercial satellites using the Ariane 5 ECA rocket, achieving the tenth successful launch in a row for the Ariane 5 series. Its total payload mass of about eight metric tons sets a new record.
Google launches Google Analytics launches a free web service that generates detailed statistics regarding web traffic. Visit the official Google Analytics website.
The United States government wins its fight to keep supervisory authority over the internet through its contractor, the ICANN, despite opposition from many nations. Rather than passing control of the internet to an international body, the World Summit on the Information Society will establish the Internet Governance Forum to discuss internet-related issues, although it will not have any binding authority. Read more at the BBC.
Version 2.4.32 of the Linux operating system is released. Visit the official Linux website.
2007
Version 1.4.1 of the PC-BSD operating system is released. Visit the official PC-BSD website.
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